Purity Culture: marriage and sex in the Law (passages in Ex through Deut)

"Purity culture" is the name given to the facet of evangelicalism that encourages sexual purity in the form of modesty, boundaries for sexual activity before marriage, and particularly abstinence before marriage. Joshua Harris's book, "I Kissed Dating Goodbye" is probably the banner piece of culture from this movement which also included purity rings. Many look back on it and point out its damaging effects, particularly on women who felt guilty for not maintaining their purity. I'm not sure exactly what to think about it. It makes sense to me that we should preserve the specialness of sex within marriage. As far as condemning women as worthless if they have sex without being married while giving men a complete pass and even honor for their extramarital exploits, that's obviously completely wrong. But using our common sense, we can see why the stakes for women who have sex outside of marriage are so infinitely much higher than they are for men. Perhaps without saying so, people want to use the idea of purity for women as a tool for their safety against irresponsible men who would love them and leave them. But if that doesn't work, other protective mechanisms must step in and help, not exploit and condemn. So much for purity culture musings. Israelite culture fully subscribed to it under the law. 

What we learn about women

• Marriage and sex are really closely related here, almost equated. Marriage is the only context where sex can happen, and marriage is prescribed as a solution if eligible people are caught doing it.
• Incest is forbidden, along with homosexuality, prostitution, and bestiality. Polygamy is not.
• Generally the laws follow the "two to tango" pattern, both parties are guilty.
• Punishments are harsh for sexual misbehavior, it's most often punished by death.
• Divorce is allowed, it can be initiated by men.

What I'm wondering

• Why is there so much more emphasis on women's virginity here than on men's? Why no tests for men's virginity or faithfulness?
• Why are the punishments for sexual sin so harsh?
• Given women's clearly weaker position in society, why are so many of the laws set against them in favor of men?
• Knowing God intends sex and marriage to go together completely, should purity culture have a place in modern Christianity?

The Rules

 There are a lot of laws having to do with marriage and sex in Exodus through Deuteronomy. As usual, they are scattered and not super-organized, so I'll do my best to talk through them in a thematic way. Overall, I think the main patterns are that marriage must be absolutely pure, partners can't be family, but they also can't be foreigners, and that women are in their culturally typical dependent position in the arrangement.

There is a detailed list in chapter 18 of Leviticus of who a man cannot have sex with. As always, the laws are written by and for men, since women are too busy with their kids and their nests to read or write. Also, most men are too busy with their farms and their military service. The first line is "You must never have sexual relations with a close relative, for I am the Lord." And then it goes on to spell out who all that entails. Plus there are instructions not to have sex with a woman during her period or with other men, or animals. Also the helpful advice, maybe passed down directly from Israel himself who was husband of both Rachel and Leah, "While your wife is living, do not marry her sister and have sexual relations with her, for they would be rivals."

The rules and consequences are directed toward men, women aren't directly addressed, but they are included in the punishments for sin. When it comes to rape, there are specific guidelines for whether women consented and were therefore guilty or not. Punishments for many of these sins are given in chapter 20 and they are mostly death sentences for both parties. Modern readers find this level of punishment clearly ludicrous and unjust. I'll try to make sense of that later in the post. But marrying a sister  only means the couple must be cut off from society (Abraham and Sarah were in this situation). The same punishment happens to a couple who has sex during a menstrual period. Other not so close relatives who become sexual partners bring about disgrace and childlessness. For priests there are more restrictive rules about who they can marry, and who their daughters can marry. Men and women dressing in each other's clothes is also prohibited.

These laws and punishments are linked closely with the idea that Israel must be set apart and different from the other nations they are driving out of the land, who do all these things. But there is the possibility that if Israel sins in this way, the land will "vomit them out" too. Gross. In Deuteronomy 27, similar rules are understood in the curses given on Mount Ebal for those who do not obey God's laws. There are 12 curses that specify different varieties of disobedience, like not honoring father and mother, making idols, and leading a blind person astray. But four of them, a full third, refer to specific types of sexual sin. Three out of those four specify incestual relationships (the other one prohibits bestiality).

One interesting way to think about this is to compare the rules about sex in the law with our modern take. The law places the greatest emphasis on avoiding incest, followed by bestiality, then homosexuality. Polygamy is never mentioned as a problem though. Our modern rules would probably also say that incest and bestiality are the worst kind of sexual problems. It think for us polygamy and homosexuality switch though. We don't talk about polygamy much, but it's obvious to us that it is really wrong, so much so that only people on the fringes of society would consider it. Homosexuality may be a bit inconvenient because of reproductive differences, and prejudice against it, but basically we are fine with it. I would imagine in ancient times homosexuality would have been obviously wrong and at the fringes, while polygamy would have been possibly inconvenient due to rival wives, but basically accepted as no big deal. I just wanted to note that to remind us that our own heebie jeebies about sex may not come from infallible intuitions about right and wrong in these relationships, but from our culture. But is there an infallible right and wrong here? Christians who believe in ultimate right and wrong generally should look for it here, as everywhere. If you think it's all up for discussion, probably you will just land where things feel right to you, based on what your culture is.

Distilled Women
When it comes to infidelity and divorce, we find the most emphatic differences in requirements for men and women about marriage. The requirement of purity for women is absolute. The only places it is mentioned for men (that I can find) is in the tenth commandment, that they may not covet their neighbors wives, and in the commands against paying for sex with prostitutes. But purity for women in marriage is huge, illustrated by three texts.

First of all, in Numbers 5, there is a test for unfaithfulness a woman must undergo if her husband suspects her of infidelity, even if he has absolutely no evidence. To me, it is reminiscent of tests for witches from the 17th century, but that probably goes the other way, that they copied from Numbers! She has to drink a potion made of muddy water from the temple floor (temple floors must have been gross, right? All the blood from animal sacrifice!). If she's guilty the water should make her infertile, but if innocent it won't harm her. There is no mention of even the occurrence of a situation where a woman would suspect her husband. But in general, aren't men the ones more likely to cheat? And women more likely to suffer in that situation?

