Engaging the Doctrine of Marriage. Matthew Levering
target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_5fe76435-1321-583c-92b0-a2c1c62cf4fa">99. Mark J. Boda remarks that the entirety of the Old Testament (joined by the New) reveals “God’s plan to form a redemptive community” and “God’s plan to transform all creation” (Boda, The Heartbeat of Old Testament Theology, 8).
100. Augustine, Confessions, trans. Chadwick, I.i.1, p. 3. See also Keating, Deification and Grace; Hofer, ed., Divinization.
101. Levenson, The Love of God, 113.
102. Levenson, The Love of God, 114.
103. Thomas Aquinas describes marriage as the greatest friendship: see Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, Book Three: Providence, trans. Bourke, ch. 123, p. 148.
104. Pitre, Jesus the Bridegroom, 8.
105. Sarna, Exploring Exodus, 134.
106. Pitre, Jesus the Bridegroom, 10. See Hahn, Kinship by Covenant, 337.
107. Hahn, Kinship by Covenant, 338.
108. See Hahn, Kinship by Covenant, 139–41.
109. Hahn, Kinship by Covenant, 172.
110. Hahn, Kinship by Covenant, 41. See Cross, “Kinship and Covenant in Ancient Israel”; McCarthy, Treaty and Covenant; McCarthy, “Notes on the Love of God in Deuteronomy.”
111. Hahn, Kinship by Covenant, 37.
112. Hahn, Kinship by Covenant, 31. Hahn’s proposal is quite complex, and all its elements need not be correct to ground the basic validity of his insight. In terms of the complex details of his proposal, a significant element is his sharp distinction between a “Sinai” covenant (broken by the Golden Calf incident) and a “Deuteronomic” covenant. He argues that “God’s initial relationship with Israel at Sinai was a kinship-type covenant, with an emphasis on mutuality and familial relationship,” whereas in the post-Golden Calf Deuteronomic covenant “Israel’s father-son relationship with God remains intact, but it takes on the character of a master-servant relationship, like that between a suzerain and rebellious vassal” (Kinship by Covenant, 32). I see much less disjunction, but I can understand why he arrives at this view.
113. Pitre, Jesus the Bridegroom, 11.
114. Pitre, Jesus the Bridegroom, 11.
115. Dozeman, Exodus, 704.
116. Dozeman, Exodus, 705.
117. Pitre, Jesus the Bridegroom, 17.
118. Pitre, Jesus the Bridegroom, 19.
119. Pitre, Jesus the Bridegroom, 20. See also Levenson, The Love of God, 125–42. Levenson points out that within the larger biblical context, “the question of the identity of the speakers takes on greater urgency than when the book is viewed in isolation. Who, in this larger framework, could these two passionate lovers possibly be? Let us put the question in terms of the rest of the Hebrew Bible: Where in that set of books do we find an intense love in which the lovers are separated much of the time, the male of the two is not continuously accessible, the identities of the lovers seem to shift in various situations, powerful external forces oppose and threaten the romance, and the consummation of the relationship seems to be continually, maddeningly postponed? Put that way, the question nearly answers itself: the only such romance is that of God and Israel. To be sure, not every detail matches up, and much imaginative interpretation is necessary to sustain the identification. That very process of imaginative interpretation, though, is highly productive theologically and spiritually” (The Love of God, 132). Levenson differentiates between allegory and midrash, arguing that the latter is in no way arbitrary. He concludes, “Without the application of the Song of Songs to the Torah, the depth and power of their [God and the people Israel] libidinous passion might never have come to expression. And without the application of the Torah to the Song of Songs, the deeper spiritual import of erotic love would surely have gone unnoticed” (The Love of God, 134).
120. Neusner, Israel’s Love Affair with God, 1.
121. Neusner, Israel’s Love Affair with God, 3.
122. Davis, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs, 231; cited in Pitre, Jesus the Bridegroom, 23. See also Levenson, The Love of God, 137–38: “When, at the literal level, Moses was anointing the tabernacle and its accoutrements, transferring them from the realm of the profane to that of the sacred, he was enacting, at the midrashic level, the consecration of Israel to God as his bride—a condition that in the rabbinic mind has survived both the tabernacle and the temple that it foreshadowed, and has defined the Jewish people through all their generations. The tabernacle served as the chuppah, the marriage canopy, for the wedding of God and Israel. . . . This is, of course, a theological ideal and not at all an accurate description of the historical facts, as the prophetic and many other biblical and postbiblical texts painfully attest. But it is an ideal with a potent and enduring capacity to inspire behavior, to provoke repentance—and to ignite the love of God among Jews. Within the marital metaphor as these Talmudic rabbis extended and developed it, the Torah, both as narrative and as law, becomes a site of intense erotic passion. Its narrative tells of God’s and the Jewish people’s falling in love with each other, of his proposing marriage and her accepting the proposal, of the wedding itself and the intimacy and deepening commitment that followed it.”
123. Pitre, Jesus the Bridegroom, 26.
124. McWhirter, The Bridegroom Messiah. McWhirter argues that the Gospel of John “alludes to four biblical texts about marriage. One involves similarities between Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman in John 4:4–42 and the story about Jacob and Rachel in Gen. 29:1–20. Two others evoke the Song of Songs. Mary of Bethany perfumes the reclining Jesus in a scene reminiscent of Song 1:12, and Mary Magdalene seeks and finds her missing man as does the woman in Song 3:1–4. A fourth allusion is the first to occur in the Gospel narrative. In John 3:29, John the Baptist declares, ‘He who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. . . .’ This saying recalls Jer. 33:10–11: ‘In . . . the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem . . . there shall once more be heard the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom . . . and the voice of the bride’” (The Bridegroom Messiah, 3–4). In McWhirter’s view, the author of the Gospel