Marriage
The UPDV traces marriage from the garden, where Yahweh judges that "it is not good that the man should be alone" (Gen 2:18) and frames the woman as a matching helper, through the patriarchal arrangements, the Mosaic regulation of betrothal, divorce, and inheritance, the wisdom commendations of Sirach and Proverbs, the prophetic figure of Yahweh as husband, and the apostolic teaching that the one-flesh union mirrors Christ and the church. The same vocabulary of bridegroom, bride, betrothal, and covenant carries both the human institution and its theological echo.
One Flesh from the Beginning
Adam's first speech identifies the woman as "bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh" and gives the canonical rationale: "Therefore will a man leave his father and his mother, and will stick to his wife: and they will be one flesh" (Gen 2:23-24). Solomon's wisdom returns the same verdict: "Whoever finds a wife finds a good thing, And obtains favor of Yahweh" (Pr 18:22). The writer to the Hebrews extends the praise into Christian common life: "[Let] marriage [be] had in honor among all, and [let] the bed [be] undefiled: for whores and adulterers God will judge" (Heb 13:4).
Patriarchal Arrangements
In the patriarchal narratives parents arrange marriages and impose endogamy. Abraham makes his servant swear "[by the Speech of] Yahweh, the God of heaven and the God of the earth, that you will not take a wife for my son of the daughters of the Canaanites," but to "go to my country, and to my kindred, and take a wife for my son Isaac" (Gen 24:3-4). The expedition closes simply: "Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah's tent, and took Rebekah, and she became his wife. And he loved her" (Gen 24:67). Isaac in turn charges Jacob, "You will not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan" (Gen 28:1). Jacob himself works for his bride: "And Jacob served seven years for Rachel. And they were like a few days in his eyes, for the love he had to her" (Gen 29:20), and Laban "gathered together all the men of the place, and made a feast" (Gen 29:22). The substitution of Leah on the wedding night follows in the same chapter (Gen 29:23). Hosea's later prophetic act puts an actual price on the transaction: "So I bought her to me [by my Speech] for fifteen [shekels] of silver, and a homer of barley, and a half-homer of barley" (Hos 3:2).
Mosaic Law
Under the Mosaic legislation marriage is fenced in by purity, kinship, and covenant boundaries. The seventh word of the Decalogue is bare: "You will not commit adultery" (Ex 20:14), and the penalty is capital: "the adulterer and the adulteress will surely be put to death" (Lev 20:10). Consanguinity is prohibited at the broadest reach — "Any man will not have any sex with anyone who is near of kin to him: I am Yahweh" (Lev 18:6) — and priests carry an extra constraint: "A widow, or one divorced, or a profane woman, a prostitute, these he will not take: but a virgin of his own relatives he will take as wife" (Lev 21:14).
Endogamy is statutory for the nation: "neither will you make marriages with them; your daughter you will not give to his son, nor his daughter will you take to your son" (Deut 7:3). Joshua repeats the warning at the renewal of the covenant (Josh 23:12), and after the exile Ezra and Nehemiah enforce it: "now therefore do not give your⁺ daughters to their sons, neither take their daughters to your⁺ sons" (Ezra 9:12); "And I contended with them, and cursed them, and struck certain of them, and plucked off their hair, and made them swear by God" (Neh 13:25).
The seducer of an unbetrothed virgin pays the bride-price and takes her to wife unless her father refuses, in which case the silver is still owed (Ex 22:16-17). The newly married man is exempted from the host one year so he may "cheer his wife whom he has taken" (Deut 24:5). Levirate duty preserves the line of a brother who dies without a son: "her husband's brother will go in to her, and take her to him as wife, and perform the duty of a husband's brother to her" (Deut 25:5). Ruth's claim on Boaz — "spread therefore your skirt over your slave; for you are a near kinsman" (Ruth 3:9) — is the same rule worked out in narrative, completed when Boaz declares, "Moreover Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of Mahlon, I have purchased to be my wife, to raise up the name of the dead on his inheritance" (Ruth 4:10).
Divorce
Mosaic law concedes divorce as a regulated act, not a commendation. "When a man takes a wife, and marries her, then it will be, if she finds no favor in his eyes, because he has found some unseemly thing in her, that he will write her a bill of divorce, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house" (Deut 24:1); the divorced woman cannot be taken back after a second marriage, "for that is disgusting before Yahweh" (Deut 24:4). Malachi reads the concession as covenantal failure: "Yahweh has been witness between you and the wife of your youth, whom you have betrayed, though she is your partner, and the wife of your covenant... For he who hates, divorces, says Yahweh, the God of Israel, and he will cover his garment with violence" (Mal 2:14, 16).
