In Their Historical Setting
E-Book, Englisch, 128 Seiten
ISBN: 978-1-68359-329-4
Verlag: Lexham Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)
Gordon J. Wenham (PhD, Cambridge University) is Professor Emeritus of Old Testament Studies at the University of Gloucestershire. He has written or contributed to many books, including Story as Torah, Remarriage after Divorce in Today's Church: 3 Views, and (with William Heth) Jesus and Divorce. He has also written commentaries on Genesis (Word Biblical Commentary), Leviticus (New International Commentary on the Old Testament), and Numbers (Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries).
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2 MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT Despite the size of the Old Testament, it is not easy to write a history of marriage in ancient Israel. There are two main reasons for this. First, knowledge of marriage law and customs is often presupposed by the writers and therefore these customs are left unexplained. This requires modern interpreters to read between the lines with the help of texts from neighboring societies. This approach is warranted because, as Raymond Westbrook observes, “Biblical law was part of a much wider legal tradition that extended across the whole of the ancient Near East.”1 But although appealing to neighboring cultures reduces the amount of interpretative guesswork involved, it does not eliminate it altogether. The other difficulty concerns the dating of the material.2 Few scholars would doubt that the entire Old Testament was written between 1300 and 150 BC, but the date of a book or part of a book is more contentious, especially the Pentateuch, which is the most informative text for understanding marriage. Its date of composition has been debated ad nauseam. But this is not so problematic as it seems at first, since the provisions of the Pentateuch are so similar to Old Babylonian rules. And the date of composition matters little for the educative function of the biblical texts, which were designed to be recited at festive gatherings to instruct the people in how to behave. Neither reciter nor listener worried about when the text was written, only about its message.3 And though the material in the Pentateuch originated in the second millennium BC, it was incorporated into the definitive history of Israel, which is constituted by the first nine books of the Old Testament, from Genesis to 2 Kings.4 This suggests that the laws and narratives in this history were regarded as normative well into the first millennium BC. This allows us to use the laws about marriage in the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy and the stories in Genesis and Samuel to illuminate the theory and practice of marriage in the postexilic era (roughly 500 BC onward). We also get glimpses of how marriage worked in practice in texts of this period. The books of Nehemiah and Ezra record the trouble these leaders had trying to regulate Jewish marriages. And from Elephantine, a colony of Jews in southern Egypt, we have some fifth-century marriage contracts that also shed light on ancient practice. MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE IN THE PATRIARCHAL ERA Marriage figures frequently in Genesis. It is presupposed in the first command given to the human race, “Be fruitful and multiply” (Gen 1:28), a command repeated three times to Noah after the flood (Gen 8:17; 9:1, 7). The topic of marriage is central in many episodes, including Adam and Eve, Cain, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Leah and Rachel, and Dinah (Gen 2–3; 4:17–24; 12:10–20; 20:1–18; 24:1–67; 29:1–35; 34:1–31). Some of these stories present examples of good conduct, but rather more serve as warnings showing mistakes that should not be repeated. Both types of story show how marriage operated in biblical times. The initial negotiations for Rebekah’s hand in marriage are described in Genesis 24, and the tricky situation created by Dinah’s abduction leading to agreement under duress is told in Genesis 34.5 In both cases, the bride’s father ought to have led the discussion, but with the father’s reluctance to intervene, the bride’s brother(s) led the haggling (Gen 24:29–30; 34:8–24). Both scenarios illustrate how marriage was the concern of the whole family, not just the bride and groom. But Jacob’s flight from home made him vulnerable when it came to marriage. He had no back-up from his family and his weakness was cruelly exploited by his uncle Laban (Gen 29:15–30). One of the key issues in these negotiations was the amount of bride-money to be paid to effect betrothal or inchoate marriage. This payment by the groom’s family was a pledge that the proposed match would be carried through. The amount of bride-money varied from family to family. In Old Babylonian texts roughly contemporary with the patriarchal period, bride-money typically ranged from one to forty shekels. So keen was Shechem to regularize his relationship to Dinah that he offered to pay “whatever you say to me” (Gen 34:12). The