Thoughts to Ponder: 1.01 Leaving father and mother

[Memphis Dwight]

That phrase in Genesis:
Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh, GEN 2:24.

Could this phrase, leave his father and mother, be rightly understood within the context of the man starting his own family? And if this is within that setting, then could the leaving mean that in his selecting of a wife, he goes outside of the immediate family?

Would this be another way of stating it:
A man chooses a woman not of direct kin to his father or mother (either by blood or law) and he forms a covenant (cleaves) with her and they become family (one flesh).

 

[CecilW]

Well .. Hmmm ...

Makes sense. A bit hard on Cain, Able, and Seth though, don't ya think.

I suspect that it has more to do with getting out on his own, and moving from dependence to independence, prior to attempting lifelong interdependence.

But I do understand that there are parts of the country where your interpretation might be fairly apropos. *grin*

 

[Memphis Dwight]

Cecil,
I actually anticipated that objection.

But lets think on all of this for a moment. Now Adam didn't have a father and mother to leave so it didn't' apply to him, right?

And Cecil, for the first two or three generations, none of the offspring of Adam and Eve would have been able to marry and not violate the instructions of the not-yet-given Leviticus 18, correct? Do you agree with that?

Because there were no women outside of "father and mother" in the Levitical sense, they wouldn't have been able to fulfill the command to multiply, so, maybe the injunction went into full effect after the first two or three generations? Remember, the Lev 18 specifications nowhere forbids the marrying of first cousins.

 

[Memphis Dwight]

I suspect that it has more to do with getting out on his own, and moving from dependence to independence, prior to attempting lifelong interdependence.

That is what I once briefly believed until I put more thought into it. What if a man was not able to leave his father and mother because of some circumstance? Would his union with a woman be fornication?
I think the phrase can only make sense when it is connected with the idea of taking a wife.
Leaving father and mother / cleaving to wife / becoming one flesh are not just three steps but rather the description of the process itself.

Leaving father and mother as opposed to marrying within the family.
Cleaving as in forming the covenental contract.
Becoming one flesh as in seeing the wife as part of his own flesh, family.

 

[CecilW]

You're welcome to your opinion, as I hope I'm welcome to mine.

I agree that the three steps are the PROPER order, and should be followed, and could describe either process.

However, I believe that the union is created once physical intimacy has occurred, and if done out of order, the rest of the steps must occur for it to be a healthy / complete marriage. That belief fits better with my scenario. If he marries without having left his folks and becoming independent, he's got problems ahead.

If he's not capable of going out on his own and establishing his own household, best not marry.

As to it not being possible to multiply in the early generations, why not. God made two. If they had 4 or 20 kids, and those paired up and did similar things, spreading (physically, as in my scenario) around the area, that sounds like pretty rapid multiplication to me.

But truth is often like onions -- layers. Maybe your scenario is truth as well.

 

[Anonymous]

Abraham married his sister. So not always leave the family, but i get your point. The incest laws were not until Moses.

 

[CecilW]

The incest laws were not until Moses.

... And maybe less a matter of morality than practical genetics by that point in the devolution of the human race.

Perhaps all the more so now! Thus bringing Dwight's onion layer of meaning into play.

 

[JayandRain]

I don't know about you guys, but I know women who have popped out at least one baby every one to two years. Adam and Eve lived to see past 900 years of age. That's a LOT of people if they've had many children, and those children had even more children.
That explains where Cain went after he was banished. He built a city called Enoch where he created children of his own.

 

[Memphis Dwight]

rms,
I don't think Abraham actually married his sister or half sister. That was part of a fib he told.
I have heard that Sarah was his niece however, and that was not prohibited under the Levitical
pronouncements.

 

[Memphis Dwight]

Cecil,
Maybe what you're saying and what I'm saying are not entirely in opposition to each other. I think that one view is more or less under the umbrella of the other.

Maybe the emotional/financial independence is a subset of the leaving father and mother..

But I still think that the most basic meaning is that the 3 steps are seen as a cumulative set of actions and that they are all geared up to work together.

There is a method to my madness. I am working thru these phrases from a fresh perspective, tossing aside all of what I've read from the dead commentaries. This is in order that I might be able to more effectively teach about polygamy and defeat the Romanistic philosophy that has enslaved mankind for quite some time.

 

[Memphis Dwight]

I don't know about you guys, but I know women who have popped out at least one baby every one to two years. Adam and Eve lived to see past 900 years of age. That's a LOT of people if they've had many children, and those children had even more children.
That explains where Cain went after he was banished. He built a city called Enoch where he created children of his own.

