Casting Down the Idols of Courtship: Falling in Love

Casting Down the Idols of Courtship

We need to be always living ‘semper reformada’. One of the most important ways in which we must do that is to be always searching our lives for idols, gods of our current age or of our own invention, which have crept into our lives and which we must cast down. In our current desire to see to the proper marriages of our sons and daughters we have invented a system, which we call courtship, in which we have incorporated several of these idols… idols that must be cast down. Here I present some of them.

Falling in love

The concept of romantic love as something which begins before commitment, and which is required for any legitimate sexual commitment is part of a Greco-Roman myth, not something we find in Scripture. Ironically whenever pre-marital ‘love’ relationships are mentioned in Scripture, they are mentioned exclusively in a negative sense… as implying, and often demonstrated as leading to, a snare, a trap, or a distraction for the young man.

Jacob and his rejection of Leah

 In obedience to his father Jacob proceeded to Ur where he was instructed to marry one of the daughters of Laban. Once there he waited a month before proceeding toward his errand and, even then, fails to mention his father’s instructions but instead makes a play for one of those daughters, Rachel, because he ‘loved’ her (perhaps because she was beautiful and well favored whereas her sister was ‘tender eyed’). His love is so great that he volunteers to serve seven years in order to marry her.

When the seven years were up his erstwhile father in law plays him a trick, slipping his oldest daughter, Leah, into the tent instead of the younger and more beautiful Rachel. The next morning Jacob, waking and realizing who lay next to him, faced a choice. Would he love the wife he was given, the wife he had already spent the night with? Was that not what God required? Is it not written, ‘rejoice in the wife of your youth. Let her be as the loving hind and pleasant roe, let her … satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love’?
Is that what Jacob did? Did he spend the next week enjoying his new bride, showing his love for her? No, he stormed out of the tent, upset at the trick that had been played on him. But, except for his premarital mental commitment, what trick had been played? He had been commanded by his father to take a wife of the daughters of Laban, and he had a wife of the daughters of Laban. And we know, from later in the story, that she was a fertile wife. He came out with no complaints about her behavior on the wedding night.

No, he was disappointed because he had set his heart on one particular woman, and was given another. He had, in modern parlance, ‘fallen in love’ and, as a result, behaved abominably toward the wife of his youth, going so far in his misbehavior that God Himself accuses him of hating his wife.

Compare this with the example of his father Isaac[i]. Isaac saw nothing of his wife, knew nothing of his wife, before he took her into his tent and ‘knew’ her physically. And, without a heart set on another, he loved his wife.

Shekem and the rape of Dinah

The next example I can find of a man ‘loving’ a woman not his wife comes at the time of the rape (or seduction) of Dinah. I language that, except for it’s old world charm could come out of any modern romance novel, it is written that, “And [Shechem’s] soul clave unto Dinah the daughter of Jacob, and he loved the damsel, and spake kindly unto the damsel.” Unfortunately this comes after the previous verse which states he, “saw her, he took her, and lay with her, and defiled her.” Only once he had done these two things (raped her and ‘loved’ her) did he “[speak] unto his father Hamor, saying, Get me this damsel to wife.”
And then her brothers, mightily offended, slew Sheckem  and all the men of his town.

David and the snare of Micah

One of David’s wives was said to have ‘loved’ him before they were married, or even betrothed. Her father, Saul, hearing this, was pleased because, he said, “I will give him her, that she may be a snare to him, and that the hand of the Philistines may be against him.” We see no evidence of his plan succeeding, but those are the words that God reveals to us about that kind of relationship.

David and his lust for Bathsheeba

David himself loved a woman later, or at least her physical form; and that story results in this man of God committing adultery and murder.

Amnon and the rape of Tamar

Another girl that was loved, neither wisely nor well, before she was married, was Tamar. It is written: “Absalom the son of David had a fair sister, whose name was Tamar; and Amnon the son of David loved her.”  The end of this relationship? He tricks her into coming to his house, rapes her, and decides he hates her.

Sampson and the destruction of the Philistines

God, in an effort to destroy the Philistines, caused Samson to lust after one of their daughters. This relationship ends very badly with his best man sleeping with his wife, both of them being killed, and Samson slaying dozens of Philistines.

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[i] Gen 24