Family
VIEW:42 DATA:01-04-2020
FAMILY
1. Character of the family in OT.Family in the OT has a wider significance than that which we usually associate with the term. The word tr. [Note: translate or translation.] house (Gen_7:1) approaches most nearly to our word family: but a mans house might consist of his mother; his wives and the wives children; his concubines and their children; sons-in-law and daughters-in-law, with their offspring; illegitimate sons (Jdg_11:1); dependents and allens; and slaves of both sexes. Polygamy was in part the cause of the large size of the Hebrew household; in part the cause of it may be found in the insecurity of early times, when safety lay in numbers, and consequently not only the married sons and daughters dwelt, for the sake of protection, with their father, but remote relatives and even foreigners (the stranger within thy gates) would attach themselves, with a similar object, to a great household. The idea of the family sometimes had an even wider significance, extending to and including the nation, or even the whole race of mankind. Of this a familiar illustration is the figure of Abraham, who was regarded as being in a very real sense the father of the nation. So also the same feeling for the idea of the family is to be found in the careful assigning of a father to every known nation and tribe (Gen_10:1-32). From this it is easily perceived that the family played an important part in Hebrew thought and affairs. It formed the base upon which the social structure was built up; its indistinguishable merging into the wider sense of clan or tribe indicates how it affected the political life of the whole nation.
Polygyny and bigamy were recognized features of the family life. From the Oriental point of view there was nothing immoral in the practice of polygamy. The female slaves were in every respect the property of their master, and became his concubines; except in certain cases, when they seem to have belonged exclusively to their mistress, and could not be appropriated by the man except by her suggestion or consent (Gen_16:2-3). The slave-concubines were obtained as booty in time of war (Jdg_5:30), or bought from poverty-stricken parents (Exo_21:7); or, possibly, in the ordinary slave traffic with foreign nations. In addition to his concubines a man might take several wives, and from familiar examples in the OT it seems that it was usual for wealthy and important personages to do so; Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon, occur as instances. Elkanah, the husband of Hannah and Peninnah, is an interesting example of a man of no particular position who nevertheless had more than one wife; this may be an indication that bigamy, at least, if not polygamy, was not confined to the very wealthy and exalted. At all events, polygyny was an established and recognized institution from the earliest times. The gradual evolution in the OT of monogamy as the ideal is therefore of the highest interest. The earliest codes attempt in various ways to regulate the custom of polygyny. The Deut. code in particular actually forbids kings to multiply wives (Deu_17:17); this is the fruit, apparently, of the experience of Solomons reign. In the prophetic writings the note of protest is more clearly sounded. Not only Adam but also Noah, the second founder of the human race, represents monogamy, and on that account recommends it as Gods ordinance. It is in the line of Cain that bigamy is first represented, as though to emphasize the consequences of the Fall. Reasons are given in explanation of the bigamy of Abraham (Gen_16:1-16) and of Jacob (Gen_29:23). Hosea and other prophets constantly dwell upon the thought of a monogamous marriage as being a symbol of the union between God and His people; and denounce idolatry as unfaithfulness to this spiritual marriage-tie.
2. Position of the wife.Side by side with the growth of the recognition of monogamy as the ideal form of marriage, polygamy was practised even as late as NT times. The natural accompaniment of such a practice was the insignificance of the wifes position: she was ordinarily regarded as a piece of property, as the wording of the Tenth Commandment testifies. Also her rights and privileges were necessarily shared by others. The relative positions of wives and concubines were determined mainly by the husbands favour. The children of the wife claimed the greater part, or the whole, of the inheritance; otherwise there does not seem to have been any inferiority in the position of the concubine as compared with that of the wife, nor was any idea of illegitimacy, in our sense of the word, connected with her children.
The husband had supreme authority over the wife. He was permitted by the Deut. code to divorce her with apparently little reason. The various passages (Deu_22:13; Deu_22:19; Deu_22:28-29, Isa_50:1, Jer_3:8, Mal_2:16) referring to and regulating divorce, indicate that it was of frequent occurrence. Yet wives, and even concubines who had been bought in the first place as slaves, might not be sold (Exo_21:7-11, Deu_21:14). Indeed, the Law throughout proves itself sympathetic towards the position of the wife and desirous of improving her condition (Exo_21:2; Exo_21:12, Deu_21:10-17). This very attitude of the Law, however, indicates that there was need of improvement. The wife seems to have had no redress if wronged by the husband; she could not divorce him; and absolute faithfulness, though required of the wife, was not expected of the husband, so long as he did not injure the rights of any other man.
The wife, then, was in theory the mere chattel of her husband. A woman of character, however, could improve her situation and attain to a considerable degree of importance and influence as well as of personal freedom. Thus we read not only of Hagars, who were dealt hardly with and were obliged to submit themselves under the hands of their masters and rivals, but also of Sarahs and Rebekahs and Abigails, who could act independently and even against the wishes of their husbands in order to gain their own ends. And the Book of Proverbs testifies to the advantage accruing to a man in the possession of a good wife (Pro_19:14; Pro_31:10 ff.), and to the misery which it is in the power of a selfish woman to inflict (Pro_19:13 etc.).
3. Children.In a household consisting of several families, the mother of each set of children would naturally have more to do with them than the father, and the maternal relationship would usually be more close and affectionate than the bond between the father and his children. Although it was recognized to be disastrous for a household to be divided against itself, yet friction between the various families could hardly have been avoided. One whom his mother comforteth (Isa_66:13) must have been a sight common enougha mother consoling her injured son for the taunts and blows of her rivals children. Thus the mother would have the early care and education of her children under her own control. The father, on the other hand, had complete power over the lives and fortunes of his children, and would represent to them the idea of authority rather than of tenderness. He it was who arranged the marriage of his sons (Gen_24:4; Gen_28:2, Jdg_14:2), and had the right to sell his daughters (Exo_21:7). The father seems even to have had powers of life and death over his children (Jdg_11:39): and the Law provided that an unworthy son might be stoned to death upon the accusation of his parents (Deu_21:18-21). See also art. Child.
4. Family duties.The claims of the family upon the various members of it were strongly felt. Many laws provide for the vengeance and protection of the injured and defenceless by their next-of-kin. Brothers were the guardians of their sisters (Gen_34:1-31). A childless widow could demand, though not enforce, re-marriage with her brother-in-law (Deu_25:5-10). Boaz, as the nearest relation, performed this duty towards Ruth. In spite of the prohibition of the later code (Lev_20:21), levirate marriage seems to have been practised at the time of Christ (Mat_22:25 ff.). Its purpose was perhaps rather for the preservation of the particular branch of the family than for the advantage of the widow herself: in any case it illustrates the strong sense of duty towards the family as a whole.
Children owed obedience and respect to their parents. Even a married man would consider himself still under the authority of his father, whether living with him or not; and his wife would be subject to her father-in-law even after her husbands death.
To an Israelite, family conveyed the notions of unity, security, order, and discipline. These conceptions were nourished by the religious customs and observances in the home, the most conspicuous instance of which was the keeping of the Passover. Such observances no doubt helped to bind the members of the family in close religious and spiritual sympathies. The common longing to love and to serve God was the base of the family affection and unityfrom patriarchal times when the head of each family would offer sacrifice upon his own altar, until the hour in which Marys Son asked in tender surprise of her and Joseph: Wist ye not that I must he in my Fathers house? (Luk_2:49).
E. G. Romanes.
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible
Edited by James Hastings, D.D. Published in 1909
According to Gods plan for human life, people do not exist in isolation but as part of a vast society, and they are fitted for their part in that society by being brought up in families (Eph_3:14-15; 1Ti_3:4). Stability, love and cooperation in the family will help produce similar qualities in society as a whole. (Concerning illustrations of the family in relation to Israel or the church see CHURCH; FATHER.)
Parents and children
With his ordering of human life, God has put it into the nature of people to exercise and accept authority. He has, for example, given parents authority over their children, and children naturally recognize that authority (Gen_22:7-8; Exo_20:12; Luk_2:51).
The Bible warns parents against misusing their authority or treating their children unjustly. It also teaches children that they must respect and obey their parents (Eph_6:1-4; Col_3:20-21). This does not mean that the family is intended to function in an atmosphere of harsh authority. On the contrary it will function best where there is an atmosphere of self-sacrificing love (Tit_2:4; cf. 2Co_6:11-13; Eph_5:25).
