JBL 136, no.

2 (2017): 269288
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.15699/jbl.1362.2017.241017

Therefore a Man Leaves His Father and

His Mother and Clings to His Wife:
Marriage and Intermarriage
in Genesis 2:24

megan warner
[email protected]
Kings College London, London WC2R 2LS, UK

In recent decades the opponents of same-sex marriage have mounted a second

front in the debate, shifting their focus from the so-called clobber texts to the
creation narratives of Genesis. These scholars argue that Gen 2:24 presents a
normative definition of marriage that precludes same-sex marriage. I argue that
Gen 2:24 offers not a normative definition of the institution of marriage but a
description of the powerful draw to relationship that is the result of Gods actions
in creation. Just as interpreters of Gen 2:24 across centuries and traditions have
approached the verse against the background of a wide range of presenting social
issues (e.g., divorce, incest, polygamy, bestiality, and, more recently, homosexual-
ity), so the authors of Gen 2:24 were influenced by a pressing social issue, namely,
intermarriage. I explore this hypothesis by means of a word study focusing on
the verses two verbs. The results of the word study are further tested by consid-
eration of the historical and literary contexts of the verse and of the earliest
instances of reuse of Gen 2:24 in canonical and noncanonical texts. I conclude
that, far from presenting a normative definition of heterosexual marriage, Gen
2:24 is an acknowledgment of the powerful attraction that causes human beings
to seek relationship in opposition to the wishes of their parents, society, and
religion.

I. Reading Genesis 2:24

A Second Front?
In the beginning there were the clobber texts. Conservative Christian schol-
ars have typically turned to this particular group of biblical passages in order to
demonstrate biblical opposition to homosexuality and/or homosexual practice.

269
270 Journal of Biblical Literature 136, no. 2 (2017)

Although the individual texts in this group may vary from scholar to scholar, one
might expect to find included Gen 19 (and perhaps Judg 19), Lev 18:22 and 20:13,
Rom 1:2627, 1 Cor 6:910, and 1 Tim 1:811.
More recently, perhaps due to a degree of battle fatigue from the entrenched
nature of the debate, there has been an attempt to open a second front in this con-
flict. This second front involves an appeal to the creation narrative(s) of Genesis as a
kind of foundation or key for the interpretation of these passages and for assessing
biblical attitudes to sexuality more generally. Genesis 1:2628 and 2:24 have received
particular attention. The argument is that the creation narrative(s) reveal Gods
intended plan or blueprint for human sexuality and that this blueprint should be a
guide for the exegesis of other biblical material addressing the topic. The views of
Robert A. J. Gagnon are at the front line: The creation stories of Genesis 13 do not
speak directly to the issue of homosexual practice. However, they do supply us with
a general understanding of human sexuality, set within the broader context of Gods
grand purposes at creation. About Gen 2:24 in particular Gagnon goes on to say:
It will not do to argue that nothing is said here about the legitimacy of homo-
sexual relationships. Even though an evaluation of same-sex intercourse is not
the point of the text, legitimation for homosexuality requires an entirely different
kind of creation story. Only a being made from man can be a suitable and comple-
mentary counterpart for him. The story remains authoritative for conveying
that the obvious complementarity (and concordant sexual attraction) of male
and female witnesses to Gods intent for human sexuality. Male and female are
perfect fits from the standpoint of divine design and blessing. Male and male,
or female and female are not.
Hence, already at the start of the canon, in the description of human origins
in Genesis 13, a justification for malefemale union is provided: the physical,
interpersonal, and procreative sexual complementarity of male and female. As
we shall see, this motif will reappear as a continuous thread in the Old Testament,
early Jewish, and New Testament critiques of same-sex intercourse as contrary
to nature.1

In recent decades this approach has increasingly gained ground, so that by

2012 Gordon Preece was able to write that the primary weakness of a collection
of Australian essays addressing the so-called clobber texts was its complete lack of
a creation theology.2
In the face of rapidly changing attitudes toward homosexuality, especially in
Western nations, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that Gen 2:24 has not always been

1Robert A. J. Gagnon, The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics (Nashville:

Abingdon, 2001), 56, 6162.

2Gordon Preece, (Homo)Sex and the City of God: Sexual Ecology between Creation and

New Creation, in Sexegesis: An Evangelical Response to Five Uneasy Pieces on Homosexuality, ed.
Michael Bird and Gordon Preece (Brisbane: Anglican Press Australia, 2012), 2547, here 25. The
volume to which Preece was responding was Five Uneasy Pieces: Essays on Scripture and Sexuality,
ed. Nigel Gordon McIver Wright (Adelaide: Australian Theological Foundation, 2011).
 Warner: Marriage and Intermarriage in Genesis 2:24 271

read with a particular eye toward issues of gender complementarity. In fact, the
history of interpretation of Gen 2:24 has long been shaped by a wide range of social
concerns. Christian readings are inevitably influenced by the reception of Gen 2:24
in the Gospels and Pauline letters, where the primary presenting issue is that of
divorce (i.e., the permanence of marriage). These readings focus on the motif of
one flesh in Gen 2:24.3 At the center of the issue was an internal Jewish debate
about the interpretation of indecency as a justifiable ground for divorce. The
school of Hillel allowed divorce for a number of reasons on this ground (some
apparently trivial), while the school of Shammai allowed divorce only for sexual
immorality.4 Early Jewish commentary, on the other hand, features a particular
interest in the issue of incest as it relates to non-Jews and tends to emphasize the
motif of leaving family.5 This not to say that neither early Christian nor Jewish
readings of Gen 2:24 considered issues of gender complementarity; rather, such
issues were not to the fore.6 Across the last two millennia of interpretation of the
verse, these two issues, divorce and incest, have dominated, although other read-
ings relating to issues such as intermarriage, polygamy, and bestiality have appeared
as these matters have waxed and waned as social issues.
What all of these readings share is an underlying conviction that Gen 2:24
offers a normative definition (i.e., what must happen) as opposed to a description
(i.e., what does happen) of marriage. They proceed from an understanding that the