In Deuteronomy 22, a woman's virginity at the time of her marriage can be proven by blood on the sheets of the marital bed, if her husband doubts her. If the husband accuses falsely, he is fined for falsely accusing the woman, and may never divorce her. If he was right according to the sheets, the woman is stoned to death.

A third interesting mention of the importance of a woman's purity comes in Deuteronomy 23. If a woman has been divorced by her husband, and remarries, she cannot remarry her first husband again if the second one divorces her or dies, because she is defiled.

These passages seem to show that despite the law being generally addressed to men as its readers, surprisingly, women are really held accountable for their virginity and purity within marriage more than men are. This is confusing to me. It seems that if the general pattern of the strong helping the weak is to be in place, the men should be the ones we really enforce these laws on. They may have no other consequence of sexual misbehavior in their lives, where women have every motivation to avoid the natural consequences of sex outside of marriage.

Divorce
Divorce is only mentioned as being initiated by men. It's description is heart-breaking, "Suppose a man marries a woman but she does not please him. Having discovered something wrong with her, he writes her a letter of divorce, hands it to her, and sends her away from his house." (Deut 24:1) Doesn't this feel so foreign to our modern American way of thinking about relationships? I'm sure this hierarchical authoritative structure of marriage is not uncommon in the modern world generally, but it feels so cold and cruel here. I think this is a pretty dire characterization of a marriage gone wrong, even for the Bible though. We have the Song of Solomon! And Ruth and Boaz! Hopefully this was a desperate measure for desperate times, one that was not offered to women because they couldn't read or study, because hardly anyone had time to--especially busy mothers, and therefore the law was not written for them? Maybe.

Sex and worship
One more topic to bring in before we try to pull this together and make some sense of it generally. We recently discussed laws about wives taken from among prisoners of war. This situation is legalized in the Torah. But in Numbers 25 we find an episode of Israelite men being seduced by Moabite women and coming under God's judgment. This at first struck me as a bit of a contradiction, but on closer reading, it seems like the crucial factor was that the sex went along with joining the women in worship of Baal. It makes sense that God would take great offense at that kind of sexual behavior. Temple prostitutes and sex-related stuff generally seems to often find its way into pagan religions. This combination is a double sin, and God takes it so seriously that the men involved with Moabite women and Baal worship are executed "in broad daylight." A rather horrifying detail of the event is that a couple composed of Zimri, a son of a family leader from Simeon's tribe, and Cozbi, the daughter of a Moabite leader are caught in the act at just the moment when God's judgment of the whole situation is apparent. They are speared, together. The names just make it that much more intense.

Washed by the cleansing of God's word
So purity, for Israel as a nation in worship of God alone, and sexual purity within marriage, specifically for women, is a big big deal in the law. We've accumulated quite a list of questions in observing these passages. Though we are going through the Bible starting in the Old Testament, Christians need to read it all in light of what Jesus has revealed in the New. Here I think we've got to go to our prime marriage passage in Ephesians to get the needed context. Here's 5:25, "For husbands, this means love your wives just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her to make her whole and clean, washed by the cleansing of God's word. He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead she will be holy and without fault."

The Church as the bride of Christ is a common image in the New Testament, and some places in the old (Hosea and Ezekiel for instance). The Old Testament does not mince any words or ideas about the seriousness of sin in general and God's judgment of it. The New Testament reveals how our impossible task of pleasing God can be accomplished through Christ. If marriage at large is a symbol of God's people united to him in marriage, this goes a long way toward explaining why the ideal of marriage is set at such a high standard, and also why the purity of the wife (the people) is such a big deal. A woman who is impure or unfaithful pretty much gets death, as do God's people who are in sin. But Christ purifies us from our sin, and he purifies his wife too. Ideal religion is participated in by perfect people, ideal marriage involves a perfectly pure wife. Under the OT law, both sinful people in general and impure wives suffer for their faults.

As far as the practical consequences of unfaithfulness and impurity for women, that they may bear children without a father, this could parallel the way people in general, and the fruit of their sin and idolatry, become alienated from their Father in heaven because of their sin.

Now. That holds water for me symbolically. But in specific cases of broken marriages, and specific women who have sex outside of a safe marriage and suffer for it, Christ's mercy should apply. How it went in Israel I'm not sure. I hope mercy was offered to unfaithful women, as it was to all unfaithful people again and again, despite the high standards of the law. I think there's hope that this was true when we consider what we noted above, that Abraham married his sister, and that Israel married women who were sisters, both of which are forbidden in Leviticus. This is a model for at least showing men mercy!

Knowing what we do know now about Christ's love for his people and his deep desire to purify us, I think we can hold to a high standard of sexual purity, with a standing offer of mercy to those who haven't met it. I'm not going to throw purity culture out with the bathwater, I guess. We just need to apply it in the context of New Testament redemption which surpasses Old Testament righteous judgement. 

The family of foreigners: Zipporah's difficult cross-cultural marriage (Ex 2-4, 18)

We opened Exodus with wonderful female characters in stories that were thrillingly easy to appreciate and understand. Not so with our next woman, Zipporah. We know just a little about her--enough to really pique our interest and, frankly, leave us very perplexed. She is a foreigner, not an Israelite, and there is a veil over a lot of the details of this exotic woman's life. But lets dive in and learn what we can.

Beautiful strangers meet in Midian
By the time Moses meets Zipporah, his life has become even more complicated than it was at his birth, which is saying a lot. He has been raised in Pharaoh's house, but feels a sense of identity with his own people, the Hebrews, who are enslaved and bitterly oppressed by Pharaoh. After his identity conflict boils over and causes him to commit murder of an Egyptian who was whipping a Hebrew slave, he is forced to flee to the wilderness.

