Studies in Early Genesis

The Doctrine of Marriage

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 4 of 11

Track: #49

Dictation Name: RR115B4

Date: 1960-1970’s

[Rushdoony] Let us turn to Genesis two, verses fifteen following.

 And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.

16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:

17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

18 And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.

19 And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.

20 And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.

21 And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;

22 And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.

24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

Last week we considered the doctrine of man according to scripture, this afternoon the doctrine of Marriage. Man as we saw was created in the image of God in knowledge, righteousness, holiness, and dominion. And he was created to fulfill his image mandate, his calling under God to be king over creation, priest therein and prophet of God. The shorter catechism begins by asking the question “What is the chief end of man?” and the answer is “The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever” this is mans calling, this is mans destiny.

Now we saw last time that man was not given his helpmeet Eve, until some time had elapsed. We are not told in scripture how long a period this was, it could have been decades between the creation of Adam and the creation of Eve. Because Eve was not given to Adam to fulfill a physical need but only when he had proven himself as a responsible person that he might fulfill his destiny under God with her as his helpmeet. So that Adam for years labored classifying all of the animal creation, taking care of the garden, recognizing that throughout nature there was male and female but there was no helpmeet, no female for him.

First to prove himself as responsible, this was the requirement, then marriage. We also pointed out that this was reflected in the marriage system of Biblical times in the dowry whereby a young man had to labor and accumulate savings equal to three years wages. And then only could he qualify for marriage. It is interesting that the Hebrew word for a bridegroom is “the circumcised one”. And the Hebrew word for the Father-in-law was “the circumciser” and the Hebrew word for the Mother-in-law is the female of the circumciser. Now this is a very interesting fact. Certainly they did not perform the act of circumcision, that was performed on the eighth day after the birth of the man child. What was the meaning then of this name for bridegroom, for father-in-law, for mother-in-law? To understand the meaning let us examine the ritual of circumcision. Circumcision was comparable to baptism in the Old Testament. And circumcision performed on the eighth day signified that this child was now taken into the covenant of grace, he had been born into the fellowship, into the community of the church. And it also indicated that the parents believed that in generation there was no hope of salvation that a person could not be saved by birth, but only by regeneration. And the act of circumcision which involved cutting off the foreskin in a sense was a way of saying “in generation there is no hope and we so to speak cut off hope in terms of natural regeneration, and we believe it must be an act of God” so that circumcision was a sign of membership in the covenant.

Now this meant that the boy had been born into the family of grace, into the covenant. When he reached maturity and when he passed his course of study in the law of God then he became accepted in the covenant, but the full acceptance in a sense came only with marriage. Because it was the responsibility of every father before he gave his daughter in marriage to any man to satisfy himself concerning not only the ability of this boy to be a provider, which meant “can you provide the dowry, have you worked, have you accumulated the equivalent of three years wages, so that there be capital for the family?”. But also the father-in-law first of all satisfied himself, and the mother-in-law also concerning the faith of the young man. What do you believe? Are you going to be under God, a prophet priest, and king. Are you going to fulfill your responsibility as a king? That is exercise Lordship in the Lord, in your family, in your calling, wherever you are to be a man under God? Will you be a priest unto God, leading your household in religious worship, taking all that you do and dedicating yourself and your family, your substance unto God? And will you be a prophet that is, will you speak for God, will you stand for Him so that in your particular calling your standards will be Godly, and you will show forth righteousness? So that although the priests and the Levites examine the boy when it came time for confirmation, the real test so to speak of his circumcision rested with the father-in-law and the mother-in-law. And so when they said “you may marry our daughter” he then became “The circumcised one” his circumcision was now a reality, spiritually as well as physically. He was truly a man in the covenant and so the name of the bridegroom, the circumcised one. The name in Hebrew for the bride was “the complete, or perfected one” this was her fulfillment; this was her calling, to be wife, to be a helpmeet. And so marriage was seen as her completion and her maturity.

Marriage according to Genesis two is a divine ordinance, it was instituted by God. So that both work and marriage are institutions in paradise, in the Garden of Eden. Those who speak of work as a product of the fall of man are wrong; his work was cursed after the fall because he was fallen. And everything the fallen man does is under a curse. But when we are redeemed we move out from under the curse to the blessing of God so that our work, or marriage, our everyday life is no longer under a curse but under blessing. So that marriage together with work or calling, was instituted in paradise {?} and God’s word concerning man, as at the very beginning he planned, for the first marriage was; it is not good that man should be alone. And here we have in this single sentence the essential meaning of marriage. There are many, many churches who say the central meaning of marriage is procreation, having children.

