IBL07: Seventh Commandment

Marriage and Man

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Prerequisite/Law

Lesson: 2-20

Genre: Talk

Track: 55

Dictation Name: RR130AD55

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Genesis 2:15-20; Marriage and Man.

“15 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.”

We have begun the study of the seventh Commandment, the meaning of marriage, and the meaning of the violation of the laws of marriage. And first of all we have been considering marriage this week, marriage and man, then marriage and women, and so on, and then to the laws regulating it. According to Scripture, man can only be understood in terms of God and His sovereign purpose in man’s creation. And according to Genesis 1:26-28, God created man in His own image, that is in knowledge, righteousness and holiness, with dominion. And he created him to exercise dominion over the earth and to subdue it.

The commandment to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth, is an aspect of man’s call to exercise dominion over the earth. Man thus is to be understood in terms of Gods kingdom. Man is called to manifest Gods law order over a progressively developed and subdued earth. Man is thus a religious creature. Man can only be understood properly by reference to his calling, his creation.

Adams calling, and man’s calling thus had two aspects; both can be summed up in terms of work. The first, a practical aspect, the care of Eden. Dressing and caring for it. Dressing means tillage. Even in paradise the trees needed pruning, they needed care, they needed tilling, the vegetables needed attention, so there was work in paradise. Second, there was the cognitive aspect, or knowledge. Adam was called by God to name the creatures, and as we have pointed out previously, in the Bible and in particular in the Old Testament, to name means to classify; to understand, to describe. So that, this was a scientific, a cognitive calling. By work and knowledge, man was called to subdue the earth and develop it.

Man was required to extend his dominion geographically, as well as in knowledge, by increasing and multiplying. Man’s calling therefore can be termed work, both practical down to earth work, and knowledge. Both can be summed up as work. Any vocation therefore, whereby man extends his dominion under God, and to Gods purpose, and develops the earth and subdues it, is a holy calling, a Godly vocation. It is extremely wrong, it is anti-biblical, to speak of a holy calling as the ministry, or the priesthood as is commonly done in both Protestant and Catholic circles. This is a violation of Scripture. Every calling whereby man works to extend his dominion over the natural world, and to subdue it, and to develop it under God, is a holy calling.

Thus, any area of production, whether it be the retailing end or the producing end, is a holy calling when exercised under God. Moreover, according to scripture, man was created not as a child but as a mature man in terms of mature responsibility. Therefore, according to Biblical psychology, man is not to be understood by reference to child psychology or animal psychology, but with reference to mature responsibility. As a result, whenever a man is interpreted in terms of anything other than mature responsibility, that psychology is destructive of man. Again, there is a radical destructiveness in any meaningless or frustrating work. Since man was created to assume responsibility in terms of work, any social order which penalizes work as our social order does, and rewards the drone, has therefore a destructive effect, a penalizing effect, on the working, the knowing man.

Now as we analyze our scripture, certain things appear. Man was required to know himself, first in terms of his calling, before he was given his helpmeet Eve. Adam worked for an undefined, but a very long period of time. First, after all even a rough and a general classification of the natural world takes time. So Adam was very obviously a bachelor for some years.

Now as we analyze the significance of this passage we find first of all, Adam was given Eve, not in fulfillment of a natural or simply sexual need, although this is recognized in our text, but after delay, in fulfillment of his need for a helpmeet in terms of his calling. A helper to him in his life and work under God as God’s covenant man. Thus, second, it means that the role of the woman is to be a helper in man’s governmental function, that is, to exercise dominion. Man’s calling is the kingdom of God. To exercise dominion over the earth under God. And woman’s creation and calling is in terms of this also, to be man’s helper in this function.

Third, God only created Eve and gave her to man, to Adam, after Adam had shown himself responsible by discharging his duties faithfully and well for some period of time. As a result this makes clear that responsibility is a pre-requisite to marriage, for man.