Exiled from the home into which he was adopted, out of his own people, who are exiles themselves, Moses is a foreigner in so many senses when he sits down by a well in Midian. We, however, are in familiar territory, knowing exactly what happens when young men show up at wells in foreign lands. When the priest of Midian's seven daughters come to water their flocks, they are chased away by other shepherds, but Moses rescues them from the shepherds and wins himself an invitation to dinner with Reuel or Jethro, the priest of Midian. And sure enough, we are not kept waiting for the news, in the next sentence, we learn that "In time Reuel gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses for a wife." When they have a son, Moses names him Gershom, "foreigner." You can read Moses' mind easily here. Though he seems to have settled happily in Midian, he still feels like an alien.

The lovely thing about a romance that occurs when you are away from home is that it is exempt from the stresses of your other life. Moses, having run away from his really complicated identity situation in Egypt, could be, in Midian, nothing but the herder of Jethro's sheep, and the husband of Zipporah. Moses had a small and manageable world in his escape. To Zipporah, Moses must have seemed brave, exotic, and just troubled enough to be interesting.

But when God breaks into Moses' life and interrupts his avoidance strategy, Zipporah's life, as well as Moses', will be completely turned upside down. Surely God's call to Moses disrupted and completely changed his life, but he had a context for it. He was receiving a redemptive challenge that would bring together his life struggle, focus it, and define both himself and and God's people.  But for Zipporah, who didn't share Moses cultural identity and history, it must have felt quite disorienting. She probably had entertained the idea that her foreigner might someday want to visit home, but she couldn't have imagined a scenario like this, where her husband would be called to face off with Pharaoh, and she would eventually need to travel with a whole nation of in-laws through the red sea and then the desert.

But Moses doesn't lead with his unique calling from God when he approaches Jethro about returning to Egypt. He goes with the milder, "Please let me return to my relatives in Egypt, I don't even know if any of them are still alive." Jethro gives his blessing and the family sets off. This journey from Zipporah's home culture to Moses' will change who is the "foreign" spouse. Did Zipporah know what her family was getting into? Probably, when you consider what she seems to know in the story that follows.

The Bridegroom of Blood
They are on the road when the most substantial paragraph we have in the Bible about Zipporah occurs. Moses is already gearing up for his task of confronting Pharaoh, hearing a message from God that reminds him of what he must do in Egypt. Immediately after God speaks to Moses, we have this strange story, which I will transcribe fully, because it is short, and odd enough that we should remember exactly what happens: 

At a lodging place on the way the Lord met him and sought to put him to death.  Then Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son's foreskin and touched Moses' feet with it and said, “Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me!” So he let him alone. It was then that she said, “A bridegroom of blood,” because of the circumcision.

This is another story that is so confusing to me that I did some extra googling to see if real theologians know what to do with it. Unfortunately, they don't. That doesn't make it easier, but it does give us more free reign to try to figure it out! 

Here is my take. One main problem with understanding the story is that we don't know who the "him" refers to in the first sentence, whom God sought to kill. Moses? Pharaoh's son, who has been mentioned in the previous sentence? Moses' son? My guess is that the "him" is Gershom, Moses' son--that along the way Gershom's life was endangered at the hand of God. Here's why.

The death of the firstborn of Pharaoh is mentioned in God's message to Moses which immediately precedes this. The death of Pharaoh's firstborn is contrasted with the rescue of God's firstborn, Israel. But which household does Moses' firstborn belong to? Pharaoh's household or God's? The question seems open based on Moses life story. In seeking the death of uncircumcised Gershom, maybe God was pushing Moses toward full identification with Israel, reminding him of what would happen to the children of Egypt.

Moses had been living as a foreigner away from his people, and had obviously not circumcised his son yet. But in light of Moses' calling, their family identity with the Jews would need to be complete. Perhaps at home in Midian, Zipporah had not felt the urgency to abide by this foreign custom, even if Moses may have mentioned it to her. But with their purpose clear, and her son's life on the line, Zipporah begins to realize what her marriage to Moses will mean for their family. They must all fully join God's people, and circumcision is necessary to establish this. She circumcises Gershom, throws the foreskin (ugh, so weird to be talking about foreskins!) at Moses, and in distress mixed with resignation, calls him a bridegroom of blood. Strange that the text gives us an explanatory note here that Zipporah's exclamation had to do with the circumcision, but leaves so much else unclear. 

What I think is clear is that Zipporah is upset over the bloodiness and injury her son must experience, but grudgingly understands what is necessary. In this take on the story, we are, admittedly, guessing about who's life was in danger. But whoever it was, Zipporah seems less worried about the mortal danger and thankful for having avoided it, than upset by the circumcision. This is a clue to me that this identification with God's people is a main issue here. Zipporah is the person who would struggle with it most, out of their family of three. Returning with Moses into Egypt would have brought this family identity issue to a crisis, and I think that's what the story is about.

Before we move on, let's note that here again in Exodus, we see the supreme importance to life of bearing children, in that the ultimate plague and worst punishment imaginable for the Egyptians is the death of a child.

The separation
Before studying Zipporah this time, I had never noticed how little Moses' family factors into his life once he returns to Egypt, and thereafter. But the text after this story turns completely to Moses, Pharaoh, the plagues, the passover, all the major themes of the Exodus. The next time we hear anything about Zipporah and her sons, they are coming back with her father Jethro, because, whoops, Exodus forgot to tell us that "Earlier, Moses had sent his wife, Zipporah, and his two sons back to Jethro, who had taken them in." It's mentioned as an aside to explain why the family is visiting, and you can't really tell when it happened. 

Why did Moses and Zipporah separate? I'm really dying for a little more detail about their family life after leaving Midian. So let's try to reconstruct a bit. In the last story we have about Zipporah, she appears upset with Moses about the circumcision, which was only the beginning of her passage into Hebrew life. If the circumcision was a problem for her, that she would bear, but with some distress, how will she handle becoming part of an enslaved group of people, and watching Egypt suffer under all the plagues? Could Moses have "sent her back" to Jethro for her safety and peace of mind? Maybe. 