Well if this were true then it would that a childless marriage was an invalid marriage, it was not a real marriage, it was null and void. But certainly none of these churches are ready to face this conclusion to their position. God said “it is not good that man should live alone” so that God established marriage, not for procreation (this is a blessing of marriage) but as fellowship, and a community together, one life together in terms of his calling. And hence the delay after this word from God concerning the marriage of Adam before he gave Eve so that Adam might find himself in terms of his manhood, in terms of his responsibility, in terms of his calling under God to be a man, prophet, priest, and king. And then the helpmeet was given to him, Eve. So that he might community, he might have fellowship in his calling

Therefore shall a man leave and cleave. With responsibility a man shall leave his father and mother, not before. When he is responsible then he can be freed, and then he can cleave to his wife and create a new unit of society, the family. And the family is the basic unit of society. The basic unit of society in our day is the individual, and when you have the individual as the basic unit you very quickly lose the individual in the state. Very little work unfortunately has been done in the study of the family, but we can be grateful that Dr. Zimmerman at Harvard of all places has spent his lifetime studying the history of the family. And he has written three excellent volumes, the first and third I think are the outstanding ones because his own statist inclinations come out in the second volume. In which he has pointed out the significance of the family in civilization. And he points out that whenever you develop the atomistic family in which the authority of the father is no longer paramount, then you very quickly have a disintegration of society, the total state takes over and there is a radical collapse of civilization. And then out of the ruin again gradually here and there a strong family develops until again you have a family oriented civilization.

But with the development of the atomistic family which is really no family at all, the home is simply a place to room and board, the state takes over the role as father, and the state begins to take care of the family in its every need. To provide for the children and their future, and the parents and their future; the family no longer cares for itself. And you have the collapse of civilization.

But in the Biblical family, the family is the central institution in society {?}. Because it is there that he gets the basic learning concerning the faith. It is his first school, and it is in the family that he learns the basic wisdom and learning of all education. And it is significant that up to almost a hundred years ago, beginning in the origins of the United States it was considered unthinkable to send your child to school without first having taught him how to read. He went to school not to learn how to read, but to learn knowledge in various fields. And the colonial mothers would teach their children to read almost as soon as they began to learn to talk. So the children learned to read between two and three. Thus when you read a five year old boy is beginning to study Hebrew in colonial America you know the reason why. They were by five very good readers. This was a skill they learned at home.

Thus the family is mans first church, mans first school, and mans first state. Because the family under God is a state, it is there that force is brought to bear on the child to make him conform to what is just. He is punished for evil doing, or for disobedience. He is taught that there must be law and order within the framework of the family and society at large. So that the family is a state, and the family as church, as state, and as school, is to be headed by the father; prophet, priest and king under God. This does not mean that he assumes every responsibility or that he takes the time to teach the child to read or write or other things. But it does mean as the person with authority he is responsible for seeing that these things be done. Man therefore in the Garden of Eden, Adam, learned two things before he married; the pattern of responsibility and the pattern of obedience. And until Adam served God first he could not expect the woman to serve him. And now in our culture we have unhappily the fact that in most churches because of their theologies, they expect God to serve man. And is it surprising that woman expect man to serve them? The whole world is turned upside down, and when you have men expecting God to serve them and woman expecting men to serve them you have social collapse.

Now the term used in Genesis two for “Eve” is “helpmeet”. This is a very significant word, the word helpmeet is a translation of several Hebrew words which means “a help as before him”. We can convey the idea in two ways, first by saying this that Paul declares in Corinthians that even as man was created in the image of God, so woman was created in the image of man. So that the image of God in woman is a reflected image, a second hand image as it were. Man is created directly in the image of God, and woman Paul tells us is created in the image of man; he reflected image of God. Moreover “a help as before him” means “a mirror”. First she mirrors his image, second in a sense she mirrors him so that a man finds himself not only in relationship to God, but in terms of a woman. And it is significant that it does make a difference in the character of men when they become married, insurance statistics bear that out. A young man has to pay a very heavy insurance as a driver until he marries, so that whether he is 17 or 21 his insurance is very high until he marries, and then it drops. Because now, so to speak, he has found himself; he has assumed responsibility and he has become stable. Or at least he becomes stable in a sufficiently large number of cases to make a marked difference in insurance statistics.

But the woman is called his helpmeet, his mirror. And even as he mirrors God, she mirrors him. He understands his responsibility by looking to God and he can see how he is fulfilling his responsibility and how he is proving his obedience in relationship to his wife as she mirrors his nature and responsibility.

