What People Miss about the Bible on Marriage, Part 3: What is Modeled and How the Marriage Relationship is Leveraged

There are four elements of biblical content that most people do not stop to contemplate that I will endeavor to discuss in this third and final part on marriage in the Bible. The first is the emotional or psychological impact it has on people that direct commands to people only show up in the form of a heterosexual pairing or in relation to people’s lack of sexual activity. The second is the nature of that content, the dynamic this content sets up within a paired-up hetero relationship, which is that it is hierarchical with the females being told to be as submissive to their men as they are to the Lord, even when those men are being abusive in some form. The third is the emotional and psychological impact on all members of a faith community, straight or queer, that only hetero couples make up the role models for people faith. Finally, people are being taught to find ways to excuse or accommodate when G-d is depicted being a verbally, emotionally, and/or sexually abusive partner. This specific step, ignoring when G-d is portrayed this way, can lead to people ignoring similar behaviors in the people around them.

See also Marriage in the Bible: What Do the Texts Say? (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2023).

See also “What People Miss about the Bible on Marriage, Part 1: Jesus’ Words, Ancient Friendships, and the Usefulness of “Slaves”

See also “What People Miss about the Bible on Marriage, Part 2: Terminology in Both Testaments”

By Jennifer G. Bird, PhD
Public Biblical Scholar
JenniferGraceBird.com
December 2024

It is understandable that people tend to look at the passages in the Christian Bible that have references to behaviors we tend to associate with marriages today when trying to make a claim about what “biblical marriage” might look like or simply what marriages look like in the Bible. But in doing so, most people do not spend enough time reflecting on several elements of paired-up relationships that are modeled or endorsed in more indirect ways. In this article I will discuss four of these elements, though I more thoroughly discuss these issues in chapters 6, 7, 9, and 10 in Marriage in the Bible: What Do the Texts Say?

Leveraging the Paired-Up Relationship

          The first element I invite you to sit with for a moment or two is what it might do to people – men, women, and those in between or beyond – that the only time there are direct commands given to people in Christian faith communities, it is done through their role in a paired-up relationship, or their lack of sexual experience. “Men, love your women” (Eph. 5: 25). “Women, (in the same way) be subject to your men as to the lord” (Eph. 5: 22). “To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain unmarried as I am” (1 Cor. 7:8). “Now concerning virgins, I have no command of the Lord, but I give my opinion as one who, by the Lord’s mercy, is trustworthy” (1 Cor. 7:25). 
                When the authors of the epistolary material offer directives to help regain or maintain order in one of the communities and they do so by speaking to men and women who are presumably paired up, or married in our terms, they indirectly communicate that the married state was assumed to be normative in these communities. This in turn silences or ignores those who are not or will not ever be in such a relationship. Content that was directed to “husbands and wives” was not intended for the single people in the community, was it? Think of the ways this initial set-up has taught billions of people in faith communities to see marriage itself as a normative part of adult experience (despite Paul’s lack of such a relationship and the dubiousness of this for Jesus). Think of the ways this teaches people in these communities to pity those who are not married or think less of those who choose not to marry or who might be paired up but prefer to forego a wedding ceremony for whatever reasons. Please take seriously what these texts teach people to value and at whose expense.
          The second point I will direct your attention to is the nature of the materiality of content I just referred to. What dynamic does it set up within a paired-up relationship? When, aside from 1 Corinthians 7 (which goes a decent way toward talking about men and women as equals in a marriage), the content directed at couples tells women to respect, fear, and be submissive to their men, in two different letters in the Newer Testament, you better believe that people get the message. It does not matter that the men are told to “love their women” in that same letter, since a) women are not being told to “love their men,” and b) men are not also being told to be subject to their women. While telling men to love their “wives” was progressive at the time, it is still being urged or encouraged within a hierarchical framework. This is precisely what “love patriarchalism” looks like: the men are still in control, but they are simply told to wield their control lovingly. I have too many examples of why this dynamic is quite unhealthy for all people involved. Additionally, speaking of this specific passage in Ephesians 5, people typically overlook the final verse: “Each of you, however, should love his woman as himself, and a woman should fear her man” (Eph. 5:33). The final note of this much-debated passage is that of a fearful dynamic for the women.

