Biblical Marriage

Dan McClellan It starts in Deuteronomy 22:13, "Suppose a man marries a woman, but after going into her," and this is a euphemism for consummation, which is itself a euphemism for sexual intercourse.

Dan Beecher It's not much of a euphemism. It's pretty straight.

Dan McClellan It's pretty graphic, yeah.

Dan Beecher Nails it pretty hard is what I'm saying, yeah.

Dan McClellan That's another euphemism. Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan And you're listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast where we're increasing public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we are combating the spread of misinformation about the same. How go things today, Dan?

Dan Beecher Ah, things are going. Rocking and rolling. Having a good time.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher I'm looking forward to today's show- Nice ... because we're going to be talking about something that is becoming, oddly, a hot button issue- Yeah ... in these United States, and elsewhere, I suppose. But it doesn't feel like it should be cropping up right now, but it kind of is.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher It's love and marriage today, and we're going to be talking about marriage, and then also, in the latter half of the show, we'll do a chapter and verse about divorce.

Dan McClellan So- Nice ...

Dan Beecher in and out of marriage.

Dan McClellan But- It's going to be a quickie.

Dan Beecher But let's start with our first segment, which is Taking Issue. And today, Dan, we're taking issue with biblical marriage.

Dan McClellan Well, I understand that I have a biblical marriage. Don't you have a biblical marriage, Dan?

Dan Beecher I mean- Is that what you're- I know my lady wife in the biblical sense. Is that what you're talking about?

Dan McClellan She is known to you.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Okay. Well, the adjective biblical gets slapped onto so many things these days- Yeah ... by folks who want to insist there's a right way and a wrong way to go about everything. And so there's a lot of talk of biblical marriage, and in short, you don't want a biblical marriage.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But there are also many different kinds of biblical marriages, and you don't want any of them.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan All right.

Dan Beecher Yeah. We'll get to that.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher One of the things that I did, when I was sort of researching this for the show, I remembered that there's this thing that's happening in the US, several states have already adopted this thing, and other states are trying to push for what they're calling covenant marriages. And what this is, is a different type of extra special marriage.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher When you file for your marriage license or whatever, you check the box- Super-size me.

Dan McClellan Yeah ...

Dan Beecher yeah, for covenant marriage. And the idea is that it's a lot harder to get a divorce, and you have to enter into the marriage, you have to have done counseling with a priest or with some sort of religious person. It's not with a marriage counselor, but- ... that's neither here nor there.

Dan McClellan But- Yes. It's got to be someone who's entirely unqualified to say anything at all about- Right ...

Dan Beecher marriage. Especially if it's a Catholic priest, someone who's not even allowed to participate themselves. I've heard tell- Yeah, exactly ...

Dan McClellan that this is how it goes.

Dan Beecher And then it's like you really can't get divorced unless... It kind of eliminates the idea of no-fault divorce.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Which I think a lot of very right-wing religious people have been hitting hard that divorce is this great tragedy or whatever. And so what we do is we enter into this covenant marriage where it's much... And they really are trying to make sort of... The end goal is to make some form of biblical Christian marriage the legal standard.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And I think there are a couple of different reasons for this. The end of no-fault divorce is something that I see a lot of Christian nationalists advocating for on social media, which is basically men saying, "I should be able to be a garbage human being- ... and my wife should not be allowed to take leave of our relationship."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Because no-fault divorce was implemented precisely to give women access to a little bit more agency within marriages.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And in marriages for a long time, there has been a significant power asymmetry, and when we get into the biblical stuff, you're going to see that that's even more entrenched- Jesus ... in biblical marriage.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And so this is basically just men saying, "I don't like women being able to make decisions for themselves. I should be the one in charge of them."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And these are the same men who are out there saying, "Every household should have one vote. It should be the man who decides." And it's fair because his wife is allowed to share her feelings with him before he makes the decision.

Dan Beecher Right. And he will listen to her about as much as those guys tend to listen to their wives.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And so it's just garbage human beings who want their garbageness to be authorized by the state.

Dan Beecher And- To be enforced by the state ...

Dan McClellan enforced by the state, yes, over and against the interests, and the agency, and the consent. These are the same folks who insist there's no such thing as marital rape.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Which is also something we will talk about when we get into- Yeah ... our discussion a bit.