3What the New Testament writers do with Gen 2:24 (and 1:27) is not at all unlike the
interpretive approach of the conservative evangelical scholars cited above but with a focus on
permanence rather than gender. For example, Craig A. Evans writes, If the intention of the
creation of the male and female is for them to be united into one flesh so that they are no
longer two, then Gods will cannot be that they divorce. Divorce is tantamount to an undoing of
the created order (Mark 8:2716:20, WBC 34B [Nashville: Nelson, 2001], 84).
4Donald A. Hagner, Matthew 1428, WBC 33B (Dallas: Word, 1995), 547. D. E. Nineham

notes that this was most likely a JewishChristian debate, given the easy availability of divorce in
Rome (The Gospel of St. Mark, PNTC [Baltimore: Penguin, 1963], 264).
5See, e.g., Gen. Rab. P. 18 and the commentary of Rashi, The Holy Spirit says this, to

prohibit forbidden unions to the children of Noah; translation by Michael A. Signer, Coming to
Consciousness: Knowing, Choosing or Stealing? Approaches to the Story of the Garden (Genesis
23) in Medieval Northern French Jewish Exegesis, in Beyond Eden: The Biblical Story of Paradise
(Genesis 23) and Its Reception History, ed. Konrad Schmid and Christoph Riedweg, FAT 2/34
(Tbingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 20926, here 224. Rashis commentary rests on b. Sanh. 58a,
which cites Gen 2:24 and, like Gen. Rab. P. 18, offers a working out of marriage law for non-Jewish
converts to Judaism. Jacob Neusner notes of Gen. Rab. P. 18, The entire construction is relevant
to the setting only because of the use of Gen. 2:24 as a proof text for propositions not related to
its own exegesis (Genesis Rabbah: The Judaic Commentary to the Book of Genesis; A New American
Translation, 3 vols., BJS 1046 [Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985], 196).
6For example, Genesis Rabbah considers the application of Gen 2:24 to couplings between

husband and wife that are not normal (see Neusner, Genesis Rabbah, 196), while b. Sanh. 58a,
in the context of a larger debate about marriage rules concerning consanguinity for non-Jews,
expressly notes that a male convert must not cling to another male. A footnote specifies that it is
pederasty that is in view here.
272 Journal of Biblical Literature 136, no. 2 (2017)

account of Gods creation of the first couple in Genesis can be seen, in the light of
Gen 2:24, to offer a blueprint for marriage that is applicable today. The relative
opacity of the narrative has meant that this normative definition has been suffi-
ciently flexible and comprehensive to respond to a range of presenting social issues
relating to marriage, some of which could not have been contemplated at the time
when Gen 2:24 was composed.

The Hypothesis
The hypothesis explored here is that Gen 2:24 was never intended by its
authors to function as a normative definition of marriage. Instead, the authors of
Gen 2:24 were themselves responding to a pressing social issue of their own time,
that of intermarriage between Israelites and non-Israelites. Their response in Gen
2:24 was not an attempt to legislate or warn against intermarriage. Rather, Gen 2:24
acknowledges the phenomenon and attributes it to Gods actions in creation.
Following a brief introduction to Gen 2:24 itself, and to recent interpretive
approaches, I will test the hypothesis by means of a word study, focusing especially
on the verbs in Gen 2:24. The results of the study will be measured in terms of the
interpretive fit of the new interpretation with the historical and literary contexts
of Gen 2:24. Finally, I will ask whether there are any examples of reuse or interpreta-
tion of Gen 2:24 that indicate that the verses earliest interpreters connected it with
the issue of intermarriage.

II. Some Background to Genesis 2:24

Genesis 2:24 in Context
The immediate literary context of Gen 2:24, Gen 2:1825, comprises a narra-
tive about the creation of a companion or helper ( )for the first earth creature
(). After the repeated affirmations of the goodness of creation in Gen 1 (vv.4,
10, 12, 18, 21, 25) and the final emphatic very good (v. 31), it comes as shock to
discover in 2:18 an element of creation, the aloneness of the , that is not good.
YHWH immediately proposes a solution and forms, out of the ground (),
animals and birds and brings them to the to be named. The names all of
the animals and birds but does not find among them an to be his companion.
YHWH then fashions a new creature from one of the ribs of the . The
names the new creature woman (), thus creating a wordplay connecting the
two of them (/ )that resonates with the wordplay connecting the earth and
the earth creature (/).7
Our verse, Gen 2:24, follows, bringing a sense of discontinuity. Here the nar-
rator intrudes for the first time in the narrative to comment on an aspect of the

7See the extended discussion of the wordplay in Phyllis Trible, A Love Story Gone Awry,
in God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978), 72143.
 Warner: Marriage and Intermarriage in Genesis 2:24 273

action.8 The narrator refers to phenomena that are alien to the story world so far
described; at this point there are only two humans and no concept of father or
mother as in Gen 2:24. We return to the story in the final verse of the passage,
Gen 2:25, in which the couple realize their nakedness without shame.
There is something of a scholarly consensus that Gen 2:24 is additional to its
context. In this regard, a 1990 article by Angelo Tosato has been influential.9 Tosato
noted that there had been many suggestions that Gen 2:24 represents a secondary
addition, an insertion, a gloss but that there had been no extended exploration of
the idea. He went on to examine a number of questions arising from the classifica-
tion of Gen 2:24 as additional. The most pressing of these, once it is accepted that
Gen 2:24 dates from a later period than the surrounding text, is the question of
dating of the added verse. Tosato places Gen 2:24 in the (late) postexilic period,
and this is a view likely to win considerable support.10 Unfortunately, pentateuchal
scholarship is currently in such a state of flux that no single dating proposal could
satisfy all, or even a clear majority of, scholars with an interest in the matter.11 Few
European scholars would consider an earlier dating, while a sizable number of
Israeli and American scholars might be expected to favor an exilic or even preexilic
date. Tosatos own arguments in support of a postexilic dating are of uneven
strength. The first runs the danger of circularity; he identifies the postexilic period
as a time of a reforming movement which led among other things to rigorous
matrimonial legislation and jurisdiction.12 Tosato reads Gen 2:24 as reflecting a
newly rigorous approach to matrimonial understanding that places it naturally
in this period. A further reason is stronger. Tosato points to a total absence of
allusions to Gen 2:24 in preexilic and exilic writings but argues that texts that are
very close appear in the postexilic period, while references to Gen 2:24 can be
found in materials from the Hellenistic period.13 This absence of allusion to Gen
2:24 prior to the return from exile is a compelling reason for dating Gen 2:24 in the
postexilic period.

