Themes in Genesis: Marriage Ceremony Custom in Genesis

The Ceremony

 Then Jacob said to Laban, “Give me my wife. My time is completed, and I want to lie with her.” So Laban brought together all the people of the place and gave a feast. But when evening came, he took his daughter Leah and gave (brought) her to Jacob, and Jacob lay with her (Genesis 29:21-23).

This is the closest we can get to what a marriage ceremony was like in the time of Genesis.

1. There was a dowry paid.  In Jacob's case the dowry is 7 years of work, because Jacob had nothing else to pay, his uncle bargained with Jacob for 7 years of his life (which turned out to be 14).

2. There was celebration in the form of a feast. There was probably a lot of wine involved in this celebration.  There is no mention specifically about who or how many were invited, but from the fact that Leban "gathered together" the people of the place, I would venture to say that the people worked for, or were servants to, Leban.  Leban would not gather the locals, but rather, he would invite them.

When Isaac was married, his bride was given a party before she was sent to get married.  So it looks like partying was a big part of getting married, as it is today.

3. The Father walked the new bride to the honeymoon tent.  This may or may not have been a common ritual.  Leban was trying to deceive his new son-in-law into marrying the wrong daughter, so he may have created his own ritual that night, in order to bring the bride to her husband's tent.  By bringing her to him, Jacob (the groom) would already be in the dark waiting for his bride.  Jacob's father-in-law could easily sneak in the bride's sister instead of the bride.  On the other hand, this march to the tent of consumation may easily have been a common practice.

The most important part of the wedding was the consumating the relationsip in a tent.  Not only did Jacob mention this in particular to his father-in-law, but when Isaac married Rebeka, the only thing we know about the wedding is that "he brought her into his mother's tent".   Isaac was very much a mother's boy, and the fact that he went into her tent does not mean that it was a practice of the day.  I am guessing that Isaac never left his mother's tent.

4. Finally, there was the consumation of the relationship.  More than any part of his wedding, Jacob looked forward to this part.  He was very bold telling Leban, his father-in-law, that it was time for him to have sex with his daughter.  Very few people would dare to speak like this to their father-in-law in our society (U.S.A.), but remember, this was a culture where children were raised in a sex filled atmoshere (among the cattle).  It was a part of life that carried no shame or hiding in discussion.

What's Missing?

1.  There is no mention of any veil or of whatever clothes the bride wore.  I assume that the bride would dress in her best clothes.

2.  There is no ceremony as we know it.  Because Jacob unknowingly had sex with his bride's older sister, he was bound in marriage to her and not to the one celebrated in the party; so I conclude that there was no ceremony in the celebration.  What did bind them in this case were two things - Father walking his daughter to the tent and the couple having sex.  In the end I would say that the march to the tent was a ritual.

The Summary:

1.  The bridegroom waited under his covers in the tent.  He had quite a bit to drink, but not too much to put him out.
2.  While the party cheered, the father walked his daughter, the bride, to her new husband's tent.
3.  The father returned to the party, talking about the good days to come while the couple consumated their relationship inside the tent.

Themes in Genesis: Trickery - How Did Leban Trick Jacob

Then Jacob said to Laban, “Give me my wife. My time is completed, and I want to lie with her.”
So Laban brought together all the people of the place and gave a feast.  But when evening came, he took his daughter Leah and gave her to Jacob, and Jacob lay with her (Genesis 29:21-23).  
 
Jacob brought his daughter to Jacob.  Jacob waited in a dark tent  (I am assuming that it was dark) for his new bride to be given to him from her dad.  The NIV is one of the few that chooses the word "gave" instead of "brought".  The Hebrew better supports "brought", which better explains how Jacob would have been tricked into sleeping with the wrong daughter.
 