Dan Beecher But- The Bible kind of backs them up on that- Yeah ...

Dan McClellan unfortunately.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan It definitely is a trump card in a lot of ways. If you think the Bible is an authoritative text and you accept the way it is interpreted by- The garbage humans that are out there right now. Yeah, it's an issue. And one thing I find funny about this is they use this word covenant because a lot of people think covenant is just this magical word- Mm ... that Christians and Bible believers can use because you've got covenant. The word is all over the Bible, and particularly books like- It means more- ...

Dan Beecher Deuteronomy ... than just promise. It's bigger.

Dan McClellan Yeah. It's more important than just- Well, and I think that's the other reason people are trying to do this is because now, gay marriage is legal, and so they're like, "Well, I don't want to be a part of this anymore. I don't want regular marriage. I want extra super special plus marriage- Right ... so that it is distinguished from gay marriage because I don't want the ickiness."

Dan Beecher Well- "I don't-" And I want something that excludes them.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher I don't want them to have... I want something that is my own, that they don't get.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Because this is about access to power and resources. It's about structuring power so the garbage humans are on top, and everybody else has to smell their garbageness- ... and be subordinate to it.

Dan Beecher Well, let's dive into biblical marriage.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher What are we talking about?

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher I don't know. You probably have- ... a lot to say about it.

Dan McClellan Well, and I brought up the word covenant because when you look in the Bible, there's a lot about covenants between God and humans.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And the concept of covenants that we find in the Bible is actually derived from Neo-Assyrian vassal treaties. And so, people tend to treat a covenant as a mutual agreement between two parties, but what is often glossed over, particularly by folks who want to appropriate the idea from the Bible, is the fact that in the Bible, these are not equal parties.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan The vassal treaties are treaties that were struck between a sovereign nation and a subjugated nation. It was the one who was bigger and stronger and in charge basically saying, "Oh, let's draw up a little contract. Wouldn't want anything bad to happen to this lovely little country you got going on over here." "So here's what'll happen. You will give us money, and you will send us troops to fight in our wars for us, and then we will protect you from ourselves."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan From- Basically, we will not destroy you.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And it's framed as... Esarhaddon was a Neo-Assyrian emperor who framed it in terms of covenantal love.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan You will love me, and then I will...

Dan Beecher Yeah. What does he say?

Dan McClellan And that's what's being picked up in Deuteronomy. They're basically copying what's going on in the vassal treaties of these Neo-Assyrians. And so marriage is very similar in the Bible. It is not two equal parties entering into a contract.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan The way the legislation exists, and particularly in the Pentateuch, but we find it hinted at in stories and things elsewhere, the contract was between two men, and it was usually the man who wanted a wife and whatever man had rights over the sexual availability and the procreative capacities of the woman. And usually, that was her father, but it could be her master.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan She could be enslaved. And her father could sell her as a concubine or a sex slave. So there were different kinds of contracts that this could be. But basically, the man was purchasing, and the bride price was the price of the transaction, her sexual availability and her procreative capacities, which were not her own.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So those were commodities that unfortunately she went along with, and he basically had control of that.

Dan Beecher So in the Bible- You say she went along with, it's not like...

Dan McClellan Not in the sense of consent- Right ... but in the sense of physically, she was a part of the transaction because those things cannot be decoupled from- Right ...

Dan Beecher her.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher She was not given the choice to go along with it.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher She was made to do it.

