The family in the Bible

Biblical Theology Bulletin, Fall, 2002 by James A. Sanders

One must not moralize on first reading a biblical story. One should not moralize either about the justness of the law broken, or the rightness of the disobedience of it recounted in the story. One must first ask what the story says God was doing through such human disobedience. There is an ancient saying that all my students had to learn: Errore hominum providentia divina--God's grace or providence works through and with human sinfulness. Throughout the Bible one must theologize first in reading the text and moralize later, sometimes much later. This is the opposite of the position taken by so-called Christian conservatives, and certainly the opposite of that adopted by fundamentalists. That is, we must first ask what God is doing in the story with the normal but frail humans in it, and how they thought and acted in the story. We must theologize first, that is, ask what the text indicates God could do with and through the sin and evil humans continually commit in the Bible and in real life--and thereafter moralize on the basis of the grace of God celebrated in the text applied to any on-going socio-political situation.

The Bible has very few models for morality but many mirrors for human identity in which we can see our own foibles and failings starkly revealed. We must ask what the text by dynamic analogy indicates God can do with the likes of us mirrored in all these marvelously wicked stories! This hermeneutic principle forces and focuses the question of the role of ancient cultures in discerning the development of our own culture today. This is the central issue in the so-called "culture wars" some conservatives try to wage in society today. So-called conservatives claim that the cultural mores described and reflected in the Bible are God's will for today, but this is highly problematic, as we shall see.

The Book of Ruth provides yet another story of family survival. Ruth's loyalty in following Naomi was not to Naomi her mother-in-law, but to her deceased husband, even though Ruth, the ancestress of King David and of Jesus, was not Judahite. Because her brother-in-law would not fulfill the Levirate law by marrying his brother's widow to make him progeny, Boaz, an eligible relation, stepped in and fulfilled the Levirate obligation for the sake of Elimelech's Judahite family. "Ruth like Tamar was an example of womanly heroism" (Pedersen: 80). Ruth's whole story is built around her determination to provide heirs for her deceased husband, Naomi's and Elimelech's son. The crux of the story (if we refuse to moralize first) is that Ruth slept at Boaz' feet in his own bed!! The story provides a variation on the persistent and basic theme of the need for continuing heirs in the families of the twelve tribes of Israel. The Book of Ruth shows how God's promise of progeny was often fulfilled through disobedience and sin. The loyalty and persistence of the foreign Moabitess, Ruth, secured the continuity of the tribe of Judah. In the Bible God often works through "others" of her children. The accounts also celebrate God's ability to convert human sin or evil into good.