The Biblical Use Of Marriage To Illustrate Covenantal Relationships

By J. Lanier Burns

[J. Lanier Burns is Research Professor of Theological Studies, Dallas Theological Seminary, Dallas, Texas.]

Abstract

This article explores the theme of marriage in the Bible with two foci in mind: theological method for biblical audiences, and Scripture’s use of itself to progressively develop its unified, Christ-centered message with marriage as a foundational paradigm for biblical audiences to understand truth. Investigation begins with prophetic texts that, though negative, clearly explicate Israel’s idolatry with covenantal marriage in the background. A second section looks back at creation for marital ideals “from the beginning.” Finally, the marriage/adultery metaphor is discussed from Revelation 17 through 21 to show that the paradigmatic theme extends from Genesis to the Revelation.

* * *

Introduction

The biblical authors did not have large libraries, nor were they motivated by an endless quest for professional degrees and credentials. Intelligent and wise, they wrestled with God-given revelation and familial traditions rather than exhaustive research on problematic pericopes for prestigious presses. Joseph and Daniel come to mind as outstanding consultants in their respective empires. Their guidance has filled sermons and textbooks, but their own insight came in dreams and visions from God. How did they do theology compared with how I have done it? In reading the Scriptures, I am constantly reminded of their priorities in doctrine that undercut the complexities of modern hermeneutics. I am not saying that we can or should abandon modern methods, but how would biblical authors and audiences have understood the plethora of options, issues, and principles that guide us? If theology is to be understood and developed analogically, then I wish to suggest that marriage (and family) was among the most basic illustrative guidelines for understanding God’s Word.

Second, the reflexive use of the Old Testament in the Old Testament (e.g., the prophetic calls to remember God’s goodness at the Exodus) and in the New Testament (e.g., the catena in Hebrews and the Revelation) suggests that the biblical authors were self-consciously constructing Christ-centered metanarratives. This means that the Bible is unified, progressively developing truth as the authors were carried along by the Holy Spirit. This becomes evident when tracing central themes through the Bible, for example, the marriage theme in Genesis through Revelation. The thematic links do not seem to be a coincidence. This exploration of the biblical teaching on marriage will begin in medias res in Ezekiel 16 and Hosea, because of their vividness and clarity,[1] and will proceed to the creation account of Genesis to expound what is “true from the beginning” about marriage as a prelude to conclusions about the subject in the Revelation.

The Adultery/Marriage Metaphor In Hosea And Ezekiel

Ezekiel 16 is a part of God’s oracles concerning judgment on Jerusalem and Judah for their idolatry, which is couched in an adultery metaphor (chaps. 13-24).[2] It precedes oracles of judgment against the nations (chaps. 25-32). The chapter highlights the love, grace, and justice of God as he “confront[s] Jerusalem with her detestable practices” (v. 1).[3] God noted that her ancestry and birth were in Canaan (16:1-6). Her father was Amorite, and her mother was Hittite.

On her birth day no one looked on her with pity and compassion, so she thrashed about with an uncut cord, unwashed and abandoned.[4] The femaleness of the chapter has been offensive to modern sensibilities. However, city as “female” and “mother” of her populations is a standard ancient Near Eastern portrayal. It had nothing to do with a patriarchal polemic against femaleness.[5] The extended metaphor used the royal city as an analogue for unbelieving Israel, male and female alike. The passage is important because Jerusalem’s wickedness had become proverbial: “Everyone who quotes proverbs will quote this proverb [a saying fixed in popular perception] about you: ‘Like mother, like daughter’ ” (v. 44). She had joined the family of Canaanite fertility cults and exceeded the wickedness of “sister” cities like Samaria and Sodom.[6] “Jerusalem must bear her disgrace and shame” (v. 54), because her sins had given depraved pagans comfort by comparison.[7]

God passed by as Jerusalem lay in her birth blood (v. 6).[8] The emphasis is on grace, since God alone cared. “As you lay there in your blood I said to you, ‘Live,’ ” a narrative expression of grace. God gave her life out of abandonment. He nurtured her to sexual maturity until she was ready for love (vv. 7-8). After his gracious claim and nurturing care, God “passed by” again and noticed that his adopted child was “old enough for love,” so he anthropomorphically spread the corner of his garment over her and covered her nakedness (v. 8). According to custom, the covering symbolized entering into the “covering” of a protective marriage relationship.

The imagery of covering and the importance of marriage for godly Israelites are illustrated in Ruth. In the era of the Judges, a famine drove Elimelech and Naomi from Bethlehem to Moab, where grain and goods were available east of the Dead Sea. Her husband and sons died, and after ten years “Naomi heard that the Lord had come to the aid of his people” (1:6). She had been transformed from Naomi (“pleasant”) to Mara (“bitter”) in afflictions allowed by the Almighty (1:20). In an agrarian society, women with no familial guardians were destitute. The goel provision (Deut. 25:5-6), as in Ruth, took place when a willing relative would marry the widow and prayerfully continue the family. Ruth birthed Obed, grandfather of David in the line of Jesus the Messiah (Ruth 4:18-22; Matt. 1:5-6). Seeing what had happened, Naomi’s friends said, “Praise be to the Lord, who this day has not left you [Naomi] without a kinsman-redeemer. May he become famous throughout Israel! He will renew your life and sustain you in your old age. For your daughter-in-law, who loves you and who is better to you than seven sons, has given him birth” (Ruth 4:14-15).

After spreading his garment over Jerusalem, God gave her “a solemn oath and entered into a covenant with her, according to the declaration of the Sovereign Lord, and you became mine” (Ezek. 16:8).[9] He graciously bathed her with water and ointments, and he gave extravagant gifts to her. He clothed her with “costly garments,” whose variegated materials reflected his own tabernacle and his sovereign status (vv. 10, 13). He adorned her with gold, silver, precious jewels, and a “beautiful wedding crown,” making her “renowned for her beauty among the nations” (vv. 12-14). He fed her delicious morsels of flour, honey, and olive oil (v. 13). The passage emphasizes that Israel did nothing to deserve the extravagance of the Lord; it was all of grace. “She became very beautiful and rose to be a queen” (v. 13). Jerusalem’s royal rank was underscored by her multicolored robe (cf. Ps. 45:14) and peerless treasures, “the perfection of beauty, the joy of all the earth” (cf. Ps. 48:1-2).

Then Ezekiel 16 takes a cataclysmic turn: “But you trusted in your beauty and used your fame to become a prostitute” (v. 15).[10] Jerusalem used God’s gifts for her idolatry: the clothes were used to make “gaudy high places” for Asherah worship, the jewelry was recast as male idols, and the food was offered to the idols (vv. 16-19). Even worse was child sacrifice (vv. 20-22; cf. 23:9-12, 37-39), reflecting the fact that the Israelites/Jerusalem had become oblivious to “the days of their youth, when they were naked and bare, kicking about in their blood” (vv. 23, 44-48). Sacrificing a child to the fire for Molech involved slaying the child and then burning its body as a sacrifice to the god. Ahaz was guilty of this (2 Kings 16:3), as was Manasseh (21:6). Jerusalem had become insatiable and bribed her enemies to participate in her prostitution. Patrick Miller comments on the metaphor of prostitution:

Such a metaphor is appropriate in part because of the similarity of the marriage relationship to the covenant relationship. Harlotry as going after lovers outside of and in violation of the relationship of undivided loyalty between husband and wife vividly uncovers the nature of Israel’s sin. That sin is further disclosed by the realization of the role of the sexual dimension in the fertility rites of Canaanite ritual and thus the further appropriateness of the imagery of adultery and harlotry as a way of depicting what Israel had done.[11]

Hence, “ ‘Woe, woe to you, adulterous wife,’ declared the Sovereign Lord” (vv. 23, 32). The outward cult reflected the inward decline of character to the point that her detestable conduct gave comparative comfort to her wicked sisters, Samaria and Sodom (v. 54, cf. 58 and the “mutual disgust” in 23:17-18, 28-29).