The Markan controversy frames the same Mosaic permission as a concession to hard hearts and reaches behind it to the creation order: "from the beginning of the creation, Male and female he made them. For this cause will a man leave his father and mother, and will stick to his wife; and the two will become one flesh: so that they are no more two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let man not separate" (Mark 10:6-9). The teaching to the disciples is unqualified in this Gospel: "Whoever divorces his wife, and marries another, commits adultery against her: and if she herself divorced her husband, and marries another, she commits adultery" (Mark 10:11-12).
Wedding, Feast, Bridegroom, Bride
Wedding scenes in the UPDV are distinctly festive. Samson's wedding lasts a week — "if you⁺ can declare it to me within the seven days of the feast" (Judg 14:12) — and his groomsmen number "thirty friends" (Judg 14:11). The bridegroom is a stock image of energy and joy: "Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, And rejoices as a strong man to run his course" (Ps 19:5). Bridal dress is freighted with ornament: "Can a virgin forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire? Yet my people have forgotten me days without number" (Jer 2:32); and Isaiah's salvation oracle uses the same picture for divine clothing of his people, "as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels" (Isa 61:10). A reversal of the same imagery is the picture of disaster in Maccabees: "Every bridegroom took up lamentation: And the bride who sat in the marriage bed, mourned" (1 Macc 1:27). Hellenistic dynastic marriages mark the same period — "King Alexander... celebrated her marriage at Ptolemais, with great glory, after the manner of kings" (1 Macc 10:58); cf. 1 Macc 9:37, 10:54, 11:12.
Jesus' first sign is set inside a wedding: "And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there: and Jesus also was invited, and his disciples, to the marriage" (John 2:1-2). When the wine fails, Mary tells the servants, "Whatever he says to you⁺, do it" (John 2:5).
Sirach on the Wife
Ben Sira gathers domestic counsel about marriage at greater length than any other UPDV book. The good wife is a portion from the Lord — "A good wife is a good portion; She will be given as a portion to those who fear the Lord" (Sir 26:3); "A good wife, blessed is her husband, The number of his days is doubled" (Sir 26:1); "A worthy wife cherishes her husband, And he fulfills the years of his life in peace" (Sir 26:2). Wisdom delights in the harmony of "a wife and a husband suited to each other" (Sir 25:1) and rates a "discreet wife" higher than friend or companion (Sir 40:23). Acquiring a wife is named a man's "highest possession, A help meet for him, and a pillar of support" (Sir 36:24), and "Without a hedge a vineyard is laid waste, And without a wife [a man is] a wanderer and homeless" (Sir 36:25). The ideal extends to grace and sense: "The grace of a wife delights her husband, And her understanding fattens his bones" (Sir 26:13); "Blessed is the husband of an understanding wife" (Sir 25:8); "Do not despise a prudent wife; And a well-favored [wife] is above rubies" (Sir 7:19); "A child and a city establish a name... But better than both is a loved woman" (Sir 40:19).
The reverse counsel is just as direct. "Do you have a wife? Do not be disgusted by her. But a woman who is an enemy, do not trust in her" (Sir 7:26); "Do not be jealous of the wife of your bosom" (Sir 9:1); "Hands that hang down, and palsied knees For a wife that does not make her husband happy" (Sir 25:23); "In the midst of his friends her husband sits, And involuntarily he sighs bitterly" (Sir 25:18). On parents and household management Ben Sira is brisk: "Do you have sons? Instruct them. And marry wives to them in their youth" (Sir 7:23); "Give away a daughter and a concern will go away. But give her to a [noble] man of understanding" (Sir 7:25).
Adultery and the Stranger Woman
Beyond the Mosaic capital sanction, the writers warn against the slow approach to adultery. "Do not come near to a strange woman; Or else you will fall into her snares" (Sir 9:3); "Do not give your soul to a prostitute; Or else you will turn away your inheritance" (Sir 9:6); "Do not taste with her husband; And do not turn away with him drinking" (Sir 9:9). Job's adulterer "waits for the twilight, Saying, No eye will see me: And he disguises his face" (Job 24:15), and Sirach exposes the same secrecy: "[There is] a man who goes astray from his own bed, And says in his soul: 'Who sees me? Darkness is around me, and the walls hide me'" (Sir 23:18). The unfaithful wife "First, she is disobedient to the law of the Most High, Second, she trespasses against her own husband, Third, she commits adultery through her fornication, And brings in children by a stranger" (Sir 23:23). Sirach catalogues an adultery-anxious father in the daughter's whole biography: "In her youth lest she commit adultery, and when she is married, lest she be hated; In her virginity lest she be seduced, And in the house of her husband, lest she be unfaithful" (Sir 42:9-10).
