Engaging the Doctrine of Marriage. Matthew Levering
center of all Scripture: the desire of the Bridegroom Creator God for spiritual union with his covenantal people Israel.
Pitre notes some parallels between the Song of Songs and the Torah/Psalms that ancient Jewish interpreters found to be significant. For example, in Song of Songs 1:7 and elsewhere, we find reference to “you whom my soul loves”; this reference led interpreters back to Deuteronomy 6:5, where Moses commands Israel to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” Lest this connection seems a stretch, Song of Songs 1:4 offers the possibility of a similar connection. It states, “The king has brought me into his chambers. We will exult and rejoice in you.” In Psalm 118:24, we are commanded to rejoice in the day the Lord has made. Song of Songs 1:7 also asks the beloved where he pastures his flock; and this query was linked by the interpreters with Psalm 23’s presentation of Israel as God’s flock: “The Lord is my shepherd” (Ps 23:1). Again, Song of Songs 6:3 states, “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine; he pastures his flock among the lilies.” The interpreters drew a connection to the Lord who is Israel’s shepherd and who has promised to be Israel’s and to take Israel to himself: “I will take you for my people, and I will be your God” (Exod 6:7). For the validity of these connections, Pitre cites the Old Testament scholar Ellen Davis. In her commentary on the Song of Songs, Davis contends that the Song of Songs “is thick with words and images drawn from earlier books. By means of this ‘recycled’ language, the poet places this love song firmly in the context of God’s passionate and trouble relationship with humanity (or, more particularly, with Israel), which is the story the rest of the Bible tells.”122
Pitre adds that, in fact, the bride in the Song of Songs is described in terms of the Temple, the city of Jerusalem, and the land of Israel. Furthermore, he points out that the Song of Songs “never actually describes the consummation of the marriage.”123 In this regard the attitude of the bride in the Song of Songs, ever losing and seeking her Bridegroom, is summed up by the concluding verse of the Song of Songs: “Make haste, my beloved, and be like a gazelle or a young stag upon the mountain of spices” (Song 8:14). As Pitre notes, Jewish interpreters saw this as descriptive of the day of the restoration of Israel, when the people of Israel would be finally gathered in Jerusalem to offer proper worship. On this day, the Bridegroom will restore Israel by forgiving its sins and consummating the spiritual marriage of God and Israel.
In the above discussion of the marriage of God and Israel, Pitre is preparing for the main chapters of his book, which treat Jesus as the Bridegroom Messiah of Israel. When he turns to this theme, he first directs attention to John 3:28–29, where John the Baptist says, “I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him. He who has the bride is the bridegroom.” In the Gospel of John, as John the Baptist makes clear, Jesus Christ is the bridegroom of Israel, the one who comes to consummate the marriage of God and his people. In articulating this point, Pitre is indebted to Jocelyn McWhirter’s The Bridegroom Messiah and the People of God: Marriage in the Fourth Gospel.124 Agreeing with Gilberte Baril that the Gospel of John presents Jesus as “the bridegroom of the Messianic nuptials,” McWhirter emphasizes that “all Christians should be able to accept and appreciate this [marriage] metaphor since John does not use it to reinforce oppressive gender roles.”125
Earlier in the Gospel of John, John the Baptist identifies Jesus as the “Lamb of God” (John 1:36). Along these lines, as noted above, the book of Revelation teaches that the consummated Israel, the Bride prepared for her Bridegroom, is “the wife of the Lamb” (Rev 21:9), the wife of Jesus Christ. When the Seer is given a vision of the new creation, he reports the following: “And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband; and I heard a great voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people’” (Rev 21:2–3). The great promises of the Old Testament prophecies are echoed here and fulfilled by God.