What is Being Modeled?

          The third point is one that I rarely hear people discussing, and that is the emotional and psychological impact it has on all people that only hetero couples are talked about in the Bible. First, I do think the lack of representation of non-hetero relationships is quite detrimental. This reality has been a significant factor for many other-than-hetero people of faith, teaching them to internalize a self-hatred. The manifestation of this self-hatred, as we all know, has taken various harmful, even fatal, forms over the centuries. The fact that people still struggle with this issue today is due in large part, it seems to me, to people not dismantling this aspect of the Bible. 
          But I think we are missing something even deeper, here, when we leave it at the harm that heteronormativity wreaks on non-hetero minds and bodies, devastating as that is. The thing is that this element of biblical stories goes a long way in creating the foundation for these heteronormative frameworks, which means that it misinforms everyone it reaches or teaches. It inappropriately gives hetero people a sense that their own sexuality and romantic partnering is normative, and that only heterosexuality is natural and normal. This is part of why it can be difficult for straight people who grow up with these texts to even be open to considering the fact that human sexuality takes many forms. I think it can be incredibly productive to be able to point to the roots of such resistance. Having compassion for someone who has been misinformed can lead to a conversation about the whole topic. We need to take seriously all of the ways the heteronormativity of the Christian Bible has misled and misinformed billions of people about human sexuality. 
          The final point I would like to make is dramatically different from the first three, and is similarly deeply impactful, it seems to me. When we look at the way G-d is depicted in the Prophets taking on the role of “husband” to his “wife,” the people of Israel or Judah, what we see, over and over again, is a G-d who is wrathfully angry and who threatens all kinds of horrific consequences if his “wife” does not change her ways.
          There are (at least) two sides to this particular element of the prophetic material that are worth us taking a moment to consider. The first is that G-d is never depicted as a “husband” or a baal to his people except as a way to try to control the people, or to shame the males in leadership over the people.[1] I hope you will pause to reflect on this point before moving on. The “marriage” relationship is being wielded as a weapon of control, literarily speaking. And it happens many times; it is not a fluke. 
          The second significant aspect to this element of the prophetic material is that people of faith are being taught to ignore a male in a position of power who is saying threatening things, or is actually inflicting harm, all because they have been taught that “G-d’s ways are higher than ours,” or that “G-d only does these things out of love,” “G-d only wants us to return to him,” or some such line of reasoning. Consider what is happening here: people are finding ways to excuse the behavior of or accommodate themselves to this deity, who is embodying an emotionally, verbally, and/or sexually abusive partner. People are being told to love a partner whom they also fear. People are being taught to normalize this kind of behavior, to not see the dissonance in G-d threatening to r*pe his “bride” and then saying he wants her to return to him. This combination sets up people to miss, or dismiss as “not such a big deal,” similar behaviors in people today. I do not think that I can overstate the seriousness of this element. (I do want people to be mindful that this is not just a Hebrew Bible issue, as the very same set up is found in 1 Peter 3:1-6.) 
          If you did not feel something of a gut punch as you read through this fourth point, pause, set aside whatever beliefs you have about who God is to you, which is a separate reality to the way G-d is depicted in either testament of the Christian Bible, and read through it, again, but a bit more slowly this time.

Conclusion

                Though the passages in question do not make up a large percentage of the biblical content, that does not negate their impact for people of faith, whether directly or unconsciously. Perhaps you will pause to reflect on what I have touched upon in this article: people of faith are being actively misinformed by their scriptures regarding human sexuality; people of faith are being taught from an early age that the married state is the preferred status in their faith communities; there are mixed signals from the scriptures about what a paired up relationship should look like, but the predominant message is that of males dominating over females; and this dominant stance being bolstered by emotional, physical, or sexual abuse, threatened or real, is given sacred endorsement in both testaments of the Christian Bible. I do think it is time that we take these elements of the Bible seriously. I do think it is time that we find a way to address the harm that is happening in the name of these scriptures and the G-d they point to.