Psalm 45:10-17; Genesis 25:19-27; Romans 7:1-6
Thursday 2 July
The central themes of our readings for today are not marriage as such, but they do all touch on an institution which is often thought of by those outside the Church as an unambiguously central tenet of Christianity. Biblical references to marriage, however, present us with a more nuanced notion of marriage and its importance.
Here is not the time to go into that in too much detail, but if we do look to our psalm to begin with, on first reading it might seem like a fairytale (it’s a psalm in which we find references to two of the gifts brought by the magi i.e. gold at verse 13, and myrrh at verse 8), but look again and we get a different view.
And maybe it’s gold and myrrh that can then become clues for us as we try to find some meaning in this passage for our own day. Myrrh is something we associate with death. It was offered to Christ to take at the time of his crucifixion and then used to prepare his body for burial. And there is a sort of death going on here, for while it all sounds very romantic (beauty, gifts, palace etc.), this passage begins with,
‘Bride of the king . . forget your people and your relatives.’ i.e. die to your old life. There’s even a hint, I think, at verse 9, that this bride is joining a harem; the reference to gold possibly implying that this is a financial transaction; and rather than a celebration of romantic love, the whole point of what is happening (see verse 16) is to produce heirs for the king instead.
Moving now to our Old Testament reading, Rebecca was basically ‘bought’ by Abraham for Isaac (see Genesis 24:53). In his favour, however, Isaac does seem to have been remarkably faithful for a patriarch. Not that that stopped Rebecca from plotting against him by the support she gave Jacob in his attempt to secure a blessing (and his father’s inheritance) from Isaac, when it ought rightfully to have gone to Esau instead.
Esau, as we see from the notes there are in some English language translations, sounds like the Hebrew for ‘hairy’ and Jacob for ‘heel’; although I have seen ‘leg-puller’ for Jacob and wondered whether this is the origin of the phrase ‘to pull one’s leg’. What Jacob did to Esau, however, was far more than just tease him.
I have a problem with Paul in Romans 7, and it’s this: his use of the death of a spouse as a metaphor for BC:AD. For, to equate marriage with bondage and law, and widowhood with the spirit and freedom is, I think, to denigrate marriage altogether. And it may be that Paul did follow his own advice (in 1 Corinthians 7:1) where he writes that, ‘A man does well not to marry,’ but I would find it impossible – conducting a wedding in Church – to try and explain what Paul is up to here. Thankfully he does make up for it elsewhere, however, with e.g. 1 Corinthians 13.
And now, in lieu of a prayer, I thought you might like to ponder this today. It’s a cartoon strip by Posy Simmonds:
Amen.