Both answers practically are in the main widely untenable as a real world answer or solution, simply because the instruction is regarding the word of YAH God and the increasing likelihood of the majority of women is that their fathers are NOT IN THE FAITH
It is necessary that a single woman must get teaching and learn, so, to that end, mature stable male elders as father figures and the mature women should take up that role UNTIL the single woman submits themselves to a godly man that they can preferably be of help to in some way or another.
I wholeheartedly agree with these two sentiments,
@JudahYAHites,
as long as the woman is tangibly intentional about finding a husband. Far too many 'elders' aren't much better than atheists or freemasons in regard to the advice they hand out to widows and other single women.
The best place for vipers to hide in plain sight is in Church leadership.
The longer I walk in messiYAH, the deeper I look in scripture, I am convinced that ALL women should be "married" IF they are under 60 and not in their fathers / uncles etc house, this does not preclude women who are 60 and over from getting "married"
It is simply in agreement with the purpose design and function that woman was created by YAH for in the beginning from Genesis 1
By simple observation over 30 years it is obvious that single women living independent lifestyles are a mess, no matter how they try and rationalize their independent lifestyle. (there are obvious situations where a woman HAS TO leave her fathers house, abuse etc).
Boom!
What you're pointing to is the tangible
fact that, absent a godly husband, single women are tremendously prone to falling into ungodly habits -- even more so than are men. For both good and bad reasons, we have the tendency to focus on male failures, while glossing over or excusing female ones, but I'd suggest that the heart of what is wrong in this world today is a tendency to at least unwittingly advance Adversarial spiritual objectives through men not fulfilling their YHWH-commanded role of preventing their women from going astray (which includes male efforts to avoid taking responsibility for any women or children).
Besides, your interpretation doesn’t allow for women who want to get married but haven’t been able to for whatever reason, several of whom we have in our assembly here.
Good afternoon, precious brother. Be forewarned: I'm going to use your statement not intentionally to criticize
it but to make a larger point that I believe, rightly or wrongly, has great bearing on this discussion.
We're in the midst of an iron-sharpening-iron discussion about whether widows should remarry. You continue by asking the following question:
I agree that its preferable that women be married, but can we honestly say that it is a command?
Others have already cited scriptures where it is commanded of women [I Corinthians 2:8 notwithstanding, given that that verse is inextricably associated with the context surrounding it, which is that, at that moment, Paul remained convinced of the imminence of the eschaton, something he later rejected, so his stated personal preference in :8 only reflects his then-present conviction that time was a-wastin' to spread
the gospel before he had full comprehension of
his gospel as revealed to him by Yeshua], but my assertion is that the more salient focus of any discussion even remotely related to this topic is, "Are
men commanded to marry widows and even
commanded to ensure that sufficient numbers of men are willing to practice polygyny to fulfill YHWH's desire that the vast number of widows will be married?" The answer, I assert, is that the holistic synthesis of contemplating everything related to this topic in Scripture is an unequivocal conclusion that,
yes,
widows are best married, and
it is incumbent upon all godly men to step up to the plate to marry them.
Which leads me to a direct response to this:
Besides, your interpretation doesn’t allow for women who want to get married but haven’t been able to for whatever reason, several of whom we have in our assembly here.
Given the supposed primacy of this assembly's stated mission (promotion of patriarchy and polygyny), and given the amount of mouth gas we men have collectively exhaled, both at in-person gatherings and here online, to the effect that we're eager to expand our families, I see only
two reasons why those women
whom we have in our assembly here
are not already married:
- The men are more focused on fulfilling fantasies than they are on ensuring that all women are covered, which is to a significant degree reflective of failure to embrace headship imperatives; and/or
- The women who remain single are unwilling to be led by anyone but men who meet their own demands, which is to a significant degree reflective of belief in female dominance.
. . . both of which boil down to individuals being more concerned with satisfying personal preferences than with obeying the commandments of YHWH. I'll mark ground by being the first to admit that I've been guilty of this myself.
But we will make no dent in promoting either polygyny or patriarchy until we confront this within ourselves and each other. The women are probably best off confronting themselves individually, and as men it's not inappropriate to declare that women collectively are avoiding becoming wives, but the most fundamental necessity is for us men to be willing to both (a) individually acknowledge when we're elevating pursuit of tickling our fancies over fulfilling our Yah-commanded roles as leaders of the Assembly writ large, and (b)
efficaciously confront our brothers in Christ when we see that they're pronouncing an intention to implement plural marriage but allowing either their own personal preferences or the sabotage of their already-existing wives to prevent them from wifing up women who are clearly available and in need of male headship.
