7th Commandment: Do Not Commit Adultery

Hey, this is Tyler at Bible Project, and I edit and mix the podcast. For the last several weeks, we've been discussing the Ten Commandments here on the podcast, as well as sharing videos on each command and more resources at tencommandments.bibleproject.com. We hope you've enjoyed being on this journey with us, because now it's our turn to hear from you. We're currently collecting questions for our upcoming question and response episode for the series.

You can record your question and submit it to us at Bibleproject.com slash QR by june fifteenth. Let us know your name and where you're from, and try to keep the question to about 20 seconds, and please transcribe your question in the form provided, as it's really helpful for our team. You'll also find the link in the show notes. We are so excited to hear from you. Here's the episode.

We are in a series on the Ten Commandments, or as the Bible calls them, the Ten Words. These are not rules to check off a list, these are an invitation to rethink how we relate to God and humanity in a way that creates life and flourishing. Look at command number seven. Don't commit adjustment. That's two words in Hebrew, lotinaf, which means to violate another couple's marriage covenant, breaking it, shattering it. That's what na'of means.

And flip this command over and it's a unique invitation. Protect the covenant marriage partnership of your neighbor as if you were protecting their life. Even if it comes at great cost to yourself.

So why is the marriage covenant so important? In the Bible? Well, the answer starts in a place that if you're a regular listener to the show, you might anticipate. Where would I go if I want to meditate on the nature and purpose of a marriage partnership between a man and a woman? It happens to be the subject of much focus in the Seven Day Creation Narrative and the Eden narrative. We'll discover that the Bible thinks of marriage in cosmic terms. Bible that teaches us a mystery about God.

Marriage is a symbol of the Creator's relentless Focus, love, and loyalty towards creation, that he would relentlessly commit himself to the dirt creatures and pursue them, to love them as God loves God's own self. That's what a human. Marriage is meant to symbolize. Marriage is a place where humans train to sacrificially love and be devoted to each other, just like how God is devoted to us. And all of this is what the seventh command is trying to do.

If you see a married couple in your community, their marriage is the most important context where they're learning to become fully loving human beings towards each other. Protect that. Honor that. Don't shatter the marriage of another couple because of your sexual desire.

Today, Tim Mackey and I explore the wisdom of the seventh commandment, and it's a wisdom that's not just for those who are married. Thanks for joining us. Here we go. Hey Tim. Hello, Jonathan Collins. We're in the Ten Commandments. We're doing the Ten Words. And we have set the stage that all of these are for. Life.

How do you know how to connect to true divine life to also just to have r life on the land? Mm-hmm. How do we treat each other with respect and dignity and how do we flourish? Mm-hmm. That's what God wants for us. Yeah, that is why God commands anything to anyone in the story of the Bible. because he wants us to be able to know the good from the bad and to choose life. Yeah.

And so that's what God's commands are all about. These ten are really set apart, inscribed in stone, as it were. And they become this kind of foundational opportunity to reflect. Pretty holistically on what does it mean to be the image of God, to live in a way that seeks life. And so we've been going through these. Mm-hmm. Slowly. and covered a lot of ground, we're in this little triad. Yeah. Commands six seven eight. Yeah. And these are deceivingly short. Two words each.

Two or G. Yeah. Don't kill. Uh-huh. No adultery. No stealing. Yeah. Yeah, I guess in Hebrew it's low. No. Mm-hmm. No killing, no adultery, no stealing. Yeah. And so we spent f last Mm. conversation really digging into this don't. Kill. Yeah. And uh so now we're gonna move on to the second one. Yep. Second. One which is don't commit adultery.

One of the big takeaways from the last one, and I don't know how important this will be for this one, is that this command, don't kill, is really an invitation. to consider how valuable human life is. Mm. And not just human life. Yeah. Like all life. Yeah. And that's what the Bible, the story through Genesis has been putting in front of us the readers, mm-hmm, is just how significant life is and that God created life and he sustains life and he can rule over life.

and that we've been given the opportunity to also take care of life. But what does it mean to like end the life? Mhm. God can do that. Mhm. Mm-hmm. He has the right to do that. But do we? And here it just comes out and it's like nope. No. And then a thousand questions spiral out of that. Yeah. But at this like baseline he's like, yeah, life is just so sacred. And then you turn that over, it's like how do you preserve and protect life? So these two words, don't kill.

open up a whole world of it's like a the sense of like real honor and respect towards just Not just to other humans, but towards all life. Yeah. I can tell you're still thinking about it. Yeah. Clearly. You want to have another conversation? No, we have to leave that. We have to leave it.

But no, I do I do. We're gonna stay in the same ballpark as we move on to don't commit adultery. Two words in Hebrew, Lotin Uf. from the Hebrew root is na'af, which means to violate another couple's marriage covenant. Interfering in the covenant partnership of uh another man or woman, breaking it, shattering it, ruining it. That's what na off means. Not off means. Not specifically adultery. Someone

that is in a marriage covenant with another person. Such that you introduce a huge rupture into that covenant partnership.

That's what Na refers to. I didn't draw attention to this in our last conversation. I'll do it now. This little triad. Don't kill, don't commit adultery, don't steal. There's all about relationships to your neighbor in the community, to other people in your community. And think about what's being violated in each of these three. The first it's their life. In this one which can talk about now, it's their covenant partnership. And then with do not steal, it's their stuff. Yeah.

