ANCIENT JEWISH MARRIAGE: ARRANGE ME
My husband and I met while both serving at a soup kitchen. My sister and her husband met while in college. My parents met while both working at the same pizza parlor shortly after high school. My maternal grandparents met at a dinner social my grandmother’s town had put on for the local military men.
If you’re married, you have your own story of how you met your spouse. Maybe you met them online or its possible you were set up through friends. I highly doubt many, if any, of you reading this blog post were married because your parents arranged it.
Marriage, in the ancient world looked much differently than today. People didn’t meet in pizza parlors, soup kitchens or college. Most marriages were arranged. Today, in many ultra-orthodox Jewish circles, marriages are still arranged by someone called a shadkan whose primary role within the community is to find a good marriage match.
Historically, although marriages were arranged by the father of the family, the bride to be did have a choice in the matter. She didn’t have to accept marriage proposed by the man of a family she did not want to marry. For example, in the arranged marriage of Isaac and Rebekah she was given a choice on whether or not she wanted to leave with Abraham’s servant or stay 10 more days with her family before her departure. We may think that women in the ancient world never had the ability to say no to a man, but this has not always proven to be the case.
Rebekah did the work of watering 10 camels. In our podcast, Jonathan pointed out this would have been the equivalent of working a full day at a manual labor job. Truth be told, marriage, in the ancient world was much more about survival than it was about attraction. A woman like Rebekah was a hardworker who had great character. For Abraham’s servant to see her work as hard as he did, he could be confident she’d do the hard work of staying committed n marriage. Not to mention she would be a strong asset to the family line. In today’s world you might find Rebekah pouring and laying concrete in a third world country or helping build new homes as a volunteer for those in need.
Marriage is used in the Bible to show us God’s relationship with His people, and how Jesus will return. The first step in the Jewish wedding process was the arrangement of the marriage. A bride price was paid by the Father of the bridegroom to the bride’s family. Our God and Father has paid the bride price for his bride. The cost of that price was the life of his very son, our Lord, master and Savior, Jesus.
As youth ministry leaders we are given a great opportunity to tell of the sacrifice God has made by sending Jesus. Truly, God has arranged a great marriage with us. We don’t have to accept this offer, but when we do, we receive the bride price, forgiveness of sins through the death of God’s son. Now, that’s worth accepting, don’t you think? Truly, this is a marriage worth entering into and it’s a marriage worth telling every teenager about. I pray you’ll do that within your ministry as you seek to love, care for and shepherd the hearts of this next generation.
Blessings,
Heather