In summary, God’s family had been chosen in Abraham, “gestated” in Egypt, led to the promised land by Moses, and organized as a nation in Jerusalem by David and Solomon with royal palace and temple. In Ezekiel’s extended metaphor she had become an adulterous wife, prostituting God’s gracious gifts for idolatrous worship. God as the husband exemplified grace, and his city/people as the wife exemplified infidelity.[12] This shocking imagery of marriage is validated in the equally vivid drama of Hosea.

About a century and a half before Ezekiel, the Lord spoke through Hosea at a time when Israel and Judah were divided. Instead of an extended metaphor as in Ezekiel, God commanded the prophet to marry “an adulterous wife and to have children of unfaithfulness, because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the Lord” (1:2-3).[13] Gary Smith has noted:

God instructed Hosea to marry an ‘adulterous wife’ (1:2), an act that has caused great consternation among interpreters. . . . The moral problem involved with this exhortation makes some think that this whole story was just a vision or parable. . . . The plain meaning of these words cannot be easily escaped, however, for Gomer was to symbolize the fact that the land of Israel was full of people who had departed from the Lord and committed adultery by their involvement in the fertility religion of Baalism.[14]

The children of Hosea and Gomer were given “message names,” seemingly unbearable in their negative implications for God’s idolatrous people. Their first child was named Jezreel (“God has sown/planted”). The name was a reminder of judgment, a place that recalled Jehu’s elimination of the Omrid dynasty. In Hosea’s day Jehu’s dynasty was hopelessly corrupted and would be eliminated in another massacre in about thirty years (“soon”). In an indefinite future (“in that day”) the kingdom of Israel would fall to the Assyrians in the valley of Jezreel, which had become a byword for decisive battles. The second child was named רחמה לא (“she will not be shown compassion”), a widely understood allusion to covenantal curses. “Yet I will show compassion to the house of Judah,” God said (1:7). Judah was promised divine deliverance without military power in warfare. This hope apparently referred to God’s miraculous deliverance of Hezekiah from Sennacherib’s army in 701 BC, when 185,000 Assyrians were struck down in a single night (Isa. 36-37). The third child was named לא עמי (“not my people”), with Yahweh as the speaker and Israel as the referent. Israel’s identity was as a covenant nation under the Lord, so now her adulterous ways had severed her special relationship with God under the old order.

The hardness of the narrative is meliorated by a future when Judah and Israel will be reunited in faith and “will be called ‘sons of the living God,’ ” for “great will be the day of Jezreel” (vv. 10-11). Emphatically, “in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ they will be called ‘sons of the living God.’ ”[15] The goal of the discipline was repentance rather than destruction.

Hosea 2 continues the hope when brothers “will be my people, and sisters will be God’s loved ones” (2:1). But future descendants are told to rebuke their mother, who was behaving unwifely in unfaithfulness.[16] She, with her children, would be stripped of covenant provision and privilege and shamefully exposed (2:2-3; cf. Ezek. 23:10).[17] As in Ezekiel they would associate the nakedness of the mother/city with her bareness “as on the day she was born” (Hos. 2:3; cf. Jer. 3:2-3; 13:24-27). As did Jerusalem in Ezekiel, Gomer attributes her gifts to her “lovers” until she discovers that adultery is worthless (Hos. 2:7-8). Fertility was the expectation of Baalism, but Israel discovered that the fertility of the land was a gift of Yahweh and that Baal was sterile. As she pursued her lovers in vain, she finally discerned that they had used and abused her, humiliating her by publicly refusing her lewdness and promiscuity (vv. 5-13). “ ‘I will punish her for the days she burned incense to the Baals . . . but me she forgot,’ declares the Lord” (v. 13). At the heart of the indictment was the fact that Israel forgot her Lord.[18] Then at the end of her punishment, she would say, “I will go back to my husband as at first, for then I was better off than now” (v. 7; cf. Ezek. 23:12).

In Hosea and Ezekiel God will allure her in faithfulness to his covenantal promises, and she will “sing as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt” (Hos. 2:14-15).[19] “ ‘In that day,’ declares the Lord, ‘you will call me “my husband” [אישׁ]; you will no longer call me “my master” [בעל]. . . . In that day I will make a covenant for them’ ” (vv. 16-18; cf. 6:7, 81; Isa. 2:2-4, 11:6-9; 65:25) and will establish peace and safety in the land. In the future, because of God’s character, Israel’s “marital” relationship with God will be reaffirmed: “I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. I will betroth you in faithfulness and you will acknowledge the Lord” (Hos. 2:19-20).

The language suggests intimacy between partners in the marital covenant and a mutual embrace based on the faithfulness of Israel’s righteous and faithful Lord. The term for betrothal (ארשׂ) is used three times to emphasize the difference of the new covenant, which will not be “like the [old] covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt” (Jer. 31:32). In the new earth, “I will plant her for myself in the land; I will show my love to the one called ‘Not my loved one’ . . . I will say to those called ‘not my people,’ ‘you are my people’; and they will say ‘You are my God’ ” (Hos. 2:22-23). This is reflected in Revelation 21:3: “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God’ ” (cf. Jer. 7:23; 31:33; Zech. 8:8; 13:9; Gen. 17:7; Ezek. 34:30-31; 36:28; 37:27). The statement affirms not only covenantal restitution with a united Israel in faith but also God’s ideals for marriage as a metaphor of his relationship with his people: “I will betroth you to me forever, I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion, I will betroth you in faithfulness” (Hos. 2:19-20). The future realities stand in sharpest contrast to the immoral behaviors in the prophets’ world and ours.

Then Hosea was instructed by the Lord to show love to Gomer in spite of her adulteries to illustrate God’s love for Israel, though they had turned to other gods (3:1). So the prophet went to the market to redeem her from her addictive behavior, with the bridal price as a redemption from her debts. He told her, “You are to live with me for many days; you must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man, and I will live with you. . . . For the Israelites will live many days in exile . . . but afterward they will return and seek the Lord their God and David their king [the “one leader” of 1:11]. They will come trembling to the Lord and to his blessings in the last days” (v. 4). Here the return from exile becomes a typological preview of an eschatological return “in the last days.”