Parents who love their children will fulfil their duty to instruct and discipline them. They will not be able to do this, however, if they are ill-instructed or ill-disciplined themselves (Deu_11:18-19; 2Sa_7:14-15; Pro_1:8; Pro_13:1; Pro_13:24; Pro_19:18; Pro_29:17; Eph_6:4; 1Ti_3:2-5; 1Ti_5:14; Heb_12:7-11; see CHASTISEMENT). They must encourage open communication between themselves and their children (Deu_6:20-25; Jos_4:21-24). If parents act responsibly towards their children, they can expect to produce children who act responsibly (Pro_10:1; Pro_10:5; Pro_22:6; 2Ti_1:5). The training that produces this responsibility begins in the childrens infancy, is carried out primarily in the home, and is based on the Word of God (Deu_6:6-9; 2Ti_3:14-15).
The teaching that parents give their children must be supported by the example of right conduct in the parents lives (Rom_2:21-24; 1Th_2:10-12). Parents must practise and teach self-sacrifice for the sake of others, so that the family is a place where people learn how to love others, forgive others, honour others and serve others (Eph_4:31-32; cf. Mat_20:25-27; Joh_13:12-15).
Wider responsibilities
Parents must be careful that concern for the familys well-being does not make them or their children self-centred. By practising hospitality and helping the needy, parents will encourage their children to have a generous attitude to those outside the family (Rom_12:13; 1Ti_5:10; Jam_1:26-27; 1Jn_3:17; see GOOD WORKS; HOSPITALITY). Such attitudes and conduct, besides benefiting others, will help those within the family develop godly character and produce a happy home (Psa_128:1-4).
Responsibilities within the family concern more than just the parents and children. They extend beyond the immediate family to those of the former generation who may no longer be able to support themselves. Regardless of the help that may come from the government, the church, or other sources, Christians have a responsibility for the well-being of their aged parents (Mar_7:9-13; 1Ti_5:4; 1Ti_5:8; see also WIDOW).
Bridgeway Bible Dictionary by Don Fleming
PRINTER 1990.
fam?i-li (משׁפחה, mishpāḥāh, בּית, bayith; πατριά, patriá):
1. The Foundation
2. Monogamy, the Ideal Relation
3. Equality of the Sexes
4. Polygamy
5. The Commandments and the Family (5th Commandment)
6. The Commandments and the Family (7th Commandment)
7. The Commandments and the Family (10th Commandment)
8. Primitive Monogamic Ideal
9. Reforms of Ezra and Nehemiah
10. The New Testament
11. The Teaching of Jesus
12. The Teaching of Paul
13. Modern Dangers
Literature
1. The Foundation
The Bible is the world's great teacher of monogamy - the union for life of one man and one woman in marriage as the basis of the family. Whatever may be said about the time of the writing of the books of the Bible, or of parts of them, the testimony of the whole is incontrovertibly to the point that marriage springs from the choice of one man and one woman of each other for a permanent family relation. Over and through the whole of the Bible this ideal is dominant. There may be instances shown here and there of violation of this rule. But such cases are to be regarded as contrary to the underlying principle of marriage - known even at the time of their occurrence to be antagonistic to the principle.
There may be times when moral principle is violated in high places and perhaps over wide reaches in society. The Bible shows that there were such times in the history of man. But it is undeniable that its tone toward such lapses of men and of society is not one of condonation but one of regret and disapproval. The disasters consequent are faithfully set forth. The feeling that finds expression in its whole history is that in such cases there had been violation of the ideal of right in the sex relation. The ideal of monogamic relation is put in the forefront of the history of man.
2. Monogamy, the Ideal Relation
The race is introduced synthetically as a species in the incoming of life. ?And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them? (Gen_1:27). But with the first particularization of the relation of the sexes to each other the great charter of monogamy was laid down so clearly that Jesus was content to quote it, when with His limitless ethical scrutiny He explained the marriage relation. ?And the man said (when the woman was brought to him), This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh? (Gen_2:23, Gen_2:14). It is well to pause and look at the grammatical number of the nouns: ?a man,? ?his wife.? The words of the charter hold the sexes to monogamy. The subsequent words make marriage life-lasting. ?They twain shall be one flesh.? A dualism becomes an individualism. So said Christ: ?Wherefore they are no more twain but one flesh? (Mat_19:6 the King James Version). Nothing but death separates a man from his own flesh. Nothing but life-monogamy can find place in the language of this charter.
There is much in the setting of this charter in the account given in Gen that is suggestive of the fine sentiment which we know has always gone along with love and marriage. That this account should have held the place in history that it has had adds testimony to the fine perception of sentiment and the strong grasp on principle out of which it came.
3. Equality of the Sexes
Eve, ?the mother of all living,? comes out as distinctly as Adam on the canvas in the portraiture of the first pair. She is the feminine representative - 'ishshāȟ - of the race, as Adam is the masculine - 'ı̄sh (Gen_2:23). The personality of Eve is as complete as that of Adam. She is a rational and accountable creature, as Adam is. In primitive intellectual and moral transactions she has share on equality with Adam, and is equally involved in their results. Different physical consequences fall on her for ?transgression,? because she is ?woman,? ?the mother of all living? (Gen_3:16). But Adam does not escape retribution for sin, and it may be questioned whether its burden did not fall hardest on him (Gen_3:18, Gen_3:19), for motherhood has its joy as well as its pain, in the companionship of new-born child-life; but the wrestler for subsistence from a reluctant earth must bear his hardship alone. It cannot but be that much of the primitive conjugal love survived the fall.
4. Polygamy
According to the record, monogamy seems long to have survived the departure from Eden. It is not till many generations after that event that we find a case of polygamy - that of Lamech (Gen_4:19-24). Lamech is said to have had ?two wives.? The special mention of ?two? seems to show that man had not yet wandered far away from monogamy. The indications seem to be that as the race multiplied and went out over the face of the earth they forgot the original kinship and exhibited all manner of barbarities in social relations. Lamech was a polygamist, but he was also a quarrelsome homicide: ?I have slain a man for wounding me, and a young man for bruising me? (Gen_4:23). If such acts and dispositions as are disclosed in the case of Lamech become common, it will certainly not be a long while before the only apt description of the condition of society must be that upon which we come in Gen_6:5 : ?And Yahweh saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.? Out of such condition will come war and slavery, and polygamy - and come they did. It is a straight road from Gen_6:5 to ?The Koran, tribute or the sword,? and the polygamy of Mohammedans.
5. The Commandments and the Family (5th Commandment)
The commandments (Exo_20:12; Deu_5:16) are a succinct summary of the supreme moral relations and duties of man. The first four pertain to our relationship to God. The six following concern human relations. Of these six, three have considerations of the family involved in them. Commandments do not come to people ignorant of the subjects to which they relate. A commandment to cover an unknown moral relation is an absurdity. The text of the Fifth Commandment is, ?Honor thy father and thy mother.? This refers to the relation of children to parents. This commandment could scarcely have arisen when polygamy was a common practice, certainly never from promiscuity. The equality of father and mother is stamped on its face. That idea never could have had strength and solemnity enough, except in a prevailing condition of monogamy, to entitle the command in which it appeared to rank with the important subjects covered by the other commands. Before the gaze of the children to whom this commandment came, the family stood in monogamic honor - the mother a head of the family as well as the father. There is no question about the position of the mother in this commandment. She stands out as clear as Sinai itself. There is no cloud on her majesty. Such honor as goes to the father goes to the mother. She is no chattel, no property, no inferior being, but the mother; no subordinate to the father, but his equal in rank and entitled to equal reverence with him. The commandment would not and could not have so pictured the mother had she been one of the inmates of a harem.
6. The Commandments and the Family (7th Commandment)
The Seventh Commandment (Exo_20:14; Deu_5:18) gives the family. It secures the home. It says that whatever children are born to the race shall be born in a home and of the home - shall be family-born. The terms adultery and fornication have now become synonymous. Under the influence of polygamous practices a distinction was made in respect to unlawful sex union as to whether one or both of the parties thereto were married or not, or whether one or both were single. Such distinction will not hold in morals. All or any sex union out of marriage is barred by the family idea. Outside of that all sex union is sin.