Dan McClellan And women would have been conditioned to think of this as a great blessing- Mm-hmm ... as something good for them, because in the ancient world, women were not really social agents of their own. They had no real social autonomy. Their identity was subordinated to a man's identity, whether it was the household of their father or the household of their husband. And even when we get down to Roman times, even in the Greco-Roman world, they would have arrangements so that a woman could get married, but if her husband died or divorced or whatever, she could revert back to the household of her father.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan Whereas prior to these time periods, she was basically left adrift in a patriarchal world where she had no identity of her own. And so she was always tied to a patriarchal household of some kind or another.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so yeah, she's a commodity. And absolutely, there are other dimensions to this. You have a lot of discussion of love and things like that in the Hebrew Bible. It's not exactly the same as the way we think and talk about it today, but you can look in the Song of Songs for erotic poetry that includes a lot of very lovely poetry about desire and about love and care and intimacy and things like that, and you see other places, but- Like with Ruth, for instance, this is not a love story.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan This is a story about convenience and meeting needs where Naomi's like, "Here's how you trick a man into marrying you so you can be a proper Israelite wife." And then Boaz is like, "Whoa. We don't need to do all this. I will take the high road, and I will go ahead and facilitate this marriage so that you can be a proper Israelite wife because I've seen the hesed that you have done for your mother-in-law and for the people." And so, it's a story of a bunch of people who are going above and beyond what's expected and demanded by the law, not because they have some deep and abiding love for each other, but they're functioning as models of behavior related to social expectations. But, I think we've talked about Deuteronomy 22 before.

Dan Beecher You'll have to remind me.

Dan McClellan Deuteronomy 22 is some rules about marriage, sex, adultery, and sexual assault.

Dan Beecher Right. I'm just remembering there was a thing about a virgin, who was proven not to be a virgin, was stoned to death, that sort of thing.

Dan McClellan Is that- Something like that, yeah.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan It starts in Deuteronomy 22:13, "Suppose a man marries a woman, but after going into her," and this is a euphemism for consummation, which is itself a euphemism for sexual intercourse.

Dan Beecher It's not much of a euphemism. It's pretty straight.

Dan McClellan It's pretty graphic, yeah.

Dan Beecher Nails it pretty hard, is what I'm saying.

Dan McClellan Yeah. That's another euphemism.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan "But after going into her, dislikes her and makes up charges against her, slandering her by saying, 'I married this woman, but when I lay with her, I did not find evidence of her virginity.'"

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And this is authors of this part of Deuteronomy who do not have a remedial grasp of female anatomy- Right ... and how that works. But basically, the idea is because she's a commodity, she's expected to be in pristine condition.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Got to have that new wife smell.

Dan Beecher New in the box. That's right.

Dan McClellan And if someone else has already been there, then that is, for lack of a better phrase, tainted goods. And so, the contract has been violated basically.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But here, the story is that he's made this up. He's looking for an excuse to get rid of her, but even more, to have her killed. And it says, "The father of the young woman and her mother shall then submit the evidence of the young woman's virginity to the elders of the city at the gate."

Dan Beecher Which- Good luck.

Dan McClellan Enjoy.

Dan Beecher Have fun with that.

Dan McClellan Yeah. This is presumed to be sheets- Right ... that indicate there has been a hemorrhaging.

Dan Beecher Right. Because everyone knows that there's no way for a hymen to be broken other than through the initial coital act.

Dan McClellan Yes. If the hymen is ever intact enough, integral enough that it is broken and there is any kind of bleeding.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan "The father of the young woman shall say to the elders, 'I gave my daughter in marriage to this man, but he dislikes her, and now he has made up charges against her, saying, I did not find evidence of your daughter's virginity, but here is the evidence of my daughter's virginity.' Then they shall spread out the cloth before the elders of the town." Because you couldn't fake something like that.

Dan Beecher No, how would you?

Dan McClellan Impossible.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan "The elders of that town shall take the man and punish him. They shall fine him 100 shekels of silver, which they shall give to the young woman's father."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Because he has slandered a virgin of Israel. What happens when you slander a virgin? You pay the virgin's father.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan "She shall remain his wife." Oh, goody.

Dan Beecher Right. There's a lot of moments where it's like, "Oh, this marriage is going to be fun."

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher He- This is good for...

Dan McClellan Yeah. It's definitely keeping her agency and consent in mind. "He shall not be permitted to divorce her as long as he lives." And then it goes, "But if it happens to be true, they stone her to death because she commit-" It's als- Yeah.

Dan Beecher There's also this sense that unlike marriage of today, because a lot of sort of the Christian nationalist set, the ultra right-wing Christian conservatives of now try to make it seem like this is the ideal, like you should not be allowed to divorce. And the problem is that marriage is then, as you say, the woman is considered property, which I don't think even those people think of women as property anymore. At least they wouldn't say it out loud.

