Why Genesis 2:24 doesn’t help the conversation
With the impending introduction of marriage equality in Northern Ireland, many Christians may feel alarmed. Indeed, the Evangelical Alliance's own Peter Lynas responded with quite bizzare warnings about the impending robot weddings and self-marriages that will obviously come next. He and others will now feel that they are the ones who have to defend “biblical marriage” on God’s behalf. In attempting to do so, they will often appeal to the much loved Gen 2:24 verse which says: “For this reason, a man leaves his parents and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.”
“There you have it”, they say. “God created marriage to be between a man and a woman and that’s that”. But they never explain what “the reason” given in Genesis actually is. Here is the verse in context:
“Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man said: “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.” For this reason a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.”
So the context makes clear that a man being “united to this wife” was because “she was taken out of man” in the first place, referring to the poetic description of Eve having been made out of one of Adam’s ribs in the second creation account. Notice also that this was based on something “the man said”, not something God decreed should happen. So in this passage, all we are learning is that there was a kind of poetic logic for ancient Hebrews in the practice of men taking women as wives. It made sense to them, since according to the story, that is where women came from in the first place.
We see the same rationale from later authors such as Paul, who reasons: “For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. That is why a wife ought to have a symbol of authority on her head”. So why should males enjoy a privileged position over females in regard to marriage? According to Paul, it’s obviously because ‘men came first’. Does anyone use this logic today? Does God really want Christians today to think of women as subordinate to men in the same way that Paul's ancient, deeply patriarchal culture simply took for granted?
Besides this, the most obvious problem is that almost no Christian I know actually believes that God literally took a rib from a man called Adam and used it to create a woman called Eve. Even the Evangelical Alliance admits they don’t take the creation stories literally. So if we know that Genesis 2:23 is not intended to be taken literally, why are we trying to impose the very next verse on modern marriage in such an awkwardly flat and ham-fisted way?
One of the decisions a serious reader of the bible has to make when approaching any particular passage is; “Am I reading a description of how things were - or am I reading a description of how God wants things to be?” In other words, we have to decide whether what we are reading is descriptive or prescriptive. Often, this is intuitive. When we read about the brutal, tribal way Israel often treated their enemies, for example, we know that although this may be an honest description of what happened at the time - nobody would argue that these stories are intended to be prescriptive of how God wants us to treat our enemies today. On the other hand, when Jesus says “love your enemies”, we know that this is intended to be prescriptive for those who intend to follow the teachings of Jesus. It’s really not that hard to tell the difference.
So when it comes to descriptions of marriage in the bible, we have to acknowledge the profound cultural gender inequality that biblical authors simply took for granted. And then we must ask whether this description was ever intended by God to become prescriptive for followers of Christ today. For example, the idea of ‘consent’ on the part of a young woman was a virtually non-existent concept with regard to “biblical marriage”. So in Judges 13, when Samson sees a young woman from a neighbouring tribe who takes his fancy, he simply says to his father: “I have seen a Philistine woman in Timnah; now get her for me as my wife”. Because that’s just how it worked. Isn’t this what Gen 2:24 says? Men “took” wives, but of course women could not “take” husbands. Now, just because this was how marriage was actually practised in the bible (and therefore “biblical”) should anyone really be defending and prescribing it as the norm today? Of course not.
And that’s just the start of it. When Esau married Mahalath in Genesis 28, we read that he did so in order to pacify his father Isaac. We are explicitly told that Esau had “realised how displeasing the Canaanite women were to his father Isaac” and so he decided to marry a local woman “in addition to the wives he already had”. And that’s just casually stated as if it was normal… because it was! What about romance or fidelity or marrying for love - traits of modern marriage we Christians take for granted? Actual “biblical marriage” from the same era as the famous Genesis 2:24 verse doesn’t seem concerned with any of that. In this one passage, we see how a “biblical definition of marriage” often involved not just polygamy, but was preoccupied with tribal loyalties as well. Not to mention that although a man could have “other wives” (if he could afford them) it was simply not possible for a woman to have “other husbands”.
Speaking of “affording” wives, you probably know that “biblical marriage” involved a man’s family literally purchasing a young woman for their son as a wife. Again, women could be purchased - but men could not. If a man or his family could not afford a woman he desired, he might instead agree to work for the woman’s family as payment in lieu.