With Moses taking on the mantle of his role as the leader of God's people out of Egypt, their marriage and family life would surely have been affected. He transitioned from a shepherd to a  prophet, miracle worker, and head of state. We can imagine how the family of the president of the United States must completely sacrifice their claim on him while he is in office, and this is probably a fair parallel to what Moses' family had to do. But while Moses was consumed with his work, Zipporah would have lacked other support. She was among complete strangers in Egypt. If Moses was a foreigner in Midian, now Zipporah is one in Egypt, but without the fellowship of a spouse, or her extended family. Maybe that's why it made sense for her to go back. 

You could also interpret it as Moses "going off to war" and arranging for the safety of his family. Given the intensity of his task, that would also make sense.

Jethro brings his daughter and grandsons back to visit Moses, after he hears of the great success of the Exodus. Between the lines, I detect signals that Jethro is really wishing to reunite Zipporah with Moses. He comes with Moses' family, encouraging him and rejoicing with him over what he has achieved. But he also watches Moses and makes some helpful suggestions for how Moses can delegate work to have more time . . . for his family, perhaps? Moses takes this advice well, and implements Jethro's advice. At the end of the visit, "he went away to his own country," but there is no mention of Zipporah and the boys. Did they stay?

I don't see any evidence that Zipporah goes back home with Jethro, but neither is there any hint of her being around afterward. I guess it's possible that they enjoyed a supportive and warm home life, which Moses just did not think was important to mention in the rest of the Torah. I would love to go with that, though I wish we had more evidence for Zipporah not being left behind with her loving father while Moses abandoned her for his holy career. 

It's not clear. But they are not in the story again except for a brief mention years later when Aaron and Miriam find fault with Moses for marrying a Cushite woman. That critique seems a bit random in it's context to me. Check it out and see if you have any insight yourself: Numbers 12:1. My only guess is that this is the cultural identity issue coming up again? That maybe they are astonishingly doubting Moses' Hebrew credentials if his wife is a foreigner?

The episode is worth considering with reference to Zipporah, because God comes to Moses' defense, saying to Aaron and Miriam, "Of all my house, he is the one I trust. I speak to him face to face, clearly, and not in riddles. He sees the Lord as he is." The point is that God is clearly pleased with Moses' relationship with him. This question about his marriage is answered by God's pleasure in his unique relationship with Moses. God is saying that his marriage to Zipporah does not count against him in any way. 

One other option we haven't mentioned yet is that perhaps Zipporah just never could fully identify with Moses' people, that the cultural differences were too much, and she wanted to be back at home. Could she have abandoned Moses? An argument against this is that in 1 Chronicles Gershom and Eliezer are referred to as family leaders, so they it seems like they must have been living with the Israelite community. But I was not able to find any information about children they had or anything else.

Ultimately, we can imagine two main versions of Zipporah's life: either she tried to integrate with Israel, or she didn't. If she didn't, she would have been the responsible party for the distance in their marriage. If that scenario is true, that Zipporah went back home because life with her holy husband was too difficult, it's easier to understand. We expect God to be in the corner of people who are abandoned by their spouses. But I think we have a little more of a challenge understanding this marriage, because we know Moses "sent them home" himself, initially, and that his sons are later involved with the Israelite community as leaders. So to me it seems a little more likely that Zipporah was there, but that after Midian, she just didn't figure strongly into Moses life, which was dominated by his work and his relationships with God. Adding to the challenge, we know that God was pleased with Moses' work and relationship with God, though it kept him from involvement with his family, and his wife, who must have really needed him in the foreign culture he brought her into.

There are a lot of words on the cutting floor for this post. I would love to tie a bow around the the story of Moses and Zipporah's relationship, but we just don't have enough information about in the text to even know exactly what we are looking at. My mom points out that it's so biblical that we get a fairly sparse account that focuses on particular events, and leaves out backstory we are left scratching our heads over.

We should also keep in mind that according to tradition, Moses is the author of all of the Bible we have read so far. Maybe he doesn't want to detail his private home life and marriage details. We did have more to work with in the other families he wrote about in Genesis. But here he focuses on what God was doing for the Israelites at large. For him, Zipporah figures in to the story when he meets her in exile, and then when they establish their family identity as firmly Hebrew. That's the important part of her story for the purposes of Exodus. Though we do have the fact that they have separated for a while, which hints at some possible trouble in their marriage, that part isn't even totally clear. I would love to understand more of her life and experience, but it seems Zipporah must remain a bit foreign to us.

Takeaways:

• Moses and Zipporah faced a challenge uniting in culture and purpose after Moses' call to lead the Israelites out of Egypt.
• We know they separated for a while, but we don't know why, or even whether or not they reunited. 
• Zipporah does not seem to figure into the most important parts of Moses' life.
• God is pleased with Moses' life, whatever was happening in his marriage.

Questions:

• What do you think is the best explanation of Moses and Zipporah's relationship? Do you think Zipporah was left behind by Moses or the other way around? Did she live with Moses after Jethro's visit?
• What is the best way to deal with the given difference in priorities between husbands and wives, to have the most happy and satisfying marriage for both parties?
• Is there any chance God was happy for Moses and Zipporah to separate and for him to throw himself into his career and for her to live with her parents? That doesn't sit right with me . . . 

Sarah's marriage (Gen 11:27-23:20)

The marriage of Abraham and Sarah is an interesting one to consider, since we are lucky to have record of their relationship pretty much from beginning to end, over many chapters, with both of them active in action and dialogue. In this post, we'll focus on several places in her family's chapters in the Bible that provide information about her marriage: the two stories of Abraham passing Sarah off as his sister and giving her to kings, and the stories of the struggles between Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar. But we'll also keep in mind what we looked at last time, the important factor of Sarah's infertility in her marriage and in God's plan. There's quite a bit to chew on here!