So there's almost kind of like a descending scale of value. What's the most valuable thing to any human, their life? What's the second most valuable thing? Well if they enter into a covenant partnership such that they join their life in the closest possible bond to another human life, well man that partnership then becomes And then there's there's stuff. The stuff they have earned or accumulated to make their life work. That's kinda interesting. Yeah. That descending scale.

Yeah. And it makes sense why they're bound together in the triad that they are.'Cause the one after that is don't bear false witness. And you're like, that's important too, but in a different way. These three are all about things that belong to your neighbor that are not yours. Their life, their marriage, their stuff. Okay. And you need to honor that. Honor that in a really significant way. Okay.

So let's start with the first time. Some basics when it says you shall not, or thou shall not commit adultery. All of the Us I've been saying this throughout all the U's are second, masculine, singular. It assumes the first most basic level of application. or audience was male heads of household in the Israelite community. So it's talking On that level to men. Mm.

Commit adultery, meaning don't sleep with another man's wife. But what we are also told within the Torah is that when the Torah is supposed to be read aloud to the people. which Moses talks about in Deuteronomy, they're supposed to do regularly. What we're told is that all of the people, young and old, men and women and children, are all supposed to stand there and hear themselves addressed by the words of the Torah.

So in that sense, the second masculine singular becomes a default for the whole community. Another way to think about this is that in Leviticus, uh, this command gets repeated and developed in Leviticus twenty. And it puts it this way If there is a man who commits adultery with another man's wife, One who commits adultery with his friend's wife, the adulterer, the male, and the adulteress. The woman will surely be put to death. Capital punishment. Cheers.

So let's think capital punishment per our last conversation is the consequence for taking another human life. Yeah, and even there we have this whole reflection on how complicated that is. That's right. So it's it's kinda shocking in a way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Then the consequence of adultery. Right. So one whole set of questions, which is important that I don't wanna necessarily pursue, unless you think we should, maybe we should, is

how and when and if these capital punishment consequences were carried out in ancient Israel. We just have virtually no evidence to work with. of whether that's the case, very little. But what we can do is say when we see capital punishments in the laws of the Torah, then we're being invited to compare and contrast Capital punishment is the ultimate statement about the value underneath a a certain command.

So the fact that preserving the marriage covenant in my community by not violating them, that is so vital. It's actually as vital as protecting life of another human in my community.

Okay, so if you're treating this as meditation literature, I see how you're making that move. And whether and how adultery was assigned the consequence of capital punishment, we would need to do kind of a separate type of project to see We would have to find the actual op code they were using. Find an actual law code, find narratives or other forms of evidence that referred to this consequence being carried out for adultery, basically. Mm-hmm.

And you just don't have a lot to work with. Sure. And then what's interesting is the one instance that's relevant here in the New Testament is the woman caught in adultery in John chapter eight. Mm-hmm. And what's interesting in that story is that the community is going to put the woman to death, but not the man. Oh yeah. And then Jesus says, and not even that. So the one prime narrative. Oh Jesus don't do.

Yeah, the one who is without sin cast the first stone. Right. Famously. So not only does the community not enforce capital punishment the way Leviticus says, because they just bring the woman, not the man, And I thought that feels pretty predictable actually for a patriarchal, right? And then Jesus, you know, goes even

against that. So this is a bigger set of issues about how the laws of the Torah have been removed in one sense from an actual like constitutional context and they form now a literary collection. Through which the biblical authors are doing meditation on the issues and the human complexities. Mm-hmm. Like that's what's being worked out here in these laws.

So you're saying the rhetoric of you commit adultery, you get killed is saying If it's law code, now you're just like, okay, well that's what we're That's consequence. But if you leave that aside for a second and go, that's a whole nother rabbit hole of like what how is the law code used? How was it implemented? Implement all that stuff. But you look at it as meditation literature to wrestle with.

And to find God's wisdom in it. Right. By saying committing adultery forfeits your life is saying screwing this up is of highest importance. Yeah. That's right. Yeah, getting this wrong. Yeah. So something that I invited us to start doing back when we started going through the commands is to flip them over.

So if it's a positive command to flip it over to the negative and if it's a negative prohibition, flip it over to the positive. Yeah. So for murder that came before, do not kill, flip that over. Uh the greatest cost, if necessary, value and protect the life of your neighbor. So here it would be the similar thing about your neighbor's covenant partnership, even if it comes at great cost to yourself. Protect the covenant marriage partnership of your neighbor as if you were protecting their life.

Mm. That would be a way of interesting. protecting their marriage or creating an environment, a community that fosters flourishing covenant partnerships is as important as fostering a community where the dignity and value of human life is

really valuable. Something like that. Yeah. And that makes it pretty darn open ended. Like, wow, this really matters. So and then it raises the question of well man, why? Why does that matter? Why is this relationship So central that these partnerships should be valued like a human life.

This explains a handful of moments throughout the Hebrew Bible where adultery is viewed as another one of these like cosmic rupt where it's breaking the universe. when you violate someone else's partnership. So the first time this really comes to the fore in the book of Genesis is well known the story of Joseph, when he's down in Egypt and he has this Egyptian slave master, Potiphar.

Who's elevated Joseph? He trusts him a lot. And so Joseph is like, you know, what do you say, a lead manager? Mm-hmm. Yeah, head of household, yeah. And then Potifar's wife. Black Lurton still. Starts having some feelings. So she, you know, wants to have sex with him and invites him to do that, and he resists her what do you say, her invitation. But then the reason that he gives is first of all, it would dishonor Potiphar. Mm-hmm.