Thus when God felt that Adam had proven himself by his obedience and by his responsibility he caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam and he slept, and he took one of his ribs. Or the word here can also be read “took of his flank, or his side” so it can be read and translated either his rib or from the side of him. And made He a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said “This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh”. This is a magnificent statement, and part of it is almost untranslatable because the word “this is now” is an idiom in the Hebrew which has meaning comparable to what we say when we say “I’ve got the beat” this is the beat, this is the rhythm of the music. Now I’ve found myself, here is the beat, the rhythm of my life that I’ve been waiting for. I have found it; this is now the beat, bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. The bone of my bone means the structure of my life, the skeleton is the structure of the body, it is that which supports the body. The body would be like that of a jellyfish without the skeleton. And so when Adam says she is bone of my bone, the structure of my being is the structure of her being, flesh of my flesh, the very life of me is the life of her; so I find myself , I realize myself in terms of her.

Now this brings up a very significant point which I think is very, very central to our time. From this the first marriage we have a pattern established, which is to be the pattern of all marriage. And certainly since she is to be a helpmeet to him in terms of his calling, mixed marriages religiously are thus from the Biblical perspective wrong. A Christian should not marry an unbeliever, or a person of another religion, because a Christian to fulfill himself in terms of his calling must marry someone who is a help as before him, someone who mirrors that which he is. And similarly how can the woman be that mirror, that bone of bone and flesh of flesh, and have the community that comes from being the reflected image of the man if she marries someone when what she is in terms of her background is so different from that which he is. So they must have a common faith, or it is not according to the law of God, a valid marriage. Moreover is she is to be a help as before him, a mirror, there must be a common cultural background, must there not? And this militates against marriages across cultures and across races where there is no common culture or association possible. The new unit is a continuation of the old unit, but an independent one. And there has to be a unity or else it is not a marriage. And thus the attempts of many today to say there is nothing in the Bible against mixed marriages, whether religiously or spiritually is altogether unfounded, we don’t have to go to the Mosaic law to demonstrate that because here in the very beginning we are told that she must be a helpmeet, a mirror; bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, sharing his faith, sharing his background, a common culture, a common desire to fulfill his calling under God.

This then is the meaning of marriage in the Biblical sense. The family, fatherhood is an important part of the man’s calling, but it is not the central part. It is central to the woman. Her responsibility under God is her husband and then the family. Man’s responsibility is broader, it is in terms of his work, and his total calling under God so that the family is a part of his responsibility, but by no means his total responsibility. He has his goals set in terms of his work, which he must do under God. Thus it is as my wife has observed, men live to work, and women work to live. Because their perspective is different as a Godly workmen, as a father, in all of these things he is rebelling against God. The woman having been created in the image of man, the reflective image of God when she rebels it is not directly against God, and she can go to church and be as pious and sanctimonious as you please, because she shows her rebellion by her rebellion against her husband. Because this is the authority of God as she is to know it. Thus the rebellion of men is directly against God, the rebellion of woman indirectly against God and directly against the authority, the Godly authority of the husband.

Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh; having assumed the status of a man in marriage, though he continues to honor his father and mother and has responsibilities towards them he is now directly under God. And therefore he must create an independent entity, a new home. He cannot have any longer anyone over him in the sense of a family relationship. He is directly under God as a man, and so he must leave father and mother. Not only by departing from the home and establishing a new home, but he must while retain, of course, a loving relationship and honoring them, he must cease to be dependent upon them. He must cut the apron strings; he must leave father and mother, and cleave unto his wife. Because by that leaving and by that cleaving he establishes this new entity and asserts that “I will now be a responsible man under God, and will fulfill my mandate to be prophet, priest, and king under Him.” This then in brief is the Biblical doctrine of marriage. Ordained in paradise, and instituted together with work a central part of mans calling. Let us pray

Our Lord and our God we thank Thee that Thou hast established and ordained marriage for the welfare and happiness of mankind. We thank Thee that Thou hast called us into Christian marriages, made us husbands and fathers, wives and mothers, in Jesus here represented. That by Thy grace we may grow and mature in terms of our calling, rejoice in one another in Thee and under Thee and might all the days of our life know the joy and the strength that comes from being heirs together of the grace of life. Bless us to this purpose in Jesus name, Amen.

Are there any questions now? Before we have our first question I learned this morning that there is a possibility that the Reverend P. Robert Ingram will be in this area sometime in the next few months and we were discussing when we should have him and I suggested that perhaps if we waited a couple of months we could do more than now when possibly other speakers are scheduled. But if we could find open dates in each area for December or January it would be easier to get a very large attendance because I believe we should try to have meetings where we should work to get several hundred in each area out to hear him. One of the talks he is prepared to give is on the significance of the work of Saul Alinsky from a Christian perspective, a critique of it, and I think that alone will be of interest. Those of you who have any ideas as to when would be the best time speak to me and whether you’d like to have him for a particular group.

