What Kind of Husband Should You Be?

Part One of Great Marriages of the Bible

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This week, as a special treat, because all I can wrap my mind around is flowers and table cloths and shoes and how many communion hymns we’ll need, I thought it would be fun to do a mini-series on Great Marriages of the Bible. The number of actually good and functional marriages in Holy Scripture might be something like three. Priscilla and Aquilla seem cool. And I quite like Naaman and his wife and their Israelite slave girl. And, let me see… Ruth and Boaz had a nice love story, but we don’t know how they got along through the long winter evenings with Grandma Naomi and Baby Obed. Maybe it was super cozy, but the Bible doesn’t let us peek through the curtain on their domestic arrangements.

The way you probably know a good marriage is that it doesn’t get mentioned by any Biblical writer. All the ones that get any substantial number of verses are such disappointments. The men die when they shouldn’t. Or they take too many wives. Or they sin grievously. Or they marry Jezebel. As for the women, they can be controlling (cough, Sarah, cough), and sometimes they pull out a tent peg at the eleventh hour.

I have often wondered why God is so careful never to offer a satisfyingly gritty and glorious picture of an actual marriage when that is one of the most beautiful and visceral metaphors of Christ’s relationship with the Church. I mean, my goodness, even Song of Songs is replete with devastation. Why wouldn’t God, who sets out so many useful laws and instructions about how to live, offer a real-life picture of what it’s supposed to look like? This is a great mystery to me personally, and I hope, by the end of the week, to have unravelled it to my own satisfaction.

First up, I want to peer, like a gossip and a busybody, into the courtyard of Lamech and his two beleaguered wives, Ada and Zillah. Let’s see how it plays out in the book of Genesis:

Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch. When he built a city, he called the name of the city after the name of his son, Enoch. To Enoch was born Irad, and Irad fathered Mehujael, and Mehujael fathered Methushael, and Methushael fathered Lamech. And Lamech took two wives. The name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other Zillah. Adah bore Jabal; he was the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock. His brother's name was Jubal; he was the father of all those who play the lyre and pipe. Zillah also bore Tubal-cain; he was the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron. The sister of Tubal-cain was Naamah. Lamech said to his wives:

“Adah and Zillah, hear my voice;
you wives of Lamech, listen to what I say:
I have killed a man for wounding me,
a young man for striking me.
If Cain's revenge is sevenfold,
then Lamech's is seventy-sevenfold.”

The mark of a good family is that you have some kind of lore attached to the names that you give. If it’s not Jabal and how he was so good with livestock and tent making, or Jubal and his lyre and pipe, it should at least be how Grandfather Josiah found the book of the law and killed all those priests of Baal, or how Grandpa Gene (that’s my grandfather) changed a tire in the middle of the night to the not distant enough sound of roaring lions because Aunt Sharon had put a crayon up her nose and the only doctor was 50 kilometers away and that when they got there she sneezed and the crayon came out on its own.

It’s hard to slog through all the names and chronologies of the Bible, but that’s only because we don’t remember them ourselves. A little digging and a little imagination, and the whole world of Lamech comes nicely into view.

Lamech is the son of Methushael, who is (guestimating) the great-great-great-great grandson of Cain (I probably counted wrong there). You remember Cain. He hit his brother Abel in the head with a rock and killed him out of jealousy and pride that Abel’s sacrifice had been accepted by God, and his wasn’t. It seems like Cain went off and married someone or other and probably had many sons, but only one of them has his line traced through in Holy Writ.

It’s been long enough to develop some false family narratives. Whatever is wrong with Lamech, at the very least, it’s because his descendants were never clued into the fact that Cain was the bad guy. They’re building cities and civilizations full of music, but also weapons of war—that was Tubal Cain’s particular gifting. Thus, we must try our best to imagine a world full of heartbreak, anger, bitterness, bad communication, and violence.

And polygamy, because Lamech gets the bright idea of not just being married to Ada but to Zillah also, and this must have been bitter to both of those women. I’m sure there were lots more children than these three and I imagine that on the surface, if you popped by to borrow a cup of sugar, they would have all been super friendly and accommodating and you would have stayed for a bit to catch up on the news, but underneath was a sea of sorrow and jealousy.

And Lamech seems, to me at least, not only violent, but authoritarian. He sings a little song, and they have to drop everything and sit down and listen to him. Who knows if he even had a nice singing voice?

“Adah and Zillah, hear my voice;
you wives of Lamech, listen to what I say:
I have killed a man for wounding me,
a young man for striking me.
If Cain's revenge is sevenfold,
then Lamech's is seventy-sevenfold.”

God is being satirical here, in the careful preservation of this ancient song of praise. Commentators and scholars point out that the word “man” could also be translated “child.” It could be a young man who puffs up his chest, who strikes with a fist. Or it could be a very young boy. Whereas the word “kill” is, well, that, and probably included one of those sharp weapons Tubal Cain was so clever at crafting.

Lamech seems like a treat, doesn’t he? We don’t get to know who are the mother and father of the young person he killed, nor the funeral lamentations, nor the social reverberations through the community in the aftermath of the death, only that Lamech is extremely proud of himself and his two wives have to congratulate him for being awful.

So there you are, a Great Marriage of the Bible. This isn’t one you should imitate to any degree, and God isn’t holding it out as a model. He’s not singing Lamech’s praises. Understated as ever, he invites the reader to be quick enough to catch the devastation, violence, and despair in the blank spaces between the words. He wants you to thirst for a different kind of marriage, one where the husband isn’t proud, isn’t demanding, and doesn’t take offense when he could have absorbed the anger and violence of others and put it to death in himself. It will be many long chapters before such a One appears, but what a happy day that will be.

Ok, so, I gotta go run my feet off. See you tomorrow!