Ezekiel parallels Hosea in 16:59-63. Israel will be justly disciplined because she “despised my oath by breaking the covenant” (16:59; cf. v. 8 with Hos. 6:7). “Yet I will remember the covenant I made with you . . . and I will establish an everlasting covenant with you. . . . So I will establish my covenant with you, and you will know that I am the Lord” (Ezek. 16:60-62). What is the covenant that is emphasized in Hosea and Ezekiel? Is it a general notion of God’s marital relation with his people (a marital vow) or is it a particular promise with everlasting implications? Or is it both? Hosea assumes a generalized covenantal tradition as embodied in promises to Abraham, Moses, and David. The covenantal tradition testified to God’s faithfulness and Israel’s waywardness. The covenant in Ezekiel 16:8 is best explained in context as a marital vow, a covenantal commitment of faithfulness to Israel. However, the references to the everlasting covenant “in that day” probably refer to the new covenant in Jeremiah 31 and Ezekiel 36.[20] Jeremiah 31:31-33 decrees a new covenant, “which will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them [cf. 3:14] . . . I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts, I will be their God, and they will be my people.” Wolff draws on the last sentence to define the newness of the covenant: “God’s own finger will inscribe the heart—the organ which gives life its direction. . . . God’s Spirit is the pulsating life of this new heart.”[21] All of this is possible because of the forgiveness that is accomplished by the sacrificial death of the bride’s Messiah. The “ ‘days are coming,’ declares the Lord, when Jerusalem will be rebuilt . . . and will never again be uprooted or demolished” (31:40; cf. Rev. 21:1-5). In Ezekiel 36:27-38, “for the sake of his holy name,” the Lord will save his people, regather them to Jerusalem, and forgive them for their uncleanness. The cities and land will flourish “like the garden of Eden” and “they will know that I am the Lord” (v. 38).

In summary, Hosea featured an adulterous marriage in place of Ezekiel’s adulterous city. Idolatry and fornication were inextricably connected in the Old Testament to highlight Israel’s need to have integrity in her covenantal relationship with God. The negative images are forceful reminders of the seriousness of violating marriage between God and his people. Both Hosea and Ezekiel projected future blessing through the new covenant in the last days. The outworking of the covenant is a vindication of the character of God and his commitment to dwell forever with his people, so that “you will know that I am the Sovereign Lord” (Ezek. 23:49).

The Marriage Metaphor In Genesis

The marriage theme in the prophets is graphic and disturbing because of the effects of sin on God’s creation and in his people. But, in the words of Jesus, “It was not this way from the beginning” (Matt. 19:8). What then was the biblical standard for marriage from the beginning? According to Jesus, the Creator ordained marriage between male and female to exemplify his Trinitarian commitment to his people (19:4-6). Genesis 1:26-28 with 2:20-25 contain the biblical ideals of marriage, which are reduced to their foundational aspects: “God said, ‘Let us make humanity in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over all the other creatures in land and sea.’ So God created man in his own image . . . male and female he created them.” Then, in Genesis 2: “But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep . . . and he took one of the man’s ribs [from the center of his being]. . . . Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib . . . and he brought her to the man. The man said, ‘This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called “woman,” for she was taken out of man.’ For this reason a man will leave his father and mother [as initiator of covenantal relationship] and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.”[22] These ideals are developed in progressive revelation with explicit allusions by Jesus and Paul.

God’s initial statement of order in his new creation places marriage at the core of his will for the earth. The literal meaning of “be fruitful and multiply” is obviously in view for the pre- and post-diluvian genealogies in Genesis 5 and 10. It also applies to the families of the patriarchs in chapter 12 and following. But are there other layers of meaning beneath literal reproduction? The Bible itself exposes these layers as its authors reflect on creation and its culmination with humanity in God’s image.[23] Why does the Bible most often portray our ungendered God in a male role? Why is God so intimately involved in the creation of woman and the inception of marriage? Reproduction in view of later texts like Hosea, Ezekiel, and the Song of Songs analogically refers to “covenant” as God’s initiative of love and grace on behalf of his people. They, in turn, are to respond positively in faith as his covenantal partner. Humanity, in progressive revelation, is portrayed in a female role, exhibiting faith or unbelief, bride or harlot. God’s command in Ezekiel to “live” makes salvation analogous to marriage in the union of grace and faith.

The layers are exposed by terminology that begs for explanation. The plural “us” has been recognized as a crucial element, and it has been variously explained as God’s hosts, a plural of majesty, or as plurality within the Godhead.[24] Granting that the Trinity is not explicitly revealed here, we may note that triunity is an incommunicable attribute of God, who is living, unique, and Trinitarian, and his creation of humanity in his image would seem to suggest humanity as plural as well, as signified by marriage in chapter 2.[25] People are “male and female” in 1:27; therefore, they are social and plural by nature rather than individual in a modern sense. In Genesis 2:15-20 Adam named the lesser creatures, “but for himself no suitable partner/helper was found” (2:20). So God made woman from the center of his being to complement Adam and complete creation. Ross comments on the implication of a complementary partner, “God is usually the one described as the ‘helper’ (Exod. 18:4; Deut. 33:7; 1 Sam. 7:12; Ps. 20:2; 46:1). The word essentially describes one who provides what is lacking in man, who can do what the man alone cannot do.”[26] “This is now,” Adam sang, “bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh,” reflecting inward and outward union. Humanity is no longer single but couple, as ordered by and under the Creator. According to Barth, “any other form of the mutual relationship of man and woman alters their relationship to God. And every alteration of their relationship to God is betrayed by the disturbance and reversal of their normal and good mutual relationship.”[27] “Now,” in Barth’s words, “she is I as his thou,” and, I add, he is I as her thou.[28] “For this reason,” Genesis continues, “a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh” (2:24).[29] Interestingly, the separation from parents, with only an implication of family in the mandate to reproduce, highlights the fact that marriage is the foundation of human societies to come.

The covenant between man and woman in marriage introduces the mystery of God’s relationship with humanity. The God-given marital covenant points “upward” to the mystery of God’s ordained relationship with humanity. The negative was expressed in Ezekiel 16:59. “I will deal with you as you deserve, because you have despised my oath by breaking the covenant.” Hosea traces the theme of adultery to Adam’s disobedience: “Like Adam, they [Israel] have broken the covenant” (6:7). Positively, Paul in Ephesians 5:31 refers to the “cleaving” of Genesis 2:24 as “a profound mystery, but [δέ] I am talking about Christ and the church.”[30] Similarly, Genesis suggests that the theological covenant with humanity (and later Israel and the people of faith) is the inner basis of creation that points to its goal. Yahweh is always the Lover, Bridegroom, and Husband of his people. In the words of Isaiah 54:4, “Your Maker is your Husband—the Lord Almighty is his name—the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer, he is called the God of all the earth.” Here Yahweh initiates and preserves relationship with Israel as his wife. The human counterpart has failed miserably, but the grace of the divine “Husband” has kept the covenant promises alive. In a wider context the person is not individual but rather plural to point to our Trinitarian God who has decreed that he will not rule without us as his vice-regents.

Genesis further states, “The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame” (2:25, emphasis added). This first use of “both” points to their completed creation in plurality. They were one flesh under God, without embarrassment or alienation. In Gordon Wenham’s words, “Here, then, we have a clear statement of the divine purpose of marriage: positively, it is for the procreation of children; negatively, it is a rejection of the ancient oriental fertility cults.”[31] Shame is present only when there is disgrace. They apparently did not realize that they could experience anything but unity in marriage. With nothing to hide, they were “right” with God and one another. They were free to be human as masculine and feminine.