This is why later on the dowry system came into being. A man had to accumulate a dowry, roughly equivalent to three years labor, of capital, which he presented to the Bride as the dowry, to establish he marriage and give her security, in the even that something happened to him in he future.

4th, the family is a central aspect of man’s dominion. It is there that he exercises his authority in his teaching function to bring about the covenant family as a central aspect of the kingdom of God.

5th, marriage thus is clearly of divine ordination and was instituted together with mans calling, to work and to know in paradise.

6th, marriage is the normal state for man. God declared: “It is not good that the man should be alone.” And Jesus Christ declared in Matthew 19:10-12 that marriage was the responsibility of all mature men, unless they were physically incapacitated, or had a calling to remain single.

7th we must say that while the family is a part of mans calling, it is not its totality. whereas the woman’s calling is in terms of her husband and family, but a man in terms of his work under God.

8th, before marriage, man had to show two things: The pattern of obedience to God, and a pattern of responsibility. And therefore, marriage involves a break. Therefore, says verse24: “Shall a man leave his father and mother and shall cleave unto his wife.” There is change which is necessary for progress and for growth. He breaks with the old home, not breaking as far and love and affection is concerned, but he establishes a new area of authority. This makes for development and progress.

9th, it is important to examine the Hebrew word for bridegroom. It means, the circumcised. And for mother in law and Father in law, he or she, who circumcises. Now of course this does not refer to the literal operation, because all Hebrew males according to the law were circumcised after birth on the 8th day. What it does refer to is a spiritual fact; that is, the mother in law and the Father in law were the ones to circumcise, in that they checked thoroughly into the young man in order to make sure that he was spiritually of the covenant; that he was a mature, a responsible person, a believing man. And hence, they were called the circumcisers in that they checked on the reality of his confession, of his faith.

And hence we have here the beginning of the principle of no mixed marriages. Marriage is thus closely linked with the covenant, with faith. The Catholic marriage service concludes with a blessing after the marriage mass, which invokes the Old Testament covenant formula, and I think is very beautiful and fitting for the marriage service. And it reads: “May the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob be with you. May He fulfill in you His blessing so that you may see your children’s children to the third and fourth generation; and afterward possess everlasting and boundless life, through the help of our Lord Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns God forever and ever.”

Finally, marriage is the ordained sexual relationship between man and woman, but as our scripture makes clear, marriage cannot be understood simply in terms of sex. When marriage is reduced to sex, marriage disintegrates and amoral sex replaces it. Marriage, and all things else must be understood in terms of God, and man sexually is to be understood in terms of God and Gods calling to work, or to work and knowledge.

Wherever there is frustration in terms of man’s calling, the result is poor health for man physically, mentally, and sexually. He no longer has the ability to rest. It is of interest, when you talk to very old men who worked in their day years ago, 10-12 hours a day, that they had no trouble in those days when it came to resting. They relaxed readily and easily when they were through working, and they slept well. Why? Because in those days before WW1, it was an age when man had a sense of optimism, a belief in progress, the world was moving forward, Gods dominion was being extended everywhere, and so in this confidence they felt a satisfaction in their work, and they could rest when they put down their work.

But, any dislocation in man’s calling is a dislocation of his total life. Because man cannot be reduced to anything other than that which God called him. And just as marriage cannot be reduced to sex, or to love, however these important these are, but must be understood in terms of God’s law, as the essential bond; so man cannot be understood in terms of himself or of his love for his wife, or anything other than Gods calling. And the thing that is prior, to a man, in his life is not his wife or his children, but work. This is of God’s creation.

And this is the tragedy of an apostate age when man’s work no longer has meaning. The woman can see clearly the futility in what man is doing. But too often, man’s reaction as things are futile around him is to work all the harder, and when it is carried to the nth degree, work becomes a substitute in man’s life for religion. Work is a way of accomplishing things. This is of Gods doing. But when work is futile men tend to work harder to try somehow to undo it. It is man’s answer to all his problems, his way to dominion, his way to problem solving. And so, men are unable to rest in an age when work has no meaning. And women become aware of the futility of work, but men are unwilling to admit it. It is their life.