He says he hasn't withheld anything from me except you. Yeah. You're his wife. I wanna respect your husband. Yeah, I want to respect your husband. And then he says, How could I do this great wickedness and sin against God? So it both dishonors. Potifar, but then it also dishonors God. So there's a whole world of implications underneath that. Why is God somehow invested in

the m marriage partnership between Potiphar and his wife. Apparently Joseph thinks so. When David Hm when King David Both murders and commits adultery. Yeah, double whopper. Mm-hmm. Commits adultery by sleeping with her, gets her pregnant, and then tries to cover it up, he can't. So he ends up having her husband murdered. In response to being confronted about both of those, David says, I have sinned against Yahweh. This is in second Samuel twelve. And that's so interesting'cause

I think the thing that I would say is I have sinned against Bathsheba and Uriah. Yeah. And certainly David thinks that. Mm-hmm. But he it's almost like he kicks up the value scale even to the one in whose image Bathsheba and Uriah are made, which is to God. I've sinned against God by sinning against Bathsheba and Uriah. Yeah.

Another angle in to this is and this one was kinda surprising and forced me to think, was this same value is underneath the fact that within the Bible's kind of moral imagination, sex work, prostitution, is viewed as like wrong within the biblical imagination. Narratives take it for granted. Prostitution in the prophets is always a a negative image. In the proverb. And this was not Taken for granted in the ancient world. That wasn't a common view.

No. That is something that definitely comes from the Jewish Christian tradition. And I'm not saying there weren't other cultures that also maybe would have thought of it negatively, but in the ancient Near East and then especially in the Greek and Roman world, no problem. Mm with prostitution.'Cause the assumption is that men ought to Have as many opportunities as possible to gratify their sexual desires. Like that's what's acceptable. And so whether that's with

your spouse or with the slaves in your house, or with hired sex. Like that's all okay. You should do it in moderation. You should be wise about it. But there was a lot more freedom given to men than to women. Women were for the most part expected still to be faithful to their spouses. But it was definitely double. Referring specifically to Roman culture? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, but it was also true in ancient areas.

So women weren't allowed, but for men I was like, Yep. Yep. Moderation meaning like don't Yeah, you could ruin your life if you're stupid about it. Mm. But it w was viewed as legitimate. Okay. Yeah. So I mean that this comes out in stories like in Genesis where Judah in Genesis chapter thirty eight. Yeah. You know, and he's going to a sheep shearing festival, you know, and there's gonna be a lot of drink, a lot of food, and he sees who he thinks is a prostitute and he's just Yeah.

Sounds great to me. Yeah. Looks great to me. And so it just Many cultures have operated with the assumption that men should be allowed a wide latitude of freedom to gratify a sexual desire. So to that degree, prostitution as a vocation was also Right. Totally fine, but you're saying then here that this is an anomaly then. Yeah, yes. So back to the Hebrew Bible as the minority report within Israel. Biblical authors stemming from Moses and the prophets.

They have this vision of the value of human life that was unique and a genuine contribution to the development of human moral thought. And then also here about the sacredness of a marriage partnership, the sacredness of sex. And reproduction and then sex outside of that marriage covenant is viewed as actually being out of line with like the weave of the universe. And that has not been how most humans think about sex for most of human history. It's not how most people think about sex.

in the modern Western world today. Yeah. But that is a contribution of the biblical story. And it's being brought into really precise expression, dense expression in this two word prohibition, lotin off. Yeah. Do not commit adultery. Yeah. That's kind of just the basic That's the basic point. Can I say about the prostitution thing, we reflected in a recent series

I just love how nuanced and self-reflective the Hebrew Bible is. That when Israel gets into the land, the promised land, the first hero in the in any of the stories who like trusts God and knows God's like character and then makes the right, wise decision of how to like help Israel. It's great. Yes. Rehab. Rehab. Yeah. No, it's fantastic.

So the same book that's like, Look, prostitution is bad, shouldn't be happening can make you as a especially in a patriarchal society, yeah start to really demean women. Yes. And that's so the same scriptures Pull this move of just like Yes good. Yeah, that's important to flag. Also because it is often the case the reasons why A woman ends up in a situation where just doing sex work, there's many different ways that could happen, and often it's because their own

freedom has been limited or compromised by the men in their communities. Mm-hmm. It's probably more often than not the result, not just of their own decision on the woman. And that's super important. And then you get The story of Rahab, yeah, who She's the heroine. And so the biblical authors are definitely pulling a move. Like people are not who they are on the surface. There's a lot more to humans than what you think is their stereotype and

God can see through all that to the heart. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. That's great. I'm really glad you brought that up. But that suspicion against both prostitution and adultery as somehow being a sign of a human life going in the wrong direction.

that assumes this baseline reflection on the value of a marriage covenant partnership. So where does that come from? And what is that? So similar to the last conversation on murder, We go back and then all of a sudden it's like, oh man, all this is really worked out. In a sophisticated way in the early chapters of Genesis that I think illumine what's come into expression here in the the seventh command. It's the seventh Hm. Seventh command. Yeah. Don't commit adultery.

So where would I go if I wanna meditate on the nature? and purpose of a marriage partnership between a man and a woman. Oh yes, it happens to be a subject of much focus in the seven day creation narrative and the Eden narrative. And then in the narratives that follow that. So let's take a tour of that and then To both the seventh command and then also I think it illumines forward what both Jesus and Paul the Apostle moves that they make when they're talking about the marriage.