Now do we have any questions? Yes?

[Audience member] {?} [Asks some question about Saul Alinsky]

[Rushdoony] Yes, Saul Alinsky is a man I believe whose headquarters are in Chicago at present who is being extensively used in the civil rights movement, in the labor movement, and in the churches, I believe he has now be retained by the Episcopal church, to set up human relations programs. So his total program is one of counseling on how to attain the great society really. And giving techniques for it, you hear not to long before the Watts {?} crisis and had some very radical statements to make.

Yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Largely the Bible; in fact almost exclusively. And one reason why mothers were taught for so many, many years, and no doubt all of you felt that this was good sense because you were told it was, even as I did once, is because the state did not want the parent to interfere with education. And so to keep the parent completely of what was once entirely the parents’ domain they told the parent that it was not good, it would hurt the child and his ability to read later on if he were taught at home because he would learn the wrong method and so on. But this was a program whereby the parent was gradually ousted from this area. I have located in books as late as 1859 the advice as a regular part of counseling to parents that they should teach their children to read before they went to school. And I found this in Presbyterian Church literature that was given to parents and you found this in all kinds of places, this was standard. But especially after 1900 it was drilled into people that this was dangerous to the educational future of the child to get this training, it would warp him, it would start him on the wrong reading habits.

Yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Well there of course is growing irresponsibly in America on the part of men, and of course with that you have irresponsibility on the part of womanhood, one follows the other. And this goes hand in hand with the… well first of all as you have a decline of a real Biblical faith you have a decline of interest by men in the church. The more modernistic a church becomes significantly the higher the ratio of women, and the lower the ratio of men. This is not my statement, this is from statistics that some very, very left wing sociologist have dug up, they don’t know what to ascribe this to, but I think we do. The male membership declines as the faith of the church declines. Now as the faith of the church gets off base, the men having departed from the church or lost interest in its wishy-washy kind of theology, which talks about loving everybody stupidly and subsiding evil as it were, and gets off into the most silly and sentimental type of political application of this business of promiscuous love. The men, first drawing out of protest, gradually lose all of this. And as they lose their basic orientation, which must be in terms of God, then they are no longer able to give guidance to the family and the younger generation of men are reared in terms of this. Even though they are in rebellion they have nothing to criticize.

Well as you have this false theology, followed by a decline in male responsibility you then have a growth of state responsibility because the minute the men begin to go down in their faith and responsibility, the state takes the role of a father. And the more the state takes over, the more it pushes down the men because Statism is warring against the ability of the men, against the capacity of the man to govern himself and his family and his business, and his whole life, and the state is in effect saying to the man “look you can’t handle this without our care, we will be big brother to you, we will be the grandfather, so to speak, in the situation who can bail you out everything. We will underwrite you.” So as the state enters in, the responsibilities of man is accelerated in its decline until you have collapse; or unless you have a revival.

Now at the end of the middle ages you had such a situation, the middle ages had ended in a collapse of the Christian culture, and you had Statism everywhere, the whole period of the Renaissance was nothing but Statism, total Statism; and the beautiful art of the Renaissance was so to speak, prostate. Behind these subsidized artist were the subsidized men who were promoting total Statism, who were promoting pornography and for example one of the greatest pornographers of all history, Aretino, was subsidized by virtually every monarch of his day. He lived in the North of Italy, but he was getting subsidies from England, Germany, France, everywhere because having put man on the run it was an excellent means of further destroying them by subsidizing someone to produce as he did with tremendous ability mass pornography to be spread across Europe to destroy men.

When Luther came on the scene Europe was so far gone that medical historians such as Jeffery May, and others have estimated that one third to one half of all of Europe was venereally diseased; so that had not the reformation come about Europe would have gone down the drain with total physical deterioration. And if you look at some of the Renaissance art the number of monsters, human monsters, that are portrayed is startling. This physical deterioration came about, what reversed the trend? The Reformation, and then in the Catholic countries, the Counter-reformation; both of which were erected primarily against the Renaissance and the Statism, and then against each other. So that what we need now is another Reformation. And men, again made responsible, and that will settle the situation, nothing else.

Yes?

[Audience Member] {?}

[Rushdoony] Yes, no man stands still. He either goes forward or he goes backward. It’s impossible, totally impossible to stand still. And a people is either growing in terms of their faith or they are rebelling against God and accentuating their rebellion.