While it is true that in the laws of Israel sex sin outside the family relation was treated as a subject by itself, yet when we remember how early in life marriage came in those ancient days, and that betrothal in childhood was deemed as sacred as marriage itself, we see that even then the sweep of the commandment was well-nigh universal and over what a broad range it protected the family. The family is the primal eldest institution of man - the greatest and the holiest. Over this institution this commandment stands sentry. It prevents men from breaking up in complete individual isolation, from reverting to solitary savagery. Think to what a child is born outside of the family relation! Then think of all children being so born, and you have the picture of a low plane of animalism from which all trace of the moral responsibility of fatherhood has disappeared, and where even motherhood will be reduced to simple care during the short period of helpless infancy, to such care as belongs to animal instinct. Put up now the idea that marriage shall be universal and that the children born in marriage shall belong genuinely to it, and you have a new heaven and a new earth ia the sex relations of the race of man.
7. The Commandments and the Family (10th Commandment)
The Tenth Commandment seems almost out of place on the list of the commandments. All the others enjoin specific acts. This tenth seems to be a foregleam of the Savior's method - going to the thoughts and intents of the heart. It is an attempt at regulation in man. It goes beyond outward acts and deals with the spirit. Its purpose seems not regulation of man in society but in himself. So far as it has outward relation it seems to apply primarily to the rights of property. We have at common law the expression, ?rights of persons; and rights of things,? i.e. to property. But the list of things enumerated in the commandment comprises the things most common to family life: house, servants, animals. One is forbidden not only to take but even to desire such things. They are necessary to family life. In this list of things belonging to a neighbor that a man is forbidden to desire occurs the term ?wife.? To first thought it may seem strange that she should be listed with property in house and chattels. But it may not be very singular. One of woman's greatest blessings to man is helpfulness. Eve, the mother of all living, came as a helpmeet for Adam. Sarah is mistress of domestic operations. A wife quick of thought, accurate in judgment and deft of hand is usually the key to a man's material prosperity. As such help a man's desire might stray to his neighbor's wife as well as to his cattle. Even on this lower plane she is still a constituent element of the family. Here the thought of sex is scarcely discernible. Covetousness unlimited in the accumulation of property is what comes under ban. To treat of that matter would lead too far astray. See COVETOUSNESS.
It is well to remember in taking leave of the commandments that half of those pertaining to human relations hold the family plainly in view. This is as it should be. The race is divided equally between male and female, and their relations to each other, we might expect, would call for half of the directions devoted to the whole.
8. Primitive Monogamic Ideal
The laws against adultery and incest (Lev 20 and the like) may seem barbarously severe. Be it so; that fact would show they were carried along by a people tremendously in earnest about the integrity of the family. Beneath pioneer severity is usually a solemn principle. That the children of Israel had a tough grasp on the primitive monogamic ideal is not only apparent in all their history, but it comes out clear in what they held as history before their own began. Mr. Gladstone said the tenth chapter of Genesis is the best document of ancient ethnography known to man. But it is made up on family lines. It is a record of the settlement of heads of families as they went forth on the face of the earth. The common statement for the sons of Noah as they filed out over the lands of which they took possession is, 'these are the sons of ... after their families, after their tongues, in their lands, in their nations.' Mr. Gladstone called attention to the fact that modern philology verifies this classification of the nations which rests on outgrowth from families.
9. Reforms of Ezra and Nehemiah
Turning now to a very distant point in history - the return of the Jews from captivity in Babylon - we find in Ezra and Nehemiah the most critical regard for genealogy. The effort to establish ?pure blood? was fairly a fanaticism and might even be charged with injustice. Yet this effort was ratified by the people - sufferers in degraded name though many of them must have been. This could never have been done had not the monogamic family idea rested in their hearts as just and right. Nehemiah (Neh_13:26) unsparingly condemned the mighty Solomon for his polygamy, and Israel upproved the censure.
10. The New Testament
When we come to the times of the New Testament, contemporaneous polygamy in Jewish society was dead. Wherever New Testament influences have gone, contemporaneous polygamy has ceased to be.
There has been in the United States by Mormonism a belated attempt to revive that crime against the family. But it has had its bad day, and, if it lives at all, it is under the ban of social sentiment and is a crime by law. Consecutive polygamy still exists in nations that are called Christian by the permission of divorce laws. But the tide of Christian sentiment is setting strongly against it, and it takes no special clearness of vision to see that it must go to extinction along with polygamy contemporaneous.
Jesus reaffirmed the original charter of the monogamic family (Mat_19:1-12; Mar_10:2-12). It is to be noticed that He affirmed the indissolubility of the family not only against the parties thereto but against the power of society. See DIVORCE.
11. The Teaching of Jesus
At first sight it seems a little strange that Jesus said so little about the family. But as we reflect on the nature of His mission we shall catch the explanation of His silence. He said, ?Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfill? (Mat_5:17), that is, to fill out, to expound and expand. He also said, ?For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost? (Mat_18:11 the King James Version), and, ?I came not to call the righteous, but sinners? (Mat_9:13), that is, to rectify what was wrong. To what was right He gave the right of way - let it go on in its own course. When the law was right, He said, not one jot or tittle of it should fail (Mat_5:18). With regard to the family, He held the old charter written in the heart of man, before it was burned in brick or committed to manuscript, was right. It was comprehensive, would and ought to stand. So He stood by that, and that sufficed His purpose. Christ did not try to regulate the family so much as to regulate the persons who entered into family life. This may explain why we have no utterance from Him in regard to the conduct and duties of children toward parents. Still stood the ancient statute, ?Honor thy father and thy mother.? He came not to destroy but to fulfill that. That still indicated the right relation of children to parents. If a child had asked about his relation to his parents, Christ would doubtless have referred him to that commandment, as He did other inquirers about duties to the commandments that cover so large a part of the ethical realm.
12. The Teaching of Paul
Paul, who particularizes so much in explanation of duties in all relations, scarcely gets beyond the old commandment, ?Honor thy father and thy mother,? when he says, ?Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well-pleasing in the Lord.? It has always been well-pleasing in the Lord. To be sure there was new inspiration to obedience from the new revelation of duty which came to them in Christ, but the duty was enforced by the Fifth Commandment, and that was copied from the deeper revelation in the heart of man.
13. Modern Dangers
In modern society the two great foes of the family are Divorce and Migration. Families no longer live a continuous life together. We have less family life than the old pastoral nomads. They had to keep together for several generations in order to protect their lives and their flocks and herds. So arose the clan, the tribe and the nation. Family influence can be detected through them. Modern Industries are very much localized. We should easily think that families would be under their controlling influence. But they are not; the industries are localized, the workers are becoming rovers. When trouble comes in an industry, a workman's first resort is to try somewhere else. Cheapness of transportation gives him the opportunity he desires. So with a satchel he goes hunting, much as a barbarian roams the forest for game, alone. He may take his family or leave it behind. He may be separated from his family for months or years - possibly abandon it forever. A very common cause of divorce is abandonment of family by its male head.
In fact, those engaged in a great deal of legitimate industry are looking out for a better place quite as much as to develop the capacities of business in their own locations. The signs over places of business are few that carry the same name in town or city for a generation. Moving is perhaps more the order of the day than movement. The families are few that can be found in the same place for a quarter of a century. The wealthy cannot stay in the same house six months at a time. They have a house in the city for the winter and one in the country for the summer, and then forsake both and fly over the sea, perhaps to remain for years - traveling. How can family ties survive under such migratory life? Society supersedes the family.
Even education is subject to this malign influence. At their most impressive age, when they need family influence most around them, children are sent away to prepare for or to enter upon higher courses of education. This fits them for something else than life in the family from which they sprang and they rarely return to it. We may not be able to check this drift, but we ought to see its tendency to degrade the estimate of the value of the family.
Literature
Wolsey, Divorce, Scribners; Publications of the National Divorce Reform League; Reports State and National, ad rem; Peabody, Jesus Christ and the Social Question, chapter iii; Caverno, Divorce, Midland Publishing Co., Madison, Wis.; The Ten Words, Pilgrim Press, Boston.
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
PRINTER 1915.
Eph_3:15 (a) GOD's people are represented as a family for fellowship. This is one of the six aspects of the church found in the book of Ephesians. As a "family" we serve together and play together. We study and work together in happy relationship. Each one helps and loves the other. Each one shares the problems, the defeats and the victories of the others in the family. So it should be among GOD's people.
Wilson's Dictionary of Bible Types
press 1957.