Sarah's marriage to Abraham begins in the family of Terah, Abram's father. In this family, marriage partners were chosen from close kin. Abram had two brothers, and one of them married a daughter of the other. Abram married another daughter of his father. But we should keep in mind that at this point we are not that far out of the garden of Eden, and only 10 generations down from Noah. There just weren't that many people around yet. What strikes us as weird in marriage choice may not have been weird to these early people.

Weird or not, marriage to close kin is inadvisable for many reasons, one of which could have been the cause of Sarah's big problem in life-- her infertility. These two factors, Abram and Sarai's half-sibling relationship and Sarai's infertility, combine with a third, Sarai's great beauty, to pave the way for what are some of the most jarringly unholy acts of Abram, the man God chose to establish a relationship with to create a people for himself. Because Sarah was so beautiful, and not obviously a mother to any children, and *technically* his sister, Abram is able to get away with using her to his advantage so that instead of being killed by kings who want to steal her away, on two separate occasions he is able to sell her to the kings and receive great riches instead. Yuck.

Let's give a bit of background for these two stories. Abram is a travelling man, under orders from God. He moves to Canaan at God's command, and then down to Egypt because of a famine, then back up to the Negev, then to Canaan again, then down to the Negev again, and also spends time in several cities along the way. He occasionally participates in battles, has interactions with various rulers and lords, and negotiates in land, livestock . . . and women, as we shall see.

The two stories about the Pharaoh and Abimelech form a kind of bookend to Sarah's period of infertility in these chapters. After Abram's call, the story about Sarai being given to Pharaoh is the first real episode that takes place. Then after many more promises from God, military skirmishes, relational dramas, etc.,  the last thing that happens to Sarah before she gives birth to Isaac is that she is given to Abimelech. Of course, once she has a son, it is much more difficult for everyone to pretend she is just a virgin sister, so there is a logical end to this strategy when Isaac is born.

It is on his first trip to Egypt to avoid the famine that we first hear of Abram giving Sarai to Pharaoh, in exchange for good treatment and gifts of livestock and servants. Let's stop and take that in. In our modern moral language, we would say that Abram has just evidenced himself to be a human trafficker of not only his own wife for sex, but also of unnumbered male and female servants, listed right along with donkeys and camels. How does the father of the Jewish people get away with doing this?

Two possible mitigating factors occur to me. The first is to put a filter of "times were different" over this. Servants were a part of life back then, since the 40 hour work week and minimum wage had not yet been instituted. Abram was "very rich" the text tells us, and we can hope the members of his household were well treated and valued as part of the village or part of the family. (Sarai's servant Hagar eventually officially bridges that gap.) The second partial explanation is that it does seem like these two stories are recorded to point out that it was outrageous for Abram to do this to his wife, and he shouldn't have. (Though it's true that the main voices of complaint in both stories come from the decieved kings, not Sarai.) Servanthood and brideprices were just the accepted societal arrangements of the day. Deceptively offering your own wife to someone else was not.

Both Pharaoh and Abimelech are furious about Abraham's deception. In the course of the second story, Abimelech gives a speech I want to high five him for, "No one should ever do what you have done! Whatever possessed you to do such a thing?" Whatever indeed, Abram? Abram was audacious and wrong to do this. What was Sarai's experience in these stories? In the first story where Pharaoh is the "victim," we don't have as much information about her part, but the second story tells us a little more. Whereas in the first story, Abram asks Sarai to say she is his sister, in the second story, Abimelech says that she has said she was his sister. Based on his claim, Sarai seems to have been in on it too.

I find it interesting that in 1 Peter, Sarah is held up as a "holy woman from the past." As in, "This is how the holy women of old made themselves beautiful. They trusted God and accepted the authority of their husbands. For instance, Sarah obeyed her husband, Abraham, and called him her master. You are her daughters when you do what is right without fear of what your husbands may do." Sarah did obey her husband. But was she doing what was right? This is generally the caveat given to the marital submission command of wives to husbands. Submit, unless he tells you to sin. But Sarah appears so submissive in these stories that she just sins right off the cliff along with Abram. We'll talk more about Sarah's relationship with God next post, but I don't see evidence of a closeness between them in these stories, (of course you could also question how close Abraham was to God at the moment he was hatching these plans).

To me what is most puzzling here, is that with these two chosen sinners pulling shenanigans, God comes to the kings to warn them, without so much as a remark to Abraham or Sarah. Abram is simply given more gifts and sent along with a royal reprimand, and all signs of a heavenly blessing. He actually prays for Abimelech's household to be healed from the infertility inflicted on them as punishment for having Sarai in his house. I don't know exactly how to understand this and am going to leave it in the list of questions. Please help, dear readers, if you can.

But, back to what we can learn about their marriage from these stories. Whether Sarai went right along willingly, or unhappily obeyed Abram out of a sense of duty, we can be pretty sure that Abram was not too jealous for his wife's affection, as he had no qualms about putting her at risk of having sex with other men. Perhaps he feels she is really only a sister to him, since she has borne him no children. We can guess that she was either similarly cold toward him, or else blazing hot with fury at her treatment. Theirs was not a fairytale romance.

We have another clue about their marriage dynamics when we come to the stories of Sarai and Hagar. We have seen that Abram was willing to allow Sarai to sleep with other men in theory, though it didn't occur in the end. In the stories of Sarai and Hagar we see that Sarai was also initially willing to allow Abram to take Hagar and have a child with her. But when that did occur, she was not ok with the situation.

Her motivation, as we discussed last time, was to help Abraham receive the promise God had given him. Maybe she hoped that orchestrating the fulfillment of the promise Abram had received would heal something in their relationship, since she would no longer be the roadblock for God's promise. But even though by doing this, Sarai was able to relieve the pressure she felt on herself to have a child, she found that it was not ultimately worth it to have to share the status and compromise the position she had as Abram's wife. Her relationship with her husband and with her servant suffered even more.