sums usually involved were so large, several years’ pay, that the groom could not pay it out of his own pocket but depended on his family.6 Jacob’s family was too far away to help, so Jacob offered to work for Laban for seven years. This timeframe was a bit longer than usual, but that no doubt reflects Jacob’s love for Rachel on the one hand and Laban’s avarice on the other. An even bigger payment in Old Babylonian society was the dowry, a gift from the bride’s family to the bride as a sort of endowment in case she was widowed or divorced. There are only two explicit mentions of the dowry in the Old Testament (Exod 18:2; 1 Kgs 9:16), so it has been doubted whether it was customary in Bible times to give a dowry.7 However, this is a rather unlikely conclusion in the light of the dowry’s pervasiveness in traditional societies. Also, there are quite a few passages where the dowry is alluded to and must be assumed. In Genesis, Bilhah and Zilpah are given to Rachel and Leah by Laban when they marry (Gen 29:23–29). In non-biblical texts, slave girls are frequently listed in the dowries of wealthy women. The status of Hagar and Rebekah’s maids is not so clear, but it is quite likely that they were given to Sarah and Rebekah at their weddings.8 The picture that emerges of marriage in Genesis is thus very similar to that in Old Babylonian documents. A similar conclusion is to be drawn about polygamy. Both the Old Testament and Old Babylonian texts allow for polygamy, although both are rather uncomfortable with it. Polygamists are portrayed in the Old Testament as rather unsavory characters and their marriages are unhappy affairs (Gen 4:23–24; Gen 29–30; 1 Sam 1:1–20). This fits the general picture that marriage and its associated customs in the Old Testament were similar to those in Old Babylonia. Further support is provided by a comparison of the laws dealing with marital offenses. In both societies, adultery was a most serious offense for which the aggrieved husband could demand the death penalty.9 Note that adultery is understood as intercourse by a married woman with a man who is not her husband, and the same rule applies to inchoately married (betrothed) women (Deut 22:23–24). In traditional cultures, a married man was not regarded as guilty of adultery if he had sexual intercourse with an unmarried girl. If caught red-handed, both the unfaithful wife and her lover were liable to the death penalty (Lev 20:10; Deut 22:22; compare Code of Hammurabi 129; Middle Assyrian Laws 13). The injured husband could decide to spare his wife, and in that case her lover had to be spared too. Both biblical and extrabiblical codes insist that both parties must be treated the same. This ensures that an innocent man cannot be framed, as with Joseph and Potiphar’s wife in Genesis 39 (see also Code of Hammurabi 129). Both legal systems distinguish rape from seduction by appealing to the place where the offense occurred. If the assault occurred in the open country out of earshot of other people who might have heard the woman’s cry for help, only the man was blamed and punished. But if it took place indoors, the woman was deemed to have consented, so both were punished (Deut 22:25–27; compare Code of Hammurabi 130; Middle Assyrian Laws 13). The laws we have looked at cover a range of offenses where the guilt or innocence of those involved is clear. It should be noted that in Israel, as in neighboring societies, the penalty prescribed is the maximum allowed: where the death penalty is authorized the offended party may waive it if he sees fit. Proverbs 6:31–35 warns the would-be adulterer not to count on the angry husband letting him off. This shows that the death penalty did not have to be enforced. It seems likely, therefore, that in Israel as elsewhere in the ancient Near East death was the maximum, not the minimum, penalty for adultery. Does this mean that if the husband exercises mercy, his unfaithful wife gets away scot free and continues to live with him as though nothing had happened and the co-respondent does not suffer for his offense? This seems unlikely, as the book of Proverbs says: If he is caught, he will pay sevenfold; he will give all the goods of his house. (Prov 6:31) For jealousy makes a man furious, and he will not spare when he takes revenge. (Prov 6:34) And the unfaithful wife is likely to have had to pay, too. Husbands could divorce their wives at any time, and would most likely want to exercise that option if their wife had misbehaved. The husband’s desire for revenge would also be encouraged by the consideration that the wife would forfeit her dowry in these circumstances. However, if a husband divorced his wife on lesser grounds, she retained her dowry and the husband who had been using it while the marriage survived had to give it back intact. This would have acted as a disincentive to divorce on trivial grounds. At least, this is how a divorce settlement might have worked in Babylon in the days of the Patriarchs. But one biblical law on divorce seems to imply similar considerations operated in...