The Character of Genesis 2:24

Most commentators agree that Gen 2:24 is, by nature, explanatory or etio
logical.14 Tosato asks whether Gen 2:24 is etiological on a juridical (or normative)

8Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 115, WBC 1 (Waco, TX: Word, 1987), 70: This is not a
continuation of the mans remarks in v23, but a comment of the narrator, applying the principles
of the first marriage to every marriage.
9Angelo Tosato, On Genesis 2:24, CBQ 52 (1990): 389409.
10Ibid., 4067.
11See Thomas Rmer, The Elusive Yahwist: A Short History of Research, in A Farewell to

the Yahwist? The Composition of the Pentateuch in Recent European Interpretation, ed. Thomas B.
Dozeman and Konrad Schmid, SymS 34 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2006), 927.
12Tosato, On Genesis 2:24, 407.
13Ibid., 4079.
14Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative (New York: Basic Books, 1981), 31. Michaela
274 Journal of Biblical Literature 136, no. 2 (2017)

level (i.e., what one must do) or on a factual (or descriptive) level (i.e., what one
does do).15 He concludes, with many others, that the former is the case.16 On the
other side of the debate stand Gerhard von Rad and Claus Westermann, who take
the view that Gen 2:24 is not a normative statement about the institution of mar-
riage. Instead, they argue, Gen 2:24 presents an explanation of a phenomenon of
nature, namely, the extremely powerful drive of the sexes to each other.17 This
powerful drive is the result of the manner in which men and women were created
and, in particular, of the fact that women and men were once a single entity, which
was divided and which seeks unification. So von Rad goes on to say:
Whence comes this love strong as death (S. of Sol. 8.6) and stronger than the
tie to ones own parents, whence this inner clinging to each other, this drive
toward each other which does not rest until it again becomes one flesh in the
child? It comes from the fact that God took woman from man, that they actually
were originally one flesh. Therefore they must come together again and thus by
destiny they belong to each other.18

Similarly, Westermann speaks of the important role taken by parents in the arrange-
ment of marriages for their children, which is evident from the patriarchal stories
right up to the book of Tobit. Nevertheless, he says, the significance of the verse
lies in this, that in contrast to the established institutions and partly in opposition
to them, it points to the basic power of love between man and woman.19
Both von Rad and Westermann make the point that Gen 2:24 does not set up a
normative standard but rather explains the extraordinarily strong force that causes
those who marry or who otherwise embark in relationship to do so regardless of the
normative standards that parents and society typically aim to enforce. This is a very
different understanding of Gen 2:24 from that held by those who read Gen 2:24 as a
normative definition of marriage. Far from being a conservative prescription of
how things must be (normative), Gen 2:24 becomes a radically honest appraisal of
how things actually are (descriptive). The radical element of the appraisal lies in the

Bauks expressly follows Alter in describing Gen 2:24 as an etiological note (Text- and Reception-
Historical Reflections on Transmissional and Hermeneutical Techniques in Genesis 23, in The
Pentateuch: International Perspectives on Current Research, ed. Thomas B. Dozeman, Konrad
Schmid, and Baruch J. Schwartz, FAT 78 [Tbingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011], 13968, esp. 145). See
also Tosato, On Genesis 2:24, 409; Gerhard von Rad, Genesis: A Commentary, trans. John H.
Marks, OTL (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1961), 82 (entirely aetiological); and Claus Westermann,
Genesis 111: A Commentary, trans. John J. Scullion S.J. (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1974), 233
(etiological motif ).
15Tosato, On Genesis 2:24, 405.
16Ibid., 409.
17Von Rad, Genesis, 82; Westermann, Genesis 111, 233 (an explanation of the basic drive

of the sexes to each other). See also the analogous comments of David W. Cotter, Genesis, Berit
Olam (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2003), 3233.
18Von Rad, Genesis, 8283.
19Westermann, Genesis 111, 233 (emphasis added).
 Warner: Marriage and Intermarriage in Genesis 2:24 275

fact that opposition to parental or societal authority is attributed to Gods actions in

creation. The drive for the genders to be united, even if inconvenient, is the direct
result of the creative activity of God. Which approach is closer to the original intent
of the interpolator(s) of Gen 2:24? The first step toward answering that question will
be a close consideration of the distinctive language found in Gen 2:24.

III. The Distinctive Language of Genesis 2:24

The opening phrase of the verse, ( therefore), demonstrates the con-

nection between the interpolated verse and the preceding narrative. It indicates
that the phenomenon being explained in Gen 2:24 is a result of the events recounted
in Gen 2:4b23 and especially 2:1823. The two most important words of the verse
for our purposes are the two verbs, leave ( )and cling ().20

to leave
The first of these verbs, , is relatively well attested in the Hebrew Bible,
appearing 261 times with a range of meanings. In translations of Gen 2:24 into
English it is generally translated with the simple sense leave. There are other
places where , in the qal (as here), takes this relatively simple sense. An example
is Gen 39:12, in which Joseph leaves his garment in the hand of Potiphars wife
in his urgency to escape her advances. The use of the verb in the Hebrew Bible most
closely analogous to Gen 2:24 is found in Ruth 2:11: But Boaz answered her, All
that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband has
been fully told me, and how you left [ ]your father and mother and your native
land and came to a people that you did not know before. The resonances between
Ruth 2:11 and Gen 2:24 are immediately apparent and will be discussed further
below. For the moment we can note that is traditionally translated with the same
sense in Ruth 2:11 as it is in Gen 2:24.
The verb is more often used in the Hebrew Bible, however, with the more
dramatic sense to abandon or to forsake. This is the case, for example, in the
many instances in which the verb is used in relation to Israels propensity to betray
YHWH by the worship of other gods. For example:
It is because they abandoned [ ]the covenant of the Lord. (Deut 29:25)
If you forsake [ ]the Lord and serve foreign gods, then he will turn and do
you harm and consume you, after having done you good. (Josh 24:20)
Yet you have abandoned [ ]me and worshiped other gods. (Judg 10:6)

20 English translations that adopt the translation leave owe something to the KJV, which

introduced a wordplay between leave and cleave. For biblical quotations in this article, I follow
the NRSV with some modifications.
276 Journal of Biblical Literature 136, no. 2 (2017)

The same term is used in respect of YHWHs commitment to Israel, which YHWH
will not break, despite Israels fickleness:
It is the Lord your God who goes with you; he will not fail you or forsake []
you. (Deut 31:6)
I will dwell among the children of Israel and will not forsake [ ]my people
Israel. (1 Kgs 6:13)