Dan McClellan Some of them have, but yeah, I get what you're saying.

Dan Beecher Oh, okay. Well, there's that. Yeah, I guess there is the very extreme set. But the other thing is, so this is an economic institution. This is not a love institution.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Marriage in that environment had nothing to do with how we see marriage now.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher It's a totally different institution.

Dan McClellan Yeah, and the folks who talk about, even within my own religious tradition, there's a discussion of the nuclear family- Mm ... which really is phenomenally modern. It's not even been a century that the nuclear family as we conceptualize it has been understood to be the fundamental unit of society.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And there are many parts around the world today where you go find multigenerational households, and the nuclear family is not ... the fundamental unit of society. There's an awful lot of ethnocentricity and an awful lot of myopia. A lot of Christian nationalists have the blinders on when- Okay ... it comes to how they understand love and marriage. It's an institute you can't disparage. This I tell you, brother.

Dan Beecher Brother.

Dan McClellan Is this- Sorry, got into my Hulk. Hulk Hogan was- I- It's- Also an awful example of a family man.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan There you go.

Dan Beecher That's right. I was going to say, it's funny because earlier you were talking about sort of ancient views on marriage and especially women in marriage, and it, like you say, it is a very new idea. There are people alive today who are married under similar ideas.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher You know what I mean?

Dan McClellan Oh, yeah.

Dan Beecher It wasn't until the '60s that women in the United States could get a loan without their husbands co-signing on it.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher The autonomy of a woman is so extremely new- Mm-hmm ... it's literally shocking to me.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Well, I remember the first time I heard that a woman couldn't get a credit card- Yeah ...

Dan Beecher until the 1970s.

Dan McClellan Yeah. That just baffled me. And we are so not far removed from that, that the folks who are like, "Oh, we've got to make marriage great again by going back to the periods before women had any agency of their own."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Again, garbage humans.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And yikes.

Dan Beecher I was going to say that one of the things that we need to talk about when we talk about the idea of biblical marriage is that polygamy was a huge thing.

Dan McClellan Yeah. It was normative. It was not the norm because you needed to be able to financially sustain multiple households.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But yes, it was normative in that if you could do it, you would do it, and nobody had any concerns with it. And this raises such an interesting thing about adultery. Adultery was a very unequal- Right ... requirement because a man could have intercourse with an unmarried woman who was not his wife, that was not adultery. And that's why sex workers were prolific- Yeah ... in this time period.

Dan Beecher And it wasn't...

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher There are multiple. I remember, oh gosh, who was the character who, was it his daughter-in-law tricked him?

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Judah.

Dan McClellan Judah.

Dan Beecher Thank you.

Dan McClellan Judah.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan The guy who was like, "Oh, is that? That looks an awful lot like my staff."

Dan Beecher Yeah. But she acted as a sex worker. He partook, and at no point in the story is that the bad thing.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Even though presumably he's a married man.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher So yeah, I think that's a fascinating part of this.

Dan McClellan Yeah. The sex in the ancient world was not a mutual act that was engaged in by two equal partners. It was something that an active sexual agent did to a passive sexual object, whose agency, whose consent was really immaterial. And so as a result, any passive sexual objects who were not already claimed by another man were fair game. And later, the idea would develop that the act of sex comprised the act of marriage.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So they could just be like, "Hey, go to the bar, have a few drinks, take somebody home." Boom, married. And because that was the sealing of the deal, so to speak, and there was absolutely nothing untoward about that kind of activity because nothing said, there were no rules that the man was only allowed to have one and only one wife.

Dan Beecher Right. There's also this idea of, you say there's no consent, but there is kind of a consent issue because if a man rapes a woman and she cries out, there's that whole thing about if she cries out, then- Mm-hmm ...

Dan McClellan he's done something wrong, but if she doesn't cry out, then she must have been okay with it.

Dan Beecher But then even then, the remedy, if she does cry out, if he was taking her against her will, is often that he's forced to marry her and pay the bride price to her father.