Family
The idea of the family (οϊvκος), in Greece, was that of the nucleus of society, or of the state. "Aristotle speaks of it as the foundation of the state and, quotes Hesiod to the effect that the original family consisted of the wife and the laboring ox, which held, as he says, to the poor the position of the slave (Polit. 1:1). The complete Greek family, then, consisted of the man, and his wife, and his slave; the two latter, Aristotle says, never having been confounded in the same class by the Greeks, as by the barbarians (Ib.). In this form, the family was recognized as the model of the monarchy, the earliest, as well as the simplest, form of government. When, by the birth and growth of children, and the death of the father, the original family is broken up into several, the heads of which stand to each other in a co-ordinate rather than a strictly subordinate position, we have in these the prototypes of the more advanced forms of government. Each brother, by becoming the head of a separate family, becomes a member of an aristocracy, or the embodiment of a portion of the sovereign power, as it exists in the separate elements of which a constitutional or a democratic government is composed. But at Rome the idea of the family was still more closely entwined with that of life in the state, and the natural power of the father was taken as the basis not only of the whole political, but of the whole social organization of the people. Among the Romans, as with the Greeks, the family included the slave as well as the wife, and ultimately the children, a fact which, indeed, is indicated by the etymology of the word, which belongs to the same root as famulus, a slave. In its widest sense, the famalia included even the in-animate possessions of the citizen, who, as the head of a house, was his own master (sui juris); and Gaius (2:102) uses it as synonymous with patrimonium. In general, however, it was confined to persons the wife, children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, if such there were, and slaves of a full-blown Roman citizen. Sometimes, too, it signified all those who had sprung from a common stock, and would have been members of the family, and under the potestas of a common ancestor, had he been alive. In this sense, of course, the slaves belonging to the different members of the family were not included in it. It was a family, in short, in the sense in which we speak of 'the royal family,' etc., with this difference, that it was possible for an individual to quit it, and to pass into another by adoption. Sometimes, again, the word was used with reference to slaves exclusively, and, analogically, to a sect of philosophers, or a body of gladiators." See Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities.
The Christian family, on the contrary, is a communion resting as an ethico- religious foundation, and forming the closest of all human relationships. It is a copy of the highest and most perfect union, that of the Church with Christ its head. Christianity, considered as the true (ideal) family, wherein Christ's power begets, through the Word and the Spirit, children of faith unto God, who mutually aid each other with their several spiritual gifts, is imaged in the natural family; imperfectly, indeed, since the life of the Christian family is yet a life in the flesh (Gal_2:20); yet truly, because its bond of union is spiritual, being the spirit of Christ. The basis of the Christian family is Christian marriage, or monogamy, the exclusive union of one man to one woman. The deepest ground of this union, and its true aim, without which Christian marriage and family are impossible, is the consciousness of unity in Christ, or in the love of God in Christ, the source of individual sympathy, as well as of brotherly and universal love. Marriage has, in common with Christian friendship, the bond of tender sentiments; but the former is an exclusive bond between two persons of different sexes, whose personality is complemented, so to speak, by each other. It is therefore a lifelong relation, while friendship may be only temporary. SEE MARRIAGE.
Two persons thus joined in marriage lay the foundation of a Christian family; indeed, they constitute a family, though yet incomplete and undeveloped. It awaits its completion in the birth of children. In proportion, however, as the married couple live in a state of holiness, so are the natural desires for issue and their gratification made subservient to the divinely ordered end of the marriage, and accompanied by a sense of dependence on the will and biessingof God. And in order duly to attain this higher end of the family, it is necessary that, keeping the merely carnal passions subordinate, both husband and wife should endeavor to subserve each other's moral and spiritual completeness; and also that they should, when children are born, faithfully help each other in training them properly, by the combination of their particular dispositions, the father's sternness being tempered with the mother's gentleness, and the mother's tenderness energized by the father's authority. The children should see the unity between the father and the mother, in their unity of aim, though manifested according to their different dispositions. Early baptism should be followed by careful religious training. In this the mother has a certain priority, inasmuch as, aside from giving her children birth, she is also first in giving them the bodily and spiritual care they require. Yet even in this early period she derives assistance from the husband, who, as the head of the family, counsels, strengthens, and assists her. In after years their relative shares in the education of the children become more equalized, the sons coming, however, more under the influence of the father, while the daughters remain more under the mother's.
Those who wish theirs to be a real Christian family must from the first inculcate on their children (aside from the habit of absolute, unquestioning obedience to the parental authority as divinely instituted) the true ground of obedience, as laid in obedience to God, springing from love to God. "The order in which the love of the child graduates is from the stage of instinctive love to moral affection; and from this to the love of its heavenly Parent. Desirous as the parents may be to lead its affections up at once to the Creator, the previous stages of the path must first be passed through. For a while the maternal care is the only Providence it knows; and the father's experience is to it a world of grand enterprise, and of power unlimited. In vain it strives to climb the height of his knowledge his virtual omniscience; nor can it conceive of a diviner guarantee than his promise. To see its parents bend in worship, and to hear them speak with holy awe of their Father in heaven, is itself solemn and suggestive as a ladder set up from earth to heaven. The wise discipline, too, which leads the parent kindly to repress its selfish desires, and constantly to aim at its moral welfare, invariably begets in return the highest order of filial love and confidence; evincing the power of the child to discriminate between instinctive and moral affection, and preparing it to embrace that heavenly Parent of whom the earthly is but an imperfect representation. And let the parents remark that, from the moment they begin to point their child to God as all object of reverence and love, they are pursuing the certain course for augmenting its moral affection for themselves; while its intelligent love for them is a valuable means and a pledge for its ascending to the love of God" (Harris, Patriarchy, or the Family, page 352). This divine liberty, based on fear and love, far from diminishing the respectful love of the children for their parents, will exalt and purify it, and bring it to its highest degree of perfection; it will make it become part of their religion, and whenever a collision may occur between the parental wishes and the will of God, it will lead the children, while obeying the latter, to cherish all possible reverence and respect for the former. By this personal development of their spiritual life the sons and daughters will become friends to their parents; a higher kind of trust; such as is felt in one's equals, is thus reached, without diminishing the respect which is the, duty of the child and the right of the parents. This is the true graduation of the Christian family life, in which the elder children become helps to the parents for the education of the younger, while at the same time they become more thoroughly fitted to fulfill their own duties as heads of families in after life. Where the blessing of children has been denied, it can in some measure, though not completely, find a substitute in the adoption of orphans or other children, and then the duties towards these are the same as towards one's own.
The Christian family includes also what heathen Rome called the family in a subordinate sense the servants. Their position, wherever the principles of Christian humanity prevail, is not one of slavery, but is a free moral relation, entered into by the consent of both parties, and giving each peculiar rights and duties. The Christian, penetrated with the spirit of his Master, will not lose sight of the fact that this spirit inclined Him much more to serve others than to have them serve Him, and he will not be satisfied by rewarding his servants with wages only, but with all the spiritual blessings of which the family is the proper sphere. They should take part in the family worship, and even an active part, as in reading, singing, praying. The more they come to take part in the life of the family, in its interests, its joys, its griefs, and receive from it the sympathy and help they require, either for the body or the mind, the more does the general family lead a really Christian life.
The entire life of the Christian family is a continuous act of worship in the more extended sense of the word, and must gradually become more and more so, since all its actions are done in the name of Christ and for the glory of God. This thoroughly Christian conduct is, however, sustained and strengthened by the family worship in the proper sense, in which the family, as such, seeks for strength in the Word and in the Spirit of God. The more perfectly this family worship is organized, the more will it resemble public worship, consisting, like it, in the reading and exounding of Scripture, singing, and prayer. The eader in the religious exercises of the family should be the father, as priestly head of the house. This, however, is not to exclude the co-operation of the mother, children, and other members of the family their participation, on the contrary, adds much to theinterest of the service, and makes it an admirable supplement to public worship, as in the family the feeling of trust in each other and of self-dependence add much: to liberty in prayer. This constitutes the true hearth of the family, the center around which all meet again, from whence they derive light and warmth, and whose genial influences will be felt through life. From the bosom of such a family the spirit of Christianity goes out with its healthful influence into the Church, the school, the state, and even the whole world.
See generally the writers on moral philosophy and Christian ethics, and especially Herzog, Real-Encyklopddie 4:318; Rothe, Theolog. Ethik, in, 605; Schaff,. Apostolical Age, § 111; Harris, Patriarchy, or the Family (Lond. 1855, 8vo); Anderson, Genius and Design of the Domestic Constitution (Edinb. 1826, 8vo); Thiersch, Ueber christliches Familienleben (4th ed. Frankf. 1859; translated into several languages).
CYCLOPEDIA OF BIBLICAL, THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL
press 1895.