The sense in each of these verses is that an act of abandoning somebody in a rela-
tional context is a serious matter, with consequences for the ongoing life of the
relationship. Moreover, in the context of the divine relationship, an act of is akin
to adultery, in which YHWH is betrayed when the Israelites go after other gods.
The rendering of the verb in most English translations of Gen 2:24 as
leaves, then, is a relatively pale rendering. Much of the strength of the Hebrew
verb is lost.21 The verb is generally understood in the sense that the man leaves his
parents house. Yet the word house does not appear in the textthe man leaves
or, better, abandons his parents themselves. The abandoning of ones parents is
not generally something encouraged in the Hebrew Scriptures! On the contrary,
one of their foundational directives is the injunction to honor ones father and
ones mother (Exod 20:12; Deut 5:16). In the face of this commandment, the
description in Gen 2:24 of abandoning parents is surprising. Mark G. Brett goes
further: The idea of abandoning parents represents a potentially scandalous sub-
version of the conventional Israelite obligations to mother and father.22 To the
same end Samuel Terrien writes:
In the ancient Near Eastern and most other cultures, patriarchal lineage pre-
vailed in such a way that the primary bond of solidarity was the duty of a man
toward his ancestors in general and to his progenitors in particular. To honor
ones father and mother was the most sacred obligation of social responsibil-
ity (Exod. 20:12; Deut. 5:16). By dramatic contrast, the Yahwist theologian
scandalously upsets, even shockingly reverses, this deep-rooted principle of
tribal morality.23

To conclude this discussion of the use of in Gen 2:24, we note, first, its
covenantal overtones. This verb is regularly used in relation to the behavior of
Israel, when Israel forsakes its God and follows other gods. Second, in the ancient
Near Eastern context and especially in the light of the Sinai/Horeb directive to

21Mark G. Brett, Genesis: Procreation and the Politics of Identity, OTR (London: Routledge,

2000), 31.
22Ibid.
23Samuel Terrien, Till the Heart Sings: A Biblical Theology of Manhood and Womanhood

(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), 1415. See also Wenham, Genesis 115, 71: In traditional societies
like Israel where honoring parents is the highest human obligation next to honoring God, this
remark about forsaking them is very striking.
 Warner: Marriage and Intermarriage in Genesis 2:24 277

honor your father and your mother, the idea of leaving parents is not as straight-
forward as the usual English translation of in Gen 2:24 would make it sound.

to cling
The second verb in Gen 2:24, ( to cling), is attested far less frequently in
the Hebrew Bible than . It appears only sixty-one times. Again, this verb has a
range of meanings, and a prominent meaning for the verb is covenantal in nature.
Probably the most common use of the word is to indicate the proper attitude of the
Israelites to YHWH, which is to cling or hold fast to their God. A good example
is Deut 13:4:
The Lord your God you shall follow, him alone you shall fear, his command-
ments you shall keep, his voice you shall obey, him you shall serve, and to him
you shall hold fast [].

Further examples may be found in Deut 4:4, 10:20, 11:22, 30:20, Josh 22:5, 23:8,
2Kgs 18:6, Jer 13:11, and Ps 119:31. An inversion of this idea is found in 2 Kgs 3:3,
where the evil king Jehoram, son of Ahab, is said to have clung not to YHWH but
to the sins of Jeroboam. In this sense, is the opposite of : Israel should not
have forsaken YHWH but should have clung to its God.
One particular covenantal context in which the verb is used, although not
frequently, is marriage. Of the sixty-one times that the verb appears in the
Hebrew Bible, four instances (apart from Gen 2:24) are clearly associated with
marriage:
And his [Shechem the Hivites] soul clung [ ]to Dinah, daughter of Jacob.
(Gen 34:3)
For if you turn back, and join the survivors of these nations left here among you,
and cling [ ]with them, so that you marry their women and they yours
(Josh 23:12)
King Solomon loved many foreign women along with the daughter of Pharaoh:
Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women, from the nations
concerning which the Lord had said to the Israelites, You shall not enter into
marriage with them, neither shall they with you; for they will surely incline your
heart to follow their gods; Solomon clung [ ]to these in love. (1 Kgs
11:12)
As you saw the iron mixed with clay, so will they mix with one another in mar-
riage, but they will not hold together [], just as iron does not mix with clay.
(Dan 2:43)

The remarkable thing about these verses is that all four concern not just marriage
but intermarriage. The issue of intermarriage, although not apparent on the face of
Gen 34:3 above, is made explicit in Gen 34:21: These people are friendly with us;
let them live in the land and trade in it, for the land is large enough for them; let us
278 Journal of Biblical Literature 136, no. 2 (2017)

take their daughters in marriage and let us give them our daughters. In Josh 23:12
Joshua warns the Israelites that intermarriage with those remaining in the land will
act as a snare, causing the Israelites to perish in the land that God had given them.
1 Kings 11:12 concerns a chronic intermarrier, King Solomon. Finally, in the much
later text Dan 2:43, Daniel interprets the dream of King Nebuchadnezzar, likening
intermarriage to the mixing of iron with claythe two will not hold together.
The connection between the idea of intermarriage and the covenantal sense
of the verb is most apparent in Josh 23:12; intermarriage acts as a snare so that
clinging to foreign women may cause Israelite men to fail to cling to YHWH as
they ought. This link is made also in Exod 34:1116 and Deut 7:16, especially
verses 34: Do not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or
taking their daughters for your sons, for that would turn your children away from
following me, to serve other gods. The same sense can be seen in 1 Kgs 11, where
our two verbs, and , are used in contradistinction (albeit thirty-one verses
apart). While verse 2 says that Solomon clung ( )to foreign women in love, in
verse 33 YHWH says, through Ahijah the prophet, that he is going to tear the
kingdom from the hand of Solomon because Solomon had forsaken ( )YHWH,
worshiping other gods and failing to keep the Torah. These verses are, therefore,
essentially covenantal in nature, even if focused directly on the particular covenant
of marriage. This sense is picked up by Terrien:
Just as the verb to forsake implies the breaking of a covenant, so also the verb
to cleave designates its maintenance, not only with outward respect for the
commitment but also with the inner compulsion of love. The Deuteronomic style
favors this notion whenever it refers to the covenant between Yahweh and Israel,
especially from the latters point of view: Israel is asked to cleave to Yahweh,
forsaking all other gods.24

There is only one other place in the Hebrew Bible where the verb is used in the
context of relationships between individual people. In the book of Ruth, the verb
appears four times, and each occurrence is concerned with relationships between
individuals. In Ruth 1:14, Ruth clings ( )to Naomi, unlike Orpah who kisses
her mother-in-law and leaves her. In Ruth 2:8, Boaz tells Ruth to stay close ()
to his young women, and in 2:21 Ruth reports this instruction to Naomi, again
using . In Ruth 2:23, the narrator reports that Ruth stayed close ( )to Boazs
young women, just as Boaz had instructed her. While none of these instances is
directly related to marriage, the central focus of the book is the unlikely, even
scandalous, marriage union between Boaz and the Moabite woman who became
the ancestor of King David. We saw above that the verb is also used in Ruth
2:11, so that in this respect Ruth is like 1 Kgs 11, where the verbs are used in contra
distinction. In short, in the only other book in the Hebrew Bible in which is
used in connection with relationships between individuals, the context is again that
of intermarriage.