This is what was going on when Jacob fell for Rachel in Genesis 29. Short on wealth, we are told that Jacob had to pay for his wife by working for her father, Laban - for seven years! At the wedding, however, Jacob was quite bizarrely tricked into marrying Rachel’s sister Leah instead - and so has to work another seven years to earn the right to marry Rachel as well. So there is the polygamy again - and let’s not forget that Leah and Rachel were Jacob's first cousins. Remember that this is not some obscure biblical marriage we’re talking about here - it’s Jacob himself, the father of the twelve tribes of Israel!
Furthermore, with a purchased wife, there often came land entitlement for the man. These property deeds would then be duly passed down through the male line - or if there were no male heirs, and the wife was widowed, then the land would be passed on to whoever was next in line to marry the widow. And there were strict rules about which men were allowed ‘first refusal’ on a widowed woman along with any property associated with her. These men were known as a woman’s “kinsmen” - and of course she had no say over who they were.
This is exactly why, when Boaz wanted to marry the widow Ruth in chapter 3, he has to first consult the man who is legally entitled to her property (and Ruth herself), saying to Ruth: “But now, though it is true that I am a kinsman, there is another kinsman more closely related than I.” In chapter 4, Boaz has to therefore literally haggle with this other man over Ruth and the property associated with her: “Then Boaz said to the other kinsman, “On the day you buy the land from Naomi, you also acquire Ruth the Moabite, the dead man’s widow, in order to maintain the name of the dead with his property.” Notice that any property in a marriage could never belong to the woman herself, only to any sons or husbands she may have.
It’s worth noting here that this is exactly why Jesus would later prohibit men from arbitrarily dismissing their wives. He knows that a woman dismissed by her husband would be left in a very vulnerable position, with no resources of her own and at the mercy of any unscrupulous men wanting to take advantage of her. Jesus is not teaching about the sanctity of heterosexual marriage here, as some claim. He is instead teaching about divorce, and challenging men about their casual treatment of their wives. Notice again that there is no equivalent teaching for women, since there would have been no concept, and no mechanism even, of wives taking the initiative and divorcing their husbands. Surely no one wishes to see this kind of “biblical” inequality as a feature of marriage today?
Evidently, actual “biblical marriage” in the era of Genesis leaves a lot to be desired from a modern, moral viewpoint. Yes, descriptions of the contractual, arranged marriages in the bible were exclusively between men and women. But this was only because patriarchal gender inequality was so hard-baked into the culture of the time - so taken for granted, that it was impossible to even imagine any other way of having a marriage. It was a contractual arrangement based on a primitive understanding of gender which subordinated the female parties involved for the purposes of protecting the male legacy and inheritance. In other words, marriage in the bible was required to be heterosexual not because that was what “God intended” - but simply because we humans had not yet even worked out that men and women were meant to be equal in the eyes of God! Clearly, if the relationships in Genesis are to be held up as “God’s design for marriage”, then it’s not a very good one. Especially if you happen to be female.
So when you invoke a verse from Genesis to defend “biblical marriage”, you need to be aware that this was an institution where men held all the cards, where polygamy and incest were common, where young teenage women had no option to say “no” and where race, tribalism and property rights were all in the mix. Genesis may well hold an honest, descriptive account of how marriage played out in the ancient Near East, but we need to be very careful about suggesting that this is intended as a prescriptive model for anyone getting married today. These ancient biblical accounts are clearly not intended to be used by Christians in the modern era to deny marriage equality to those wishing to enter committed, loving relationships. They are inspired passages from which we can learn and which remind us how far we have come - and also how far we have still to go.
So yes, marriage equality in our corner of the world is finally on the way, and no, that doesn’t mean you have to worry about the robots. The way biblical marriage worked may have made sense to ancient Hebrews at the time, but it is clearly not a model we should be holding up as a reason to deny same sex couples marriage equality in our place and time. Of course, we all still have work to do in our understanding of what it actually means for adults to live in a lifelong, self sacrificial relationship with another person - and no doubt we often get it wrong. But as we continue to learn how to love well, are we not also drawing nearer to the God who is love; and is this not how love will win us all in the end? Therefore, any steps along the way that bring us closer to equality and inclusion should be welcomed by all, especially by Christians animated by the God of love.