Covenant and why they think it's somehow a cosmic key to the meaning of the earth. Yeah.

So man if I had a dollar for every time I had us look at this little section of day six of Genesis one, I'd be a rich man, I guess. I feel like I already am. So God says, let us make human in our image according to our likeness. And let them rule over the fish of the sea, birds of the sky, cattle, over the land, over every creeper on the ground. Then you get a little three line poem Genesis one verse twenty seven God created Adam human in his image.

in the image of God, he, that is God, created him, that is, humanity, Male and female, he created them. So we've meditated on this many times over the years. Humanity is both one and more than one at the same time. Yeah, human adam. Singular noun. Singular noun. Referring to the species, collective species. Mm-hmm. It can also refer to a single man. You can also refer to a single male human. That's right. So you could think of then all of humanity as a single As a single, yeah organism.

Yeah. Yeah. A single body with many parts. Yeah. Many. God created that. Mm-hmm. And that is in his image. Mm-hmm. The whole shebang. The whole yep, the whole human family. Yeah. And so the second line just reiterates that. It restates it but swap the word order. So instead of God created human in his image, it flips it and restates it in the image of God. Created a dumb. Yeah. And then the third line of the poem, male and female, he created them.

So the phrase image of God has gotten swapped out for male and female. Mm-hmm. So you could think of humanity as uh a single organism. Yep. Humanity. Yeah. Now that's referred to as male and female. Mm-hmm. And then now it's called the Yeah. And so humanity is male and female. Yeah. And as one and many, we're meditating on two interesting features of the human family. Mm. You can think of the family as singular. They're both one and they are many. And the many has a diversity to it.

Mm-hmm. Yes, that's right. And those many are not just replicas of each other, they are also themselves have a fundamental Within them.

And there's lots of differences. You and I are both males, but we're different. Yeah. So there's a difference there, and the biblical authors know about that, obviously, but they're trying to draw attention to a a fundamental difference that's relevant to the thing that God is about to say next. Which is to bless them and say, Be fruitful and multiply. How do humans multiply? Yeah, the two genders get involved. That's right.

Yeah. But uh then also and this is I know this is Controversial territory in our time and place. Yeah. True. I just wondered if I used the word gender correctly. That's how controversial. Oh, that's right. As opposed to biological sex. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. So let's just acknowledge that. Yeah, we're trying to be responsible.

Yeah. But also I'm trying to respect the biblical authors and understand them. Right. And that what they want us to see here. So what they want us to see is humanity is one and many. and the many is made up of many who are different from each other. But also there are some sub unities within the many. And one of those is male and female. And this one's called out in particular because i it's vital to the role of reproduction. That's right. Yeah. And reproduction is what's on the brain.

Here. Fifth one, multiply. Yep. Fill the lamp. Fill the land. Because that's the gift of God's blessing is that a creature can be both one and many and then auto-generate more of itself.

coming from the ultimate one who is autogenerative within God's own self, that is, God is the source of all life. Now, there's a great mystery here, because if Male and female if that unity within difference, or difference within unity part or somehow speaks to the image of God a cosmic mystery opens up in that A creature that is both one and many, and those many are different from each other, but the different actually speaks to how they go together.

here thinking of like the reproductive anatomy of a man and a woman. Clearly they're different, but they match each other. Mm-hmm. And that constitutes their oneness. The difference of what a that's almost a paradox. The thing that makes These two different is also the very thing that speaks to them. Make them one. Yeah. It's almost like a little puzzle. Yeah. And this Is set in relationship to the image of God. In the image of God, he created humanity. Male and female, he created them.

Difference and unity is set in relationship to the image of God. One of the ways humans image God is that we are different, but yet also one. Mm-hmm. So there we go. That's the first meditation. Okay. So that's Genesis one. The second story that really focuses on this is then in the Eden narrative. Where you have a singular human, an Adam formed out of the dust of the ground, brings it to life by breathing divine life into it, and the man becomes Nefesh Kaya, a living being.

But then when God puts the human in the garden to work it and to keep it, God says Something that's quite surprising at this point in the narrative, Genesis two hundred eighteen, it is not good for the Adam to be alone. So this is the first thing that's not good in the story so far. And this is very puzzling'cause right, Genesis one, as it were, introduced humanity as a whole and male and female on to to the scene already. Yeah.

And then you're back here, you're like, wait, now it's just a singular Adam? Right. These aren't like chronological stories. Right. And so now we're back to how the seven day narrative and the Eden narrative are put next to each other, but they don't actually work seamlessly as like

The Eden narrative happens as day eight after the seven days. It there's a whole bunch of things that don't work like that. And the timelines are different and the order of events are different. And this is one of them. So here it's you have a human alone who's been given a job that a human alone cannot accomplish. I mean I guess a human alone could work and keep the garden. Yeah, small little patch. That's right. But it's gonna be limited. Yeah.

And then when you think, Oh yeah, the purpose of the human was to image God By there being more than one and to be fruitful and multiply. Yeah. Well, that's not gonna work. Yeah, you need more than one human. So what God says is I will make a delivering ally. Hm, the Azer. Which is my translation inspired by uh the work of Carmen Eimes in Azer. Azer conecdo, which we've uh talked about many times throughout the story, but just a little refresh on that right here. So the word Azer.