24Terrien, Till the Heart Sings, 15 (emphasis original).

 Warner: Marriage and Intermarriage in Genesis 2:24 279

IV. Does Genesis 2:24 Contain an Allusion

to Intermarriage?
What are we to make of the results of this word study? It is certainly striking
that the authors of Gen 2:24 use these two distinctively covenantal terms in contra
distinction to each other. In fact, Gen 2:24 is unique in that nowhere else in the
Hebrew Bible are these two covenantal verbs to be found in the same verse. Even
more striking is the fact that every other instance of the use of the verb in the
Hebrew Bible in the context of relationships between individuals concerns the issue
of intermarriage. Further, in two of those five instances the two verbs, and ,
are used in contradistinction as they are here (even if not in a single verse).
This must raise the issue for us whether Gen 2:24 ought also to be interpreted
as alluding to intermarriage.25 The very least that can be said is that we ought not
deny the possibility without further exploration. Three questions in particular can
help us to explore further the hypothesis that Gen 2:24 alludes to intermarriage:
1.Is there a time when intermarriage may have been a pressing concern for
the authors of Gen 2:24?
2.Does the literary context in which Gen 2:24 has been placed reflect concern
with the issue of intermarriage?
3. Has Gen 2:24 been reused in the context of intermarriage?

Is There a Time When Intermarriage May Have Been a

Pressing Concern for the Authors of Genesis 2:24?
The short answer to this first question is yes. We have already identified the
postexilic period as the most likely time for the composition of Gen 2:24. Witnesses
such as Ezra-Nehemiah, Ruth, Tobit, and Malachi point to the issue of intermar-
riage as having been to the fore during that period.26 The various texts written
during that time also clearly suggest the prevalence of more than a single view about
the issue.27

25For a recent discussion of allusion and other intertextual approaches, see Cynthia Edenburg,

Intertextuality, Literary Competence and the Question of Readership: Some Preliminary Observa
tions, JSOT 35 (2010): 13148.
26The literature on this topic is extensive. See, e.g., Sebastian Grtz, The Second Temple

and the Legal Status of the Torah: The Hermeneutics of the Torah in the Books of Ruth and Ezra,
in The Pentateuch as Torah: New Models for Understanding Its Promulgation and Acceptance, ed.
Gary N. Knoppers and Bernard M. Levinson (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2007), 27387;
Mark G. Brett, Politics of Marriage in Genesis, in Making a Difference: Essays on the Bible and
Judaism in Honor of Tamara Cohn Eskenazi, ed. David J. A. Clines, Kent Harold Richards, and
Jacob L. Wright (Sheffield: Sheffield Pheonix, 2012), 4959; Christian Frevel, ed., Mixed Marriages:
Intermarriage and Group Identity in the Second Temple Period, LHBOTS 547 (New York: T&T
Clark International, 2011).
27See, e.g., Grtz, Second Temple, 28487; Gary N. Knoppers, Intermarriage, Social
280 Journal of Biblical Literature 136, no. 2 (2017)

As we saw above, Tosato argues that the appearance and the consolidation,
in the Jewish community of the advanced Persian period, of a reforming movement
which led among other things to rigorous matrimonial legislation and jurisdiction
support a dating for Gen 2:24 in the (late) Persian period.28 Tosato includes the
following as a norm adopted by that movement: (a) the prohibition of taking as
a wife a woman of another race (= of another religion) or in a close degree of rela-
tionship or affinity.29 One of Tosatos conclusions indicates that he considers it
possible that intermarriage was in the view of the authors of Gen 2:24:
The sense of Gen 2:24 is not that of an etiology concerning sexual drive or love,
but rather that of an etiology concerning matrimonial legislation adopted in this
period; referring to the work of the Creator himself, the glossator intends to
explain and thus to found and better justify the new norm which was generically
antipolygamous and implicitly antidivorce (Lev 18:18; cf. Mal 2:1316), and per-
haps also the new restrictive norms in the area of incestuous and mixed mar-
riages (Leviticus 18 and 20; cf. Mal 2:1011).30

Tosatos observation about incest and mixed marriages is unsupported apart from
the fact that his views about the date of Gen 2:24 and the prevalence of this issue
coincide.31 The real limitation of Tosatos reading, however, is that he takes for
granted that any allusion to the issue of intermarriage during this period would be
generally supportive of Ezras exclusivist program. It does not occur to him that an
allusion to intermarriage might intend some degree of opposition to that program.
This, however, is precisely the view of Brett, who continues his remarks about the
translation of in Gen 2:24 with the following:
In a context where men were being urged to leave their foreign wives, however,
the peculiar strength of this language may well be explained by reading the verse
as suggesting a priority of commitments: the kinship bond with the wife stands
above that of the parents, and in this sense, marriage comes before bloodlines.
The notion of the holy seed suggests the reversethat marriage has to conform
to the bloodlines.32

Complexity, and Ethnic Diversity in the Genealogy of Judah, JBL 120 (2001): 1530; Georg
Braulik, The Book of Ruth as Intra-Biblical Critique on the Deuteronomic Law, AcT 19 (1999):
120; Michael Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985),
123.
28Tosato, On Genesis 2:24, 4067.
29Ibid., 407 (parentheses original).
30Ibid., 409.
31We noted above the circularity of his argument. Some degree of circularity may not be

fatal, so long as there are other supporting and collaborative arguments.

32Brett, Genesis, 31.
 Warner: Marriage and Intermarriage in Genesis 2:24 281

Does the Literary Context in Which Genesis 2:24 Has Been Placed
Reflect Concern with the Issue of Intermarriage?
In contrast to homosexuality, the issue of intermarriage is one of special inter-
est in Genesis.33 Despite YHWHs initial call to Abram in Gen 12:13 to leave his
country, his kindred, and his fathers house, Abraham takes great care to ensure
that a wife for Isaac is found from among his kin (Gen 24:34). Isaac, in turn, sends
his son Jacob to Abrahams family to find a wife, telling him, You shall not marry
one of the Canaanite women (Gen 28:1). Similarly, Hagar, the Egyptian mother of
Abrahams son Ishmael, gets a wife for him from the land of Egypt (Gen 21:21).
Not all the patriarchal sons, however, toe the family line. Isaacs son Esau marries
two Hittite women, much to the frustration of his parents. Similarly, Jacobs daugh-
ter Dinah becomes entangled with a foreigner (this is one of the four uses of the
verb in a marriage context that we saw earlier), setting off waves of interethnic
violence.34
The rest of Genesis bears witness both to a practice of parents seeking ethni-
cally appropriate partners for their children (usually sons) and to the phenomenon
of sons choosing ethnically inappropriate partners, to the frustration of their par-
ents. Brett, returning to this issue in a 2012 essay writes, In effect, I am suggesting
that the pious appearance of endogamy in the characterisation of Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob is being relentlessly exposed by the final editors as contrary to divine
commands. This suggestion might well be considered preposterous, were it not
executed with such consistency in the texts as we have them.35
On the other hand, interpretations of Gen 2:24 that argue for a normative etiol-
ogy of marriage do not fit well with the rest of Genesis. These interpretations read
Gen 2:24 as establishing a normative pattern in which a man leaves his parents house
and clings to his wife. There are two problems with this reading. First, Gen 2:24 does
not speak of the abandoning/forsaking his parents house but rather his parents.
Second, the marriage practice reflected in Genesis is not matriarchal/matrilocal but

