Mag. Claudia R. Wintoch
Bride of Christ/Song of Solomon
Ken Lundeen
World Revival School of Ministry
1. Introduction
2. Before The Wedding
2.1.
New Testament Parallels
3. The Wedding Ceremony
3.1.
New Testament Parallels
4. After The Wedding
5. Conclusion
6. Bibliography
1. Introduction
A Jewish wedding follows biblical
patterns as well as traditions that have developed over the centuries. We have
many examples of weddings in the Tanakh, the most famous ones being Isaac &
Rebekah (with a wonderful description of the pre-wedding customs) and Jacob
& Rachel/Leah (whose wedding led to a number of customs, e.g. looking under
the veil to assure having the right bride). Studying Jewish wedding customs
does not only give us a better understanding of biblical accounts of weddings
and marriages, but it opens our understanding for a much deeper perspective:
The ultimate Bridegroom who will have the most beautiful bride, to reign with
her for all eternity. Jewish wedding customs are full of parallels to our
eternal Bridegroom Jesus, giving us a glimpse of the heavenly joy and
anticipation as His bride is making herself ready for her Bridegroom.
2. Before the Wedding
As is still the custom in many
cultures today, the bridegroom’s father usually chose a bride for his son, who
would then give his consent. In Genesis 24 we see Abraham sending away his most
trusted servant to find a bride for his son – a custom which was very common.
Such a matchmaker was called a shadhan,
which later became a ‘profession’ in itself.
Once a bride was chosen, a bride
price – Hebrew mohar – had to be
agreed upon, which was called shidukhin,
the ceremony being called tena’im, meaning “conditions”. It was a “mutual agreement between two sets
of parents for the date and financial conditions of the forthcoming marriage of
their children” (Lamm 1980:176). The bridegroom’s family would pay the bride’s
father to compensate for the loss of a worker, as well as to show the
bridegroom’s love and appreciation. It also ensured the genuineness of the
coming marriage and the material welfare of the young couple. Traditionally,
this ceremony includes “the breaking of a plate, which … reminds those present
that Jews still mourn the destruction of the temples in Jerusalem” (Routtenberg
1967:5). The two mothers would wrap a plate in a cloth and break it together
over a table corner or chair.
Breaking these agreements was
considered a violation of the law as well as a moral transgression, which
affected the whole community and was punished. For that reason, this ceremony
was frequently moved as closely to the wedding as possible, and today it is
frequently left out altogether.
This first part of the wedding was
with the engagement or erusin, also
called kidushin, which “literally
means sanctification or holiness with the idea of being set apart” (Lash
1997:9). Up to twelve months before the wedding the bride and bridegroom would
enter into a covenant, which was always binding and could not be broken easily.
“They were legally married in all aspects except for the physical consummation
of the marriage” (ibidem).
The marriage contract presented to
the bride’s father was called ketubah
and is still part of Jewish weddings today, being read publicly. “In it the
bridegroom promised to work for, honor, support and maintain his bride in
truth, provider her food, clothing and necessities, and live together her as
husband and wife” (ibidem).
After the ketubah was accepted, the
bride and bridegroom would share a cup of wine together, after its traditional
blessing called Birkat Erusin, to
seal their marriage covenant.
“Wine in Judaism has always symbolized joy. Marriage in Jewish thought is the highest source of joy on earth. Wine also symbolized blood. The marriage covenant is a blood covenant in the eyes of God. Two lives become one in a lifelong commitment”
(Lash 1997:14).
As a sign of their commitment, the
bridegroom would give a coin to his bride, which later became a ring, which the
bridegroom would place on the bride’s index finger, reciting a traditional
Jewish espousal formula: Be thou
consecrated unto me according to the law of Moses and Israel by means of this
ring (Lash 1997:16). The coin or ring would continually remind the bride of
her bridegroom, as bride and bridegroom would separate until the wedding day.
In ancient Israel the bridegroom
left to go to his father’s house to prepare a wedding chamber for his bride.
