Biblical marriage

Bible study amazes me in that not only do we learn more and more of our Lord every time but that certain things catch our attention on any given day. Something that may not have earned so much as a pause in our reading yesterday may stick out above all else today. Christ telling people to sell everything to follow Him was one of those things that popped out at me just last month.

This month it’s something completely different. Last month I watched a movie on the book of Ruth. It held pretty close to Scripture and was enjoyable to watch. But something in it stood out to me. I don’t remember exactly what was said it but it was something to the effect of God preparing Ruth for Boaz. That got me thinking but it wasn’t until I switched from the New Testament to the Old that I really started seeing the verses, the stories, about marriage. I wasn’t looking for them but there they were.

From the very beginning we see God’s hand and plan in marriage.

Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.  So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.  And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.  Then the man said,

“This at last is bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh;

she shall be called Woman,

because she was taken out of Man.”

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

Genesis 2:18-24

There isn’t much said about their marriage. We’re left with only our own thoughts and speculations on what life was like for them. Adam was created not in the Garden of Eden but out of it and placed inside it later. At some point after that God put him to sleep and used his body to create Eve.

This wasn’t just any woman. This was a woman made from his body and created just for him. She was designed by God to belong to Adam. When Adam awoke and was presented with his new wife. Adams response… “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. He didn’t look at her and say ‘hmm, there’s a woman’ or ‘that one will do’ or ‘why God? I’d have rather lain around and not have to put up with her.’ No. He said ‘at last.’ The implication there is that he waited for her. He wanted a wife. A helper. A partner.

Now instead of being alone he had a wife. They were two people joined in marriage so that they were one flesh. This is a joining of mind, body, and soul. And they were dependent on each other. Where he was weak she was strong. Where she was weak he was strong. They were two and yet…one.

There they were in what amounted to paradise. They had everything and yet by our standards today…they had nothing but each other. They had no house, no car, no instant entertainment. They didn’t even have clothes. How much would they have bonded and clung to each other when they had nothing else? Can you imagine being the only two people in the world? How attached and dependent would you be on that other person?

Adam and Eve had each other and they had God. Not just in thought and Spirit but walking and talking with them. He was there to give them instruction, to show them what He expected from them but when He left them alone…they had each other.

That was the first marriage God created. And He did create it. He didn’t just bring them together. He made them for each other.

That is the first marriage He made. It is the example we should look to.

Scripture brings us many more marriages. Genesis alone shows us Abraham and Sarah, Noah and his wife, Noah’s sons and their wives, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachael. We don’t get very much insight into what their marriages were like. We know that Sarah called Abraham Lord and that they were still close enough to conceive a child in their old age. We know the world was repopulated from the eight people, four married couples, that were on the ark during the flood.  We know Isaac was willing to work for fourteen years to claim the woman he loved as his wife.

These are only a handful of marriages scattered throughout Scripture. There are so many more. The very fact that there are so many marriages in Scripture should tell us the Lord puts importance on it.

Over and over in Scripture marriage is mentioned. Couples are referenced.  An internet search turns up the fact that marriage is mentioned 19 times in the Bible. A search on the word wife shows that it appears either 396 times or 407 times. I couldn’t find a number count for the word husband. Even allowing for errors in counting, different translations and anything else that might affect the word counts the number of times wife is mentioned is pretty impressive.

But what were these marriages like? Our minds tend to see them as we see marriage today. Some good, some bad, some awful. And I’m sure they were. People were people no matter when they lived. Sin takes hold of all of us no matter how hard we try not to let it. We’re human. We fail. We say things we shouldn’t. Do things we shouldn’t. Hurt those we love. That wasn’t any different just because the times were different.

But what did those marriages look like?

Have you ever noticed that marriages lasted for centuries in ways they don’t today? Part of that is the social stigma of being divorced. Even well into the 1900’s saying you were divorced carried a burden of shame with it. But there was another side to it. The simple fact was there was a time when men needed women and women needed men.

In times past a woman had no way of supporting herself or providing for her children if she wasn’t married. There were few opportunities for employment available to women, and when they were…if she had children what was she supposed to do with them if she worked outside the home? Who would care for them?

Men had few if any domestic skills and less time for doing things like cooking and cleaning even if they had the ability to do them. If they had children, especially small children, they were ill equipped to care for them. It was hard to work a field, or tend animals with a baby in their arms.

Life was separated into men’s work and women’s work. Husbands had a role, wives had a role. And marriages happened as often out of sheer need as they did out of love. Life was just harder alone than it was when you were married.

Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” Genesis 2:18

Our modern society has taken the need for marriage away. Women can and do support themselves and their children. Men can cook and clean or they can throw something in the microwave. A single parent of either sex can drop their children off at daycare and not need to worry about them while they work. The need that held husbands and wives together has disappeared.

We can’t know what Biblical marriages looked like but we can know that the Lord had a plan for it in the beginning and He has a plan for it today. We know He gave certain roles to women and certain roles to men. He is the provider. She the caretaker. He is the protector. She the nurturer.

What if we simply stayed in the roles the Lord created us for? What if we realized that the Biblical model of marriage is good and tried to follow it? What if when we started questioning whether marriage was good we turned to Scripture? What if we looked at examples like Adam and Eve and saw that they stuck together through everything? What if we looked at marriages like Hosea and saw that they stuck it out when most would have walked away?

What if we looked at our husband and asked ‘what if God created me for him? What if I’m made ‘bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh’?

There is a secular movie that I saw years ago. It centers around a married couple as they work (and fight) together. A scene at the end of the movie shows a tornado heading their way. They take refuge in the only place that seems safe and is close enough to get to: a well house. With the tornado headed their way they lash themselves to the piping and hang on to it and each other. The tornado rips everything away and leaves them in the midst of a swirling mass that is churning angrily around them. As they’re bombarded with wind and debris swirls around them, you can see the churning tornado that is trying to suck them into it. But the pipes they’re anchored to hold fast and they’re swept into the air, hanging from their anchor, alone in a swirling storm that is surrounding them with trouble.

The Lord was kind enough to give me a Christian husband. Not just one that professes to know Christ but one that truly believes and follows the Lord, a man that denies himself for Christ, who puts others first, who is kind and humble. A man that I can see lives out Scripture every day. A man that is my safe place. Since our marriage we have been hit with many trials both big and small but with every one of them I have noticed that they’re easier to bear because we have each other. It’s easier to find a solution when we look for it together. It’s easier to bear the trials when we don’t have to bear them alone.

I haven’t watched that movie in years but the more trials that come our way the more I see my husband and I in the center of that tornado. We are the couple being blown and tossed about, Christ is the pipes that keep us anchored, that give us hope and strength to hang on, life is the tornado that swirls around us. But there in the middle of the tornado, my husband and I are anchored to the pipes, we have a firm foundation that keeps us rooted. We may be battered by the storms (trials) while the tornado of life surrounds us but we have each other in the midst of it.

And we have Christ.

Could that be what God had in mind when he created the first marriage?