1. Old Testament Marriage
INTRODUCTION
THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT "Thou shalt not commit adultery"
Ex. 20;14, Deut. 5;18 - or the requirement for "ONE FLESH"
"Where does marriage leave off, and adultery begin?", is the question that Joy Davidman (1953) asked in her essay on the Seventh Commandment in "Smoke on the Mountain". I am indebted to this book for much information and many ideas on this subject, but I also have read the work by Susan Dowell on "They Two Shall be One". She is one of the new women researchers (1990), who have drawn on historical facts over the last two millennia, often from previously, relatively unknown women historians. She has given us detailed pictures of marriage from before the time of Abraham, up to the present day. Her view has been tempered by the research from both points of view, rather than only that of male secular, or male church authority, who have dominated the research up til the present. Her research on statistics is remarkable, and I am grateful that she has put things in perspective for me. I am astounded that the marriage state did not evolve in an orderly direction, but was fashioned by the social fabric of the time in and erratic fashion. The relationship between church and state, as they see sawed over the centuries, had a mighty impact on the lives of woman and children, and it is only in this rapidly closing century, in the last twenty years that conditions have changed for women and children, especially girls.
1. CHURCH AND STATE
The Christian position on adultery is, that if you have a wife still living, taking a new partner is adultery, and therefore sinful. Our Secular law position is that if you take another additional wife legally, then that is adultery. Some countries have different marriage and divorce laws, allowing more than one wife, and easy divorce, so the stability, or stick ability, of marriage becomes more tenuous.
The State has a legitimate interest in wishing to protect children, and so they define the rights of women and men and children, and these are ever changing, as we see in our recent press about a parent removing a child from the convenient visiting rights of a non custodial parent. Christians, in these days, having to recognise the state requirements, can have God in there as well, adding a mystical dimension if they wish. They seek to make the civil contract a holy union, emphasising the one flesh of Genesis 2:24, which leaves no room for a multiplicity of wives, or mistresses, or the practice of serial monogamy.
2. ONE FLESH
I think the one flesh idea, is the whole basis of the argument against adultery. It is not negated by the argument that this or that is a casual affair, or that surrender is less total, or devoid of holiness, for momentary pleasure can add permanent loneliness, or an everlasting feeling of sin and its effects, as was the case of David, who while God forgiven, never forgave himself, for his lust that led to adultery, then to deceit and then murder.
3. PREHISTORY
Deterioration from the ideal in Genesis saw secularly recorded prehistoric practices with possession of a woman as nine tenths of the law. A man captured and controlled his wife as a possession, with a club, she was necessary for domestic uses to feed him, to create his clothes and to keep his weapons in a useable state. She was tolerated for as long as she was useful, or until someone else took her, again by brute force. The original one flesh idea of Genesis passed into a long period of obscurity.
4. ACQUIRING A WIFE
As things became more civilised this law of possession meant that the physically strong could view their wives as assets and marriage by purchase, was the practice. They could be given or taken, or sent for, or captured, and the law had countless provisions for man's seemingly insatiable need for more than one sexual partner. It was viewed by women as only a partial improvement, but for men her exchange meant bargaining, with or without her presence, as was done with slaves. Thus if she was stolen, a thief could be punished under property rights, or she too, if she was a willing accomplice. The Covet Commandment (number Ten) places a wife as property in with house and fields, servants, oxen and asses. It was somewhere here that the concept of adultery was born.
In Deuteronomy 22 an explicit distinction in rape was made between the free and betrothed virgin. In the latter she is damaged property, and so the seducer must die. In all of this there is no awareness of how the women may feel, but there was a measure of justice and decency here, because if it was judged that, if the raped woman had called out and there was none to hear, she was not condemned, or if she had been raped in war, she could not be later sold as a slave.
There was a hidden message in these laws for it meant a preservation of the bloodlines which were so important in Israel's early history. As shown in the story of Onan, struck dead for not contributing to his childless brother's bloodline, children became the centre of marriage until the time of Christ.
5. OLD TESTAMENT MARRIAGE -PATRIARCHY
There was more rigour at some times than others, in the national need for Israel's purity. There was inclusive advice about converted heathens and proselytes in the time of Jonah and Ruth, with a more Universalist approach. The honour of a stranger and sojourner was indeed a sacred and oft honoured principle. God himself came to the rescue of Hagar when she was thrown out of Abraham's house. She had probably been brought from the sojourn in Egypt. But religious exclusivity came to the fore, with the evolving circumstances of Israel's great wickednesses, and we have recorded in Ezra 10 how that the foreign wives and children were to be sent away. We can hardly imagine the human misery, in this brutal and hard punishment. It was not the fault of the wives that they had not been assimilated into the ways of Israel, and that their children spoke only in their mothers' tongues, for they had left their homes and thrown in their lot with the Israelites. No godly leadership skills, or spiritual fatherhood roles here.
Elkanah and Hannah, Jacob and Rachael and Abram and Sarai, all seemed to enjoy their marital relationships though, in practising polygamy, the men were not one flesh with their loved wives. David is recorded as loving some wives more than others, and his adultery is only condemned when his passion threatened the community. Wealth and power should not have immunised him against condemnation, for it eventually brought about such family dysfunction, that it is still commented on today, and causes the enemy to blaspheme.
2 Samuel 20:3 records for us, that David locked under guard, in his palace, and never visited, ten concubines, until the end of their days. They were regarded as widows. Men certainly had free will to practise what they pleased and the one flesh idea was long forgotten in the hardness of their hearts.
The adultery forbidden in the Seventh Commandment originally meant, to those people, an infringement of property rights, but it had hidden in it a greater fulfilment of a need of oneness (one flesh) in marriage. However for every advance for man, for his well being and development, there was a regression for women, with misery and repression. There was no walking in unison, and men never saw the need for oneness. There are no adulterous or polygamous husbands, or wife abusers or whoremongers or even stone throwers recorded as having been forgiven by Jesus. This is not to say that they were in no need of forgiveness, but rather that women needed recognition even in their sins, and that they could avail themselves of the forgiving processes in the church.