It's interesting that Sarai places the blame for her emotional pain on Abram, when it was her idea for him to have Hagar. This is probably because it is his hope for a son from God that causes Sarah to suggest that he take Hagar as a wife. She even calls on the Lord to judge between her and her husband in the situation, one of the only times we hear her having any involvement with God. She may be speaking to God this first time because she feels it is his influence in Abram's life that has led her to this problem. When confronted by Sarai, Abram again exhibits coldness, practicality and passivity toward his marriage relationships, telling Sarai, "Look, she is your servant, do with her as you see fit." Get off my back, will you? Abram has a deep relationship with God; his family relationships pale in comparison.

However, God is deeply involved in Abram's marriage, continuing to reiterate that Abram will have many descendants through his wife Sarai. Though Abram is the one to receive the promise, it is really about Sarai. When he has a son of his own seed through Hagar, it does not count as fulfillment of God's plan. God want's this son to be born of Sarai herself. Their marriage is lived in this context, including the wounds it contains. I do hope Sarai knew some love and tenderness from some one, since it doesn't sound like she received much from Abram. Did God comfort her? We will look at that more in a coming post, but it's not obvious to me.

Returning briefly to the discussion of Sarah and the kings, after God's most explicit promise to Abraham that Sarah herself will bear him a son within a year, we find the story of Sarah being given to Abimelech. It is extra jarring at this place in the narrative, because now Sarah is expected to bear a son within a year. If, within that time, she is in another man's harem, who will have been the father of the baby?! The Lord delivers Sarah and Abimelech from their situation by sending him Abimelech a warning in a dream. The king and Abraham then have it out, but seem to end up being friends, since in the next chapter they make a covenant with one another. Again, I ask where is God's discipline of Abraham for coming so close to blowing the fulfillment of his promise that Sarah would bear him a son?

From Abimelech, Abraham receives his choice of land and 1000 pieces of silver. And Abraham prays that the infertility of the women in Abimelech's house, inflicted upon them by the Lord because of Sarah's presence there, will be healed. (Sarah must have been in his house for quite some time for infertility to have been noticed among the other women.) In the next breath after Abimelech's household is healed by Abraham's prayer, Sarah receives what she has been promised, and she bears Abraham a son.

Sarah's reaction to the birth of her son is so touching. "God has brought me laughter. All who hear about this will laugh with me." I hope this high point brings redemption to her for her trouble in life and marriage.

A further aftershock of Sarah's plan for Abraham to have Hagar as a wife occurs next in the text when their two sons are in conflict. Even after her own son is born, Sarah is insecure in her place in the family, and also her son's place. She convinces Abraham (though he is "very much upset") to send Hagar and Ishmael away for a final time. God promises Abraham that he is involved, and will again care for Hagar and Ishmael, and He does.

I wonder how Abraham and Sarah's marriage changed with the competing family members gone. Did Sarah feel more peace, or did her wounds fester without the possibility of a healed relationship between her servant, her stepson and herself? Did the romantically cool Abraham miss them?

The next thing we are told about Sarah is that she dies at 127 years old. Abraham's extended negotiation to buy a burial place for her gives the impression that he is putting energy into honoring her memory. I love that she is buried near Mamre, where the angels visited their family to promise their son's birth.

Sarah's marriage to Abraham is not easy by any means. But it is used by God to form the root for his people. Though it seems almost too easy of an application, we can definitely see here how God's plan goes forth in the lives of constantly sinning sinners, through his guidance and faithfulness. We can also see that the purpose of this marriage was not at all the romantic fulfillment of the spouses involved. Their steadiness in family-membership despite their unsteadiness in happy companionship was the context for God's great establishment of official contact with humanity. They hung in there through heartbreak, redemption, sin, good times and bad times, and this was the stuff God used to move forward his plan to save the world.

Takeaways

• Sarah's marriage was difficult, nothing like modern versions of romance. 
• When God made promises to Abraham about his descendents, their fulfilment hinged on them being given to his first wife as well as himself.
• Though it seems A and S had a tense marriage, their main point of unity was in their shared parentage of Isaac.
• Though this does not seem to be a model marriage, we can say that a less than model marriage was still a context for a great work of God in building his kingdom through the birth of a child.

Questions

• Why do we only hear God warning to the kings about the deception of Abraham and Sarah regarding the wife-sister tricks, with no consequences for either of them?
• Do you see evidence of a loving relationship between Abraham and Sarah that I have missed?

God's Princess, an overview (Gen 11:27-23:20)

Today, we come to the story of a woman who's life is described, alongside her husband Abraham's, for eleven chapters! This is the first woman we come to know in any real sense after Eve. Since it is such a long story, my first step here will be to outline the information points we have about Sarah in a rough timeline of her life:

• She is the wife of Abram (we later learn she is Abram's half sister) and she is unable to become pregnant.
• With Abram, she moves from Haran to Canaan, and then to Egypt when there is a famine in Canaan.
• She is given by her husband to Pharaoh, so he could avoid being killed, and then given by Pharaoh back to Abraham after plagues fell on his house.
• She travels by Abram's side as he travels with Lot, and settles in Canaan, and participates in a local war.
• Abram receives the promise that he will have many descendents, which depends on her.
• She offers her servant Hagar to Abram, to help God fulfill his promise.
• She is treated with contempt by Hagar, and sends Hagar away. God cares for Hagar and sends her back.
• Abraham receives another covenant from God establishing circumcision, changing his name, and her name.
• God promises Abraham that Sarah specifically will have a son.
• Three holy messengers visit Abraham at Mamre and announce birth of a son through Sarah within a year. Sarah overhears this from inside the tent and laughs.
• After Lot is rescued from Sodom, Sarah accompanies Abraham south. 
• Again Abraham says she is his sister and gives him to Abimelech. The Lord warns Abimelech she is married and he gives her back, saying she was in on the deception.
• She gives birth to Isaac in her old age, and declares God has brought her laughter.
• She sends Ishmael away because he is mistreating Isaac.
• Abraham offers Isaac.
• She dies at 127, and was buried at Machpelah, near Mamre, where Isaac's birth was promised by the holy messengers and she got caught laughing at the promise.

