It was an arranged marriage, a patriarchal practice, which is a known but rejected custom for modern westerners. But, there was love and romantic distraction in Isaac’s marriage to Rebekah that reduced his grief over his mother’s death. There was something special between Isaac and his mother. He held respect, high respect, for his father, but his sensitivities and emotions appear to have rested with his mother. He seemed a near perfect son for his aged parents.
We are moved with both the romance and the fulfillment of the marriage of Isaac and Rebekah. At their marriage they were strangers. They had just met. They were chosen by others to betrothal. The marriage was brokered. They deliberately chose love and good will to guide them – even before they knew each other. We who read their story must be moved with both the romance and the fulfillment in the marriage of this accepting couple. There is a modern parable in the musical, Fiddler on the Roof. A song is dedicated to the custom of marriage arrangement, and the practice is romanticized in the lyrics, Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Make Me a Match.
I am, at this writing, in the process of assisting a couple to prepare themselves for marriage, a marriage in which I will officiate. I am also preparing myself, believing there is stronger virtue for the event if all who are in it are genuinely on the side of family idealism and the meaning of Christian marriage. All who care about the couple ought to be prayerful, invoking God’s blessing and care for both bride and groom. The groom is my great grandson, and my insistence with the couple is that love, genuine love borne along by the will of each person will conquer so that, together, their troubles will be lightened, their joys will be increased. I must be content to wait and see if the fervent prayer, the family yearning, the personal counsel, succeed. Every marriage ought to be more than the bride and groom. Here is the core of community, the context for responsibility, the seed of the next generation, the sharing of life to the joy and benefit of both. In this, the two can comfort their parents, and honor God. During my lifetime, I will pray for them.
Looking back after nearly seventy years of performing wedding ceremonies, I could have predicted most of those who would succeed and those who would fail in their marriages. I did not realize, without experience, that I had some advanced insight. The first two marriages in which I officiated remained strong through the decades. Those couples remained in communication with me. Looking back on events of their lives, before and after their marriages, I am impressed that they were persons of integrity, of love, of faith, and they were problem-solvers. In a word, they were moving early toward maturity and may not have known it. In the years following their idyllic beginnings, both Isaac and Rebekah had to learn maturity. Currently there are many couples being married who little embrace the commitment necessary to lifelong relationship. It is a great gift to own a mature Christian family. It may lead to long life for the couple. In this, faith, love and immortality work well. It is likely true that most persons do not grasp what God has designed for marriage. For God’s patriarchs there was no divorce. They knew that whatever the culture for marriage, the individual can decide to love, serve, rear a family in trust that all was a gift from God to be received and cherished. Two become one with spiritual meaning. Current media distractions and emphases, and the paucity of knowledge about the meaning of marriage have led to fracturing personal family life, even before the marriage rite. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020