Paul keeps the same line: "Or don't you⁺ know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Don't be deceived: neither whores, nor idolaters, nor adulterers" (1 Cor 6:9), and 2 Peter pictures false teachers "having eyes full of adultery, and that can't cease from sin" (2 Pet 2:14). For the woman, the law of Romans 7 makes the legal status precise: while her husband lives "she will be called an adulteress" if she joins another, "but if the husband dies, she is free from the law" (Rom 7:3).
Pauline Counsel
Paul writes to a contested Corinthian situation. He concedes a place for a celibate vocation — "It is good for a man not to have any sex with a woman" (1 Cor 7:1) — but immediately balances it: "because of the whoring going on, let each have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband" (1 Cor 7:2). The mutual claim within marriage is symmetrical: "Let the husband render to the wife her due: and likewise also the wife to the husband. The wife does not have power over her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband does not have power over his own body, but the wife" (1 Cor 7:3-4). Sexual abstention is allowed only "by consent for a season" for prayer, and then resumed (1 Cor 7:5). Paul's preference is celibacy, "Yet I would that all men were even as I myself. Nevertheless each has his own gift from God" (1 Cor 7:7); to the unmarried and widowed, "It is good for them if they stay even as I. But if they do not have self-control, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn" (1 Cor 7:8-9). The unmarried woman "is careful for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in the body and in the spirit: but she who is married is careful for the things of the world, how she may please the husband" (1 Cor 7:34). The bond is for life: "A wife is bound for as long as her husband lives; but if the husband is dead, she is free to be married to whom she wants; only in the Lord" (1 Cor 7:39).
The "in the Lord" qualifier is also a general principle: "Don't be unequally yoked with unbelievers: for what fellowship have righteousness and iniquity?" (2 Cor 6:14). The Pastoral Epistles recommend the married estate against ascetic teachers who forbid it. Some "will fall away from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons... forbidding to marry, [and commanding] to abstain from meats, which God created to be received with thanksgiving" (1 Tim 4:1, 3). And to younger widows: "I desire therefore that the younger [widows] marry, bear children, rule the household, give no occasion to the adversary for reviling" (1 Tim 5:14). The early Christian apologist sums up the resulting practice: "They marry, as do all. They do not throw away what is born, but acknowledge the children" (Diognetus 5:6).
Marriage Not Binding After Death
The Sadducees press the levirate law to a reductio: seven brothers, one woman; "In the resurrection, when they will rise, whose wife will she be of them?" (Mark 12:23). Jesus answers, "Is it not for this cause that you⁺ err, that you⁺ don't know the Scriptures, nor the power of God? For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry, nor are given in marriage; but are as angels in heaven" (Mark 12:24-25).
Yahweh as Husband
The prophets read the marriage covenant back onto the relation between Yahweh and his people. Hosea is told, "Go, take to yourself a wife of whoring and children of whoring; for the land commits great whoring, [departing] from Yahweh" (Hos 1:2), and the restoration oracle uses the language of betrothal: "And I will betroth you to me forever; yes, I will betroth you to me in righteousness, and in justice, and in loving-kindness, and in mercies. I will even betroth you to me in faithfulness; and you will know Yahweh" (Hos 2:19-20). Isaiah is plain — "For your Maker is your husband; Yahweh of hosts is his name" (Isa 54:5) — and turns the same picture to joy: "as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so will your God rejoice over you" (Isa 62:5). Jeremiah recalls the broken Sinai covenant in marriage terms — "which covenant of mine they broke, although I was a husband to them, says Yahweh" (Jer 31:32) — and pleads, "Return, O backsliding sons, says Yahweh; for I am a husband to you⁺" (Jer 3:14). Ezekiel narrates the betrothal as Yahweh's Speech taking covenant action: "and [my Speech] spread over you, and covered your nakedness: yes, [my Speech] swore to you, and entered into a covenant with you, says the Sovereign Yahweh, and you became mine" (Ezek 16:8).
Christ and the Church
The apostolic writers carry the figure into the new covenant. Paul applies the one-flesh saying to Christ: "For this cause will a man leave his father and mother, and will stick to his wife; and the two will become one flesh. This mystery is great: but I speak in regard of Christ and of the church" (Eph 5:31-32). To the Corinthians he positions himself as the bride's father: "for I espoused you⁺ to one husband, that I might present you⁺ [as] a pure virgin to Christ" (2 Cor 11:2). The seventh chapter of Revelation's wedding sequence is the consummation of the same image: "Let us rejoice and be exceedingly glad, and let us give the glory to him: for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his wife has made herself ready" (Rev 19:7).
A textual note belongs with the sign in Isaiah 7. The UPDV reads, "Therefore the Lord himself will give you⁺ a sign: look, the young woman will be pregnant, and give birth to a son, and will call his name Immanuel" (Isa 7:14) — "young woman" rather than "virgin," following the Hebrew. Where the New Testament writers take up the verse, the language of virginity comes from the Greek tradition rather than from this verse in the UPDV.