The nakedness and shame motif is the comparative fulcrum for the pre- and post-fall narratives. In Genesis 3:7, “Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked.” They disobeyed and their eyes were opened—not from blindness to sight but rather from naïvete to alienation. They realized a new reality: namely, the consequences of sin for their relationship with God and each other. “The trust of innocence is replaced by the fear of guilt.”[32] The repetition of “both” meant that they were aware of a mutual estrangement in sin. Their alienation from God was marked by their attempt to clothe themselves with inadequate coverings. Adam’s response to God was that he was afraid because he realized that he was naked (v. 10).

Our initial inclination may be that nakedness entails consequent exposure to abuse or exploitation. However, Hosea and Ezekiel point to a more profound meaning. Von Rad notes that, in general, “to appear naked before God was an abomination in ancient Israel. In the cult every form of bodily exposure was carefully guarded against (Exod. 20:26). If shame was the sign more of a disturbance in man’s relation to other men, then fear before God was the sign of a disorder in his relation to his Creator. Fear and shame are henceforth the incurable stigmata of the fall in man.”[33]

Hosea described the effect of sin as the loss of the blessing of God’s gifts: “I will strip her naked and make her as bare as on the day she was born” (2:3; cf. Ezek. 16:2-5). God’s forceful removal of Gomer/Israel’s clothes is attributed in Ezekiel to Israel’s lovers, who in callous revulsion “will strip you of your clothes and take your fine jewelry and leave you naked and bare” (16:39). Thus, “I will expose her lewdness before the eyes of her lovers” (Hos. 2:10). Barth concluded, “The awful genius of sin is nowhere more plainly revealed than in the fact that it shames man at the center of his humanity, so that he is necessarily ashamed of his humanity, his masculinity and femininity, before God and men.”[34] In other words, nakedness signified exposure to alienation from God and one another, the intimacy of marriage being transformed into guilt, blame, and ultimately death.[35] A history of heartache would bring tears, sorrow, crying, pain, and death (Rev. 21:4). The order of creation was lost in the chaos of sin; everything that had been created in a harmonious paradise was thrown into an evil absence of romantic ideals. The problem now was a problem of posterity, the “seed of the woman” pointing to a Son who would reconcile God and humanity in fulfillment of God’s stated will for the earth.[36]

In summary, disturbing images in the prophets prompt us to inquire about the marriage ideals behind Israel’s “adultery.” Creation in the image of God involved layers of meaning beneath the mandate to reproduce. Foundationally, the plurality of God is reflected in humanity’s plurality as male and female. In brief, marriage points to the “clothing” of covenant in divine and human relationships. Nakedness after the fall is the barrenness of alienation.

The Adultery/Marriage Metaphor In The Revelation

The familial implication of the marriage analogy extends from the fruitfulness of the image through the promises to the nation as Yahweh’s firstborn son: “Then say to Pharaoh, ‘This is what the Lord says: “Israel is my firstborn son, and I told you, ‘Let my son go that he may worship me’ ” ’ ” (Exod. 4:22-23). Firstborn as a metaphor means that Israel will inherit God’s promises for the earth. It reemerges with Hosea’s children and points to the Son of David, “the firstborn over all creation” (Col. 1:15), the leader who will unite all of Israel and all believers in himself (Hos. 1:10). The Bible points to the “last days,” when the harlot will die (Rev. 17-18) and the bride of Messiah will live (Rev. 19-21). John’s theology brings the family to the fore as his favored metaphor for the community of faith. In John 1:12 believers gain the right to be called the children of God. In 3:1-11 people must be reborn in the Spirit to be in God’s family, a fact that Israel’s teachers should understand (3:10). The apostle tirelessly instructed his children (τεκνία) toward their maturity in the family (παιδία, 1 John 2:12-14). The former term connotes training, while the latter one points to birthright. They should know that “this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, and even now many antichrists have come” (2:18). Revelation reintroduces unbelieving Israel as an adulteress in chapters 17 and 18 in the imagery of the prophets. Just as the prophets juxtaposed adulterous Israel in lifeless idolatry with the covenantal children of the living God (Hos. 1:10-11), so John compared the fall of the wicked city with the new Jerusalem when “God himself will be with them and be their God” (Rev. 21:3). The chapters are a catena of images and quotations from prophetic oracles against the nations and Israel.[37]

The harlot appears as an imperial city sitting on a global throne of unbelieving “peoples, multitudes, nations and languages” (17:1, 15).[38] The title on her forehead reads, “Mystery / Babylon the Great / The Mother of Prostitutes / and of the Abominations of the Earth” (v. 5).[39] She reigns through seven heads/kings and hills, who are given authority to rule with an eschatological eighth under the sovereignty of the Lamb, who is “Lord of Lords and King of Kings” (vv. 9-14).

The title was on her forehead, signifying identity and allegiance, whether to God (cf. 14:1; 22:4) or to the forces of Satan (cf. 13:16; 20:4): “If anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on the forehead or on the hand, he, too, will drink of the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath” (14:9-10). The harlot and the beast are inextricably bound together in eschatological adulteries. The connection of prostitution and political and economic power is deeply embedded in Scripture as evidenced in the prior discussions of Ezekiel and Hosea.[40] In Revelation 17:5 the harlot is “the mother of prostitutes and of the abominations of the earth.” Motherhood indicates both source (the birth process) and authority (the promotion of idolatry). Beale correctly infers that “ ‘Mother of the harlots’ also suggests that she relates to harlots in the same way that the beast relates to his heads and horns.”[41]

Also, she “held a golden cup in her hand, filled with abominable things and the filth of her adulteries” (17:4). The cup is the deceptively pleasurable receptacle of sin, which will intoxicate the world, making people drunken puppets of evil without rationality or inhibition. In Jeremiah 51:7-8 Babylon was “a gold cup in the Lord’s hand,” deceitfully enticing the nations to temporary prosperity and insecurity: “She made the whole earth drunk. The nations have now gone mad.” Even closer to Revelation 17 is Ezekiel 23, where Oholibah [Jerusalem] drained Oholah’s [Samaria’s] “large and deep” cup and was “filled with drunkenness and sorrow, the cup of ruin and desolation” (vv. 31-33). Her loss of sanity meant that she “was drunk with the blood of saints, the blood of those who bore testimony to Jesus” (Rev. 17:6). As Beale observes, “All forms of persecution are included under the portrayal of shed blood (see on 6:4, 9-11; 12:11).”[42] In Ezekiel 22:3-13 Jerusalem’s killing of her own “children” in the chaos of her idolatry made her the laughingstock of the nations. As in Ezekiel the forces of the beast will turn on the harlot, strip her to nakedness, and burn her in fire (Rev. 17:16-17).[43]