[Audience member] Does the understanding of Adam’s work of classification as being a period of decades militate a literal six day period, if you are against that…

[Rushdoony] No not at all. Creation was in six days but then Adam set in the garden we don’t know how long, but for quiet a span of time, was engaged in this task. The Bible makes no attempt to satisfy our curiosity on these things but certainly he was given a considerable task and he engaged in it long enough to feel the loneliness and to prove himself to God. That’s why I believe it’s absurd that one person once, where he got his reckoning I don’t know, but he claimed some years ago, that Adam was created at eight o’clock in the morning and fell at four o’clock in the afternoon. [General laughter] Whoever did that reckoning, and I’ve forgotten just who it was, obviously didn’t have much respect for man. [More laughter]

Yes?

[Audience member]{?}

[Rushdoony] Yes that thesis to which you referred, of two stories of creation which are ostensibly contradictory, is the Graf-Wellhausen theory and it divides the whole of the books of Moses into four documents, “J, E, P, D” which supposedly were written by different men and then them and put them together. And I had to for example in seminary, go through and mark each of these so called strands with a different color so supposedly you could go through and read a “j” document and the “e” document, and the “D” document, and the “P” document. “J” for Jawehistic, “E” for the “Elohim” document, “D” for the “Deuteronomic” and “P” for “priesthood.” And sometimes they take a single verse and have supposedly all four strands there and the words woven together. Now this is a marvelous thesis, they claim they can actually differentiate these threads, well when they are confronted with something like Shakespeare’s plays where we know that sometimes “Beaumont” and Fletcher” and other writers collaborated with him and say “now, get to work and separate the words here that are Shakespeare’s and those that are Beaumont’s or Fletcher’s.” They can’t do it. So that this is utter nonsense that they can go through and do this; and again and again the theory has been demonstrated to be totally fallacious on 101 counts.

But according to them the first chapter represents one strand and the second represents at least another strand. But this is an absurdity and even some of their own men like Albright, at John’s Hopkins, who certainly would not agree with me has nonetheless said that the theory is unprovable and rather unlikely. The first chapter is a general statement of creation. The second chapter after this description of the whole of creation centers attention on one aspect of it, the creation of man; and then proceeds to tell the story.

Now there’s another aspect to all of this that I think is very interesting and a British Scholar has recorded, has done some work on this. He is with the British museum, and Wiseman is his name, Dr. Wiseman has said that the frequent term as for example in Genesis 5:1 “This is the book of the Generations of Adam”. Now he said, indeed generation is a possible meaning here, but he said the older and original meaning is “This is the book of the family records and the histories as compiled by Adam”. And Wiseman has through extensive use of old Babylonian tablets that have been uncovered and other records throughout the whole of the ancient world demonstrated that this word does mean that. So if he is right, and I think he is, when we read Genesis 5:1 what it is saying is “This is the book of the records kept by Adam”. So that everything up to Genesis 5:1 is Adam’s record. The inspired record as kept by Adam, and then you get a record kept by someone else so that you have through these frequent references, the records of the patriarchs. And this goes back then to the very times that these happened and Moses simply compiled them.

yes?

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] He gave him the law and the pattern of tabernacle on the mount. So that Moses wrote or compiled this from the earlier inspired records and brought them together. But we are told definitely that the law was given to him on the mount.

[Same audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] All of it is inspired by God, that’s very clearly stated. But Moses took Genesis which was to compilation of Adam, of Noah, and other men and simply put it together in this one collection of the five books of Moses. SO he was the compiler. But it is the law that is specifically stated as coming directly from God on the mount. All of it as I want to re-emphasize is inspired by God and this is emphasized repeatedly in scripture.

We have time for possibly one question.

[Audience member] {?}

[Rushdoony] No, there are those who say that the, this is a very recent theory, that according to Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1: 2 there are two creations, and there was a fall in between. And this has been developed in the last hundred years by people who want to say “well we’ve got room for these vast geological ages” because they accept the words of the scientist concerning them. Therefore God created the world, and it fell. It was a habitation for angels and they fell and that’s where the devils come from, and after millions of years then he went ahead and did this new creation of the six days, but there isn’t the faintest trace of evidence for that. There have been a number of very fine books written demonstrating that this is without any foundations. A Doctor Morris of the Genesis flood has a paperback on this subject that he published earlier this year in spiral bound form, in which he points out that this is nonsense, there’s no evidence for it in the Bible, it’s an attempt simply to accommodate evolutionary thinking. Well our time is up and we stand dismissed.