Josephus records that Adam and Eve had something like either 53 or 56 children. I forget the exact number. Now Josephus was most likely going on oral tradition but he was probably pretty close to being right.

 

[Lionking]

May I give my two cents here? I am agreeing more with Cecil on this matter because I believe that as you said the prescribed way to go about marriage is given in scripture; that a man should leave father and mother first. This leaving father and mother first however does not mean you cannot marry kin-folk, just not any immediate kin like sisters or aunts; but cousins I believe are fair game, especially if they are distant cousins.

The part about agreeing with Cecil is that if he doesn't follow to the letter the prescribed way, he may run into a bit of trouble later on, but it doesn't however detract from the legitimacy of any marriage he may make whether he follows the prescribed way or not.

Lionking.

 

[Memphis Dwight]

Actually it doesn't say that a man should leave his father and mother first.. the word first is something you supplied.

If a man must leave his father and mother in a geographical sense, then how far should he go?

If in an emotional sense, then how much?

But if we see that the phrase is given within the sense of starting a family, that is, in a biological framework, we see that the man is supposed to marry outside of his father and mother.

And just as we see that it was not possible for Adam to leave his father and mother, for he had none, it was not possible for the first generations to marry outside of father and mother for there was no "outside of".

 

[Memphis Dwight]

In connecting the concept of taking of a wife from outside of the family to the phrase leaving father and mother, I had to apply logic.

We know that the Levitical code of the Israelites coincides with this concept. But what about the gentiles? Did the gentiles know that they were to marry in a certain fashion that was not incestous? Well of course they did.
Because at the time of Adam, there was no grouping of mankind into Israelites and Gentiles. This was before all of that.

So I asked myself, when were the gentiles given this innate law? If not at that point in the garden through Adam, then when?

Lets take a look at Romans 1:19
Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed [it] unto them.

The phrase in them refers to this instinctual law that God gave to man in the beginning. Manifest in them meaning in their bodily functioning, making familes -- the whole biological process.

Some make the mistake when they reach verse 26 of this chapter thinking that God is condemning lesbianism along with sodomy but there certainly was a different understanding at one point in time. Even some of the church fathers that were known for being disturbingly anti-sex do not connect vs 26 to what we call lesbianism today, even though, these fathers (Augustine, Origin, etc) were the establishers of asceticism.

In the first four or five centuries after the church was started, vs 26 was meant to be referencing women having anal sex as opposed to vaginal. It may be inferred that they were doing this as part of some worship prostitution and in order to avoid pregnancy. If that is the case, then the point of this is that God can be known in some sense by our ability to reproduce and develop godly families. Therefore, when these wicked people started engaging in anal sex, women with men, and men with men, they were completely and utterly denying God's manifest destiny for mankind.

Anyhow, the point to all of this is that man knew all along that there was a proper process involved in selecting a wife and she knows to obey her husband and all of this is written into our spiritual genes. The fallen man forgets about God because sin has tainted his conscience and only until he has remission of sins can he start to see things clearly.

 

[Mark C]

...So I asked myself, when were the gentiles given this innate law? If not at that point in the garden through Adam, then when?
...
Anyhow, the point to all of this is that man knew all along that there was a proper process involved in selecting a wife and she knows to obey her husband and all of this is written into our spiritual genes. The fallen man forgets about God because sin has tainted his conscience and only until he has remission of sins can he start to see things clearly.

We are told the answer to the last paragraph in Genesis 3:16:

...To the woman He said: "I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; In pain you shall bring forth children; Your desire shall be for your husband, And he shall rule over you."

Politically incorrect, of course, in a fallen world. But True nevertheless.

Blessings,
Mark

 

[Lionking]

Actually it doesn't say that a man should leave his father and mother first.. the word first is something you supplied.

If a man must leave his father and mother in a geographical sense, then how far should he go?

If in an emotional sense, then how much?

But if we see that the phrase is given within the sense of starting a family, that is, in a biological framework, we see that the man is supposed to marry outside of his father and mother.

And just as we see that it was not possible for Adam to leave his father and mother, for he had none, it was not possible for the first generations to marry outside of father and mother for there was no "outside of".

In Genesis 2:26, the instructions are as follows; Leave parents, cleave to wife, become one flesh. I supplied the word "first" because it was the first thing said in the instructions when He said that a man should leave his father and mother.