These descriptions of “Babylon the Great” are a “mystery,” which calls for “a mind of wisdom” for their comprehension (17:5, 9). The center of Nimrod’s kingdom was in Shinar. An ancient despot, he was an arrogant “hunter before the Lord.” His cities included Babylon and Nineveh and were called “the great city” (Gen. 10:8-12). From that time of post-diluvian development, “Babel” became the biblical center and symbol of worldly power and opposition to God and his people (cf. Rev. 14:8; 17:3). The imagery of arrogant imperialism seems to be based on Daniel 3 and 4, where Nebuchadnezzar set up an enormous idol of himself to be worshipped by “peoples, nations, and men of every language.” It was an imperial symbol of his power and pride, continuing the legacy of titanism in Genesis 11.[44] The king represented the world’s way of attaining power, influence, and prideful deification. Its vice was imprinted by Nebuchadnezzar’s boast in Daniel 4:30, “Is this not the great Babylon I have built as the royal residence, by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty?” Behind the immorality and oppression was an endemic arrogance (Isa. 13:11, 19; Jer. 50:31-32; cf. Zeph. 2:10-11, 15 for Assyria; Ezek. 28:2-8 for Tyre; and Ps. 10:6). Arrogance surfaces in Revelation 18:7 in the inviolable queen: “In her heart she boasts, ‘I sit as queen; I am not a widow, and I will never mourn.’ ” This boast is strikingly similar to Ezekiel 16:15, “But you trusted in your beauty and used your fame to become a prostitute. . . .” The self-glorifying “queen” is most explicit in Isaiah 47:5-8, when the “queen of kingdoms” was used by God to discipline his idolatrous people. In response, Babylon was oblivious to her role and claimed to be invincible: “You said, ‘I will continue forever—the eternal queen!’ . . . Listen, you wanton creature, lounging in your security and saying to yourself, ‘I am, and there is none besides me. I will never be a widow or suffer the loss of children” (vv. 7-8, 10). In other words, she would not lose her imperial status and economic prestige.[45]

In apocalyptic thought “mysteries” were truths to be discerned by revelation to godly wisdom (Rev. 10:7, “just as [God] announced to his servants the prophets”). The forces of the world seemed invincible, so the mystery was the end of global power in self-destructive fragmentation (cf. 17:16). Paul expressed the principle in 1 Corinthians 2:6-8: “We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we speak of God’s secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” Hence, the ironic way that overwhelming power will be weakened and crushed will be through the authority of “the Lamb . . . because he is Lord of lords and King of kings” (Rev. 17:14). The “last will be first,” and God will exalt the humble and humiliate the proud (cf. 1:5-7).

Revelation 17 and 18 involve a collection of doomed cities. Two of these are Rome and Tyre.[46] As Massyngberde Ford emphasizes, “Here, beyond the specific emperors to whom John refers, he sees the whole force of evil in all ages led by individuals whom the world follows and admires.”[47] However, “the great city” comes into sharper focus in Revelation 11:8: “Their [the martyred witnesses] bodies will lie in the street of the great city, which is figuratively called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified.” Ford states, “The great city in vs 8 cannot be other than Jerusalem.”[48] Jerusalem is clearly “the holy city” in the verses that precede; it is Zechariah’s eschatological city in Revelation 11:1-6. She is the object of Messiah’s lament as his opponent and the killer of the prophets (Matt. 23:29-39). The character of the city will become like Sodom and Egypt.[49] The modifiers are prominent in Ezekiel. Sodom was Jerusalem’s younger “sister,” the exemplar of wickedness (16:46-48). Egypt may symbolize persecution of Israel. However, Ezekiel 23 is more apt for the emphasis in the Revelation, when the prophet traces the origin of Jerusalem’s prostitution to Egypt “in its youth” (vv. 3-8, 20). In seeking to be “like the nations,” she “lusted after them and defiled herself with their idols (vv. 23-30).[50]

Finally, mention of “the great city” raises other questions about her identity: “The woman you saw is the great city that rules over the kings of the earth” (Rev. 17:18). The issue is important for this article because it seeks to demonstrate that the harlot/bride imagery is covenantal and that John is bringing the indictments and promises of Israel’s “Husband” from Ezekiel, Hosea, and the major prophets to their eschatological completion. Beale limited himself to a preterist hermeneutic and concluded that the city was a metaphor for the ungodly world in general.[51] The “great city” is for him the ungodly world-city.[52] No doubt, the global extent of the city supports a comprehensive judgment of “the whole force of evil in all ages,” as noted by Ford above. But John’s emphasis on the city seems to suggest more than a metaphor for an evil “spiritual realm.” He had much to say about the world system, but the culminating judgments in Revelation are too detailed for such a generic view of the harlot.[53] Admittedly, Jerusalem in the latter part of the first century is an unlikely choice for the imperial city in the Apocalypse.

Three reasons point to unbelieving Jerusalem as the eschatological city: a futurist perspective, John’s theology about Israel’s persecution of believers, and the literary symmetry of Revelation 17 through 21. First, if one takes the judgment of the harlot as a future event that will fulfill prophetic oracles and Roman typology, then the details can be reconciled with the Old Testament marriage/adultery emphasis, and the certainty of God’s promises are brought into sharp relief. One can discern that the types of Antichrist, whom the world admires, will culminate in the Beast himself, “who will oppose and exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God” (2 Thess. 2:4). Also, it will be a time when “the light of a lamp will never shine in you again. The voice of bridegroom and bride will never be heard in you [the great city] again” (Rev. 18:23).

Second, one of the strangest themes of John’s theology is his portrayal of the continuing hostility of Jerusalem and the Jews to Messiah and his followers.[54] From the Prologue John keynotes the theme that “he [the Word] came to his people, but his own did not receive him” (John 1:11). In 2:13-16 Jesus at the temple “found them selling cattle . . . and others sitting at tables exchanging money.” He drove the sacrifices out and scattered the coins of the money changers with the words, “Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father’s house into a market!” The passage parallels the connection between religion and commerce in Revelation 17 and 18.[55] Commerce was a priority among all classes in Jerusalem; even priests and scholars joined the ranks of the merchants. Joachim Jeremias concluded “that foreign trade had a great influence on the holy city, and the temple drew the largest share.”[56] In 6:41-42 and 7:41-44 the Jews grumbled about his divine claims in light of his humble parentage. The hostility reached a high point in 8:42-46, when the Lord accused “Abraham’s children” of belonging to “their father the devil.” “Salvation is from the Jews” (4:22), but “it was better . . . that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish” (11:50). In 9:22, “the Jews had decided that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the Christ would be put out of the synagogue” (cf. 12:42; 16:1). “The world” would hate believers as it had hated the Master without reason “to fulfill what was written in their Law” (15:18-19, 25).[57] This reference is important because it identifies “the Jews” with the world as the opponent of believers. Perhaps “the antichrists in the last hour” had a Jewish representation (1 John 2:18), since the liars denied that Jesus is the Christ (v. 22). Finally, in Asia Minor, the church in Smyrna was slandered by “those who say they are Jews but are not, but are a synagogue of Satan” (Rev. 2:9). One may conclude that the Jewish perversions in the prophets had continued to the first century and will resurface at the end of the age to be terminally judged at the return of Messiah. Eschatological Jerusalem, it seems, will incarnate the combined corruptions of world centers in the image of the prophetic oracles.

