I love doing weddings! Some ministers don’t, but I get to bless couples in a deeply real,
meaningful way. But I would have hated
to deal with Jacob’s wedding. Is this
what people mean when they talk about ‘biblical marriage’?
We hear stories all the time about bridezillas or dictatorial
mothers, but here we have the father of the bride deceiving his son in law in a
nasty, underhanded manner. Some folks
might say it serves Jacob right as he was a nasty trickster himself, stealing
the inheritance from his twin brother Esau.
But two wrongs don’t make a right. And maybe there is more to this story
that can be applied to our lives in meaningful ways.
One tool that is helpful in understanding family patterns is
to make a genealogy family tree. Family
backgrounds and behavior patterns can impact a new couple’s life together,
especially if they are not aware of it.
So if Jacob and Rachel came to me for marriage prep, they would have to
draw their family tree. It’s quite complicated. Abraham has several brothers and at least one
half sister, which he marries. That may
seem shocking to our modern ears, but remember that Egypt, the biggest super
power of Jacob’s time, was ruled by dynasties of pharaohs who were descendants of
the Gods and rather than dilute the sacred DNA, the Pharaohs often married
their sisters or half-sisters. They
didn’t understand the dangers of inbreeding any better than the royal families
of Europe 200 years ago who spread hemophilia to most of their descendants.
So Jacob’s family tree starts with Abraham. Interesting aside is that this family unlike
many ruling families of the time, did not claim direct descent from God or
multiple gods the way the families in Greece, Rome and Egypt did. No, they recognized that God created them
like God created many people and did not claim special status over other
people.
There are three brothers in Abraham’s family and at least one
half sister. Abraham leaves home to make
his own fortune in the world, suggesting that he was not the first-born going
to inherit Terah’s business. He
struggles to have children – Lot is his heir, son of his brother Haran. Abram’s first born is Ishmael, whose mother
was a surrogate mother for Sarah.
There’s no sense of whether Hagar consented to this or not. Sarah finally has Abraham’s second child
Isaac, and bullies her husband into sending Hagar and Ishmael away so that
Isaac has no competition for the inheritance.
Isaac is also treated badly by his wife who tricks him into blessing
Jacob instead of Esau. A pattern of
disrupting the status quo of the eldest son for the youngest is established in
this family. Rebecca, Isaac’s wife is
the granddaughter of Nahor, the other brother of Abraham. More inbreeding. And Jacob is sent to find a wife from his
mother’s brother, a great-grandson of Terah marrying a great-great
granddaughter of Terah. Yikes!
Convoluted and complicated.
Now, biblical marriage four thousand years ago did not say this was the
ideal relationship or that everyone should have multiple wives or play
favorites amongst their kids. But this
does show a realization that marriage could be more than just a business deal
which is what Rebecca and Isaac’s seemed to be, but men falling in love! No word about what the women felt at all,
although when you read on, they are quite competitive for Jacob’s favors. They are still determined to do their wifely
duty of providing children for the tribe, something else quite foreign to our modern
minds.
So these stories may be of biblical marriage, but they are
primarily focused on the biological survival of the family. But there’s another view of biblical
marriage, that of a relationship that is modelled on the relationship between
God and Jerusalem, God and the Hebrew people, and in our New Testament, Jesus
and the church. It sees marriage as the
building block for a heavenly and holy relationship. A relationship filled with the fruits of the
Spirit – love, hope, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness,
gentleness and self control. That’s a
biblical marriage too, and we don’t have to be married to work on these fruits
of the spirit.
I’d like to challenge you all to do your family tree and look
for patterns – do you come from a family of tricksters or a family that plays
favorites, or some other pattern? Are
you bringing these patterns into your current friendships or
relationships? Are you ready to
challenge the negative patterns to aim for a more spiritual focus?
Jacob, visiting his relatives, discovered that it wasn’t so
nice to be on the receiving end of a trick.
He may have thought, ‘oh, so that’s why mother always did this’ and
similar ah-ha moments. This visit would
help him unlearn the pattern and be aware of it. He decided with God’s help to stop being a
conman and start orienting his life around God.
And we can remember that when someone says ‘I believe in Biblical
marriages’ that there are many kinds of biblical marriages that we don’t
tolerate in today’s society, but marriages based on love, peace and kindness
are cherished in God’s community.
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