Jacob was duped into marrying the wrong daughter.  On the night of his marriage, his father-in-law set him up to marry the older daughter in several ways: 
 
1.  Jacob had probably had too much to drink.  The Bible doesn't say it, but they did have a feast, which in those days that meant drinking; and Genesis gives us examples of godly people getting stone cold drunk - Noah and Lot.  Wine was a way of life, and ceremonies such as this were a time to drink more than usual.  When King David wanted Uriah to go home to his own wife, David got him drunk.  It was a method in the Bible, to get people to do things.
2.  Leban brought his daughter to Jacob into Jacob's tent.  Jacob did not walk with her into his tent. 
3.  A veil would not be good enough to cover Leah's identity.  Very few men would be tricked by the one they love covering her face.  Most men can tell the difference between their wife's body and her sister's, unless they are drunk.

What Were the Direct Results of the Fall in Genesis?

As I mentioned in my last post, the most important values in Genesis were:
1.  Survival
    a.  Fruit of the belly (having children)
    b.  Fruit of the ground (having crops and/or cattle for food)
2.  Preeminence
    a.  Getting most attention from dad
    b.  Getting most attention from the husband

When Adam and Eve fell, God filled all of these with pain, hardship and suffering.

THE WOMAN

To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you (Genesis 3:16)."

I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children.  There is nothing that needs to be said about this.  It is pretty obvious that giving birth is filled with pain and oftentimes death.
 
Your desire will be for your husband. 
Genesis portrays women who hungered for and fought for their husbands' attention.  They suffered for it.  Some suffered because they bore no children and some because they were not their husband's favorite.  Others were humiliated by competing with other wives for their polygamous husbands' love and respect.

He will rule over you. 
Women were made subservient to their husbands, as they ruled over them.  Women have suffered injustices in societies and in their own homes since the fall of humanity.  It is not an absolute rule, but a general rule that has permeated almost all societies and families. 

Genesis shares with us how this took place in ancient times.  Sarah was told by her husband to give herself to Pharaoh and other leaders wherever they traveled.  He did this to protect himself, because he was afraid that people would kill him and take his wife.  Granted, the Bible says that God protected her from getting raped in one case, but the Bible is silent about all other places they visited.  Her husband also had sex with a servant in order to have a child because Sarah couldn't have children.  Sure, she gave him permission and even brought up the idea, but I'm sure there was a lot of pressure put on her to do so.  There are plenty of other examples of how men ruled over their wives in Genesis, but I will leave that for now.

The fact that men rule over their wives is a curse that came about from the fall.  Pain in childbirth is also a result of the fall; should we seek to make childbirth as painful as possible?  Should we make sure work is more difficult than need be, because God cursed the ground?  No in these things we do what we can to turn the curse around.  We seek to alleviate pain and to repair what nature does to the work of our hands.  Who would seek to increase pain in childbirth because it is God's doing at creation?

The point I am making is this - we should not use the bible to justify abuse of or domination over women or wives.  It is a curse in Genesis, not a commandment.

THE MAN

Genesis 3:17-19
Cursed is the ground because of you;

through painful toil you will eat of it

all the days of your life.

It will produce thorns and thistles for you,

and you will eat the plants of the field.

By the sweat of your brow

you will eat your food

until you return to the ground,

since from it you were taken;

for dust you are

and to dust you will return.”

The early chapters in Genesis are obsessed with the ground (IE: dirt).  We are created from dirt and we will return to dirt, and the ground is our most needed natural resource.  The dirt gives us life and the dirt will receive our lives. 

The ground was cursed at the fall.  Again, this does not mean that we should seek to make the ground terrible for growing crops, rather, we do what we can to help grow crops, to undo the curse placed on the ground and on the work it takes to get from the ground.

ONE LAST THOUGHT

The curse seems more directed to a settled community than a nomadic one.  The curse relates most of all to those who were growing crops, it does not seem to relate as much to raising cattle.  Granted, the cattle need vegetation to survive, but the vegetation they need is not the kind that needs cultivation.

By implication, we can say that the curse on the ground implies a curse on all of our work.  IE: that we have to struggle and work hard in life to get the fruit of any labor.