That period of time could last up to 12 months, during which the bride would
prepare herself to leave her single life with her parents and join her
husband’s household as his wife. She was set apart, consecrated – the Hebrew
word for bride kallah meaning the
secluded, enclosed one. Song of Songs speaks of the bride’s state: You are a garden locked up, my sister, my
bride; you are a spring enclosed, a sealed fountain (4:12). As months
passed, the bride’s patience and faithfulness was certainly tested as she
awaited her bridegroom’s return.
Over time this period of time that
lasted for months was reduced considerably to a week or less. It was also meant
as a safe-guard for the couple’s purity. The bride actually went through a mikvah prior to their wedding, a “ritual
immersion in water as part of [her] physical and spiritual preparation for the
wedding ceremony” (Lash 1997:18). The bride was required to begin the practice
of family purity within four days before the wedding. Dr. Norman Lamm offers
the following insight:
“By thus preparing for their wedding and afterwards for their monthly marital reunion – separating from eath other and then, before joining each other, the wife immersing in the mikvah, and reciting thereupon the blessing thanking the Almighty for sanctifying us through this instituation – husband and wife acknowledge, in the most profound symbolic manner, that their relationship is sanctified and blessed, that it is pure and not vulgar, sacred and not salacious.” (Lamm 1980:191)
While only the bride went through
the mikvah, it was customary in some
Jewish traditions that the bridegroom would also be immersed in the mikvah, to be purified and cleansed.
One tradition that has lasted to
this day is that one week before the wedding, the bridegroom was “called to
recite the blessing over the Torah at the Sabbath service” (Lamm 1980:189),
thereby publicly announcing his wedding and giving the community (those not
invited) the opportunity to celebrate with the couple by attending the Sabbath
refreshments after the service. “During the service, the cantor inserted
special prayers into the regular service in honor of the couple, and a special
reading was recited (Isaiah 61)” (ibidem).
2.1. New Testament Parallels
The Father sends out the Holy Spirit
to find a bride for His Son Jesus. As in Matthew 22, Holy Spirit is going into
the streets asking people to come to the wedding of the Lamb. Everyone is given
a choice to either love Him or reject Him, as the Jewish bride has the option
to not agree to the chosen bridegroom. Today some resist, others exchange their
veil of blindness with the bridal veil. As a bride price had to be paid in
ancient Israel, so our heavenly Bridegroom has paid the ultimate price to
purchase us for Him. For the joy set
before him [he] endured the cross (Heb
12:2). This joy was His bride, without
stain or wrinkle or any other blemish (Eph 5:27). At Jesus’s last Passover,
He mentioned the bride price: And he took
bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, "This is my
body given for you; do this in remembrance of me." In the same way, after
the supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my
blood, which is poured out for you” (Lk 22:19-20). We now no longer belong
to ourselves, but to our Bridegroom who exclaimed on the cross: It is finished (Jh 19:30) – a verb (ka’lal) from the same Hebrew root as the
word bride (kallah)[1].
What the ketubah is for a Jewish couple, the Bible – “a love letter to the
bride” (Lash 1997:10) – is for us. In Matthew 6 our heavenly Bridegroom
promises to clothe us, feed us and provide for us – we are now in covenant with
Him; a covenant He will never break. Jeremiah foresaw this time, when he said:
"The time is
coming," declares the Lord, "when I will make a new covenant …"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. No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a
man his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' because they will all know me, from
the least of them to the greatest," declares the Lord. "For I will forgive
their wickedness and will remember their sins no more."
(Jer 33:31, 32-34).
Today, we can know Him – a Hebrew word that describes deepest intimacy with our
heavenly Bridegroom.
As bride and bridegroom drink wine
to seal their marriage agreement, so Jesus drank from the cup at His last
Passover, telling them that Jeremiah’s new marriage covenant would be sealed
with His blood. As all the disciples drank from the same cup, they all became
one, part of His Bride.