In a vision near the beginning of the book of Revelation, the Seer identifies Jesus as a “Lamb standing, as though it had been slain” (Rev 5:6). He is worthy of worship, which attests to his divine identity (see Rev 5:13). Thus, Jesus is the divine Bridegroom who accomplishes what God has promised to do for Israel in his covenants and prophecies. Jesus extends the marriage of God and Israel to include the nations in covenantal Israel, now reconfigured around the Messiah.
Is this perspective on the Messianic marriage of God and humanity found solely in the Johannine literature? According to Pitre, the answer is no. The accounts of the Last Supper in the Synoptic Gospels indicate that Jesus intended to inaugurate “the new wedding covenant spoken of by the prophets.”126 In all three Synoptic Gospels, Jesus at the Last Supper speaks of the wine as his covenantal blood: his “blood of the covenant” (Matt 26:28; Mark 14:24) or “the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20). In Matthew’s and Mark’s Last Supper accounts, Jesus makes it clear that his blood will be spilled for the forgiveness of sins; and, indeed, Luke makes this clear as well, even if not necessarily in the Last Supper account. Pitre connects this with Exodus 24, where Moses seals the covenant at Sinai between God and Israel by throwing the sacrificial blood of animals upon the altar and upon the people (as noted above). In addition, Jesus’ talk of “the new covenant in my blood” alludes to the covenant promised by Jeremiah 31, where, as Pitre has already pointed out, God refers to himself as Israel’s “husband.”
Along these lines, the New Testament scholar Joseph Fitzmyer observes in his commentary on Luke 22:20 that “[t]he ‘new covenant’ is an allusion to Jer 31:31, the promise made by Yahweh of a pact that he would make with ‘the house of Israel and the house of Judah.’”127 Fitzmyer grasps the cultic or sacrificial implications of Jesus’ words, but he does not make the connection that the purpose of the sacrificial action (the spilling of Jesus’ blood) is to establish once and for all the covenantal marriage of God and humanity. Instead, Pitre draws upon a book published in the 1930s that makes the point that Passover itself was nuptial and therefore Jesus’ Passover action is intended to be nuptial as well, with respect to the marital union of God and his people.128
In addition to the Synoptics’ Last Supper accounts, Pitre has recourse to the parable of the Sons of the Bridechamber, found in Matthew 9, Mark 2, and Luke 5. In Mark 2:19, Jesus responds to the people who question him about why his disciples do not fast: “Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast.” The same point is made in this parable in Matthew and Luke. Jesus adds that “[t]he days will come, when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day” (Mark 2:20). This, too, is a clear reference to the future events that will happen to Jesus. Pitre cites the New Testament scholar Adela Yarbro Collins to argue that Jesus intends to make clear that his very presence among his disciples means that there is preparation for an imminent wedding.129 Pitre also clarifies the meaning of οἱ υἱοὶ τοῦ νυμφῶνος, which the RSV rather misleadingly translates simply as “wedding guests.” The literal translation of this phrase is “sons of the bridechamber,” an expression that is not found in the Old Testament but that appears in Rabbinic texts. The “sons of the bridechamber” are not simply all invitees to the wedding, but rather they are particular friends of the bridegroom who help to prepare him for the wedding and who attend upon him at the wedding. If the wedding of God and Israel has finally arrived in the Bridegroom Jesus, then it makes sense that Jesus’ disciples do not perform the normal fasting required by Jewish law or custom.
Why should we think that Jesus, in describing himself as the “bridegroom,” has in view a marriage of God and his people consummated on his Cross? As we have seen, Pitre has already suggested that this is the implicit meaning of Jesus’ words at the Last Supper about “the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20). Admittedly, examination of the passages in the Old Testament that explicitly foretell a Messiah indicates that (in the words of the New Testament scholar Morna Hooker) “[t]here is no precedent in the Old Testament for referring to any ‘messianic’ figure as a bridegroom, but the image is used of God (Isa. 54.4–8; 62.5; Ezek. 16.7ff.).”130 Pitre’s point about the Messianic “bridegroom,” however, holds firm when the explicitly Messianic passages are canonically combined