Based on this outline, Here are several themes I want to look at.

The central one is Sarah's infertility. Though Abraham is the lead in this story, the first thing we learn about his family pertains to Sarah--that she cannot bear children. We have previously seen how important childbearing is in the story of humanity. It is certainly given first priority in these chapters. Even God's promise to Abraham to establish a people through him to be God's own special people hinges on this important womanly detail of Sarah's life.

The next interesting feature of this story is what we are told about her marriage relationship to Abram. It begins within their nuclear family (!?).  We are told she has great beauty and, with no children, a lack of obvious matronhood. This allows Abram to claim her as only a sister, and twice effectively pimp her to menacing kings. We also have God's attention to these situations without obvious reprimand to Abram.

I'd also like to look at her relationship with God. Throughout the story, Sarah is in the action, and even speaking, but not to God. God only speaks with Abraham, with one possible exception. How did Sarah herself relate to God in the often difficult circumstances of her life?

Finally, I want to think through the time in her life when God's promise is fulfilled and she finally gives birth to Isaac. We have a few pieces of information that speak about this, and the touching final record that she is buried at Mamre, where the holy messengers promised his birth within a year and she laughed.

Stay tuned! There is a lot of really valuable stuff here I suspect.

Since this is an overview, I will save the takeaways and questions for the next posts, where we will dive deeper into Sarah's life.

Sons of god and daughters of men (Gen 6:1-7)

Chapter 6 opens with what is to me one of the most fantasticly perplexing little sections in the entire Bible: 

• Then the people began to multiply on the earth, and daughters were born to them. The sons of God saw the daughters of men [translated "beautiful women" in the NLT] and took any they wanted as their wives. Then the Lord said, 'My Spirit will not remain in humans for such a long time, for they are only mortal flesh. In the future, their normal lifespan will be no more than 120 years.' In those days, and for some time after, giant Nephilites lived on the earth. For whenever the sons of God had intercourse with the daughters of men, they gave birth to children who became the heroes and famous warriors of ancient times." 

All together now, "HUH?"

I am mostly trying to let scripture speak here and see what I can make of it without the outside voices of commentaries, but for this passage I have done a bit of reading. And no one seems to know with certainty what this is talking about. To keep us from being drawn into a lengthy review of ancient literature and Hebrew words etc, I am going to stick to the strategy of gleaning what is glean-able here and leaving the (many!) questions to the side.

What I think we can tell is that there was some lust happening from males (male somethings!) toward women, which they were freely acting on in a way that displeased the Lord. This is the first record of the sexual sin that history will reveal to be such a serious problem for men through all time. What specifically displeased the Lord in these relationships? To me there are a couple of possibilities. Though it's hard to know what is meant by the distinction that the sons were sons "of god" and the daughters were daughters "of men," I think there's a chance that this intermingling in itself was the problem. But without knowing what the groups are, it's hard to really say much about that. To me it seems more likely that the fact they "took any they wanted" to be their wives might be the real issue. 

Based on the design for marriage described earlier in the story of creation, we know God wants us to have one spouse to unite ourselves to, to reproduce with, to rule over creation together with, in submission to Him. Let's also remember that Eve was given as a helper for Adam in marriage, and this does imply that men are leaders in the marriage relationship. But from this story we can tell that this leadership does not mean freely taking women when desire strikes. We'll have to keep our eyes open for a positive example of how marriage should be established outside Eden as we keep reading.

So, God cares deeply who we marry. It's not ok to just take whoever you want, based only on your own desire. In this ancient situation, taking anyone you wanted for a wife might have meant having multiple wives, abandoning previous wives and children, taking other people's wives or other abuses. Whatever was specifically happening, we can see that disregarding God's plan for marriage separated us even further from fellowship with him ("my Spirit will not dwell in humans") and from immortality ("their normal lifespan will be no more than 120 years"). 

The punishment God gives is interesting in that it isn't specific to the sinners, or the sins, nor does it really rectify anything that has happened. It just sets a limit on the amount of time that men will be able to sin in this way in the future. Like the initial consequence of sin for humanity-death, it just puts a temporal limit on the moral decay of people, now an even lower limit.

Were the "daughters of men" complicit in this sin, and hence, justly punished in the judgment, (which they also received)? Or were they just delivered from suffering as recipients of lust after 120 years? The text doesn't make that clear, but I think either is possible. The main thing, though, is that God is not happy with men brutishly taking any women they want and he will not put up with it. 

In this chapter, childbearing continues to be a main element in the story of humanity. The fruit of the relationships between the sons of God and daughters of men is a group of children  called giant Nephilites, who "became the heroes and warriors of ancient times." 

Heroes are only made through great feats, and warriors through battle, so here again we find a reference to exciting things happening offstage from the action in the text.The author seems at first glance to be describing the Nephilites with favor, calling them heroes and warriors. But when we consider what follows in the text, we may change our opinion about that. 

These strange paragraphs together form the introduction to a dark and difficult story of judgment with a spark of hope, the second of it's kind we have encountered so far. (The first was the fall of humanity with a promise of future triumph through the offspring of Eve.) This is a theme which the whole story of the Bible repeats again and again in different settings. Here, God is about to judge and destroy the mass of humanity in a flood, because "The Lord observed the extent of human wickedness on the earth and he saw that everything they thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil. So the Lord was sorry he had ever made them and put them on the earth. It broke his heart. And the Lord said, "I will wipe out this human race I have created from the face of the earth." 

These verses tell us that life on earth including marriage, brotherly relationships (Cain and Abel), heroic deeds and battles (the Nephilites),  advances in farming, music, and metal-working (the sons of Cain) had become completely corrupt. What we have been puzzling over in the previous paragraphs was certainly sinful, whatever exactly was going on.

"But," the text tells us "Noah found favor with the Lord." We'll pick it up there next time!