Dan McClellan So that's still in Deuteronomy 22.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And the crying out is actually unrelated to the unmarried woman. The crying out is if it is an engaged woman.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan So the betrothed woman, yeah. So in between betrothal and marriage, and betrothal could last for a year or more. Betrothal was basically the man and the father inking the contract basically.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But then there was a period- Hammering out the details, et cetera Yeah. Entering into the negotiations and everything, and then there could be a year or more period of betrothal, and at that point, in the eyes of the law, she belongs to her husband even though it has not been consummated yet. Mm-hmm. And so the Deuteronomy 22:8 is like, well, let's see what happens if a betrothed woman is sexually assaulted. And it's like if it happens in the city, then they're both stoned because she should've cried out and obviously- Somebody would have come and stopped it.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And but if it happens in the open country, then obviously she did cry out, but nobody was around to come and stop it, so she didn't do anything wrong, so only he is stoned. And then we get to the woman who's neither betrothed nor married, and that's where if he grabs her and lays with her, and a lot of apologists want to try to insist that the verb tafas there in Hebrew means it's just a taking hold of. There's no force implied. 100% false.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan It is entirely about grabbing someone against their will and restraining them. And in that case, what happens is, the man must marry her and then pays the father an elevated bride price. And the idea there is that, again, by rendering her tainted goods so that she cannot enter into proper Israelite marriage, he has deprived the father of the income from the bride price.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so the restitution, the first restitution that is mentioned is 50 shekels to the young woman's father, and she shall become his wife. Again, obviously not really worried about what the woman thinks- Right ... because what she thinks doesn't matter. The people who are writing this law are trying to make it sound like they're covering all the bases. We've accounted for that. He has to marry her. He can't divorce her for the rest of his life. That way, we're taking care of her. She can be a good contributing member of society as a wife of her rapist.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And a lot of people suggest the Bible requires the victim of rape marry her rapist, and that's the consequent that's turning the law around. In reality, I don't think that ever would have happened. One, Deuteronomy was not enforced. This was not actual legal code. This is propaganda. But two, we have a similar case in Exodus 22, where if a man seduces an unbetrothed woman, he's got to pay an elevated bride price to the father, but then the father has the prerogative to take the money and deny the man his daughter.

Dan Beecher Oh, wow.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Can say, "Give me the money and my daughter will be staying with me in my household, so you can all fade away."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And I don't know if anybody's going to get that movie reference. Somebody's going to get it.

Dan Beecher It wasn't me. Somebody's going to get it.

Dan McClellan And that's a slightly different law, but I think, if any actual judicial rubber had hit any judicial road regarding a circumstance like this, I have no doubt the father would've been able to be like, "No, I'll just take the money."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And yeah. "I don't want to see you- And why wouldn't you?

Dan Beecher ...

Dan McClellan around these parts."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Because hopefully, the father actually has some care for his daughter.

Dan Beecher Yeah. It'd be nice.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher The world doesn't always work out in the best ways.

Dan McClellan No, not always.

Dan Beecher One of the kinds of marriage that we have already talked about on this show is levirate marriage, which I don't think anyone is pushing for that to come back- ... that I've heard about yet.

Dan McClellan No, not really. Because that's one of the things that's actually kind of handcuffing men a little bit.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And you want to know in a lot of Spanish-speaking countries, the slang term for handcuffs is esposas.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan Wives?

Dan Beecher Wives.

Dan McClellan Okay. But here, the idea is that if a man marries a woman and then he dies without having impregnated her, in order to ensure that his line is carried on, and also that the property stays within his family, any brothers that he has or the closest male relative has the obligation to marry that woman and raise children by her- Yeah ... in the name of the deceased kin. And we see from the story of Onan, Onan was like, "I'm getting a raw deal here."

Dan Beecher Yeah. "I don't want my kid to be my brother's son."

Dan McClellan Yeah. This is a quote from some movie. I don't know what it is, but somebody says, "I denied her my seed." But that's basically what Onan is doing.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Because Onan is a garbage human being.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And God gives him the old forearm shiver. The old heave-ho. Yeah, into the Sheol, into the realm of the dead.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And yeah, because it was a requirement that was intended to keep the society together but didn't really serve the interests of the individual. And so obviously, that one went away. When people got tighter control of how marriage worked, they were like, "Well, we're not doing that one." And also, it presupposes polygamy.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So say a brother is there who's not married yet, he's required to marry his dead brother's wife, and all their kids are raised up in the name of the deceased brother. But now he doesn't get to raise children in his own name.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So you're really just reproducing the problem.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Unless polygamy.

