Deuteronomy

Marriage and the Family

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: 80-110

Genre: Talk

Track: 080

Dictation Name: RR187AR80

Location/Venue:

Year: 1993

Let us worship God. This is the confidence that we have in him, that we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us. Having these promises, let us draw near to the throne of grace with true hearts in full assurance of faith. My voice shalt Thou hear in the morning oh Lord, in the morning will I direct my prayer unto Thee and will look up. Let us pray.

Almighty God our Heavenly Father we give thanks unto Thee for Thy blessings which are new every morning. Thy faithfulness is great and wonderful. Teach us our Father to walk by faith knowing that what we see does not determine the future but Thy will which shall be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this confidence and make us joyful in our faith and ever instant in Thy service. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Our scripture is Deuteronomy 24:5. Our subject: Marriage and the Family. Deuteronomy 24:5.

“When a man hath taken a new wife, he shall not go out to war, neither shall he be charged with any business: but he shall be free at home one year, and shall cheer up his wife which he hath taken.”

Few texts are more revelatory of the difference between a godly social order than this one. Not the state nor the church but the family is central to life. Because of this the establishing and knitting together of the marital bond requires a year’s sabbatical from all kinds of responsibilities. The modern honeymoon is totally unrelated to this because it is a departure from the family whereas our text refers to a rest for settling into family life. A cognant verse is Proverbs 5:18 which says:

“Let thy fountain be blessed and rejoice with the wife of thy youth.”

In Genesis 2:18 and 24 we are told:

“And the Lord God said it is not good that the man should be alone, I will make him a helpmeet for him. Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife and they shall be one flesh.”

A great many verses in Proverbs tell of the blessedness of a covenantal union and the very serious problem of a bad marriage. To cite just three of them, Proverbs 18:22:

“Whosoever findeth a wife findeth a good thing and obtaineth favor of the Lord.”

Proverbs 19:14:

“Houses and riches are the inheritance of fathers and a prudent wife is from the Lord.”

Proverbs 12:4

“A virtuous woman is a crown to her husband but she that maketh ashamed is as rottenness in his bones.”

There is much, much more in Proverbs and elsewhere about marriage and the family because the family is the foundation of the community and of life. Genesis 2:24 requires a man to leave his father and cleave unto his wife. This does not require a break with the parents but it does mandate that he is now the head of a new family and must cleave to his wife, assuming that she is a godly woman. Deuteronomy 24:5, our text, makes clear that marriage is a break for the wife, she is now under her husband’s authority, life has a different pattern for her, one that depends on her husband and his calling. During the first year of marriage the husband cannot be recruited for civil or military service. While the text does not specifically bar him from working to maintain a farm, for example, it seems to require a minimal amount of work because his duty is to cheer up his wife.

The meaning in the Hebrew is to brighten up or make joyful. The text does not mean that the bride is unhappy with her marriage but that her husband strives to make sure that for his wife this new relationship is a privilege and a blessing. For both the personal and the national wellbeing it is important for the bride to be happy and trusting. To be otherwise is to blight the marriage. The husband cannot be involved in military or civil duties. This is a requirement of very great importance because it clearly indicates the priority of the family to the nation. Religious institutions are not mentioned because crises in such spheres are a rarity whereas crises in national life are commonplace, sometimes continuous. No national crisis can take precedent over the new marriage. Because the family is most important in God’s sight it must always be protected. The Vulgate gives an interesting reading. The groom shall rejoice, or take pleasure, with the wife of his youth. It is important to notice that the bridegroom’s exemption has a double focus, his home and his wife. It is for this that the exemption is given. Sir John Adam Smith wrote that the exemption from public service is for the sake of his house and his wife and he was right. He is free, literally, for his own household. He has a duty under God to establish a family as a physical and spiritual entity. J. A. Thompson wrote and I quote:

“Such a law is out of place in a modern state.” Unquote.

But he recognized that the law gives priority to the family over the state and if it’s out of place in a modern state so much the worse for the state. James Moffat’s rendering of Deuteronomy 24:5 is interesting. When a man takes a new wife he shall not go on active service with the army nor shall he be called upon for any enterprise, he shall be free at home for one year to be happy with the wife he has taken.