33The one oft-cited exception to the lack of interest in homosexuality in Genesis is in chapter

19, where the men of Sodom seek to have knowledge of two male visitors. This narrative is often
included as one of the clobber texts. As many scholars have noted, however, the story concerns
gang rape rather than consensual sexual activity between males, and it is entirely probable that
the visitors divine or semidivine natures were of more significance for the authors than their
gender. Further, the reception history of the narrative is focused primarily on the issue of inhos
pitality to strangers. The sexual aggression in the story may be merely an element of this inhos
pitality. See, e.g., von Rad, Genesis, 21213; Brett, Genesis, 68.
34In that case, even though the text indicates that the Hivite man in question seduced

(perhaps raped) Dinah, the real problem was not the violence of the seduction but the nationality
of the suitor. See Lyn M. Bechtel, What If Dinah Is Not Raped? (Gen 34), JSOT 19 (1994): 1936;
Brett, Politics of Marriage.
35Brett, Politics of Marriage, 53.
282 Journal of Biblical Literature 136, no. 2 (2017)

patriarchal/patrilocal.36 In other words, Genesis reflects not a culture in which a man

leaves the house of his parents in order to marry but rather one in which a woman
leaves the house of her parents to join her husband. For example, when Isaac marries
he brings his wife into his mothers tent (Gen 24:67), and after Dinah is seduced by
Shechem she is taken by him into his house (Gen 34:26).

Has Genesis 2:24 Been Reused in the Context of Intermarriage?

The short answer to this third question is yes. There are instances of reuse of
Gen 2:24 in late biblical, deuterocanonical and pseudepigraphical texts, although
the connections have not often been discussed. The texts that I will consider here
are Ruth 2:11, Mal 2:1016, 1 Esdr 35 and Tob 6:18.

Ruth 2:11
Having noted already the analogous use in Ruth of our two verbs, in Ruth
2:11 and in 1:14, and 2:8, 21, 23, I discuss here the extent of the parallel between
Gen 2:24 and Ruth 2:11. Ruth 2:11 reads:
But Boaz answered her, All that you have done for your mother-in-law since the
death of your husband has been fully told me, and how you left [ ]your father
and mother and your native land and came to a people that you did not know
before.

The verb appears here, as does the motif of leaving father and mother. Ruth
left her father and mother and clung first to Naomi and then to Boazs young
women. Interestingly, Ruth 2:11 appears to allude not only to Gen 2:24 but also Gen
12:1; Ruth leaves not only her parents but also the land of her kin (both Gen 12:1
and Ruth 2:11 use rather than )to go to an unknown country.37 These
parallels are too extensive to be coincidental.38
Ruths leaving is an abandonment in the full sense of the covenant term.
Ruth radically abandons not only her parents (who are never elsewhere mentioned)
but also her lodging, her people, and her God (Ruth 1:16). Such abandonment is
the inevitable consequence of covenantal relationships with foreigners of which
Deut 7:17 warns. It is presumably also reflective of the extent of the conversion
required for a Moabite to be admitted to the status of honorary Israelite. The story

36Wenham, Genesis 115, 70: The traditional interpretation leaves suggests that the man
moved from his parents and set up home elsewhere, whereas in fact Israelite marriage was usually
patrilocal, that is, the man continued to live in or near his parents home. It was the wife who left
home to join her husband. See also A. F. L. Beeston, One Flesh, VT 36 (1986): 11517.
37Grtz, Second Temple, 28182.
38Irmtraud Fischer, Rut, 2nd ed., HThKAT (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2005), 8691;

Grtz, Second Temple, 282. There is, of course, an inversion here, in that it is the foreign woman
who leaves her family and country.
 Warner: Marriage and Intermarriage in Genesis 2:24 283

itself must have been shocking to its earliest readers. The idea that a Moabite woman
should gain admission to the extent of becoming part of the genealogy of King
David himself (Ruth 4) was dramatically at odds not only with Deut 7:17 but also
with the prohibition in Deut 23:36 against the admission of Moabites to the
assembly and the whole tenor of the intermarriage polemic in Ezra-Nehemiah. As
Bernard M. Levinson has observed,
In deriving the legendary founder of the United Monarchy itself from such a
union, it becomes clear the extent to which Ruths assumptions about Israelite
identity (the legal and religious status of foreigners, ethnicity, and intermarriage)
offer a very different vision of the community and its boundaries than that articu-
lated in Ezra and Nehemiah.39

Although it is possible to say with some confidence that the parallel between Gen
2:24 and Ruth 2:11 cannot be accidental, it is not possible to be certain about the
direction of dependence running between them. The book of Ruth is now, like Gen
2:24, generally dated to the Persian period.40 This makes it impossible to say author-
itatively which verse is a reuse of the other. It would certainly strengthen our
hypothesis if it were possible to establish that Gen 2:24 was the later text and depen-
dent on Ruth 2:11. Nevertheless, even if Ruth 2:11 is a reuse of Gen 2:24, such reuse
in the context of a book that seeks to revise and liberalize the requirements of
Deuteronomy regarding the exclusion of Moabites from the community (Deut
23:45 [English, 23:34]); and the laws of levirate marriage (Deut 25:510) cer-
tainly supports my hypothesis.41

1 Esdras 35
Genesis 2:24 is clearly referenced in the Tale of the Three Youths in 1 Esdras.42
Three of King Dariuss bodyguards compete to say what is the strongest. Zerub-
babels answer, women, is judged wiser than the other answerswine and the
king. In 1 Esdr 4:2021 Zerubbabel says, A man leaves [] his own
father, who brought him up, and his own country, and clings [] to his wife.43
With his wife he ends his days, with no thought of his father or his mother or his
country. Then in 4:25, A man loves his wife more than his father or his mother.
Here we see repeated the motif of the man leaving mother and father in order to
cling to his wife in such a manner that the kinship with his wife becomes superior

39Bernard M. Levinson, Legal Revision and Religious Renewal in Ancient Israel (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2008), 44.