The bridegroom gave his bride a coin
or ring; our heavenly Bridegroom gives us the greatest gift: the Holy Spirit to
live in us, always reminding us of our beautiful Bridegroom. And with Him, His
gifts are abundantly poured out in our lives.
As the bride prepared for her
bridegroom’s return, His Bride today is making herself ready for her
Bridegroom’s return. We also have to go through the mikvah, cleansing ourselves and making us beautiful for the wedding
day, as Esther did, while He is preparing a wedding chamber for His Bride (John
14:2-3).
3. The Wedding Ceremony
In ancient Israel a bride did not
know when her bridegroom would return for her, nor did the bridegroom know when
the father would tell him to get his bride. According to the custom, the
bridegroom returned late at night, just before midnight.
“Shofars would break the silence of night. There would be shouts in the streets, and a torch-light procession which would wind its way through the town to the home of the bride. This gave her a few extra moments to make final preparations” (Lash 1997:25).
Then the bride would trim her lamp
and get ready to go meet her bridegroom. She entered a bridal litter or
palanquin called aperion, which is
described in Song of Songs 3:9-10: King
Solomon made for himself the carriage[2];
he made it of wood from Lebanon. Its posts he made of silver, its base of gold.
Its seat was upholstered with purple, its interior lovingly inlaid by the
daughters of Jerusalem. Accompanied by musicians, friends and family
carrying torches, the procession would joyously take her to her bridegroom’s
home, the whole town hearing the celebrations going on. The most important
officials of the community would often come to greet the bride, which was later
omitted because of concerns of mixing sexes, and today it is even reversed by
the bridegroom being accompanied to his bride.
The bride was veiled, and –
resulting from Jacob and Rachel’s story – the bridegroom, who would be waiting
for his bride to welcome her, would make sure he had the right bride by looking
into the palanquin and under the veil. Today, the bride does not approach her
husband veiled, but a veiling ceremony takes place. The bride is flanked by
both mothers, as the bridegroom, the rabbi, the fathers and all visitors
approach the bride. The bridegroom places the veil over the bride and recites
the blessing Rebekah was given in Genesis 24:60: Our sister, may you increase to thousands upon thousands. Then the
rabbi and the parents pray for them, sometimes the bride’s father placing his
hands on her head and blessing her.
The second part of the wedding
ceremony would start, which is called huppah.
The name for the bridal chamber is the same and can be found in Joel 2:16: Let the bridegroom leave his room and the
bride her chamber (huppah), and Psalm 19:5: which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion (huppah).
When the bride arrived, the guests
would be greeted and the couple then led to the bridal chamber (huppah), where they would be alone for
seven days, which was called the “week of the bride” (Lash 1997:27). The best
man kept standing outside the wedding chamber, waiting for the bridegroom’s
voice to tell him that the marriage was consummated. The consummation of the
marriage completed the second part of the wedding.
Over time the huppah became the bridal canopy covering the couple[3],
instead of an actual bridal chamber:
“This canopy was usually a square cloth of silk
or velvet, supported by four poles, and held up by four men. It symbolized the
new home to which the bridegroom would take his bride. As a symbolic house,
open on four sides, the huppah
represented the Jewish home filled with hesed
(acts of love) including hospitality to strangers, hence its ‘openness’.”
(ibidem).
Today, as the bride arrives under
the huppah, she walks three times around
the bridegroom, the meaning of which is not very clear. One rabbinic scholar
says that the man was considered a half person before and was now “completed
and encircled by his wife” (Lamm 1980:214), but the more plausible explanation
is that the bride makes “invisible walls” (since it used to be a room), showing
a “public declaration of togetherness, and a separation from the rest of
society at this most awesome and decisive moment” (ibidem).
The bride would stand to the right
of her bridegroom, with all the guest standing around them. As in their
engagement celebration, they are drinking from another cup of wine. But first
it is blessed by the rabbi, and then six more blessings follow, which are
recited by the rabbi and are called Birkot
Nisuin. As they drink from the wine, the bride’s veil is lifted and not
lowered again, as a sign that the bride now fully is a wife.