Takeaways:

• God cares deeply who and how we marry.
• Male leadership in marriage does not equal license for any men to take any women they want for wives. The Lord refuses to tolerate this kind of behavior.
• Children born out of toxic relationships can turn out to be heroes.

Questions:

• Anyone want to take a stab at the "sons of god" and "daughters of men"?
• Nephilites, famous or infamous?
• Do you think the "daughters of men" were victims in this story or were complicit?

Sixty-three words on the perfect marriage (Gen 1:1-2:25)

I started this blog four years ago, in 2013, to take a stab at answering my curiosity about what it means for me, from God's perspective, that I am a woman. I didn't get very far then, (see the previous 2 posts from 2013) but here I am again, so clearly the question is still on my mind! I am going to try again this year to make my way through the Bible looking for hints about what it means that God created us male and female. I hope to find out more about God by looking at the order he created and also learn about how, as a female, I should live in his world.

It was fun to look back and see what I observed when I made my first start in Genesis, but to refresh myself and put down my current thoughts, I'm going to start again in the beginning.

Genesis 1-2 tell the creation story. Genesis 1 gives an overarching summary of how God, day by day, formed different realms of creation. The last day before he rested, he "created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them, male and female he created them."

This first creation story strikes me as more poetic than scientific. It seems to show the world being created form low to high, completely, but from nothing, with human beings created at the very end, with authority to rule the rest of creation- to fill and subdue it. This story has human beings as male and female together, doing both filling and subduing. The next story in chapter 2 has much more to say about the first man and woman distinctly.

This second story has Adam being created before the plants and animals. (The fact that the chronologies of these two stories conflict is one thing that tells me that chronology is not their point.) God forms him from the dust and then breathes life into his nostrils. The man is put in a garden God has planted for him, which includes the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the tree of life. The four rivers described are real rivers, so this story happens on earth in a tangible way.

God gives the man the command about the forbidden fruit, then proclaims that he is alone and needs a helper. The animals are formed next and prove not to be suitable as helpers for him.

God's description of the woman he is making is important to consider. He has her in mind as "a helper suitable for him." I recently read Susan Hunt's book "Becoming Eve" which makes the argument that since woman and man are made in the image of God, woman is a helper in the same sense that God is a helper throughout the Bible using the same word. I think she has a good point. As I think of these uses in the Bible, I wonder if this "helper" means sort of a benefactor, like someone who helps him succeed, who brings him blessing, who does not harm him, but makes his life better.

God anesthetizes the man and creates woman from his rib. Why is Eve made from the rib? This detail is so familiar to me, having learned it from preschool age. But I would love to know it's significance. I will probably not get anywhere on that question without knowing a lot more about ancient Jewish literature than I do. Anyone want to help in the comments?

The next few verses, are almost all we have to go on about marriage and men and women together before the fall:

"At last," the man exclaimed. "This one is bone from my bone and flesh from my flesh! She will be called 'woman' because she was taken from 'man'" This explains why a man leaves his father and is joined to his wife and the two are united into one. Now the man and his wife were both naked, but they felt no shame. (Gen 2:23-25)

Sixty-three English words describe the only perfect marriage we will ever be able to peek into! Taking the little we've got, what can we learn?

The man is excited! "At last" is a bit ironic, since this was the very beginning of creation, and the very first woman or even other person the man has ever seen. But apparently it seems like too long that he has been alone when he finally meets the woman. What excites him is that she is made from him, from the same stuff. It reminds me so much of what I felt like saying when I laid eyes on my first child. Did Adam have that feeling about Eve? It was almost as if he did birth her (under anesthesia, but that's how some births go!).

Then we have marriage described as a man leaving his parents and being joined to his wife, becoming one with her, a new unity. Why does he leave his parents rather than she? Maybe it's that they both do, but the story is focusing on the man as the protagonist. Or perhaps that she now cares for him the way his parents did? But no, this is a different concept than parent-child love. The sentence uses three unity words in my translation: "joined," united," and "one," so it seems the happy marriage is about unity. And probably unity with a spouse as superceding other family ties. 

Both the man and "his wife," no longer just "the woman," are naked, but not ashamed. So much in that sentence, brief though it is. I have heard many messages about the importance of being metaphorically naked and not ashamed, in marriage, and in Christian relationships in general. The idea I've heard taught is of complete openness and complete acceptance, which of course is not so hard if everyone is perfect! This passage actually gives us nothing at all about human relationships other than marriage before the fall, except that a man leaves his parents to join his wife. Would everyone have been naked and unashamed in a perfect world, or just spouses? A redeemed relationship of openness and acceptance despite true sin being present is a whole different animal. It's something I believe the rest of the Bible does call us to, but it's so much more challenging in our current state. Redeemed humanity may turn out to be even loftier than pre-fall, in that sense.

But back to the nakedness of marriage. The man and the wife are naked, unadorned, everything in the open. [[Strange to note that sex is not mentioned as part of this happy marriage. Just implied? Though no children are born before they are born in the difficulty of the next chapter's curse, surely they would have been . . . how would that have gone?]] But there is no shame. Without the self-centeredness that is so much of the essence of our sin, perhaps they just didn't even think to judge themselves, or each other. They were just receiving the gifts of a sparkling new world and a sparkling new soulmate. Shame is such a killer of true love in marriage and in other relationships. I would reach out, . . . but what if they don't like me, if I'm not worthy, and am rejected?? Or taken advantage of?? Better just stay safe over here by myself. The opposite of unity.

Last time I started this blog, I flew straight through these chapters into the story of the fall. And there is a lot of interesting stuff that happens during story of the first sin, but before the curse, from which we could learn more about a perfect world. But I will have to save that for the next post!

Takeaways from Genesis 1-2:

• Male and Female together are the crown of creation, charged to fill the earth and subdue it.
• The woman is created as a helper suitable for the man.
• Pre-fall marriage was about unity, and nakedness without shame.

Questions for the comments:

• What do you think "helper suitable for him" means?
• Why the rib??
• Why does the man leave his parents to join his wife and not the reverse?