1. Character of the family in OT.Family in the OT has a wider significance than that which we usually associate with the term. The word tr. [Note: translate or translation.] house (Gen_7:1) approaches most nearly to our word family: but a mans house might consist of his mother; his wives and the wives children; his concubines and their children; sons-in-law and daughters-in-law, with their offspring; illegitimate sons (Jdg_11:1); dependents and allens; and slaves of both sexes. Polygamy was in part the cause of the large size of the Hebrew household; in part the cause of it may be found in the insecurity of early times, when safety lay in numbers, and consequently not only the married sons and daughters dwelt, for the sake of protection, with their father, but remote relatives and even foreigners (the stranger within thy gates) would attach themselves, with a similar object, to a great household. The idea of the family sometimes had an even wider significance, extending to and including the nation, or even the whole race of mankind. Of this a familiar illustration is the figure of Abraham, who was regarded as being in a very real sense the father of the nation. So also the same feeling for the idea of the family is to be found in the careful assigning of a father to every known nation and tribe (Gen_10:1-32). From this it is easily perceived that the family played an important part in Hebrew thought and affairs. It formed the base upon which the social structure was built up; its indistinguishable merging into the wider sense of clan or tribe indicates how it affected the political life of the whole nation.
Polygyny and bigamy were recognized features of the family life. From the Oriental point of view there was nothing immoral in the practice of polygamy. The female slaves were in every respect the property of their master, and became his concubines; except in certain cases, when they seem to have belonged exclusively to their mistress, and could not be appropriated by the man except by her suggestion or consent (Gen_16:2-3). The slave-concubines were obtained as booty in time of war (Jdg_5:30), or bought from poverty-stricken parents (Exo_21:7); or, possibly, in the ordinary slave traffic with foreign nations. In addition to his concubines a man might take several wives, and from familiar examples in the OT it seems that it was usual for wealthy and important personages to do so; Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon, occur as instances. Elkanah, the husband of Hannah and Peninnah, is an interesting example of a man of no particular position who nevertheless had more than one wife; this may be an indication that bigamy, at least, if not polygamy, was not confined to the very wealthy and exalted. At all events, polygyny was an established and recognized institution from the earliest times. The gradual evolution in the OT of monogamy as the ideal is therefore of the highest interest. The earliest codes attempt in various ways to regulate the custom of polygyny. The Deut. code in particular actually forbids kings to multiply wives (Deu_17:17); this is the fruit, apparently, of the experience of Solomons reign. In the prophetic writings the note of protest is more clearly sounded. Not only Adam but also Noah, the second founder of the human race, represents monogamy, and on that account recommends it as Gods ordinance. It is in the line of Cain that bigamy is first represented, as though to emphasize the consequences of the Fall. Reasons are given in explanation of the bigamy of Abraham (Gen_16:1-16) and of Jacob (Gen_29:23). Hosea and other prophets constantly dwell upon the thought of a monogamous marriage as being a symbol of the union between God and His people; and denounce idolatry as unfaithfulness to this spiritual marriage-tie.
2. Position of the wife.Side by side with the growth of the recognition of monogamy as the ideal form of marriage, polygamy was practised even as late as NT times. The natural accompaniment of such a practice was the insignificance of the wifes position: she was ordinarily regarded as a piece of property, as the wording of the Tenth Commandment testifies. Also her rights and privileges were necessarily shared by others. The relative positions of wives and concubines were determined mainly by the husbands favour. The children of the wife claimed the greater part, or the whole, of the inheritance; otherwise there does not seem to have been any inferiority in the position of the concubine as compared with that of the wife, nor was any idea of illegitimacy, in our sense of the word, connected with her children.
The husband had supreme authority over the wife. He was permitted by the Deut. code to divorce her with apparently little reason. The various passages (Deu_22:13; Deu_22:19; Deu_22:28-29, Isa_50:1, Jer_3:8, Mal_2:16) referring to and regulating divorce, indicate that it was of frequent occurrence. Yet wives, and even concubines who had been bought in the first place as slaves, might not be sold (Exo_21:7-11, Deu_21:14). Indeed, the Law throughout proves itself sympathetic towards the position of the wife and desirous of improving her condition (Exo_21:2; Exo_21:12, Deu_21:10-17). This very attitude of the Law, however, indicates that there was need of improvement. The wife seems to have had no redress if wronged by the husband; she could not divorce him; and absolute faithfulness, though required of the wife, was not expected of the husband, so long as he did not injure the rights of any other man.
The wife, then, was in theory the mere chattel of her husband. A woman of character, however, could improve her situation and attain to a considerable degree of importance and influence as well as of personal freedom. Thus we read not only of Hagars, who were dealt hardly with and were obliged to submit themselves under the hands of their masters and rivals, but also of Sarahs and Rebekahs and Abigails, who could act independently and even against the wishes of their husbands in order to gain their own ends. And the Book of Proverbs testifies to the advantage accruing to a man in the possession of a good wife (Pro_19:14; Pro_31:10 ff.), and to the misery which it is in the power of a selfish woman to inflict (Pro_19:13 etc.).
3. Children.In a household consisting of several families, the mother of each set of children would naturally have more to do with them than the father, and the maternal relationship would usually be more close and affectionate than the bond between the father and his children. Although it was recognized to be disastrous for a household to be divided against itself, yet friction between the various families could hardly have been avoided. One whom his mother comforteth (Isa_66:13) must have been a sight common enougha mother consoling her injured son for the taunts and blows of her rivals children. Thus the mother would have the early care and education of her children under her own control. The father, on the other hand, had complete power over the lives and fortunes of his children, and would represent to them the idea of authority rather than of tenderness. He it was who arranged the marriage of his sons (Gen_24:4; Gen_28:2, Jdg_14:2), and had the right to sell his daughters (Exo_21:7). The father seems even to have had powers of life and death over his children (Jdg_11:39): and the Law provided that an unworthy son might be stoned to death upon the accusation of his parents (Deu_21:18-21). See also art. Child.
4. Family duties.The claims of the family upon the various members of it were strongly felt. Many laws provide for the vengeance and protection of the injured and defenceless by their next-of-kin. Brothers were the guardians of their sisters (Gen_34:1-31). A childless widow could demand, though not enforce, re-marriage with her brother-in-law (Deu_25:5-10). Boaz, as the nearest relation, performed this duty towards Ruth. In spite of the prohibition of the later code (Lev_20:21), levirate marriage seems to have been practised at the time of Christ (Mat_22:25 ff.). Its purpose was perhaps rather for the preservation of the particular branch of the family than for the advantage of the widow herself: in any case it illustrates the strong sense of duty towards the family as a whole.
Children owed obedience and respect to their parents. Even a married man would consider himself still under the authority of his father, whether living with him or not; and his wife would be subject to her father-in-law even after her husbands death.
To an Israelite, family conveyed the notions of unity, security, order, and discipline. These conceptions were nourished by the religious customs and observances in the home, the most conspicuous instance of which was the keeping of the Passover. Such observances no doubt helped to bind the members of the family in close religious and spiritual sympathies. The common longing to love and to serve God was the base of the family affection and unityfrom patriarchal times when the head of each family would offer sacrifice upon his own altar, until the hour in which Marys Son asked in tender surprise of her and Joseph: Wist ye not that I must he in my Fathers house? (Luk_2:49).
E. G. Romanes.
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible
Edited by James Hastings, D.D. Published in 1909
According to Gods plan for human life, people do not exist in isolation but as part of a vast society, and they are fitted for their part in that society by being brought up in families (Eph_3:14-15; 1Ti_3:4). Stability, love and cooperation in the family will help produce similar qualities in society as a whole. (Concerning illustrations of the family in relation to Israel or the church see CHURCH; FATHER.)
Parents and children
With his ordering of human life, God has put it into the nature of people to exercise and accept authority. He has, for example, given parents authority over their children, and children naturally recognize that authority (Gen_22:7-8; Exo_20:12; Luk_2:51).
The Bible warns parents against misusing their authority or treating their children unjustly. It also teaches children that they must respect and obey their parents (Eph_6:1-4; Col_3:20-21). This does not mean that the family is intended to function in an atmosphere of harsh authority. On the contrary it will function best where there is an atmosphere of self-sacrificing love (Tit_2:4; cf. 2Co_6:11-13; Eph_5:25).