And so, this is one of the tragedies of an apostate age. What it does to men. Work is no longer an answer, since the world of work has moved out from under God.

Long ago, Dostoyevsky, as he described his experiences in Siberia, about a century and a quarter ago, said that it was not hard labor which destroyed the convicts; in fact the hard labor could be very healthy. Were they building a fort or a building? Oh they could be worked from sun up until sun down, and they could get strong and healthy doing that work, no matter how much they were driven, as long as they were fed well. But, if the guards wanted to destroy the men, all they needed to do was to set them to useless work. Moving a pile of boulders from one side of the prison yard to the other, and then back again. And no matter how slowly the men worked, the meaninglessness of it shattered the men in a very short time. It broke them completely. And this is what meaningless work does, and of course this is what socialism does, because it progressively renders men meaningless.

Because there is no dominion in work apart from God and His law order, apart from meaning. One of the things that characterized the industrial revolution of course was the development of factories. And one of the interesting and rather touching sidelights of that revolution was the jarring effect on men. Why? After a while they got adjusted to it and they had a greater sense of dominion because they could produce more. But it destroyed the factory in the home, the workshop in the home. And this is hard on men. There was a delight men had, and still have in some parts of the world, in having their tools under their roof. And if you go today to certain parts of Europe, to Switzerland or Austria or Germany or Scotland, into the country areas, the men have a special pride in having their tools under their roof with them, because they identified so strongly with their tools.

I was interested last night when we were at a welcome home party for a doctor who had just been to Europe. And what did he do when he left to Europe for his vacation? He took his little black bag with him in spite of all the teasing. And the high point of the trip for him was, he had a chance to use that little black bag. This is how strongly a man identifies with his work, and this is why it is so necessary, that a man’s work be firmly under God. Because work under God is man’s life, and man is just understood in terms of it.

Therefore in our day, the tragedy is that both men and work have moved out from under God with a shattering effect upon society and upon marriage. There is no hope for society unless society again is under God. Then men again will find themselves and their marriages and their work will show forth the glory there is in man’s life when it is under God.

Let us pray. Our Lord and our God we give thanks unto Thee that Thou hast called us to know ourselves in terms of Thee and of Thy calling. To find our place in Thy law order, and to exercise dominion under Thee. To extend Thy kingdom from pole to pole, to subdue and develop the earth, according to Thy word. And we pray our Father that Thou wouldst enable us by Thy grace to summon men and nations again to Thy word and Thy law order. That the kingdoms of this world might become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ. Bless us to this purpose in Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions now, first of all with respect to our lesson? Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes. In Biblical times the engagement was a real service. The engagement in Biblical times was the getting together of the young man, and very often of his parents, with the parents of the bride to be. And at that time the terms of the marriage were settled. First, they examined him thoroughly as to his faith and character. And of course usually they knew a great deal about him, it was a stable society; but nonetheless they satisfied themselves on that point, and then the next point, the dowry. If he did not have it, which was often the case, well, when would he have it? Then it was settled. They were man and wife, even though they didn’t live together, say for a year or two years or three until he had accumulated the dowry. But it was a contract, and a divorce was necessary if that were broken. So though they never lived together the engagement was the marriage ceremony.

Now… what?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, a Levite usually came in and ratified it, yes. And there was a great deal of ceremony in the way of banqueting. Then later at the actual wedding, there would be a big feast, but the actual service was at the engagement.

Now, in the Christian church, this system carried over for a long time, and it has only broken down gradually in recent centuries, although in medieval Europe the whole thing became paganized, and it was the bride’s parents who gave the dowry to the young man, which perverted and destroyed the whole thing. In which case, which still prevails in Europe, the young man went shopping around for the girl who had the most money, which destroyed the whole purpose of the Biblical system, which was that the man had to prove himself responsible.

