Men in the Bible aren't that romantic, especially the men of the New Testament. Sometimes I wish one of Peter's love letter's to his wife would have made it's way through history so we'd have an example of a man persuing God, serving God and at the same time seeing that balance of family and ministry. Today I felt like being romantic, I felt like reminding Julie of my love for her. Now in the past romance for me has often meant being very creative and bold, but today as I tried to think up some creative and bold I kept hitting a creative wall. So I typed into the google toolbar "romantic ideas" which led me to some site about a book a guy wrote called "300 date ideas" as seen on Oprah! This didn't help, and made me quite annoyed so I checked out our book shelf and came across "52 dates for you and your mate" which ended up frustrating me even more since every date was a disaster waiting to happen, I almost convinced myself to go buy kites and take Julie to the park as soon as she arrived home. Then I realized that'd probably be more fun for me, she's going to be hungry not kite happy. Anyways I decided just to keep it simple (although I still like my one idea, to attach reason's why I love her to hundreds of paper butterfly's and hang them from the ceiling, ahh that will have to wait untill another day). I strapped on my blades, went to the SuperStore, tucked my sock covered toes into my flop flops (since taking off my socks would be a chore, and wearing no socks with blades is uncomfortable), purchased some pink gerbers and a card, and battled the wind all the way home.
I started to think about husband/wife relationships in the Bible while reading Numbers (my new book for the next couple days even though it's draining at times). I got to Num 5:11-31. "the test an an unfaithful wife" apparently they didn't have spy camera companies and business's devoted to catching your spouse in the act of marital unfaithfulness, they had their own special system. If the husband begins to have feelings of jealousy even if his wife wasn't impure, she was to be taken to the priest. The priest would then have her stand before the Lord, as she stands before the Lord the priest puts together a mixture of dust/holy water/the washed off words of the curse and says to her "if you haven't slept with another man then may this water not bring a curse upon you" but if she had slept with another man she would experience bitter suffering, her abdomen will swell and she would become barren. The husband would be innocent of any wrongdoing, but she would bear the consequence of her sin.
After I read this I prayed that God would reveal to me something about Himself from this passage. God was a major part of this procedure in 5:16,21,25. Prior to this instruction God was ensuring the purity of the Israelites, and I think that's the point of this system of dealing with the suspected unfaithful wife. What about the man's responsibility, didn't God have a system for them? What if she was raped? As she was about to drink the curse why didn't she just confess? I suppose she'd probably have been stoned. What would the husband who suspected something do to his wife before she came to the priest? Imagine what the people watching would have thought..
I'm not sure I can finish today's entry with a nice tidy summary sentence. I have more research and reading to do, I just don't have all the answers. But I so far I've known God's character to be obsessed with purity and holiness, not because he loved to punish sin, but because he wanted to save them from sin's consequences but that was second to his desire to be intimate with them and this was impossible if they kept on sinning. Maybe this very public display was God's way of showing the Israelite community how serious His was about making them Holy. Guaranteed everyone would know in a weeks time if the wife was faithful or not. Possibly seeing the consequences of sin so publically might cause both men and women to think twice before breaking their marriage vows. (humm.. the marriage vow, a covenant) maybe that has something to do with God's severity on this matter of marital unfaithfulnes, marriage was mini representation of the of the bigger conditional covenant God had going with Israel at the time.
Untill tommorow..
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