Parents who love their children will fulfil their duty to instruct and discipline them. They will not be able to do this, however, if they are ill-instructed or ill-disciplined themselves (Deu_11:18-19; 2Sa_7:14-15; Pro_1:8; Pro_13:1; Pro_13:24; Pro_19:18; Pro_29:17; Eph_6:4; 1Ti_3:2-5; 1Ti_5:14; Heb_12:7-11; see CHASTISEMENT). They must encourage open communication between themselves and their children (Deu_6:20-25; Jos_4:21-24). If parents act responsibly towards their children, they can expect to produce children who act responsibly (Pro_10:1; Pro_10:5; Pro_22:6; 2Ti_1:5). The training that produces this responsibility begins in the childrens infancy, is carried out primarily in the home, and is based on the Word of God (Deu_6:6-9; 2Ti_3:14-15).
The teaching that parents give their children must be supported by the example of right conduct in the parents lives (Rom_2:21-24; 1Th_2:10-12). Parents must practise and teach self-sacrifice for the sake of others, so that the family is a place where people learn how to love others, forgive others, honour others and serve others (Eph_4:31-32; cf. Mat_20:25-27; Joh_13:12-15).
Wider responsibilities
Parents must be careful that concern for the familys well-being does not make them or their children self-centred. By practising hospitality and helping the needy, parents will encourage their children to have a generous attitude to those outside the family (Rom_12:13; 1Ti_5:10; Jam_1:26-27; 1Jn_3:17; see GOOD WORKS; HOSPITALITY). Such attitudes and conduct, besides benefiting others, will help those within the family develop godly character and produce a happy home (Psa_128:1-4).
Responsibilities within the family concern more than just the parents and children. They extend beyond the immediate family to those of the former generation who may no longer be able to support themselves. Regardless of the help that may come from the government, the church, or other sources, Christians have a responsibility for the well-being of their aged parents (Mar_7:9-13; 1Ti_5:4; 1Ti_5:8; see also WIDOW).
Bridgeway Bible Dictionary by Don Fleming
PRINTER 1990.
fam?i-li (משׁפחה, mishpāḥāh, בּית, bayith; πατριά, patriá):
1. The Foundation
2. Monogamy, the Ideal Relation
3. Equality of the Sexes
4. Polygamy
5. The Commandments and the Family (5th Commandment)
6. The Commandments and the Family (7th Commandment)
7. The Commandments and the Family (10th Commandment)
8. Primitive Monogamic Ideal
9. Reforms of Ezra and Nehemiah
10. The New Testament
11. The Teaching of Jesus
12. The Teaching of Paul
13. Modern Dangers
Literature
1. The Foundation
The Bible is the world's great teacher of monogamy - the union for life of one man and one woman in marriage as the basis of the family. Whatever may be said about the time of the writing of the books of the Bible, or of parts of them, the testimony of the whole is incontrovertibly to the point that marriage springs from the choice of one man and one woman of each other for a permanent family relation. Over and through the whole of the Bible this ideal is dominant. There may be instances shown here and there of violation of this rule. But such cases are to be regarded as contrary to the underlying principle of marriage - known even at the time of their occurrence to be antagonistic to the principle.
There may be times when moral principle is violated in high places and perhaps over wide reaches in society. The Bible shows that there were such times in the history of man. But it is undeniable that its tone toward such lapses of men and of society is not one of condonation but one of regret and disapproval. The disasters consequent are faithfully set forth. The feeling that finds expression in its whole history is that in such cases there had been violation of the ideal of right in the sex relation. The ideal of monogamic relation is put in the forefront of the history of man.
2. Monogamy, the Ideal Relation
The race is introduced synthetically as a species in the incoming of life. ?And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them? (Gen_1:27). But with the first particularization of the relation of the sexes to each other the great charter of monogamy was laid down so clearly that Jesus was content to quote it, when with His limitless ethical scrutiny He explained the marriage relation. ?And the man said (when the woman was brought to him), This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh? (Gen_2:23, Gen_2:14). It is well to pause and look at the grammatical number of the nouns: ?a man,? ?his wife.? The words of the charter hold the sexes to monogamy. The subsequent words make marriage life-lasting. ?They twain shall be one flesh.? A dualism becomes an individualism. So said Christ: ?Wherefore they are no more twain but one flesh? (Mat_19:6 the King James Version). Nothing but death separates a man from his own flesh. Nothing but life-monogamy can find place in the language of this charter.
There is much in the setting of this charter in the account given in Gen that is suggestive of the fine sentiment which we know has always gone along with love and marriage. That this account should have held the place in history that it has had adds testimony to the fine perception of sentiment and the strong grasp on principle out of which it came.
3. Equality of the Sexes
Eve, ?the mother of all living,? comes out as distinctly as Adam on the canvas in the portraiture of the first pair. She is the feminine representative - 'ishshāȟ - of the race, as Adam is the masculine - 'ı̄sh (Gen_2:23). The personality of Eve is as complete as that of Adam. She is a rational and accountable creature, as Adam is. In primitive intellectual and moral transactions she has share on equality with Adam, and is equally involved in their results. Different physical consequences fall on her for ?transgression,? because she is ?woman,? ?the mother of all living? (Gen_3:16). But Adam does not escape retribution for sin, and it may be questioned whether its burden did not fall hardest on him (Gen_3:18, Gen_3:19), for motherhood has its joy as well as its pain, in the companionship of new-born child-life; but the wrestler for subsistence from a reluctant earth must bear his hardship alone. It cannot but be that much of the primitive conjugal love survived the fall.
4. Polygamy
According to the record, monogamy seems long to have survived the departure from Eden. It is not till many generations after that event that we find a case of polygamy - that of Lamech (Gen_4:19-24). Lamech is said to have had ?two wives.? The special mention of ?two? seems to show that man had not yet wandered far away from monogamy. The indications seem to be that as the race multiplied and went out over the face of the earth they forgot the original kinship and exhibited all manner of barbarities in social relations. Lamech was a polygamist, but he was also a quarrelsome homicide: ?I have slain a man for wounding me, and a young man for bruising me? (Gen_4:23). If such acts and dispositions as are disclosed in the case of Lamech become common, it will certainly not be a long while before the only apt description of the condition of society must be that upon which we come in Gen_6:5 : ?And Yahweh saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.? Out of such condition will come war and slavery, and polygamy - and come they did. It is a straight road from Gen_6:5 to ?The Koran, tribute or the sword,? and the polygamy of Mohammedans.
5. The Commandments and the Family (5th Commandment)
The commandments (Exo_20:12; Deu_5:16) are a succinct summary of the supreme moral relations and duties of man. The first four pertain to our relationship to God. The six following concern human relations. Of these six, three have considerations of the family involved in them. Commandments do not come to people ignorant of the subjects to which they relate. A commandment to cover an unknown moral relation is an absurdity. The text of the Fifth Commandment is, ?Honor thy father and thy mother.? This refers to the relation of children to parents. This commandment could scarcely have arisen when polygamy was a common practice, certainly never from promiscuity. The equality of father and mother is stamped on its face. That idea never could have had strength and solemnity enough, except in a prevailing condition of monogamy, to entitle the command in which it appeared to rank with the important subjects covered by the other commands. Before the gaze of the children to whom this commandment came, the family stood in monogamic honor - the mother a head of the family as well as the father. There is no question about the position of the mother in this commandment. She stands out as clear as Sinai itself. There is no cloud on her majesty. Such honor as goes to the father goes to the mother. She is no chattel, no property, no inferior being, but the mother; no subordinate to the father, but his equal in rank and entitled to equal reverence with him. The commandment would not and could not have so pictured the mother had she been one of the inmates of a harem.
6. The Commandments and the Family (7th Commandment)
The Seventh Commandment (Exo_20:14; Deu_5:18) gives the family. It secures the home. It says that whatever children are born to the race shall be born in a home and of the home - shall be family-born. The terms adultery and fornication have now become synonymous. Under the influence of polygamous practices a distinction was made in respect to unlawful sex union as to whether one or both of the parties thereto were married or not, or whether one or both were single. Such distinction will not hold in morals. All or any sex union out of marriage is barred by the family idea. Outside of that all sex union is sin.