God’s purpose in his law is not restrictive but expansive and it is interesting that where the Bible most clearly demonstrates this in Deuteronomy you have the maximum hostility of anti-Christians, liberals, modernists, focused on this book. God’s purpose is to give us happiness and freedom in His law, James called God’s law the perfect law of liberty, twice he uses that expression. The law of God is for our protection, happiness and liberty. This freedom under God’s law is not archaic. As [unknown] pointed out: free shall he be for his house for a year. The focus, for his house, free shall he be for his house, means for the new community his marriage establishes. It looks beyond the bride and groom although it is enjoined that it is for their happiness. In Numbers 4:23 and 30 the service of the Levites is described in English as to perform the service, or literally, as the marginal reading has it, to war the warfare. To do their duty in their sphere for to do God’s work is holy warfare. The various kinds of service cited in our text are aspects of our holy warfare. It tells us much about the importance of marriage and the family that exemption from such service, holy warfare, is mandated by God during the first year of marriage. The term holy matrimony is a relic of such a view. In Deuteronomy 20:5 and following exemption from military duty is given to betrothed or engaged men. Here it is given to newly married men and it is for more than military service. We come now to two important aspects of this law. It reads: when a man taketh a new wife, meaning this applies to more than a first marriage. It can apply to remarriage, as to a widow. It is valid for a remarriage on the part of either and one in which the children of both the man and the woman can be young or they can be of age and themselves married.

The law applies to any and every marriage. The purpose is this is the key unit in holy warfare upon earth and therefore it is important for this new marriage to begin as God requires it. John Gill citing [unknown] stated that the exemption from public duty meant an exemption from all taxation for a year. In fact we are told that this was a law Aristotle learned from the Jews and taught to Alexander the Great who applied it up to a degree; after The Battle of Granicus Alexander sent his newly married soldiers home to winter with their wives and then return in the spring. This fact of exemption from all public service and exemption from taxation tells us how serious this law is. This law is in the background of western law and civilization. We still have relics of it in the tax exemption a man gains on marrying and then for each child. It’s a relic of this law. It is the means of stressing the value of the family in the biblical form. This stress makes clear the priority of the family in civilization. It is the primary bearer of faith and culture. When church and state seek to separate faith and culture from the family both suffer and we are now seeking the end product of a long assault on the family by the state and a jealous of it on the part of the church. The law declares the man shall be free at home one year. He is to enjoy himself and develop his calling and his marriage. He is free from extraneous duties, he is not to travel. He is to be at home for the year.

Now consider the background before marrying. The man has to accumulate a dowry, normally the equivalent of three year’s wages. He has to be a provident man; it could be he has accumulated this dowry in advance of his marriage. Normally the betrothal was a year in duration, it gave both families and both bride and groom a chance to reconsider the whole thing which meant that the man was accumulated income in that time so that when he entered into marriage he had a substantial dowry which he gave to his father-in-law who gave it to the bride which he could never touch, and he had the income from the previous year. This meant that indeed he was free at home, he had some security, he had some relaxation from the necessity of earning more. It is clear from this law how important the family is in God’s sight. The law is to us unusual in its stress on the family and it is very different from what we find in other cultures. The strength of western civilization has as its background this and like laws in the Pentateuch. They made clear the priority of the family in God’s sight. It meant therefore that the strength of the life of the people was at the grass roots in the family. When the strength is taken away from that area the whole of the culture and civilization weakens. Let us pray.

Our Father we give thanks unto Thee for Thy word. We thank Thee that Thou hast called us to Thy service in and through the family. Make us joyful in Thy ways, make us ever mindful of the wisdom of Thy law and Thy providence that we might all the days of our life serve Thee as we ought. In Christ’s name, Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Question] During the Gulf War when we saw the videos of the women, enlisted women, saying goodbye to their small children we got a pretty good flash of what our government thinks of the family.

[Rushdoony] Yes and it is interesting that centuries ago it was clearly seen by scholars of the Hebrew text that when it says that a woman should not put on the manner of a man it had reference to his vocation and in particular military service. And in England one of the first scholars to call attention to this was Adam Clark going back a few centuries. So it’s been known but no one has paid attention to it and I think it’s an aspect of the idiocy of the church today that there are men who I have known who have preached against women wearing slacks as unbiblical but have nothing to say when women were taken into the military. Any other questions or comments?

Little by little as you doubtless know we are whittling away at the relics of this statute in our laws. For example, from World War Two until not too long ago the exemption for child was limited to only six hundred dollars and it took a great deal of bitter infighting to get through a larger exemption from Congress, and in the course of that there were some who held that all such exemptions should be eliminated. Because of overpopulation it was held to be unwise to give a tax break for a child. So every relic of this law has been the target of a great deal of hostility because the family is not to be seen as basic. We have courses in public schools on family education which are really courses on sex education with the stress being on homosexuality. Normal marital sexuality is frowned upon and ridiculed so that we have built into our educational system a hatred of the God-ordained family. We are indeed in the last stages of civilization when such a thing happens. Are there any other questions or comments?

Well if not let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father, Thy word tells us there is much for us to do. If the foundations be destroyed it is our duty as Thy people to rebuild them. Enable us to establish a sure foundation for Thy kingdom in our family life and with our children and our children’s children. Grant that as the world around us crumbles we build on the foundation of Jesus Christ so that our homes, our lives, our vocations be established on Him in order that the kingdoms of this world might indeed become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ. And now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always, Amen.