Dan Beecher Right. And then he's got one wife that produces his brother's kids- Yeah ... and one wife that produces his own kids.

Dan McClellan And this is my nephew Trent's kids that I'm raising, and this is my other nephew, and yeah. I wonder if to the degree that levirate marriage was widely practiced, I wonder if families had the one guy where they were like, "He'll take her. He's into this."

Dan Beecher "Let's get Mikey. He'll take any wife."

Dan McClellan Yeah. He's already got seven of them. He'll take another one. I'm sure that would've been quite the relief valve for some people involved, but except for the wives. The wives were probably like, "I heard about Mikey."

Dan Beecher Yeah. I don't want to belabor. There's a meme that went around that was sort of making fun of the people who talk about biblical marriage, and we have to get back to biblical marriage. And the way that the meme worked was just, it listed all the ways that a biblical marriage exists, and it's like- Yeah ... a man, a woman, and her slave or whatever, referencing Sarah and Abram and Hagar.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher And so I don't want to go through all of those, but I think that the main thrust of it is what we've been saying, which is just that, how could any of this apply in a society where women aren't considered property?

Dan McClellan Yeah. And they're trying to make it apply because, again, the garbage people. They want to have control- Yeah ... over other individual women. And I think they have to feel like they're doing something right. Certainly there are those of them who know this is garbage human activity, but just want to exploit it anyway. But I have to imagine that some of them, at some level, sincerely think they're actually trying to restore something that's important to God. But yeah, in that time period, marriages were phenomenally unequal, and to try to restore that is to try to revert us back to a society where women are property that are exchanged- Right ... for money, and yeah. That's, as I am wont to say, pure and utter nonsense.

Dan Beecher All right. Well, to get to the remedy of this idea, I think it's time for us to go to our chapter and verse.

Dan McClellan All righty.

Dan Beecher And what is the chapter and verse for this week? The reading this week comes to us from Matthew 5.

Dan McClellan Matthew, yeah. From the Gospel according to Matthew. This is the Sermon on the Mount. We're going to be in chapter 5, verses 31 and 32. Concerning Divorce is the section heading that we generally see in Bibles that add chapter or section headings.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan If I were putting this section in a book of mine, I would have to give it a song title or song lyrics or something like that as a name. Concerning Divorce. There are not a lot of songs about divorce, are there?

Dan Beecher No. There should be.

Dan McClellan No.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Or if there are, the word divorce is not in the title.

Dan McClellan No, it's not. There are a lot of country songs. I can think of some Toby Keith songs.

Dan Beecher "My wife left me, and my dog left me, and my truck left me, and now I'm sad."

Dan McClellan Yeah, I think there's a song, "That Ain't My Truck in the Drive" or something like that. So from the NRSVUE, "It was also said," and this is Jesus, who's basically saying, "Here's what's written, and I'm overruling that."

Dan Beecher Or yeah.

Dan McClellan Here's what's written.

Dan Beecher In this case, here's what's written, and also, and I raise you.

Dan McClellan Well, and that's what's going on in the Sermon on the Mount.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Because Jesus says, "Unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven." So a lot of people are thinking Jesus is replacing the law of Moses with the law of the gospel. No, not in Matthew. Matthew is a judaizer. Matthew is saying, "I see your law of Moses.

Dan Beecher I raise you."

Dan McClellan Yeah. "Don't even think about it."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And here he says, "It was also said whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce, but I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, causes her to commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery."

Dan Beecher And so that is bonkers to me, first of all.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher First, will you walk me through something?

Dan McClellan Because I- Yes ...

Dan Beecher when I first read this passage, my brain immediately assumed that it knew what sexual immorality was, and then I thought, "You know what? This is the Bible. I might not know- Yeah ... what that's referring to."

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher I don't think I should just automatically assume that I understand what we mean when we say sexual immorality.

Dan McClellan And that's a hurdle that you have cleared that probably 95% of Bible believers either struggle with clearing or just refuse to even try to clear. And that's a wonderful point. So the word here should be porneia. Let me just make...