While it is true that in the laws of Israel sex sin outside the family relation was treated as a subject by itself, yet when we remember how early in life marriage came in those ancient days, and that betrothal in childhood was deemed as sacred as marriage itself, we see that even then the sweep of the commandment was well-nigh universal and over what a broad range it protected the family. The family is the primal eldest institution of man - the greatest and the holiest. Over this institution this commandment stands sentry. It prevents men from breaking up in complete individual isolation, from reverting to solitary savagery. Think to what a child is born outside of the family relation! Then think of all children being so born, and you have the picture of a low plane of animalism from which all trace of the moral responsibility of fatherhood has disappeared, and where even motherhood will be reduced to simple care during the short period of helpless infancy, to such care as belongs to animal instinct. Put up now the idea that marriage shall be universal and that the children born in marriage shall belong genuinely to it, and you have a new heaven and a new earth ia the sex relations of the race of man.
7. The Commandments and the Family (10th Commandment)
The Tenth Commandment seems almost out of place on the list of the commandments. All the others enjoin specific acts. This tenth seems to be a foregleam of the Savior's method - going to the thoughts and intents of the heart. It is an attempt at regulation in man. It goes beyond outward acts and deals with the spirit. Its purpose seems not regulation of man in society but in himself. So far as it has outward relation it seems to apply primarily to the rights of property. We have at common law the expression, ?rights of persons; and rights of things,? i.e. to property. But the list of things enumerated in the commandment comprises the things most common to family life: house, servants, animals. One is forbidden not only to take but even to desire such things. They are necessary to family life. In this list of things belonging to a neighbor that a man is forbidden to desire occurs the term ?wife.? To first thought it may seem strange that she should be listed with property in house and chattels. But it may not be very singular. One of woman's greatest blessings to man is helpfulness. Eve, the mother of all living, came as a helpmeet for Adam. Sarah is mistress of domestic operations. A wife quick of thought, accurate in judgment and deft of hand is usually the key to a man's material prosperity. As such help a man's desire might stray to his neighbor's wife as well as to his cattle. Even on this lower plane she is still a constituent element of the family. Here the thought of sex is scarcely discernible. Covetousness unlimited in the accumulation of property is what comes under ban. To treat of that matter would lead too far astray. See COVETOUSNESS.
It is well to remember in taking leave of the commandments that half of those pertaining to human relations hold the family plainly in view. This is as it should be. The race is divided equally between male and female, and their relations to each other, we might expect, would call for half of the directions devoted to the whole.
8. Primitive Monogamic Ideal
The laws against adultery and incest (Lev 20 and the like) may seem barbarously severe. Be it so; that fact would show they were carried along by a people tremendously in earnest about the integrity of the family. Beneath pioneer severity is usually a solemn principle. That the children of Israel had a tough grasp on the primitive monogamic ideal is not only apparent in all their history, but it comes out clear in what they held as history before their own began. Mr. Gladstone said the tenth chapter of Genesis is the best document of ancient ethnography known to man. But it is made up on family lines. It is a record of the settlement of heads of families as they went forth on the face of the earth. The common statement for the sons of Noah as they filed out over the lands of which they took possession is, 'these are the sons of ... after their families, after their tongues, in their lands, in their nations.' Mr. Gladstone called attention to the fact that modern philology verifies this classification of the nations which rests on outgrowth from families.
9. Reforms of Ezra and Nehemiah
Turning now to a very distant point in history - the return of the Jews from captivity in Babylon - we find in Ezra and Nehemiah the most critical regard for genealogy. The effort to establish ?pure blood? was fairly a fanaticism and might even be charged with injustice. Yet this effort was ratified by the people - sufferers in degraded name though many of them must have been. This could never have been done had not the monogamic family idea rested in their hearts as just and right. Nehemiah (Neh_13:26) unsparingly condemned the mighty Solomon for his polygamy, and Israel upproved the censure.
10. The New Testament
When we come to the times of the New Testament, contemporaneous polygamy in Jewish society was dead. Wherever New Testament influences have gone, contemporaneous polygamy has ceased to be.
There has been in the United States by Mormonism a belated attempt to revive that crime against the family. But it has had its bad day, and, if it lives at all, it is under the ban of social sentiment and is a crime by law. Consecutive polygamy still exists in nations that are called Christian by the permission of divorce laws. But the tide of Christian sentiment is setting strongly against it, and it takes no special clearness of vision to see that it must go to extinction along with polygamy contemporaneous.
Jesus reaffirmed the original charter of the monogamic family (Mat_19:1-12; Mar_10:2-12). It is to be noticed that He affirmed the indissolubility of the family not only against the parties thereto but against the power of society. See DIVORCE.
11. The Teaching of Jesus
At first sight it seems a little strange that Jesus said so little about the family. But as we reflect on the nature of His mission we shall catch the explanation of His silence. He said, ?Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfill? (Mat_5:17), that is, to fill out, to expound and expand. He also said, ?For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost? (Mat_18:11 the King James Version), and, ?I came not to call the righteous, but sinners? (Mat_9:13), that is, to rectify what was wrong. To what was right He gave the right of way - let it go on in its own course. When the law was right, He said, not one jot or tittle of it should fail (Mat_5:18). With regard to the family, He held the old charter written in the heart of man, before it was burned in brick or committed to manuscript, was right. It was comprehensive, would and ought to stand. So He stood by that, and that sufficed His purpose. Christ did not try to regulate the family so much as to regulate the persons who entered into family life. This may explain why we have no utterance from Him in regard to the conduct and duties of children toward parents. Still stood the ancient statute, ?Honor thy father and thy mother.? He came not to destroy but to fulfill that. That still indicated the right relation of children to parents. If a child had asked about his relation to his parents, Christ would doubtless have referred him to that commandment, as He did other inquirers about duties to the commandments that cover so large a part of the ethical realm.
12. The Teaching of Paul
Paul, who particularizes so much in explanation of duties in all relations, scarcely gets beyond the old commandment, ?Honor thy father and thy mother,? when he says, ?Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well-pleasing in the Lord.? It has always been well-pleasing in the Lord. To be sure there was new inspiration to obedience from the new revelation of duty which came to them in Christ, but the duty was enforced by the Fifth Commandment, and that was copied from the deeper revelation in the heart of man.
13. Modern Dangers
In modern society the two great foes of the family are Divorce and Migration. Families no longer live a continuous life together. We have less family life than the old pastoral nomads. They had to keep together for several generations in order to protect their lives and their flocks and herds. So arose the clan, the tribe and the nation. Family influence can be detected through them. Modern Industries are very much localized. We should easily think that families would be under their controlling influence. But they are not; the industries are localized, the workers are becoming rovers. When trouble comes in an industry, a workman's first resort is to try somewhere else. Cheapness of transportation gives him the opportunity he desires. So with a satchel he goes hunting, much as a barbarian roams the forest for game, alone. He may take his family or leave it behind. He may be separated from his family for months or years - possibly abandon it forever. A very common cause of divorce is abandonment of family by its male head.
In fact, those engaged in a great deal of legitimate industry are looking out for a better place quite as much as to develop the capacities of business in their own locations. The signs over places of business are few that carry the same name in town or city for a generation. Moving is perhaps more the order of the day than movement. The families are few that can be found in the same place for a quarter of a century. The wealthy cannot stay in the same house six months at a time. They have a house in the city for the winter and one in the country for the summer, and then forsake both and fly over the sea, perhaps to remain for years - traveling. How can family ties survive under such migratory life? Society supersedes the family.
Even education is subject to this malign influence. At their most impressive age, when they need family influence most around them, children are sent away to prepare for or to enter upon higher courses of education. This fits them for something else than life in the family from which they sprang and they rarely return to it. We may not be able to check this drift, but we ought to see its tendency to degrade the estimate of the value of the family.
Literature
Wolsey, Divorce, Scribners; Publications of the National Divorce Reform League; Reports State and National, ad rem; Peabody, Jesus Christ and the Social Question, chapter iii; Caverno, Divorce, Midland Publishing Co., Madison, Wis.; The Ten Words, Pilgrim Press, Boston.
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
PRINTER 1915.
Eph_3:15 (a) GOD's people are represented as a family for fellowship. This is one of the six aspects of the church found in the book of Ephesians. As a "family" we serve together and play together. We study and work together in happy relationship. Each one helps and loves the other. Each one shares the problems, the defeats and the victories of the others in the family. So it should be among GOD's people.
Wilson's Dictionary of Bible Types
press 1957.