Third, Revelation 17 and 21 contrast the women and their cities. The notions of harlot and bride reflect their distinctive populations, and “cities” are their concrete, corporate form. Beale connects them with the transtemporal nature of the city: “She [the harlot] is set in contrast with . . . the Lamb’s bride (17:7-8; 21:2, 10) . . . The contrast is also evident from the strikingly identical introductory vision formulas in 17:9 and 21:9-10. The parallel suggests that when the seductive whore with all her false attraction is exposed and judged, then Christ’s bride will be revealed in all her purity and true beauty.”[58]

God declared that he “is making everything new” (21:5). The emphasis is on “new” (καινός) in terms of the passing away of the first heaven and earth. In the “new order” God “will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain” during the eternal blessing of his people (v. 4). It is a transformation in which the blessings of God are unleashed on behalf of his faithful saints; “the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, will come down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband” (21:2). An angel then carried John “away to a mountain, great and high” and showed him “the bride, the wife of the Lamb . . . the Holy City, Jerusalem” (21:9-10). These images refer to an assembly of saints who have persevered through “Babylon’s” oppression and have overcome in their worthy walk with the Lord (2:4). The bride faithfully held to “the testimony of Jesus” and “made herself ready” for her marriage. She will be graciously dressed in beautiful linen as a gift from God and will be vindicated by God’s judgments on her behalf. Her contrast with the harlot resurfaces Israel’s adultery and promised betrothal in Hosea 2 and Judah’s promiscuity and covenantal promise in Ezekiel 16 (cf. Isa. 54:5-6; 61:10-62:5).

The advent of the bride will establish the promised everlasting covenant in the prophets: “Now the dwelling of God is with men and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God” (Rev. 21:3). The greatest blessing will be this direct, untroubled fellowship with God forever. In the presence of God in the new order death will be no more. The ideal of a perfect community, a perfect family, will be realized. We have no language to fully express this, because the curse of sin has vitiated relationships between God and people in the first heavens and earth. We can only conclude that marriage is nothing less than a governing metaphor for God’s relationship with his people and their glorious future.

In summary, after the fall marriage and family emerge as important metaphors for the people of faith. Revelation features a harlot, who is “the great city,” the mother of evil forces facing the full wrath of God. Religious, political, and economic powers characterize the idolatrous city “where the Lord was crucified.” A futurist hermeneutic allows a striking literary contrast between the old Jerusalem as the great city and the new Jerusalem as the holy city. In the new creation “the bride” inherits the great blessing of the unhindered presence of God forever.

Conclusion

This article has traced the theme of marriage and its implications for the concepts of home and family as a hermeneutical model that the audiences of the Bible used to understand the truths of revelation. Its scope has limited its focus to marriage, leaving home and family for another discussion. In vivid prophetic texts, idolatry and fornication are inextricably connected to highlight Israel’s need for integrity in her covenantal relationship with God. “From the beginning” marriage involved layers of meaning that were couched in the mandate to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” The plurality of persons in God’s single being was reflected in humanity’s plurality as male and female “in one flesh.” That is, marriage points to the “clothing” of covenant in divine and human relationships. After the fall adultery becomes a metaphor for idolatry and is applied to Israel, who broke her covenantal vows with God. The prophetic “pattern” of judgment and blessing resurfaces in the Revelation, where the great, idolatrous city where the Lord was crucified contrasts strikingly with the Holy City, in which “the bride” will inherit eternal worship and the blessings of God forever.

The marital grid would have been easily accessible, since marriage and the family are presented as the foundation of societies from the creational account. It was not the only model, for subjects like agriculture were important as well. Biblical marriage, however, is supremely important for issues that we face today: unnatural sexuality, gender confusion, moral anarchy, and prolific divorce are on the table. But our concern here is not with contemporary issues per se. I would submit that enlarged themes are more convincing evidences for God’s commitment than proof texts at a time when opponents attack the foundations of the Judeo-Christian convictions about life and world. Girgis, Anderson, and George insightfully argue for essential matters: “Marriage is, of its essence, a comprehensive union. . . . It has long been and remains a personal and social reality, sought and prized by individuals, couples, and whole societies. . . . The health and order of society depend on the rearing of healthy, happy, and well-integrated children. . . . redefining marriage in the public mind bodes ill for the common good.”[59] Prayerfully, marriage as a foundational paradigm for biblical truth can guide our interpretation and communication with clarity to our own generation.

