To be clear, legally, in most jurisdictions, marriage is an institution held largely between one man and one woman, a traditional marriage that most Christians believe is described in Genesis 2:24.
In recent history, some areas have opened up the institution to include same sex marriages, but that is a slightly different debate.
It seems that all around us, there are conversations on the subject. One generation ago, you never encountered that discussion. Of course, there were some polygamous groups in Utah and Arizona, universally regarded as cults, but there were no mainstream debates on the subject of polygamy or what constituted a marriage. There certainly were none about same sex marriage. All of that has changed in recent years.
On college campuses, open debates on the subject are common. The term “Poly relationship” is a phrase known to all, and those forms include both polyandry (one woman and multiple men) as well as Polygamy (one man with multiple women). The other term that is increasingly used is Polygyny, meaning one man and multiple women outside of a marriage. In former times, this would commonly be described as a wife or wives, and concubines. Today, it typically refers to a couple with a girlfriend. More often than not, the sexuality within these relationships extends not only between the genders but also within the same gender participants.
All of those other discussions have been explored in other posts, or will be in future ones. The matter I want to deal with today is the root conversation of biblical marriage and the widely held belief within the Christian church that the form ordained by God is one man and one woman; a Genesis 2:24 Marriage.
There is currently a widespread debate regarding “marriage” and its definition. One popular theme of these conversations is marriage being defended and defined as a convention held between one man and one woman. As part of that debate, one “evidence” of the truth of that position is often given as Genesis 2:24, wherein it is said that the proof of God’s intention, one man and one woman, is stated. I want to examine that argument.
Actually, the subject of this passage of scripture isn’t marriage; it is the manner in which a man starts his lineage and his household by taking a woman to himself. Similarly, the point of a woman joining a man is that it is the symbolic return of his rib. That is why Genesis 2:24 starts with the phrase, “For this reason.” In the Hebrew tradition, females were not considered complete beings unless they were part of a man’s household, part of his biological lineage… first as a daughter, then as the property of another man. This belonging could be as a wife, a concubine, or a slave. I explain this in much more detail in my paper about Hebrew family structures. Two Societies Article
In Genesis 2:24 the Hebrew word for man is eesh; contracted from en-oshe'. It is an “absolute” noun, meaning that its use is singular, referring to a man as an individual or a male person, with an emphasis on gender distinction.
The word for woman is ish-shaw’; the feminine of eesh, (a male), except Ish-shaw’ is an irregular plural noun. It is similar to the word “deer” in that it is both singular and plural, not limited in use to a singular sense. That is the same word used in 2:23, which is translated into “woman”, which is appropriate. When it is translated into “wife,” it is a cultural appropriation, as the modern concept of marriage didn’t exist in Hebrew times. This means that what Genesis 2:24 actually states is that to establish a new lineage, a singular male leaves his father’s family and is joined with the first female.
To be continued