40Ibid., 34.
41Ibid., 35. The fact the Ruth 2:11 appears to reference both Gen 2:24 and 12:1 tends to

support the idea that it may be later than Gen 2:24.

42Zipora Talshir, 1 Esdras: From Origin to Translation, SCS 47 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical

Literature, 1999), 195.

43hese verbs echo the verbs used in the LXX of Gen 2:24.
284 Journal of Biblical Literature 136, no. 2 (2017)

to the kinship with his parents, to whom no further thought is given.44 As in Ruth,
the element of leaving ones country is added. Whereas in Ruth this element was
reflected in the narrative (Ruth left Moab in order to follow Naomi), here it is
unnecessary in terms of the logic of the text.45 What is particularly interesting here
is the reason why a man does this. Zerubbabels winning argument is that women
are stronger than wine or kings because of the extraordinary attraction that they
have for men. They cause men to do things that they otherwise would not do and
of which they might not otherwise approve:
If men gather gold and silver or any other beautiful thing, and then see a woman
lovely in appearance and beauty, they let all those things go, and gape at her, and
with open mouths stare at her, and all prefer her to gold or silver or any other
beautiful thing. Many men have lost their minds because of women, and have
become slaves because of them. Many have perished, or stumbled, or sinned
because of women. (1 Esdr 4:1819, 2627)

This kind of draw, or attraction, to women is the precise phenomenon that von Rad
and Westermann see reflected in Gen 2:24. 1 Esdras 4 could be considered a
midrash on Gen 2:24, further explicating the effects of the process by which woman
was created by God from the body of the man.
In contrast to the book of Ruth, the context here is not explicitly that of inter-
marriage. Two things, however, suggest that intermarriage is in view. The first is
Zerubbabels repeated reference to the fact that women cause men to leave their
country and to have no further thought for it. Inasmuch as this element is unneces-
sary in terms of narrative logic, it is quite possible that here the author of 1 Esdras
is simply quoting Ruth. On the other hand, the repeated emphatic reference to leaving
ones country suggests a deliberate theme. The second thing to bear in mind is that
1 Esdras as a whole is a subversive retelling of Ezra-Nehemiah.46 The principal subver
sive element noted by scholars is the magnification of Zerubbabels role in the resto
ration of his people, including his replacement of Nehemiah as temple builder.47
Although the incident of the foreign wives is not part of the Ezra-Nehemiah
tradition that 1 Esdras appropriates, nevertheless the issue of intermarriage and

44William Loader argues that this element of the forgetting of parents twists the original

into something negative, contrary to the Genesis text, and brings it into conflict with values about
honouring parents (The Pseudepigrapha on Sexuality: Attitudes towards Sexuality in Apocalypses,
Testaments, Legends, Wisdom, and Related Literature, Attitudes towards Sexuality in Judaism and
Christianity in the Hellenistic Greco-Roman Era [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011], 144). This
conflict, however, is already present in Gen 2:24.
45Although Michael F. Bird notes that this element reflects the relational and geographical

fracture often caused by taking a wife, this need not necessarily reflect the full sense of the
reference to country here (1 Esdras: Introduction and Commentary on the Greek Text in Codex
Vaticanus, Septuagint Commentary Series [Leiden: Brill, 2012], 16970).
46See the comments below about the literary relationship between the two texts.
47See, e.g., Talshir, 1 Esdras, 4647, 5457.
 Warner: Marriage and Intermarriage in Genesis 2:24 285

Ezras determined opposition to it is integral to the Ezra-Nehemiah tradition as a

whole. The author of 1 Esdras, therefore, can hardly be thought to be writing with-
out thought of it. In the context of Ezra-Nehemiah, Zerubbabels words about mens
propensity to be influenced by women so as to act inappropriately, even so as to
forget their own country, are inflammatory.48
There is no scholarly consensus about the relative dating of Ezra-Nehemiah
and 1 Esdras or about the direction of dependence between them.49 Both are likely
to belong to the Persian or Hellenistic periods, but the safest assumption is probably
that 1 Esdras is the later document. Nevertheless, this uncertainty about dating
leaves open the possibility that 1 Esdras and Gen 2:24 were composed at roughly
similar times and that they reflect a single tradition about men, women, and mar-
riage that can also be seen in books such as Ruth and Tobit.

Tobit 6:18
An allusion to Gen 2:24 in Tobit is less clear but has nevertheless been
observed.50 In Tob 6:18, when Tobias learns that his intended wife, Sarah, is his
kinswoman, related through his fathers lineage he loves her and his heart is drawn
() to her.51 It is obvious, even in this one verse, that the issue of the appro-
priate wife is particularly strong in the book. The influence of the ancestral narra-
tives of Genesis, including the story in chapter 24 of Abrahams procuration of a
wife for Isaac from among his kin, is evident. Tobit has been viewed as presenting
an exact opposite to the allusion to Gen 2:24 in 1 Esdras 4 because here Tobias
does not forget his parents.52
To be sure, the allusion to Gen 2:24 in Tobit is different from those in Ruth
and 1 Esdras. Although the issue of intermarriage is to the fore, the books general

48Intriguingly, Talshir argues that 1 Esdras was composed precisely for the purpose of

presenting the story of the three youths (1 Esdras, 58). Although others have queried whether the
story is sufficiently important to warrant such attention, the idea that the story comments on
the intermarriage issue in a subversive manner would answer that query handsomely. See, e.g.,
JamesC. VanderKam, Literary Questions between Ezra, Nehemiah, and 1 Esdras, in Was
1Esdras First? An Investigation into the Priority and Nature of 1 Esdras, ed. Lisbeth S. Fried, AIL
7 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011), 13143, here 134 n.10.
49See the collected essays addressing these issues in Fried, Was 1 Esdras First? It is of course

possible that neither is directly dependent on the other. Kristen De Troyer argues that 1 Esdras is
dependent on a now lost Hebrew-Aramaic rewritten account (Rewriting the Sacred Text: What
the Old Greek Texts Tell Us about the Literary Growth of the Bible, TCSt 4 [Leiden: Brill, 2003], 92).
50See, e.g., John J. Collins, The Judaism of the Book of Tobit, in The Book of Tobit: Text,