So, how do we implement this without ending up in a Rebuke City echo chamber?
We also had a similar experience here on the property, us men were talking Biblical stuff with another man and every time we asked him a question his wife would butt in. He couldn't get a word in edge wise. Finally I had enough, and I rebuked her, it was something to the effect of... Are you going to be quiet and let him answer, we are talking to him not you, we want his thoughts not yours. Needless to say, we haven't seen them since.
You decided to rebuke another man's woman in front of him.
If a man doesn't have the STONES to REBUKE his woman and keep HIS woman in line so that her rebellion doesn't influence my wife or other men's wives, I WILL speak up and put a stop to it if I can. Maybe just maybe he needs that example. I get it, Men shouldn't rebuke another man woman that is HIS JOB, but if she is trying to CONTROL the conversation that I am apart of I will let it slide for a little while, then I will set an example to the male and try and put a stop to it, if they will not heed then I will end the conversation or remove myself from it.
@Edward, if that is truly how you believe a man, a Godly man should act toward another man's wife, then I rebuke you. You are wrong. Do us all a favor and if we ever do meet, never speak to my wife. Not even hello.
I am going to have to rebuke you here. You are overreacting to his, admittedly strong, position.
This group is not monolithic in its understandings of Scripture. We have many different ways to approach certain concepts, and no one gets to lord it over anyone else’s beliefs.
Again, please forgive me for singling out your particular posts,
@Edward, but they're instructive, not as a matter of casting aspersions in your particular direction but because you're the one who opened up the rebuking hornet's nest.
Perhaps rebuking isn't efficacious confrontation.
Perhaps confrontation -- to
be effective -- requires an effort to at least strive for disembodied descriptions of particular destructive
behaviors. No one has appointed me as a Judge in this matter, but if hypothetically I were Judge Judah, I would declare that
@MarkH most deserves to be awarded damages or legitimacy, and significantly because of
@JudahYAHites's testimony. Promotion of patriarchy requires reverence for leadership, and reverence for leadership requires respect for chain of command. My admonition from the bench would be that, if one man disapproves of what another man's woman is doing, the only appropriate intervention would be to take the other man aside privately and share his perceptions, perhaps even requesting that the other man address the issue with his woman.
This is not trumped by any concept related to differing interpretations of Scripture.
@steve, you are spot on when you assert that
no one gets to lord it over anyone else’s beliefs,
but one's individual beliefs do not justify interfering with another man's authority over
his woman by publicly rebuking that man's woman.
My general intuition about such situations is that when we're tempted to bring shame on other individual men for failure to properly lead their women, the likelihood is that a much more appropriate use of our time, energy and wisdom would be to stop and reflect on what our own individual failures are with our own women; this amounts to a Matthew 7 moment: "
Now why are you observing the mote that is
in your brother's eye, yet the beam in your eye you are not considering? Or how will you be declaring to your brother, 'Brother,' let me extract the mote out of your eye, and lo! the beam is
in your eye? Hypocrite! Extract first the beam out of your eye, and then you will be keen-sighted to be extracting the mote out of your brother's eye." [:3-5, Concordant Literal New Testament]
The potential beams could be anything from (a) addressing how our own woman gossips, to (b) acknowledging the manner in which she sabotages our leadership, vision or burgeoning relationship with another woman, to (c) our own woman's similarly-egregious but perhaps more-subtle interruptions of more-appropriately-male discussion.
Back to the topic:
But there is no way given the the totality of scripture that we can require “marriage”.
I agree. We can't
require it. Not being YHWH, none of us possess the
authority to do the requiring, but that doesn't stop us from acknowledging that YHWH admonishes unmarried women to marry -- and it also doesn't stop me from disagreeing with this:
I think it’s possible for single women to move (live?) godly, productive lives but just like with men it becomes much easier to do so when yoked.
My disagreement comes from knowing that promotion of that idea won't just be left in the realm of "until one finds a husband" but will instead be prime fodder for justifying
remaining unmarried as long as possible for the purpose of extending the delusion that a woman is perfectly justified operating under the fantasy that she can be independent.