Themes in Genesis: The Cycle of Violence in Genesis

Violence began with Cain in Genesis, and never seemed to disappear.  Even with the chosen family, violence became a way of life.

Cain

Cain killed his brother in a spiritual contest.

Noah

God destroyed the earth with fire because of wickedness in general and violence in particular.

Abraham

Abraham was about to slaughter his own son before an angel of God stopped him.  Abraham also went out against an army to rescue Sodom and his brother Lot.

Sarah

Sarah dealt harshly with her servant.  In all likelihood, she beat her servant.  Beating servants was acceptable and expected in Bible days.  In the book of Tobit another Sarah (who was a godly woman) beat her servant girl, because she was childless and her servant taunted her.  There are definite similarities between the Sarah's.

Laban

Laban could have slaughtered Jacob and taken his daughters and grandchildren.  He mentioned that to Jacob, but did not follow through with his plans because God told him in a dream not to do it.

Reuben 

The oldest of Jacob's sons had sex with Jacob's wife's servant who was also Jacob's wife.  This was an act of aggression and revenge...not an act of lust.

Simeon and Levi

Simeon and Levi slaughtered an entire village of men in order to revenge their sister Dinah's honor.

The Brothers

Joseph's brothers were quite willing to kill him, but because of Reuben's own personal interests in restoring some of his honor; and because of Judah's own leadership the brothers sold him into slavery instead.

Joseph

Joseph ended the cycle of violence in the family with forgiveness.  He acknowledged their evil and openly called his brothers on it, but he forgave them, thus ending the cycle of revenge in his family.

CONCLUSION

Violence permeates Genesis.  It suggests that the human race is violent by nature.  I believe this accurately portrays humanity - we are violent, competing for territory and for dominance.  We can hide behind names such as patriotism, love of country, protection, or whatever; it still comes down to this - we are violent as individuals, and we are more violent as groups. 

Brothers rarely get along in Genesis.  It seems that the only times they do get along are when they are gathering together to kill somebody or some village of men (Joseph's brothers).  I could push this more and suggest that most brothers in the Hebrew Bible are bound to live in competition, disagreement, hatred and killing.

Genesis - The Story of a Nomadic Tribe that Lived in Fear

Abraham moved with his dad into a major city called Ur.  When his father died, God told Abraham to continue to move on to a land He would show him.  When Abraham came into the land God promised him, it was filled with people and was going through drought; in other words, it didn't look like much of a "promised land".  Because the land was going through drought, he moved on to Egypt where he passed his wife off as his sister (remember, she was his half sister), because she was beautiful and he was afraid the people there would kill him and steal his wife.  Abraham thought it was better for someone to just go ahead and have her, pay Abraham dowry and he could move on with his life.  See Genesis 20.

His fears were not unfounded.  Although her beauty attracted the most powerful in Egypt and Canaan, his judgment of the Egyptians' morality and his fear of outsiders were not based in reality.

Eventually, Abraham moved back to his promised land and wandered around the entire area, as a Nomad, which means he didn't settle down.

Nomads didn't plant because they were too much on the move to plant.  Because Abraham was a Nomad he and his group could not settle down long enough to own land and to plant in it, so they were shepherds who wandered from place to place, making a living with their flocks by trading and selling in whatever area they happened to be in. 

Genesis provides us with a partial inside look into his nomadic life and his relationships with people outside of his clan.

Xenophobia (Fear of the outsider)

Abraham feared and distrusted people outside of his clan. In other words, he probably felt discomfort everywhere he went.  He built trading relationships with the people in the country, but we never see him building up any solid relationships outside of his own group or his own family.

Genesis give two examples of Abraham passing his wife off as his sister because of his fears of those with whom he came into contact.   Abraham continued with this practice even after Egyptian rulers rebuked him for his immoral behavior.  After God protected Sarah from becoming another man's wife, the leaders of Egypt scolded Abraham who responded by telling them that he was afraid of them and assumed they would treat him with violence.