At the end of the huppah, the
bridegroom breaks a glass wrapped in a napkin – “the betrothal was over, the
marriage had begun and the two lives would never be the same” (Lash 1997:29).
From the ancient custom of the bridal chamber the tradition called yihud developed for the young couple to
spend the first few minutes alone. They hold hands as they enter the room,
where food is prepared for them and where they stay for about ten minutes.
Outside the room, two witnesses are waiting. It is when bridegroom and bride
emerge from that room that they are husband and wife.
3.1. New Testament Parallels
Like in the parable of the then
virgins (Mt 25), we are today waiting for our bridegroom’s return – the time of
which only the Father knows (Mk 13:32). We are to stay awake so we can hear his
coming just before midnight, as His best man loudly proclaims His arrival. His
best man, or the friend of the bridegroom, is the one proclaiming the
consummation of the marriage. John the Baptist, Jesus’s best man, proclaimed
about Him: The bride belongs to the
bridegroom. The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him,
and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom's voice. That joy is mine, and
it is now complete. (John 3:29).
As the bride is taken to the bridal
chamber, so Jesus will lift His Bride off the earth to be taken to our heavenly
wedding chamber, to become one with Him and become like Him (see 1.John 3:2).
Richard Booker suggests that the New Jerusalem of Revelation 21 represents a
heavenly huppah to descend on His
Bride[4].
4. After The Wedding
In ancient Israel, the new couple
would join their guests for a marriage feast after the seven days in the bridal
chamber. The purpose of the meal was and is to bring joy to the young couple.
Music and dancing are both an integral part of the celebration. For a long time
it was customary to “invite the poor to the wedding, in order to bring happiness
into their often drab lives” (Lamm 1980:232), but this custom has become
impractical today.
The first week after their wedding,
the married couple repeats the seven nuptial blessings daily, as a reminder of
that precious moment under the huppah, which requires a minyan[5]
to be present every time. During that week they have to stay together and
continue to celebrate, which is traced back to Moses.
“On the Sabbath after the wedding,
in a custom celebrated mostly by the ancient Sephardic community, a reading
from a second Torah was specially arranged for bride and groom. This was the
Genesis narrative of Eliezer and Rebekah, which, according to Rabbi Bachya,
emphasizes that one should marry for right values and not for money, prestige,
or beauty alone” (Lamm 1980:189f).
It is interesting that the Bible
gives the young couple a full year to adjust to their new life: If a man has recently married, he must not
be sent to war or have any other duty laid on him. For one year he is to
be free to stay at home and bring happiness to the wife he has married (emphasis
mine) (Deuteronomy 24:5).
5. Conclusion
A Jewish wedding is full of
beautiful biblical customs and pictures for God’s greater purpose in marriage.
All of history is based on one thing: the Father choosing and preparing a
beautiful, worthy Bride for His Son, sending His servant, the Holy Spirit, to
prepare her and speak to her continuously about His beauty, love and
awesomeness. Today we are have entered the marriage covenant and we are eagerly
awaiting our Bridegroom’s return to consummate the marriage for all eternity.
The book of Revelation ends with the Bride’s heart cry for her Bridegroom to
return: The Spirit and the bride say,
"Come!" (Rev 22:17). And as she longs for His return, so He also longs
for the day He will come back to finally become one with His Bride, who He’s
paid the highest possible bride price for in His great love: Yes, I am coming soon (Rev 22:20).
6. Bibliography
Lamm, Maurice, The Jewish Way in Love & Marriage,
Harper & Row: New York, NY 1980
Lash, Jamie, The Ancient Jewish Wedding, Jewish
Jewels: Ft. Lauderdale, FL 1997
Routtenberg, Lilly S. & Ruth R. Seldin, The Jewish Wedding Book, Harper & Row: New York, NY 1967