In the Christian service it was basically a religious service, it was between the families and it was in the church. The civil aspect, a civil contract, came in a couple of centuries ago. So now it is a three-way contract. It is a personal contract rather than a family contract, it is a religious contract, and it is a civil contract. And this is what the vows are about; when the couple takes the vows they are ratifying a contract. First they go to the county clerk’s office, and they get a contract which is filed with the contract of the county, so that is the contract with the state, a civil contract that the two enter into with the state, because the state has a stake in stable and secure homes.

Second, they take the vows to God. The first vow in the ceremony is taken to God, that is the religious contract. The third, the personal, “I John take Thee Mary” with one another.

Does that answer? Yes? Another question.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, we will come to that next week when we deal with Eve, but I will just say this, don’t be too hard on Eve, because after all Adam was still in charge, and he chose to go along. So we can’t pass the buck there. This of course is exactly what Adam and Eve did; when Adam was confronted by God he said: “It’s not my fault, it’s the woman whom thou gavest to be with me. It is your fault, you gave her to me, to give me and I did eat!” and of course she didn’t take the responsibility either. Which was of course a product of their sin.

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] That is myth. Pure myth. Lilith was supposedly another woman who was there in Eden, where she came from they don’t say unless Satan created her, but that was a part of the mythology that crept up in the Middle Ages. And there was a lot of humor connected with it, so we shouldn’t take it too seriously, that they really believed in it. They did invent a lot of stories in humor that our now taken as though they believed a lot of things.

But you know the story of course of Adam and Eve, that he came home late one night, and she said: “Who have you been with?” and he said: “Well, who is there to be with?”

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes. Right. Yes. We will touch on that next week also, yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes. That is right, this is an old, old custom. There had to be the (band?) published, that is, an announcement of marriage; I believe originally it was three months. Yes. Then it was reduced to preannouncement, but I believe originally, centuries ago, the bands had to be published in church three months. And the service, I may add, was originally at the conclusion of the church service, so there would be the regular morning worship, and at the conclusion of the worship the couple would come forward to be married before the whole congregation. And the purpose of publishing the bands that way was of course, first of all the contract had to be ratified in the church, that had been made between the couple, and then to make sure that there were no objections; that there were no liabilities on the part of either, that they had not entered into any contracts or illicit relationships with somebody else.

So it was a part of the fact that the marriage involved the community. And everyone in the congregation was present at the service; it was not by invitation. And I think there is a great deal in favor of that.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] What was that?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, right. In both churches it had to be. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, yes, technically that would have been the case. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Oh yes. Now this is a very significant point; the role of the father in the marriage ceremony, and of course this has been destroyed in some of the services where the father is supposed to say: “Her mother and I give her to you.” What is the role of the father in the service? Well, up to that point, the girl is under the authority of her father. Now, this has been, historically, and important point. She has been strictly under the authority of her father, who has had the responsibility of her care, of her training, and of her discipline. At that point, the father takes the right hand of his daughter, and puts it in the right hand of the bridegroom. He transfers authority of the girl from himself to the groom, so that he is saying: “The authority, the care, the provision that I have provided is now your responsibility.”

So it is a transfer of authority and of responsibility. That is its significance. So it is not just a meaningless part of the service, it is a very important part, and the supervision he has exercised religiously. This is an important aspect of it. You see, nowadays if there is any religion in the family too often it is the mother who exercises it; she makes sure there is any family worship or prayer at the table, or the children get off to Sunday school, and so on and so forth. But this is not biblical. This is the significance of the Fathers role in part, and this is what he transfers to the groom. It is now his responsibility to exercise authority and religious leadership. And of course in this respect most men nowadays have been failures.