Family
The idea of the family (οϊvκος), in Greece, was that of the nucleus of society, or of the state. "Aristotle speaks of it as the foundation of the state and, quotes Hesiod to the effect that the original family consisted of the wife and the laboring ox, which held, as he says, to the poor the position of the slave (Polit. 1:1). The complete Greek family, then, consisted of the man, and his wife, and his slave; the two latter, Aristotle says, never having been confounded in the same class by the Greeks, as by the barbarians (Ib.). In this form, the family was recognized as the model of the monarchy, the earliest, as well as the simplest, form of government. When, by the birth and growth of children, and the death of the father, the original family is broken up into several, the heads of which stand to each other in a co-ordinate rather than a strictly subordinate position, we have in these the prototypes of the more advanced forms of government. Each brother, by becoming the head of a separate family, becomes a member of an aristocracy, or the embodiment of a portion of the sovereign power, as it exists in the separate elements of which a constitutional or a democratic government is composed. But at Rome the idea of the family was still more closely entwined with that of life in the state, and the natural power of the father was taken as the basis not only of the whole political, but of the whole social organization of the people. Among the Romans, as with the Greeks, the family included the slave as well as the wife, and ultimately the children, a fact which, indeed, is indicated by the etymology of the word, which belongs to the same root as famulus, a slave. In its widest sense, the famalia included even the in-animate possessions of the citizen, who, as the head of a house, was his own master (sui juris); and Gaius (2:102) uses it as synonymous with patrimonium. In general, however, it was confined to persons the wife, children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, if such there were, and slaves of a full-blown Roman citizen. Sometimes, too, it signified all those who had sprung from a common stock, and would have been members of the family, and under the potestas of a common ancestor, had he been alive. In this sense, of course, the slaves belonging to the different members of the family were not included in it. It was a family, in short, in the sense in which we speak of 'the royal family,' etc., with this difference, that it was possible for an individual to quit it, and to pass into another by adoption. Sometimes, again, the word was used with reference to slaves exclusively, and, analogically, to a sect of philosophers, or a body of gladiators." See Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities.
The Christian family, on the contrary, is a communion resting as an ethico- religious foundation, and forming the closest of all human relationships. It is a copy of the highest and most perfect union, that of the Church with Christ its head. Christianity, considered as the true (ideal) family, wherein Christ's power begets, through the Word and the Spirit, children of faith unto God, who mutually aid each other with their several spiritual gifts, is imaged in the natural family; imperfectly, indeed, since the life of the Christian family is yet a life in the flesh (Gal_2:20); yet truly, because its bond of union is spiritual, being the spirit of Christ. The basis of the Christian family is Christian marriage, or monogamy, the exclusive union of one man to one woman. The deepest ground of this union, and its true aim, without which Christian marriage and family are impossible, is the consciousness of unity in Christ, or in the love of God in Christ, the source of individual sympathy, as well as of brotherly and universal love. Marriage has, in common with Christian friendship, the bond of tender sentiments; but the former is an exclusive bond between two persons of different sexes, whose personality is complemented, so to speak, by each other. It is therefore a lifelong relation, while friendship may be only temporary. SEE MARRIAGE.
Two persons thus joined in marriage lay the foundation of a Christian family; indeed, they constitute a family, though yet incomplete and undeveloped. It awaits its completion in the birth of children. In proportion, however, as the married couple live in a state of holiness, so are the natural desires for issue and their gratification made subservient to the divinely ordered end of the marriage, and accompanied by a sense of dependence on the will and biessingof God. And in order duly to attain this higher end of the family, it is necessary that, keeping the merely carnal passions subordinate, both husband and wife should endeavor to subserve each other's moral and spiritual completeness; and also that they should, when children are born, faithfully help each other in training them properly, by the combination of their particular dispositions, the father's sternness being tempered with the mother's gentleness, and the mother's tenderness energized by the father's authority. The children should see the unity between the father and the mother, in their unity of aim, though manifested according to their different dispositions. Early baptism should be followed by careful religious training. In this the mother has a certain priority, inasmuch as, aside from giving her children birth, she is also first in giving them the bodily and spiritual care they require. Yet even in this early period she derives assistance from the husband, who, as the head of the family, counsels, strengthens, and assists her. In after years their relative shares in the education of the children become more equalized, the sons coming, however, more under the influence of the father, while the daughters remain more under the mother's.
Those who wish theirs to be a real Christian family must from the first inculcate on their children (aside from the habit of absolute, unquestioning obedience to the parental authority as divinely instituted) the true ground of obedience, as laid in obedience to God, springing from love to God. "The order in which the love of the child graduates is from the stage of instinctive love to moral affection; and from this to the love of its heavenly Parent. Desirous as the parents may be to lead its affections up at once to the Creator, the previous stages of the path must first be passed through. For a while the maternal care is the only Providence it knows; and the father's experience is to it a world of grand enterprise, and of power unlimited. In vain it strives to climb the height of his knowledge his virtual omniscience; nor can it conceive of a diviner guarantee than his promise. To see its parents bend in worship, and to hear them speak with holy awe of their Father in heaven, is itself solemn and suggestive as a ladder set up from earth to heaven. The wise discipline, too, which leads the parent kindly to repress its selfish desires, and constantly to aim at its moral welfare, invariably begets in return the highest order of filial love and confidence; evincing the power of the child to discriminate between instinctive and moral affection, and preparing it to embrace that heavenly Parent of whom the earthly is but an imperfect representation. And let the parents remark that, from the moment they begin to point their child to God as all object of reverence and love, they are pursuing the certain course for augmenting its moral affection for themselves; while its intelligent love for them is a valuable means and a pledge for its ascending to the love of God" (Harris, Patriarchy, or the Family, page 352). This divine liberty, based on fear and love, far from diminishing the respectful love of the children for their parents, will exalt and purify it, and bring it to its highest degree of perfection; it will make it become part of their religion, and whenever a collision may occur between the parental wishes and the will of God, it will lead the children, while obeying the latter, to cherish all possible reverence and respect for the former. By this personal development of their spiritual life the sons and daughters will become friends to their parents; a higher kind of trust; such as is felt in one's equals, is thus reached, without diminishing the respect which is the, duty of the child and the right of the parents. This is the true graduation of the Christian family life, in which the elder children become helps to the parents for the education of the younger, while at the same time they become more thoroughly fitted to fulfill their own duties as heads of families in after life. Where the blessing of children has been denied, it can in some measure, though not completely, find a substitute in the adoption of orphans or other children, and then the duties towards these are the same as towards one's own.
The Christian family includes also what heathen Rome called the family in a subordinate sense the servants. Their position, wherever the principles of Christian humanity prevail, is not one of slavery, but is a free moral relation, entered into by the consent of both parties, and giving each peculiar rights and duties. The Christian, penetrated with the spirit of his Master, will not lose sight of the fact that this spirit inclined Him much more to serve others than to have them serve Him, and he will not be satisfied by rewarding his servants with wages only, but with all the spiritual blessings of which the family is the proper sphere. They should take part in the family worship, and even an active part, as in reading, singing, praying. The more they come to take part in the life of the family, in its interests, its joys, its griefs, and receive from it the sympathy and help they require, either for the body or the mind, the more does the general family lead a really Christian life.
The entire life of the Christian family is a continuous act of worship in the more extended sense of the word, and must gradually become more and more so, since all its actions are done in the name of Christ and for the glory of God. This thoroughly Christian conduct is, however, sustained and strengthened by the family worship in the proper sense, in which the family, as such, seeks for strength in the Word and in the Spirit of God. The more perfectly this family worship is organized, the more will it resemble public worship, consisting, like it, in the reading and exounding of Scripture, singing, and prayer. The eader in the religious exercises of the family should be the father, as priestly head of the house. This, however, is not to exclude the co-operation of the mother, children, and other members of the family their participation, on the contrary, adds much to theinterest of the service, and makes it an admirable supplement to public worship, as in the family the feeling of trust in each other and of self-dependence add much: to liberty in prayer. This constitutes the true hearth of the family, the center around which all meet again, from whence they derive light and warmth, and whose genial influences will be felt through life. From the bosom of such a family the spirit of Christianity goes out with its healthful influence into the Church, the school, the state, and even the whole world.
See generally the writers on moral philosophy and Christian ethics, and especially Herzog, Real-Encyklopddie 4:318; Rothe, Theolog. Ethik, in, 605; Schaff,. Apostolical Age, § 111; Harris, Patriarchy, or the Family (Lond. 1855, 8vo); Anderson, Genius and Design of the Domestic Constitution (Edinb. 1826, 8vo); Thiersch, Ueber christliches Familienleben (4th ed. Frankf. 1859; translated into several languages).
CYCLOPEDIA OF BIBLICAL, THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL
press 1895.
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