Dan Beecher Yes, porneias.

Dan McClellan Logo porneias, P-E. So Porneia refers to sexual immorality, is a fine translation. The word is most closely related for the term for a sex worker.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And so the two central kinds of sexual indiscretions that were associated with porneia in this time period would've been sex work and adultery. Now we talked just a minute ago about how sex workers were prolific in ancient West Asia- Right ... in the first half, probably most of the second half of the first millennium BCE. They're a little more stigmatized in this period. They're not quite as prolific. Polygamy's not outlawed within Judaism, but most folks are like, "Eh, we don't really do that that much anymore." So that's not really going on. But, so adultery, sex work, and then anything else that was considered sexually immoral by whatever group is using the term.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So you can't go back and find a list of everything that constituted porneia. It was basically, again, another example of choose your own adventure. It was whatever the group decided was problematic.

Dan Beecher I think that that's a really interesting and useful point. I think it's useful to point out that even within the Bible, the mores change over time- Yes ... and so to say that the Bible says X about how marriages should work is ignoring the fact that that actually modifies itself even through the Bible as their society progressed through time.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And when you look in the Bible, you brought up polygamy earlier. If you just go by the numbers, it's like 1,000 to zero. There's no part of the New Testament that prohibits or even badmouths polygamy.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And there are a bunch of passages that treat it as normative, that presuppose its normativity.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And yet Christians will be like, "Oh, no, no, no. Can't do polygamy. That's against the rules." It's like that's not a biblical principle.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan At best, you've got a passage in the pastoral epistles that says, "An overseer will be the husband of one wife." Which could mean monogamy, if you want to be an overseer, then you have to adopt this higher law. Or it could just mean they didn't get remarried- Mm-hmm ... after a divorce or after the death of a spouse or something like that. So even that, which is the best they have, is not crystal clear. So yeah, it's not univocal, and if you're going by the numbers, polygamy way outweighs opposition to polygamy. And so, yeah, this probably is a reference to, somebody in the first century CE heard this, their assumption probably would've been, "Oh, adultery."

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan But yeah, it could include other things.

Dan Beecher And again, adultery in this case, we talked earlier about how adultery didn't mean what we assume it to mean now, at least in older times.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher What does adultery mean in this case?

Dan McClellan Just to- By this time period, there's a lot more parity.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So that a man was not supposed to engage in sexual intercourse with someone else because polygamy is on the outs a little bit.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan That was not your relief valve. That was not like, "Whoa, I can do this if I want." Now whether or not that was the case, that's a different story. Whether or not anybody ever would've actually gotten in trouble for that. The only examples we have of somebody getting a scriptural finger-wagging in the New Testament for adultery, it's when it's the woman.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan In our story of the woman taken in adultery, the dude presumably just left there. Like, "All right, I'll take care of myself." And- Yeah.

Dan Beecher And the mob- You- ... grabbed the woman and- Yeah ... went to stone her.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And so they had no concern for his culpability. But also, this was a time period when slavery was also normative, and whatever someone's position would've been about a man having sexual intercourse with an unmarried, unbetrothed, free woman, their concern would've not even been a fraction of that concern if he was engaging in intercourse with an enslaved person.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan One of his own slaves. That would've been, they would've been like, "Yeah, not my business, not my business." And so there were ways for men to get what they wanted.

Dan Beecher So- Okay. So we have this idea of Jesus saying sexual immorality is the only reason that he accepts for a divorce.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher But clearly, just by the context of what he's saying, that's not the social norm.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher The social norm is someone can get... We have the concept of a certificate of divorce.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher So that exists.

Dan McClellan Yes. And we don't have a piece of legislation in the Hebrew Bible that's like, "And now we're going to talk about certificates of divorce." But we do have in Deuteronomy 24:1, "Suppose a man enters into marriage with a woman, but she does not please him because he finds something objectionable about her." And there's a lot of debate about what this means. If he had to have really good reason or if he just didn't like the way she cooked or something.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan We don't know. Presumably, he could've gotten away with just about anything. And so he writes her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand. and sends her out of his house. Then she leaves his house and goes off to become another man's wife. Then suppose the second man dislikes her, writes her a bill of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his house, or the second man who married her dies. Her first husband, who sent her away, is not permitted to take her again to be his wife after she has been defiled." I imagine the verb there in Hebrew is, ana, but I did not look this up.