It's it's hard to find a good English word, but Is ally a good English word? I think so. Yeah. I think it's pretty close. Here here's some other examples. When Moses names one of his sons, Elie Azer, this is in Exodus chapter four eighteen. And what he says is, God was my Azer. He saved me, rescued me from the sword of Pharaoh. Yeah. So Eli Azir means my God is Azur. Yeah. So he came to rescue me. He's my rescuer. Yeah. It's a yeah. This is the rescuing ally, the delivering ally. Exactly.

Not just an ally who's like, Oh, I got your back and I'll send eleven prayers. Yeah. This is like I'll go in and I'll pull you out of danger. Yeah, so the Azer is the one who brings about deliverance from the bad situation. Psalm 20 May the Lord answer you when you're in distress. May the name of the God of Jacob protect you, may he send you Azar.

From his holy place. If I am in in distress and need protection, Azer is the thing that comes along. These are just two examples, we could go through many. Yeah. The point is It sure doesn't mean assistant. Ha ha. Oh,'cause it's often translated helper. Helper in the case. Helper feels like an assistant. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I will make a helper suitable for him is how many English translations go.

Maybe there was a time in English where that captured the appropriate meaning, but it Might be more going on there. I think there's more going on there. Yeah. Delivering ally. Yeah. I think an excellent English rendering of the Azer Connecto. I mean savior. Yeah, say. Is kind of a w it kinda gets into that territory. Yeah, yeah. The phrase conegdo is where you get suitable in our English translations. And ka k means like or as, and neged means opposite.

or in front of or corresponding to. So a delivering ally who is The opposite of or who is corresponding to corresponding to. Matching. Yeah. The essential other. The essential other. Yes. Yeah, that's exactly right. So there is a not good situation. A human alone cannot accomplish what God has destined the human to do. Mhm. The human needs to be delivered from that non ideal situation.

similar to matching or corresponding to. So a delivering ally that matches, but not matches by being identical, matches by being precisely different. So what God does is send some uh what do you say? God becomes an anesthesiologist? Ha ha ha. Put Adam to sleep. with a deep sleep and takes one of his sides. One from the sides of the human. And The one becomes two. And yes, God forms the woman. So and again it's very similar, the one becomes more than one.

And then what we're told is when the human wakes up and he sees and he's like, oh my goodness, this is bone of my bone, flesh in my flesh. This one shall be called Isha Woman because she was taken from Ish Man. And then the narrator steps in. In Genesis two twenty four and says, Okay, dear reader, this is the reason why a man leaves his father and mother and then joins, becomes joined to or literally becomes clings, grabs onto his wife, and they become one flesh.

Mm-hmm. So we're meditating on the one becomes two so that the two can become one. Yeah. So that this new unity can produce life. Yes, it can produce life. Now let's go back to Genesis 1. Here's a little thread that didn't get tied up there. Because when it said, In the image of God he created human, male and female, he created them, and he blessed them and said, Be fruitful and multiply, that can mean a lot of things. Just stop and think about it. How do the animals multiply?

Well, ma'am, they just They m just mate with as many partners as they can. Sure. Right? Yeah, most animals. Yeah, that's right. Mm-hmm. So The way forward? Genesis one leaves that totally open. Oh okay. Unresolved. Got it. Okay. So do we just multiply like rabbits? Is that how this works? And the Eden narrative comes along.

and paints this kind of more intimate personal portrait of like God providing this specific delivering ally for this one particular human, and then you get this little meditation. on what we recognize more as like monogamous marriage here in Genesis two twenty four. And I think it's the biblical author's way of going from the abstract. in Genesis one to a more particular portrait.

It does beg the question though why. Um and what does it say in Genesis two? Let no man separate, the two will become one flesh. There's this unity Yeah, there's a unity that comes from when one particular Man and one particular woman joined together in this bond, those two become one in a w way that It leaves quite open ended. Uh but one flesh is a way of talking about a family bond.

Jacob, the grandson of Abraham, goes into exile'cause he tricked his father and brother later on in Genesis, and he shows up at his uncle's place. And he welcomes him in and what he says is, Man, we are we are one flesh and bone together. We are flesh and bone. Oh I see. Or family. Literally we come from the same

like set of great great grandparents. Yeah. So in that sense we share flesh and bone. Mm. And this is this is actually remarkable what Genesis two then is saying. He's saying, listen, there's all these humans out here And you might think you're not related, although we're all related all the way up the chain somewhere. But this far down the chain, you have all these humans and you're not related. You're not flesh and bone with each other in that way.

one guy can leave his flesh and bone parents and then there'll be this woman who's leaves her flesh and bone and they be joined together and they Become one together. It's a great mystery, actually.

So it's talking about creating a family bond. Yeah. So this might be a big distraction, but I've heard it said that maybe at one time in human society, especially maybe in some sort of tribal setting, that maybe some tribes would not have the value of creating these covenant bonds and so it was much more free flow like the community raised children and

What mattered was the women got pregnant and the children were born within the community. Yeah. But like who was sleeping with who and who was committed to that didn't really matter. And you can imagine that kind of tribe. existing and there's all sorts of complex things to do with it. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean that's how many animals That's like uh animals, yes. Many animal species operate.

You're saying is Genesis one leaves open like, Yeah, how are we gonna do this? Mm-hmm. And so why then this value of Genesis two? Mm-hmm. Like a man and a woman coming together, finding this unity and through that then reproduction in life. Mm-hmm. This focus on that bond. Bond. Yeah. The bond is the thing.

