As a young man marries a young woman, so will your Builder marry you; as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you. – Isaiah 62:5

Today’s Scripture Reading (January 5, 2014): Isaiah 62

The idea of marrying for love is a fairly recent development of society, although admittedly it is hard for us to understand any other reason to marry. Today, marriage is a commitment and a contract between two people who choose to face the challenges of life together. Although the top two fights in a modern marriage are listed in almost every study as being caused by money and sex, a modern marriage is really based on so much more. And the expectation in every marriage is that both of the partners will become the absolute best that they can be because of the union.

But an ancient marriage was quite different. An ancient marriage was an economic contract for the benefit of only one of the partners. In a male dominated culture like the Middle East, the benefitting partner was always the male. The question in almost every marriage was not do I love you, but rather how will I benefit from marrying you – a benefit that included but also went beyond jut the bearing of healthy children. It is not that love was totally absent, but it was not the priority and often showed up later in the relationship.

Because of the economic nature of a marriage, in every marriage a woman who was a virgin was valued higher than a woman who was widowed or divorced. And that is the meaning of the phrase “young woman” in this passage. The allusion of Isaiah is to the marriage of highly desirable woman – a virgin - by a man. Even a man who had married before would value a young, never before married woman over one who had been married before. And Isaiah says that God desires this kind of marriage relationship with Israel. But there is also an irony hiding in Isaiah’s words – there is absolutely no way that Israel could be considered either a virgin or a young woman. In fact, Israel was not even a widow. Israel was an unfaithful divorcee. She had bounced around in her relationships with the various gods of the land and had been faithful to absolutely none of them. And yet, Isaiah says that she is still desired by God. And not only desired, but desired in a way that young man desires a young woman or a virgin. It is as if God was willing to ignore all of Israel’s unfaithful behavior and accept her as if her unfaithfulness had never happened.

And this is really the beauty of the Christian message. The attractiveness of the message has never been that we are a perfect people – we know that that is not true. But God desires us even though we have not been faithful, accepts us as if we had been faithful, and rejoices over us as if we are the most valuable possession that he has. It is a position that neither we nor Israel deserved, but in God it is our reality. And the hope of God is that we will live our lives reflecting the value that he sees in us, even though we may not see it in ourselves.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Isaiah 63