Dan Beecher Wow. We're all very disappointed in you, Dan.

Dan McClellan Verse four. Oh, no, it's not. It's the hotpael of tama, to be unclean. So, she has been rendered unclean, excuse me. "For that would be abhorrent to the Lord, and you shall not bring guilt on the land that the Lord your God is giving you as a possession." And again, we're going back to this idea that these actions generate some kind of metaphysical contamination that gets out onto the land, and it's the land itself that cannot tolerate these things because it's going to barf you out. It's going to get all Barfolomew- ... on you. Hopefully, you get that movie. That one I got. Okay, good.

Dan Beecher Thank you.

Dan McClellan And so we have this weird thing where they're basically saying if she leaves one guy, goes and marries another guy, she can't go back to the first guy because she's tainted goods all over again or something like that. There's a lot of debate about all the different aspects of this, but we get this idea of he can be like, "All right, look, I'm writing you a certificate. Take it and go." But one of the things that this kind of contributes to is the idea that the man had unilateral authority over divorce. And even in the New Testament, it is the woman who is the victim of this.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And in fact, a lot of folks think this is precisely what Jesus or the author of Matthew is doing in these passages, because you have this here in Matthew 5 and also in Matthew 19, where Jesus is talking about how men cannot divorce a woman because that then sets her adrift without this patriarchal anchor or buoy or whatever to exist in the ancient world. And this kind of turns the tables on the folks who are trying to restore this concept of marriage for today, because these are the folks who are like, "I don't want my wife to be able to divorce me."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Now, back then, they weren't allowed to at all, and all of the concern about divorce was concern for the abuse of women on the part of men. Jesus is basically saying, "No, you can't just divorce your wife for whatever reason because that's going to royally screw her over."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan "And so we're making this rule." And the thing that I always come back to is when you're trying to change behavior, you got to look at what's motivating the behavior, because if you just try and implement a law saying, "Don't do that," that's frequently not going to be incredibly helpful. It's not going to actually fix the problem.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And the problem underlying this issue is garbage humans. So we need to find a- The issue of divorce, you mean?

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Well, at least the issue with people today trying to implement these covenant marriages- Right ... just to institutionalize their garbageness. It is funny to me- We've got to find a vaccine for the garbage humans. They will refuse to take it- Right ...

Dan Beecher obviously. That's the problem.

Dan McClellan Yes. But there's got to be some way to help them out.

Dan Beecher But yeah.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher It's fascinating to me. The other thing that's weird that I wanted to get to, going back to Matthew- Mm-hmm ... is the idea that divorcing a wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, causes her to commit adultery. It causes her. The thing that you're doing makes her a sinner.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher What the heck? And- To quote the poet ...

Dan McClellan but it also makes...

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Quote the raven, "Caw?" And also, whatever man marries her is also committing adultery.

Dan Beecher Yeah. By my standards, that feels a little messed up, and I don't think I understand it at all.

Dan McClellan I don't know.

Dan Beecher So- Yeah.

Dan McClellan The idea there is that that marriage, that contract is so sacrosanct that the only thing that legitimately breaks it or annuls it would be that porneia.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Would be that sexual immorality. And so if you divorce... And it's kind of addressing the way things were at that time. Jesus was not saying, "I'm now making it illegal for you to do this." He didn't have that authority socially.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan What he was saying was, "If you do this, just know, in the eyes of God, you're still married."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan God has not annulled that relationship, and therefore, if she goes off and goes and marries somebody else, she's getting married for a second time. She's committing adultery. If anyone marries her, they're marrying somebody who's already married. They're committing adultery. And additionally, the implication is that the man himself, if he went off and tried to marry someone else, would also be committing adultery, even though that's not explicit. But I think in Matthew 19, you have a little more explication there.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So this is where they say some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause?" And Jesus cracked his knuckles because he had recently gotten done explaining this. He answered, "Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning made them male and female and said, 'For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.'" A bit of a fallacy here, that scripture has nothing to do with this. "So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate." In other words, the marriage, that link is something that God has created.