Yeah,'cause here in Genesis two, with this little statement, it actually doesn't mention reproduction and children that come from that. Like that's not the focus here. Sure. The focus is on there's something really special, mm, important. When one human separates from their flesh and bone, joins that other human that is different from them in biological sex and Two that are different become one. God is for that.

What is very noticeable and what the biblical authors draw to our attention is that after the folly and failure of Adam and Eve and Eden, after the exile from the garden, And after the Cain enabled debacle, where Cain murders his brother He finds a wife. Where and how and that's the whole But um seven generations down the line of Cain's line, our attention is brought to this guy named Lemeck.

And he's the first one who's presented as somebody who's taking human life like casually, mm hmm for the sake of his honor. Screw that. He's also the first polygamist. He has two wives. Hm. And he has a negative figure. So the narrator doesn't come out and say It was evil in the eyes of the Lord that he took the life of this other man and took two wives. So it's not explicit in that way, but it's the Hebrew Bible. You're just supposed to

ponder these things. But it does then set I think this shadow over all of these polygamous marriages that happen in Genesis especially, but also throughout the whole Hebrew Bible. with Abraham and with Isaac and Jacob and it is interesting they all go poorly. All of these hm points in Genesis where a man leaves his mother and father And then is joined to many wives and it always creates problems and heartache, especially for the women.

It's like the women who suffer from these men's choice to like have many wives.

An interesting part of that portrait. It is also interesting then when you get to the covenant between God and Israel, that the exclusivity and faithfulness Of Yahweh to Israel and that Israel is not to be married to any other God. Marriage is one of the main metaphors to talk about God's covenant with Israel. Right. Such that when Israel does end up giving their allegiance to other gods, Moses and the prophets call it Adultery and prostitution. That's really quite remarkable.

Yeah. Maybe we're just kinda used to it. Yeah, I think maybe I'm just used to it. But Moses, for example, in Exodus thirty four. describes Israel going after gods as prostituting themselves after other gods. Or the prophet Hosea in Hosea chapter three, describes how Hosea is supposed to go marry a woman who he knows and has before already it's not fully clear committed adultery.

And to be like really loyal to her and remain loyal to her. And this has all becomes a symbol for God remaining loyal to Israel over the centuries.

So I guess what would be the purpose of not doing the rabbit approach? Right? Be fruitful and multiply. Like what is the heartbeat? of this bond between one man and one woman in a monogamous marriage covenant. And what's so fascinating is the biblical authors don't come out and say

the value underneath there for the humans. Yeah. It actually uses the marriage metaphor between God and Israel to explore the meaning of marriage. And there really is no better place than um what Moses says in Deuteronomy seven, You are a people holy to Yahweh your God. And Yahweh your God has chosen you to be a people of his own possession out of all the peoples on the face of the earth.

Yahweh did not set his love on you, nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples. No, you were fewest. It's because Yahweh loved you, and he kept the oath that he swore to your forefathers that he brought you out by mighty hand and redeemed you out of the house of slavery. Know that Yahweh, your God, He is God, the faithful God who keeps his covenant.

So this is a long sentence, but if you follow the logic, it says the Lord didn't set his love on you for this reason or that reason. He loved you because Yahweh loved you. The Lord didn't set his love on you because you were more in number. No. Rather, it's because Yahweh loved you. Okay. He loved you. Because he loves you. Yeah. Yeah. It was actually in a sermon by Tim Keller. Oh.

May you rest in peace. Yeah. Brilliant and amazing communicator, Pastor New York, who first drew this that the structure of the sentences. The Lord didn't love you because you were many, he loved you because He loves you. Okay, let's go back to this like anthropological question. Yeah. Like what is the gain or what's the point when Yeah. Humans do the monogamous thing instead of just being like rabbits. What's the difference there?

And it seems like the mirror for what that means for humans is actually what God is showing in His covenant with His people, which is that it creates the conditions where a human has to demonstrate some quality over the course of a lifetime of faithfulness to one covenant partner. And the word here to describe that is the word love. What is it that's of cosmic value that humans should operate differently than rabbits? Hmm. What are we in touch with?

What are we connecting to? What are we modeling when two humans dedicate their loyalty and affection to and resources and bodies to each other over the course of a lifetime, and not to any others. It's love. And faithfulness. And faith and loyalty and There's almost this sense of um sacrifice too. That's a sacrificial love. Mm-hmm. Right. Well, wh why don't I love a bunch of people? Mm mm. Mm-hmm. More people, more love. So why restrained? Yeah. Mm.

So the focusing of one's love and loyalty on one other one. On one. Makes you then say no to many other things. Yes. Which is a sacrificial way to live. Mm. And so In that sense it's a limiting. Yes. The monogamous model of marriage is about saying no to most other things so that you can say yes to the one thing. insight is by saying yes to that one thing consistently over a long period of time, it actually becomes the most rich discovery of of like a something of cosmic sacred value.

So valuable it's set on analogy to the value of a human life. All the way back to the beginning. It's so valuable it becomes a metaphor by which God talks about coming into covenant with humans. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. has to be why the Apostle Paul sees sex in marriage as having cosmic implications.