Notes

1. Ezekiel 22-23 contains a similar indictment against the prostitution/idolatry and corruption of Jerusalem. The taunts are even more graphic than chapter 16 (e.g., 23:20). Chapter 23 completes the series of oracles of judgment on Judah and Jerusalem begun in chapter 13. Scripture quotations in this article are from NIV (1984).
2. The form of the oracle consists of an expanded accusation (vv. 3-34) and an announcement of punishment (vv. 35-43). Its conclusion is a message of hope for an everlasting covenant that is couched in the mercy and grace of God that frames the chapter as a whole. In between Yahweh’s initial and eschatological grace lies a chasm of broken covenant in Israel’s career as an “adulterous wife.”
3. John Day, “Ezekiel and the Heart of Idolatry,” Bibliotheca Sacra 164 (January–March 2007): 30. “Through Ezekiel God not only revealed just how deeply seated idolatry is; He also revealed how deeply wrong it is. The steady penchant for idolatry is nothing less than flagrant adultery. This fact shows how God feels about idolatries against Him, who is the believers’ faithful Lover and covenant Husband.”
4. The normal treatment of a newborn baby is described by F. W. G. Masterman, “Hygiene and Disease in Palestine in Modern and in Biblical Times,” Palestine Exploration Fund, Quarterly Statement (1918): 112-19. The adoption of a newborn child while still “in its amniotic fluid and birth blood” meant that the baby could not be reclaimed by its natural parents (cf. M. Malul, “Adoption of Foundlings in the Bible and Mesopotamian Documents: A Study of Some Legal Metaphors in Ezekiel 16.1-7, ” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 46 [1990]: 97-126).
5. John Taylor, Ezekiel: An Introduction and Commentary, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1969), 133. Taylor writes, “Although the city of Jerusalem is specifically addressed (2, 3), the parable applies to the whole nation and its history.” This is true, but he does not mention that humanity is portrayed as female in the chapter and the ancient Near East in general, especially in the figurative sense as “city.”
6. Ezekiel 23 indicts Jerusalem (Oholibah = “my tent is in her”) and Samaria (Oholah = “her tent”). They are called “lewd women” (23:44). “Tent” is best interpreted as a reference to sanctuaries in each city that highlights idolatry as the foundational sin that led to their pervasive corruption (cf. 23:30-31).
7. Ralph Alexander, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 6, Isaiah–Ezekiel (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Regency, 1986), 817: “This saying was equivalent to our ‘Like father, like son.’ Jerusalem, Sodom, and Samaria had all been nourished in the perverted religious systems of the land of Canaan.”
8. Julie Galambush notices the contrast between Yahweh’s doubly passing by ((ואעבר in verses 6 and 8 and the double mention of “every passerby” (כל־עובר) in verses 15 and 25, referring first to Canaanite gods and then to foreign nations (Jerusalem in the Book of Ezekiel: The City as Yahweh’s Wife, SBL Dissertation Series [Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992], 100-1).
9. The image of marital covenant is the historical reality of Jerusalem’s becoming Israel’s capital (cf. 2 Sam. 5:12). “She became mine” is a declaration of the “marriage” pact.
10. “The lynchpin of this development is her renown and beauty, which featured in v. 14 and now in reverse in v. 15. There is a new independence, a wrongful self-confidence that leads to the transfer of her sexual vigor (vv. 7-8) to the street” (Leslie Allen, Ezekiel 1-19, Word Biblical Commentary [Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1994], 239).
11. Patrick Miller Jr., Sin and Judgment in the Prophets, SBL Monographs (Chico: CA: Scholars Press, 1982), 7; cf. Francis Anderson and D. N. Freedman, The Anchor Bible: Hosea (New York: Doubleday, 1980), 323.
12. A helpful summary of the fullness of the metaphor in Ezekiel can be found in Galambush, Jerusalem in Ezekiel, 159-63.
13. Hosea’s marriage has occasioned much discussion. Leon Wood summarizes the options and prefers a literal marriage in which Gomer became a prostitute later (The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 7, Daniel-Minor Prophets [Grand Rapids: Zondervan Regency, 1985], 164-67). Douglas Stuart holds that Gomer and the children were a “prostituting woman and children” because they were members of an adulterous nation that cohabited with all sorts of syncretistic doctrines and practices. In his view, the woman in chapter 3 was a new wife who was a prostitute (Hosea–Jonah, Word Biblical Commentary [Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1987], 26-7, 34, 65-8). Stuart notes, “Orthodox Yahwism had become a small minority religion in Israel by Hosea’s time, judging from the consistently discouraging reports of its status in the historical books and the prophets” (ibid., 10).
14. Gary Smith, The NIV Application Commentary: Hosea/Amos/Micah (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001), 45-46. Stuart adds, “Prostitution is Hosea’s most common metaphor for the covenant infidelity that provoked Yahweh’s wrath against Israel, and the term is used in that sense throughout the book” (Hosea–Jonah, 27).
15. The phrase בני אל חי (“children of the living God”) occurs as such only in Hosea.
16. “God asks the children to bring accusation against their mother in support of his own lawsuit against her. . . . The issue of divorce is at any rate secondary to the main point of the allegory” (Stuart, Hosea, 47).
17. The revulsion over Judah’s lewdness and the stripping of her blessings should be seen as a blending of sexual imagery, political ineptitude, and religious compromise in her alliances with Egypt and Chaldea. Judah’s alliances and concomitant compromises are portrayed as dalliances. Delbert Hillers has shown that being stripped naked like a prostitute is one metaphor for breaking the treaty covenant (Treaty-Curses and the Old Testament Prophets, Biblica et Orientalia [Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1964], esp. 58-59). Jerusalem/Judah was stripped of God’s gifts with no return. “Ezekiel inherited a developed prophetic tradition in which sexual infidelity was used as a metaphor for both Israel’s adoption of Canaanite religion . . . and for political alliances with foreign powers. . . . His blending of both themes is an instance of his frequent dependence on earlier prophecy” (Allen, Ezekiel 1-19, 235). “The hostility of the prophets to such political affiliations was only partly because they regarded them as showing a lack of trust in the protecting power of Yahweh. The main reason was that in any such alliance between a lesser and a greater power, it was normal for the weaker party to take into its religious system the gods and the worship of the stronger as a sign that they were accepting his patronage. So here the religious and political are closely intertwined in the interpretation of the allegory” (Taylor, Ezekiel, 138-39). Cf. J. A. Thompson, “Israel’s ‘Lovers,’ ” Vetus Testamentum 27 (1977): 475-81. Throughout the chapters, the legal metaphor stands with the love parable.
18. On the other hand, in Revelation 16:19 God “will remember Babylon the great and give her the cup filled with the wine of the fury of his wrath.”
19. The narrative moves through three stages that are marked by “therefore” (2:6, 9, 13): He would symbolically hedge his people like farm animals; he would sovereignly render the land sterile; and he would entice her back with loving promises. The Valley of Achor, a notorious site of holy war disobedience (Josh. 7) would be transformed into a “gate of hope” (2:15). The versification for Hebrew and English texts differ. This article follows the verses in the English translations. The second half of the oracle is structured around three “in that day” promises (2:16, 18, 21) to describe eschatological realities.
20. Allen cites Renaud in asserting, “Here the evidently new character of the covenant as everlasting suggests the establishment of a new, different covenant: cf. Jer. 31:31-34, which may well underlie this passage” (Ezekiel 1-19, 232, n. 60a).
21. Hans Walter Wolff, Confrontations with Prophets (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), 55.
22. Karl Barth describes the passages as “the Magna Carta of humanity” (Church Dogmatics, Vol. III, Pt. 1: The Doctrine of Creation, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance, trans. J. W. Edwards, O. Bussey, and H. Knight [Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1958], 291).
23. Barth argues that the Song of Songs mirrors Genesis 2 as the Shulammite celebrates her lover with “my lover is mine, and I am his” (2:16; cf. 6:3) (ibid., 313). A balanced description of the ideals and disorders of marriage in the Old Testament can be found in Hans Walter Wolff, Anthropology of the Old Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974), chap. 19.
24. The subject concerns our topic only if plurality in the Godhead is a premise for humanity in his image and for covenantal insights. The issues are insightfully summarized by D. J. A. Clines, “The Image of God in Man,” Tyndale Bulletin 19 (1968): 53-104.
25. There has been a tendency to explain the image as a specific aspect or “part” of humanity, such as reason, but Gerhard von Rad cautions, “One will do well to split the physical from the spiritual as little as possible: the whole man is created in God’s image” (Genesis: A Commentary, rev. ed. [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1972], 58).