This episode shows us that along with his fear of outsiders, Abraham believed that people outside of his clan (or clans related to him, such as his brother's) were immoral.  In reality, the people outside of his clan (in both Egypt and in Gerar) were more moral and rebuked Abraham and his scam, because they felt like Abraham set them up for immoral disaster.

Fear of the outsider presupposes the belief that the outsider is capable of evil far worse than the insider.  And this fear can make the insider far more evil than the outsider...all in the name of protection. 

On the side, Egyptians despised shepherds.  We learn this from Joseph's discussion with his brothers when they came to Egypt.  Joseph lived many years after Abraham, but Egypt had not changed all that much in those years.

For years Rabbis wondered why God called Abraham to become the father of many nations and the father of Israel.  Some assumed it was because of something good that was in him, a good that we could see later in his life - some good that set him apart from the rest of the world.  But this is not born out in Genesis.  Through Abraham, we learn that God chose on the basis of His own purposes, and those choices were not made because of some goodness that we have done or are capable of doing.  God chose Abraham for reasons we will never know.

Abraham's son Isaac continued the same practice that his father did with his own wife.  I am convinced that Isaac only did this to copy his father.  It was a practice that Isaac saw in his father Abraham and Isaac continued doing the same, not necessarily because of fear, but because dad did it.

Dinah Ventures Out

One example from Genesis that we do see of anyone bonding with the outside community is when Abraham's granddaughter (Dinah) hung out with girls from a local city. One of their friends was a man (a prince) from the same city. He had sex with Dinah and that didn't go well with Dinah's brothers. 

There seems to be some discussion about Dinah's relationship with this young man.  While some English Bibles tell us that Dinah was raped, the Hebrew does not tell us that it was in fact rape.  It  is very possible that Dinah willingly bonded with a man who was outside of the clan, and the brothers were outraged that someone outside of the group was making inroads into the clan.  So the brothers schemed to kill every man in that city. 

Why did they slaughter the men in that city? 

Whether she was raped or whether she willingly gave in, she was dishonored in her own group, among her brothers.  Remember, that the Law of Moses commanded that if a man raped a woman, if she was single, he must marry that woman to protect her from dishonor.  In other words, dishonor was worse than rape, and even though rape dishonored a woman, consensual sex dishonored her even more.

The brothers were left with two options.  They could have let the prince and his city blend with the clan - thus saving their sister from dishonor, or they could take vengeance.  They decided to take vengeance, leaving no inroads into the clan or for the clan to melt into the local population.  Vengeance also may have saved their sister from dishonor, because her suiter was killed.

For 3 generations, Dinah was the only one mentioned who broke out of the clan and actually made friends with outsiders.  The consequence, however, was disaster for the friends she made, and caused her father Jacob to be more afraid of the people outside of the clan.  After the slaughter, Jacob feared that the surrounding cities would take vengeance on him and on his clan.  But the opposite happened.  The outsiders feared him and his clan more.

Esau

Another example of someone who bonded with outsiders was Esau who married to local Hittite women.  After he was married, he found out that his mother didn't like his wives, and that she wanted his brother to marry a girl from another nomadic clan headed up by her brother.  Trying to please his parents, Esau married a cousin from still another clan headed up by his father's relative.  The story of Esau gives us a window into the world as seen by a nomadic tribe.

CONCLUSIONS

Abraham and his family are normal human beings with normal fears.  They were no worse than the rest of the world or any other group who act and react in fear and in the need to survive. 

Xenophobia is an interesting phenomena, because while we fear other people and other groups, judging them to be less moral, in reality, our own xenophobia creates its own violence and lack of morals that can outweigh that of the outsider.  I often think of the illustration that the most vicious animal or bird is the one protecting her family.  Self protection can be and has been an instigator of many evils.  Fear of the outsider feeds an unrealistic need to protect when there is no need. 

This nomadic tribe struggled to keep the outside from coming in and from its own group melting into the outside world.  They distrusted the outsiders they did business with and they feared the people who lived in the big cities that gave them shelter from time to time.