When Paul's writing in this uh letter to the Corinthians About why a follower of Jesus specifically male Corinthian followers of Jesus should break their habit of going to temple shrines and engaging in the sacrificial parties and sleeping with cult prostitutes. What he says to them, he actually quotes the Garden of Eden story. He says, Don't you know that the one who joins himself to a prostitute becomes one body with her? Like it says and he quotes from Genesis, the two become one flesh.

And then what he doesn't say is you're one with your wives if you're married. The one who has joined themself to the Lord, Jesus, is one spirit with him. That's Wild. So his point is actually like whether you're married or whether you're not married to another human If you're a follower of Jesus, you're married to God. And you're one with God,'cause your body comes from God. So it doesn't belong to someone you're not in covenant partnership with. A lot of leaps in logic there.

Yeah. But he's making them. Yeah. You know? So that's one place where this thinking comes out. Uhhuh. And then the other place, most famously, is in his letter to the Ephesians. where he says, Husbands are to love and there's that word again, uh the sagape in Greek. 'Cause when they love their wives, they love their own bodies, and he's for sure meditating on the One flash. The Eden narrative. That the two are one So to love your wife is to love yourself.

Mm-hmm. To love your wife is to love yourself. And then he starts talking about the Messiah and the church. The Messiah loves the church. Cảm ơn các bạn đã theo dõi. Like what? Which is his model of God and his people. Yeah. Yeah. He quotes from Genesis two, and then he says, Listen, this mystery that I'm speaking about is great. Now I'm talking about the Messiah and his people, the church.

Wait, so he quotes Genesis two. He quotes For this reason a man will leave the father and mother, he will be joined to his wife, they will become one flesh. That's right. And he says, this is a great mystery. Now just clarify, the mystery I'm talking about when I read Genesis two is about the Messiah and his people. Yeah. So he's reading Genesis two in light of its analogy with Yahweh and his people. In the Hebrew Bible. And then he swapped out Yahweh for the Messiah and his people.

For the church. So he's doing a whole biblical theology. Yeah. He's reading Eden in light of the story of God and Israel, and now he's reading the story of God of Israel in light of the story of Jesus and his people. So the story of Adam and Eve becomes the story about Jesus and his people. Okay. I just made a bunch of steps there. Mm-hmm. But I'm I think this is how it works within the biblical story.

Okay, I'm gonna try to do a fly over. Yeah. Great. Okay. Genesis one You are my image, all of humanity. You are both male and female. And you're going to reproduce, fill the earth. And you are my image reflecting my goodness. One in the many. And you are one image. And you are many. Go and fill the earth. Reproduce. Mm-hmm. Okay. Well, how are we gonna do that? Because other animals like bunnies, they're just going for it.

And then you get Genesis two that really limits things down. Ver really limits things down. And I'm skipping over the Adam becoming two. Yeah. But once the one becomes two, this idea of the two others that need each other. One person of a family can like join with another person, another family, and then create this new bond. And through that. bond, create a new type of family. And here when we think about family, we're thinking about love. We're thinking about the faithfulness.

Faithfulness the one to the one, saying no to the many. Yeah, like I'm gonna protect you over others. Like there's this special kind of bond. A new flesh, a new familial bond will be made. And then the rest of the Bible shows all of these situations where that isn't the case and it is kind of going awry. Now, that doesn't mean that it's always rosy. For that's right. In a monogamous. Yeah. Of course not, yes.

But you when you get to Lamech and he s takes two wives and now this becomes about well, wives are now my property and like it's not about this union with the other. It just gets distorted. And so polygamy becomes this distorted reality. And so then the question becomes, well why? Why is God so focused in on this? And one thing you pointed out was Marriage becomes a the main metaphor or a pretty primary metaphor for how God relates with Israel.

Covenant people. And that whole story is about how God wants to To have a relationship with all the people, bring blessing to all the people. And so he's gonna focus on the one. Yeah, on behalf of the many. On behalf of the many. Yeah. He limits himself to the one. So there could be kind of life for the many. Great that's great. I don't think I'd quite th thought of it that way or said it that way earlier. God dedicates himself to one family. Yeah. Israel. And temporarily says no. Yeah.

Yeah. Right to all the other nations, but precisely so that through what happens with the one family Yeah. All of humanity can experience the blessing that comes out of Whoa. Okay, there's something to think about there, but keep going. Sorry. I d don't want to distract you. Keep going. Keep going. And The purpose of relationship is uh well we just have the word love. Yeah. And when you think what is love? It's treating someone other than you like you. Yeah.

And we only have so much of that ability to do that on any given day. Yeah, that's right. To you know, you can't go around and treat every person like you. You would just get exhausted. Yeah. But that's the ideal. Mm-hmm. And so this it becomes like a I don't know, it's training ground, but like by choosing one and focusing there and saying no. No. There's a special bond, there's a special thing. It's saying no, you're learning how to limit yourself, you're learning sacrificial love.

And then the still the question becomes, well, why? I mean, that's a lot of effort and like Yeah, it's hard. It's hard. Yeah. It doesn't guarantee that it's easy or even enjoyable. Or that it's gonna work. Or that's gonna work. That's right. Yeah. How many marriages just end in in a lot of pain?

Right. Yeah. And so then Jesus, in a passage we didn't even look at in Matthew nineteen, or in these passages in Paul, what they want us to see is that this model of marriage Is a symbol of the creator's relentless focused. love and loyalty towards creation, specifically as human image bearing partners. And that God could have Yeah. God is the other. most fundamental out of it.