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes. Right.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, a very interesting point. The breach of promise has of course been dropped by law in recent years, and it was something of a fraud in the 20’s and 30’s when it was being used, because the old relationship was gone. But the breach of promise has its origin in the background that this was a real contract, that there was a really transfer of property being negotiated, very often the father would add a dowry; now the Old American custom for generations in this country was that the bride’s father added to what the young man brought, by giving, this was always a basic part, as far as they possibly could, a heifer; so that there would be milk for the new family. So that he was endowed with a heifer.

Last night I heard of one doctor report of his mother’s dowry I believe it was, it included a team of oxen, a logging chain 8 feet long, and several other things, so she had a good dowry.

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes. Yes, they are adding a lot of harmless and cute features nowadays that really have no basic part of the original service. I might add, this dowry of the oxen and all was in the Dakotas in the last century. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, at that time the communities were pretty uniformly religious, and those who were not did not bother to have any ceremony at all, they just lived together. Because, after all, what was God to them, so why bother with any such ceremony? And I think that makes sense. I really don’t see the point to some of these Hollywood marriages, I think it would be a lot more honest to move in together. After all, they don’t believe in God, and they don’t take the marriage vows to seriously, and to get married over and over and over again, year in and year out, why bother with ceremony? Why both. And of course, that is what it was centuries ago.

Now they could be penalized sometimes for that sort of relationship if it were of the sort that they was corrupting to the community, but if they were just living in a common law relationship, the community left them alone.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, but, here is a significant fact: until WW1, the ratio of births to such marriages was extremely low; in other words, for every hundred persons, or 50 couples, let us say, or a hundred couples, for every hundred couples that were church going people, there were several hundred children born. For every hundred couples that were not church going people, there was barely reproduction at best. For every hundred couples that were in trouble with the law and in and out of trouble, there were practically no children born. In other words, when you had a free situation when you didn’t buttress people with welfare, the birthrate for irresponsible people dropped so drastically that they bred themselves out.

Now I have a book that has just come out, I haven’t seen it yet, I got a letter from my publisher saying it is in the mail, the Myth of Overpopulation. When I wrote that I dealt with this matter of what welfare does to population, and I dealt in particular with the Negro. I went back to the pre-civil war census figures, and the post-civil war census figures. In the pre-civil war period, there were free Negro’s, both in the North and in the south, and in spite of the fact that every year the number of free Negro’s increased because there were more set free, so it was not just those who were already free but new free men, they could not reproduce. Their birth rate was that low.

Whereas, the slave Negro’s were revealing a very high birthrate. Why? Because slavery is a welfare society. Now, when emancipation took place, the birthrate overall for Negro’s began to drop rapidly. Very rapidly. So that, by 1920, the Negro’s were percentage rise lower in ratio to the general American population than they were in 1860. In other words, they could not hold their own in a free society, they were becoming a diminishing factor, they were breeding themselves out. Of course what has happened since the new deal has been a sky-rocketing birth rate among them because of welfare, which is a return to slavery; slavery being a welfare society of sorts.

So, what was happening throughout the centuries to Western European man was that there was a progressive genetic improvement precisely because the worst element was breeding out. And now the reverse has been taking place for a couple of generations. You can get this in my book. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, we dealt with slavery earlier, as an inferior way of life, but slavery is a reality of history. You either have slavery to individuals, personal ownership, or state ownership.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, there were abuses in slavery, but they have been grossly exaggerated, and by and large the Negro’s increased and flourished under slavery, and they showed it in their birth records. To a degree they did not flourish from 1865-1920 or 30 approximately, so they prospered under slavery, just the way they are prospering now. But that is the weakness of slavery, it is a welfare society.

Now, it is a better welfare society I would say then socialism and communism, but it is basically a welfare society.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No, there is no blanket condemnation of slavery, it is presented as an inferior way of life, and the believer is to avoid it. “Ye have been bought with a price, therefore be ye not the slaves of men.”