26. Allen Ross, Creation and Blessing: A Guide to the Study and Exposition of the Book of Genesis (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1988), 126.
27. Barth, The Doctrine of Creation, 308. Barth uses the analogia relationis to assert that creation in the image of God is not homo solidarius, but rather homo relationis. Just as God is not the solitary God but the Trinitarian God, humankind in God image was created for genuine mutuality and reciprocity in an I-Thou relationship.
28. Ibid., 309.
29. “This is the language of covenant commitment. Marriage depicts God’s relationship to his people (Hos. 2:14-23; Eph. 5:22-32)” (Bruce Waltke with Cathi Fredericks, Genesis: A Commentary [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001], 90). Physical intercourse reflects the inner union of the couple as “one flesh.”
30. The reader should consult S. F. Miletic, “One Flesh”: Eph. 5:22-24, 5:31, Marriage and the New Creation, Analecta Biblica (Rome: Editrice Pontificio Instituto Biblico, 1988), esp. chap. 5. The biblical ideals from Genesis to Paul must be understood as starkly different from ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern backgrounds. The general pattern was strictly paternalistic and expressed in subordinate terms analogous to master-and-slave. Polyandry and polygyny were attested from earliest recorded history. Demosthenes argued that “companions” were kept for pleasure, concubines for personal service, and wives for producing “legitimate” children. Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics) wrote that women were naturally inferior. Philo justified men’s domination of women with the dichotomy of reason over sensuality. Marriage generally could be terminated with ease; the male simply dismissed his wife by “returning” her to her paternal home. According to Svetlana Renee Papazov, “The Place of Women in the Graeco-Roman World, Part 1,” “Paul’s commands for husbands and wives in Ephesians 5 provided a completely new way to look at marriage: as an earthbound illustration of the spiritual mystery of the union of Christ and His bride—the church” (accessed February 10, 2016, http://enrich-mentjournal.ag.org/201004/201004_ 000_christian_women.cfm, 7).
31. Gordon Wenham, Genesis 1-15, Word Biblical Commentary (Nashville: Nelson Reference, 1987), 33.
32. Ibid., 76.
33. Von Rad, Genesis, 91.
34. Barth, The Doctrine of Creation, 292.
35. Waltke, Genesis, 92: “In the Bible ‘arum usually describes someone stripped of protective clothing and ‘naked’ in the sense of being defenseless, weak, or humiliated (Deut. 28:48; Job 1:21; Isa. 58:7).” According to Ross, “The motif of nakedness, introduced before, obviously stands for more than a lack of covering, in view of the shame and fear that was generated over it. From this event on, all sinners will fear the Lord God when their guilt is uncovered” (Creation and Blessing, 144). Jonathan Magonet, “Themes in Genesis 2-3, ” in A Walk in the Garden: Biblical, Iconographical, and Literary Images of Eden, ed. Paul Morris and Deborah Sawyer, JSOT Supplement (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1992), 43: “The inescapable conclusion from these usages is that the primary significance of the Hebrew ערום, ‘nakedness,’ (in its various forms), is not sexuality at all but a state of defenselessness and helplessness, without possessions or power. For the first time, on seeing themselves through the eyes of God, the two human beings perceive their weakness, frailty, and dependence.”
36. John Collins, Genesis 1-4: A Linguistic, Literary, and Theological Commentary (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R, 2006), 157: “We may say that Genesis fosters a messianic expectation, of which this verse is the headwaters.”
37. G. R. Beasley-Murray observes that Johannine theology is “the product of a mind soaked in the Old Testament to a degree to which no other work in the New Testament approximates” (John, 2nd ed., Word Biblical Commentary [Nashville: Nelson, 1999], lxix).
38. The populations as “waters” probably refers to the ocean and its Leviathan, a monster that spreads chaos through the “inhabited earth.”
39. The imagery seems to parody the golden plate on the high priest’s turban that was inscribed with “HOLY TO THE LORD” (Exod. 28:36; 39:30-31). “However, instead of the sacred name upon his brow the ‘priest-harlot’ bears the name Babylon, the mother of harlots and the abominations of the earth, a title illustrating Ezek. 16:43-45 (RSV), where Yahweh speaks of the lewdness of Jerusalem” (J. Massyngberde Ford, Revelation: Introduction, Translation, and Commentary, Anchor Bible [Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975], 288).
40. The equation of “abominations” (idolatry) and fornication (adultery) is evident in Ezekiel 6:9 and 16:22. Wisdom 14:12 states, “Idols have become . . . a snare to the feet of the unwise . . . for the desire for idols was the beginning of fornication.”
41. G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 859.
42. Ibid., 860.
43. According to Leviticus 21:9, “If a priest’s daughter defiles herself by becoming a prostitute, she disgraces her father; she must be burned in the fire.” This implies that the harlot imagery concerns the defilement of the sanctuary with appropriate judgment.
44. Daniel 4:11 describes Nebuchadnezzar as “a tree . . . whose top touched the sky; it was visible to the ends of the earth.”
45. The blasphemous aspect of the boast stood in sharp contrast to the eternal claims of invincibility by the Lord in Isaiah 43:11-13. One is also reminded of the worldly complacency of Laodicea: “You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked” (Rev. 3:17).
46. For Rome the “seven heads are seven hills on which the woman sits” (Rev. 17:9). G. B. Caird stated, “Latin literature is full of references to this well-known feature of Roman topography (Virgil, Geor. ii.535; Aen. Vi.783; Horace, Carm. 7; Ovid, Trist. 1.5.69; Mart. Iv. 64; Cicero, ad Att. Vi.5; cf. Or. Sib. Ii. 18; xiii.45; xiv. 108)” (The Revelation of St. John the Divine, Harper’s New Testament Commentaries [New York; Harper & Row, 1966], 216; cf. George Beasley-Murray, New Century Bible: The Book of Revelation [London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1974], 260-61). The dirge in Revelation 18:12-20 alludes to the lament for Tyre in Ezekiel 27 (cf. Isa. 23:8-9). Revelation 18 is structured by four dirges over the great city’s fall, which are sung by an authoritative angel (vv. 2-3), kings (vv. 9-10), merchants (vv. 15-17), and sailors (vv. 18-20). Finally, a “mighty angel” will throw a large millstone into the sea to symbolize the destruction of the city (vv. 21-24). “Another voice from heaven” summoned “my people” (cf. Hos. 2:1) to flee from the city, because “her sins are piled up to heaven,” ripe for judgment (Rev. 18:4-5; Gen. 11:4; Jer. 50:8-9; 51:6-9), much as the “bricks” of arrogant Babel prompted judgment by the sovereign Creator.
47. Ford, Revelation, 281.
48. Ibid., 180, cf. 285-86. Ford cites a number of sources for the view, including Josephus and sectarian Jewish writings. Beale also acknowledges sources that equate the harlot and Jerusalem, but he discounts them. Jeremiah 22:8-9 is apropos, “People from many nations will pass by this city and will ask one another, ‘Why has the Lord done such a thing to this great city?’ And the answer will be, ‘Because they have forsaken the covenant of the Lord their God and have worshiped and served other gods.’ ”
49. Πνευματικῶς has been variously rendered as “figuratively,” “spiritually,” or “allegorically.” Undoubtedly, it means that the great city is not Sodom and Egypt literally. The city’s character is like these centers of wickedness.
50. Ezekiel 16 included Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon in the seduction of Israel as well as surrounding cities and nations.
51. The preterist view seeks to explain the Revelation in terms of the first century and the Roman Empire (cf. Andrew Woods, “Have the Prophecies in Revelation 17-18 about Babylon Been Fulfilled? Part 6,” Bibliotheca Sacra, 170 [April–June 2013]: 194-214).
52. Beale, Revelation, 591-92.
53. David Reimer observes a “blending” of the oracles against Babylon and Judah: “Judgement spoken against Judah is also judgment spoken against Babylon” (The Oracles against Babylon in Jeremiah 50-51: A Horror among the Nations [San Francisco: Mellen Research University, 1993], 257).
54. There are 71 references to “the Jews” in 77 verses in the Gospel; 30 have a neutral meaning or refer to Jewish believers, and 41 depict the Jewish people or their leaders as hostile toward Jesus. The hostility becomes increasingly explicit as the crucifixion approaches. John was without doubt a Jewish believer who earnestly sought the salvation of his kinsmen as Paul did in Romans 9:1-7.
55. Beasley-Murray, John, xxxiii: “It is not clear why Jesus is so emphatic that he will be seized by the Jewish leaders and handed over to death when he goes to Jerusalem. . . . He weeps over the city and declares the impending day of the Lord on the city and its temple and its people.”
56. Joachim Jeremias, Jerusalem in the Times of Jesus, trans. F. H. and C. H. Cave (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1967), 36.
57. “As has been long been seen, the Jews appear basically as the historically concrete cipher for the kosmos, the human world separated from God and hostile to him” (Martin Hengel, The Johannine Question, trans. John Bowden [London: SCM, 1989], 119).
58. Beale, Revelation, 859.
59. Sherif Girgis, Ryan Anderson, and Robert George, What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense (New York: Encounter, 2012), 6-7.