Yeah, totally. And maybe just to work it almost like a parable, God had a lot of options. God has a lot of Ways that he could express his creative potential. Yeah. Yeah. But that he would relentlessly commit himself to the dirt creatures. And pursue them. Yeah. To love them as God loves God's own self. Mm. Yeah. Yeah.

So that's it. Who knows what other creatures in the cosmos he could have or might have created. Or has. Yeah. Or That humility and dedication, the loyalty and love That's what a human marriage is meant to symbolize. Over and above its reproductive Like capacity. Yeah,'cause what we're not talking about is like, is that the best place to for kids to grow up in? Is that the best way to create societies, these family units. Yes. That's a whole interesting conversation.

Oh right. Apparently a higher value is a human learning to love. Yeah. that's above and beyond value of just reproductive functionality of a marriage. Yeah. Wow, that's a powerful thing to say.

'Cause reproductivity is really important in the Bible. Yeah. But it apparently in this line of thought, it's not more important than love. And maybe this is why early Christianity innovated a culture where because love really learning to cultivate a loving character towards any other humans I come into contact with.

This was why Celibacy on Jesus' part and Paul's part, um, and in the early Jesus movement actually became one of the most honored ways to live as a human being because it's severing human value from your ability to reproduce. And it is a remarkable innovation within the Christian tradition that celibacy became honored as one of the most Not a disgrace, but a normal. Oh as an honor. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Well you n I mean the thing that we haven't been talking about is underneath all of this is The fact that our sexual desire is such a strong urge. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. That just generates so much Mm-hmm. Interest and focus and desire. The rabbit option. The rabbit option looks pretty attractive to most human beings, especially when they're flooded with hormones. Yeah. Yeah. It's a strategy to learn how to truly love.

Yeah. Whether you are entering this kind of marriage covenant or R you and you focus that desire. Focuses. Just one person. Or then like you were saying with Jesus and Paul, you're just abstaining. Yeah. Just say no to it because loving another human. sacrificially in serving my community, forming the the kind of character that lives that way, that's more important than satisfying your sexual desire.

Yeah, that is a radical view of human value and sexuality that the Christian movement contributed to the history of human thought. Yeah. It's remarkable.

Yeah. Okay. And so with all of these ten commandments we've been like turning them around. Yeah. Yep. Okay. So don't Don't mess with that. Yes. Is the prohibition. Yeah, that's right. Don't Whoa, okay. So you flip it over. Flip over don't commit adultery means if you see a married couple in your community Their marriage is

the most important context where they're learning to become fully loving human beings towards each other. Protect that. Help them. Honor that. Yeah. That's where they're working it out. Now you might be single and so you're working it out in a different set of relationships and in a different way. Yeah, Paul actually says you're more free to work. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Paul says that you have a lot of advantages. Yeah. But for those of you who are married

Your marriage, its cosmic value is that you are learning to become a more faithful mirror of God's love towards each other. And that is really valuable. Don't me don't mess with that. You're saying the person who's honoring the seventh commandment the most is like a marriage therapist? I suppose so. Yeah. Yeah. Learning how to left. is one of the primary goals of marriage, apparently. Now learning how to love is one of the primary purposes of being a human being.

And of course I guess we're not saying they're in all your other raceships and then love doesn't matter. Exactly. Yeah. But there's this focusing. Focusing in a marriage covenant that is unique, significant. It's difficult. Don't shatter the marriage of another couple because of your sexual desire. Or your own. Don't shatter your own marriage because of sexual desire. Yeah. Don't commit adultery.

There is a great mystery here, as Paul says, in the seventh commandment, something really worth pondering, whether you are married or not. So let us not just think on these things, but discern what it means to live out the value underneath the earth. Bible Project Podcast next week, the eighth command. Do not steal. It's a command It helps us rethink how we relate to other people's stuff. So everything that my neighbor has is God's gift. One way of thinking about stealing is

It actually stems from this probably unconscious belief that God made a mistake, because I think that that should be mine. What does that say about my view of God and my relationship to the things that God has given to me?

Bible Project is a crowdfunded nonprofit and we exist to experience the Bible as a unified story that leads to Jesus. Everything that we make is free, and that's because it's already been paid for by thousands of people just like you. Thank you so much for being a part of this with us. Hello, my name is Brayley and I'm from Costa Mesa, California. Hello, my name is Ben Strawbridge from Auburndale, Florida. I first heard about Bible Project about 10 years ago.

And I love the Bible project, not only for my own study, but I have found it so helpful in discipleship relationships. I use Bible Project almost daily to help. what I'm reading or listening to, the Bible project's been incredibly influential in my repentance and faith. If someone comes to me with a question that feels a little too complicated for me to answer, there's almost always a video that we can watch together that leads to further discussion.

And it's just visually appealing too. We believe the Bible is a unified story that leads to Jesus. Bible Project is a non profit funded by people like me. Find free videos. podcasts, classes, and more on the Bible Project app and at Bibleproject.com. Hi, my name is Lexi Papineau and I work on our audience care team. We respond to our audience members that reach out with questions.

I am from Tustin, California in Orange County. I have a healthy respect for the ocean. I love looking at it. I love gathering seashells. There was one time we were standing on the pier. I look down and there is a whale underneath and I was like It's such a cool place and I have much respect and a healthy distance from it. Ha ha. Yeah.

There's a whole team that make the podcast come to life every week. For a full list of everyone involved in this episode, check out the show notes wherever you stream the podcast and on our app. Yeah.