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Right. Yes. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Right, here is another myth that has been extensively propagated about the southerners being so pro slavery. One out of eighteen southerners owned slaves. The other 17 hated slavery. They resented it. The only reason why the south did not abolish slavery, there was only one state in the south that was genuinely pro slavery, South Carolina. Now, that is a matter of extensive documentation, but the only reason the other states did not abolish slavery, even though they discuss it more than once, was, “What shall we do with them after we free them?” and had some workable solution come about to resettle them elsewhere, it would have been welcomed by the Southerners. During the civil war there was actually a measure that passed congress, went to Lincoln and he signed it, to resettle all the Negro’s elsewhere, perhaps in some of the Caribbean Islands to be purchased, or somewhere else after the conclusion of the war.

Now as I say, this actually passed and was signed by Lincoln, and was supposed to become a matter of law to be operative after the war; but whether it was by design or by accident it was not sealed with the official seal. So this rendered it null and void, and before anything more could be done, Lincoln was assassinated.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Right, there were a sizeable number of Negro’s first of all, who were free. There were a sizeable number of free Negro’s in the south who were slave owners. This you don’t get very often, but many of the Negro’s who were freed in the south were men who were part white, they were often the illicit son or child of the owner, and he would free them, and they often had the intelligence of their Fathers and became very successful and very, very wealthy slave owners.

Now, this is a fact that is left out, but those one out of 18 slave owners in the South included a fait number of Negros. So why don’t they start suing their own people on that? The whole thing of course is a fraud from start to finish.

One of the interesting things I turned up this past week; now, during the abolitionist days one of the most eloquent women speaking against slavery was a colored woman, Sojourner Truth. And she was a very godly woman, and a very remarkable woman. The story of Sojourner Truth is a very amazing one. And she had had her children, most of the, I think she had about a dozen or so children sold out from under her, and her back was scarred from whipping. And she was one of the most eloquent speakers against slavery throughout the North. But there was a joker there that they didn’t tell people. She had been a slave in New York.

And you don’t get that in the books today, like Land of the Free and other such books when they speak of Sojourner Truth. She was a Northern slave. Our time is really up, but one or two questions, yes/

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes…

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Very very true, as the war progressed and the radical republicans became more and more bent on abolishing slaves, and one of the radical republican congressmen from Pennsylvania, William (Garrot?) Kelly made a statement: “Like it or not, the Negro is the coming man in America.”

In other words, everything that you have today in the Civil Rights program they wree talking about, and they were going to ram it down the throats of people. In New York a fearful riot broke out, first against the draft, and second against the Negro’s, and for several days all of New York was characterized by rioting and looting, and mass murdering of Negro’s of the most brutal sort, vicious. And there was this sort of thing throughout the North, and throughout the world. So you rarely get the true story of the rest of the day, what you get is an anti-southern diatribe, normally. One more question, yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony]Yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, slavery was not the prime issue, although it was greatly exploited and brought into perspective; the basic issue was centralism as they called it then, we would call it totalitarianism or socialism. It was Federal power vs State rights. Now there was a great deal to be criticized on both sides, but this was the basic issue, and the radical Republicans of the day were very definitely socialistic. And the… well, it is quite a long story, but some of the ugliest politics in our history until now was conducted by Thaddeus Stevens the leader of the Radical Republicans. And they came very close to destroying this country, and would have after they apparently assassinated Lincoln, had not Andrew Johnson, a very great president, blocked them. at a fearful price. He himself a southerner, was the man who stemmed the tide. Grant sold out to the radical republicans, but Johnson before him had blocked it sufficiently that they never could get their program in, and Hayes of course scuttled it completely then.

But the one deciding vote that prevented the radical Republicans from impeaching Johnson was cast by a new senator from Kansas, Senator (Watts?). And they hounded him the rest of his life for that. Someone someday ought to write the story of Senator (Watt?) and he did it purely in terms of character and a belief in his country, because he saw what would happen to him, he knew, they threatened him openly. Well, our time is up.