*************
I'll just add this, because it has been heavily weighing on my heart:
As most of my friends, associates and men whom I counsel are aware, lately I've been an outspoken advocate of men (a) jettisoning the approach to plural marriage of focusing on obtaining the hottest, youngest, most-submissive, closest-to-virginal wife who will automatically fit right in with our preexisting households, inspire our libidos and satisfy our sexual needs, and come equipped with willing and able spirits to augment the wifely strengths possessed by our already-present wives, to instead (b) meeting available women where they are in the
real world
but actively initiate headship even before courtship begins by establishing
conditions for these women that have to be met before we either (1) bring them into our households or (2) consummate relationships with them.
I'm certain there is nothing disrespectful about telling a single woman exactly what would be expected of her to be your wife or to additionally expect her to start demonstrating significant progress toward meeting one's expectations
before a permanent covenant ensues. Far too often, men behave as if they're blessed just by a woman's willingness to consider being one's wife, but the truth of the matter is that the
more generous side of the equation is the willingness of the
man to take on another wife.
I am
not suggesting that this be used as yet another excuse to continue in a state of Playing House about polygyny, pretending to be seeking it while consistently avoiding it like the plague. Instead, I'm advocating very seriously preparing oneself for leading another woman -- and doing so by initiating headship even as early as prior to courtship.
So
conditions are entirely reasonable, and they include everything from improved self-care (including diet and exercise); straightening up loose-end relationships with other men (including baby daddies, which could also include expectations that unimplemented efforts to reconcile first be undertaken); self-confrontation of remaining feminist mindsets; disengaging from welfare dependence; making actual preparations to move from one geographical location to another; and lessening overt and covert attempts to control the prospective male mate's inner desires.
As a matter of self-disclosure, though, I've been discussing with only a small group of individuals what I'm increasingly becoming convinced is a personal stumbling block in this regard:
would it ever be appropriate to present a potential wife with the condition that, as long as it didn't entail denial of the Supremacy of our LORD or the Saving Grace of the Passion, Crucifixion and Resurrection of our Lord
, the woman be willing to abandon significant chunks of what, up to that moment, has been her spiritual path? Up until now, I've been an advocate of and have been willing to present any condition whatsoever to women in relation to the potential for kinetic headship --
except that one. I've considered it sacrosanct, but what I'm now wondering is if it isn't a kink in the patriarchal armor (a way out of confronting perhaps one of the most foundational impediments to male headship), as well as operating as just another excuse for avoiding ensuring that all women are covered.
Here's what I've observed vaguely in the mainstream culture but more clearly within Biblical Families when it comes to women who cross paths with us (sometimes even becoming longstanding unmarried members): the women tend to appear already possessing deeply-entrenched spiritual-path habits, and thus they are only given consideration by men whose 'lane' those women are already swimming in, which automatically drastically reduces the number of potential pairings. The focus becomes one of quibbling about secondary considerations like 'spark,' submissiveness and financial burdens, but the most significant level of rejection occurs due to the Christian Club to which the woman belongs.
Is it possible that this camouflages a tremendous Blind Spot in our supposed efforts to cover all the lonely, disconcerted widows that exist among us, both in Biblical Families and the rest of Planet Earth?
What if the Blind Spot is failure to recognize that the primary barrier to willingness to be led on the part of unmarried women is the fact that they are insisting on
following rituals and practices that were taught to them by previous men who are no longer operating as heads in their lives? At best, those men would be godly fathers, but at worst those men could be men who either demonstrated either incompetence or unwillingness to lead these women, which, probably in most cases, means that our own unwillingness to expect them to abandon their Club for our own is an unwillingness on our part to assert our own headship as worthy of being superior to that which these women formerly imprinted on even though it proved to be part of an inadequate constellation of leadership.
I'd love your thoughts, but I'll close by adding this: paradoxically, it seems to me in slightly less than a decade's exposure to this organization that it's not an infrequent occurrence for Torah-keeping women to be rejected as inadequate by Torah-keeping men while non-Torah-keeping men are drawn to these same women but won't wife them up because they're Torah-keepers -- as well as that we've had non-TK women whom no non-TK men consider ideal who would probably generally fit in more easily in TK families, but the TK-men won't wife
them up because they're not already Torah-keeping.
This just represents two of the many examples of different lanes of the pool, but, really, what would be inappropriate about a man in either of those lanes to straightforwardly assert to an unmarried woman who needs covering that he would very seriously consider marriage if that woman would be willing to radically alter her non-salvation-aspect spiritual path?