Tradition, Theology; Papers of the First International Conference on the Deuterocanonical Books,
Ppa, Hungary, 2021 May, 2004, ed. Gza G. Xeravits and Jzsef Zsengellr, JSJSup 98 (Leiden:
Brill, 2005), 2340, esp. 33; Loader, Pseudepigrapha on Sexuality, 172, 174.
51The verb here echoes , in the LXX of Gen 2:24 (Loader, Pseudepigrapha

on Sexuality, 172).
52Bird, 1 Esdras, 16970.
286 Journal of Biblical Literature 136, no. 2 (2017)

outlook is highly critical of marriage outside (close) kinship bonds.53 There are
hints, however, of an underlying critique.54

Malachi 2:1016
It is arguable that Mal 2:1016 is the earliest text in which allusion to Gen 2:24
is used to indicate divine opposition to divorce and that Mal 2:1016 became the
foundation for the reuse of Gen 2:24 in the New Testament.55 The text of this pas-
sage is notoriously corrupt, but commentators have nevertheless seen in it an allu-
sion to Gen 2:24.56 Not only the text but also the logic of the passage is difficult.
The passage divides naturally into two halves, the first dealing with the problem of
intermarriage and the second with divorce. It is not at all clear how these two relate
to each other. Possibly Mal 2:1016 is simply a collation of two unrelated problems
concerning marriage.57 Some have argued, however, that the two halves of the
passage are connected. For example, it has been suggested that Israelites were
divorcing their Israelite wives in order to marry foreign (Samaritan) women.58
Alternatively, it is possible, as Smith argues, that Malachi is responding to the

53Proper marriage is a major concern in the work (Loader, Pseudepigrapha on Sexuality,

151); see also Thomas Heike, Endogamy in the Book of Tobit, Genesis and Ezra-Nehemiah, in
Xeravits and Zsengellr, Book of Tobit, 10320.
54For example, Sarahs first seven husbands, despite being appropriately sourced from

among her kin, died prior to the consummation of the marriages. Additionally, the story courts
issues of incest as well as intermarriage in the identification of Sarah as Tobiass sister (Tob 7:11).
There are strong resonances with this same issue in the marriage of Abraham to Sarahs namesake
in Genesis (where an underlying critique of opposition to intermarriage is certainly present).
Tobias Nicklas has argued that two literary strata in Tobit, GI and GII, present differing approaches
to endogamy, with GII evidencing a far stronger (correcting?) opposition to marriage outside kin
circles than GI (to which Nicklas assigns Tob 6:18) (Marriage in the Book of Tobit: A Synoptic
Approach, in Xeravits and Zsengellr, Book of Tobit, 13954). Finally, Gary A. Anderson has
recently written that the labeling of Tobit as a Deuteronomic novella badly misses the mark
(Does Tobit Fear God for Naught?, in The Call of Abraham: Essays on the Election of Israel in
Honor of Jon D. Levenson, ed. Gary A. Anderson and Joel S. Kaminsky, CJAn 19 [Notre Dame,
IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013], 11543, here 138). Anderson sees in Tobit a theme of
Joban testing (will Tobit obey God for naught?) that links it with books such as Genesis and Ruth,
as well as Job.
55So Collins, Judaism of the Book of Tobit, 33; Ralph L. Smith, MicahMalachi (WBC 32;

Waco, TX: Word, 1984), 325.

56E.g., Smith, MicahMalachi, 31825; W. Rudolph, Zu Malachi 2.1016, ZAW 93 (1981):

8590. The essence of the allusion is found in the (supposed) reference in 2:1516 to YHWHs
creation of one ( )man.
57John J. Collins, Marriage, Divorce, and Family in Second Temple Judaism, in Families

in Ancient Israel, ed. Leo G. Perdue et al., The Family, Religion, and Culture (Louisville: Westminster
John Knox, 1997), 124.
58E.g., J. M. Myers, The World of the Restoration (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1968),

98.
 Warner: Marriage and Intermarriage in Genesis 2:24 287

events narrated in Ezra-Nehemiah and saying that, although intermarriage is pro-

hibited, divorce is not the answer: Malachi is speaking about the disastrous effects
of mixed marriage and divorce.59
Regardless of the relationship between the two halves of the passage, it is striking
that the very first text in which Gen 2:24 appears to have been used in a sense meant
to convey the impression of divine opposition to divorce should be located in the text
in such close proximity to a denunciation of intermarriage. If commentators such as
Ralph L. Smith are correct, then this juxtaposition is not a matter of chance. Rather,
Mal 2:1016, no less than the other three texts we have considered, is a passage that
is concerned in its entirety with the issue of intermarriage. Only later was it used to
support a line of interpretation that focused on the issue of divorce.60

Concluding Remarks about the Early Reuse of Genesis 2:24

The purpose of this brief intertextual study has been to measure whether any
of the earliest reuses of Gen 2:24 appear to share our hypothesized interest of Gen
2:24 in the issue of intermarriage. I have identified four early instances of reuse in
contexts where intermarriage is a central element.61 The reuse of Gen 2:24 in Ruth
suggests an approach to the issue of intermarriage that is at odds with the negative
view portrayed in Ezra-Nehemiah. The book of Tobit, in contrast, appears on its
face to be supportive of Ezra-Nehemiahs approach, but it contains clues that its
relationship with the issue of intermarriage may be more complicated. 1 Esdras 35
presents a view of the power of attraction that women exert over men that is highly
analogous to our interpretation of Gen 2:24. I have argued that Gen 2:24 observes
the phenomenon of Israelite men being drawn by that same attraction into mar-
riage with non-Israelite women, despite the opposition to such marriages that was
prevalent in the Persian period. Finally, Mal 2:1016, despite its association with
the Christian tradition that Gen 2:24 speaks to the issue of divorce, is also closely
connected with the issue of intermarriage.
In summary, all four early examples of reuse of Gen 2:24 have a connection
with the issue of intermarriage.62 Further, we see reflected here a variety of attitudes
toward the issue; it is by no means the case that the passages demonstrate uniform
support of Ezras response to the problem of foreign wives. A similar variety of
attitudes toward intermarriage can be identified in the wider text of Genesis. In
addition, at least one of the passages reflects the same concept of the power of the

59Smith, MicahMalachi, 325.

60It is tempting to surmise that the apparently strong statement of divine opposition to
divorce in Mal 2:1316 may be at the root of the persistent idea that Gen 2:24 presents a normative
definition of marriage.
61As noted, it is not always possible to be certain about the direction of dependence. Accord

ingly, it is safest to take the position least advantageous to our argument and assume that all four
are instances of reuse of Gen 2:24.
62I have argued that this is true of 1 Esdras 35 no less than of the other examples.
288 Journal of Biblical Literature 136, no. 2 (2017)

attraction of women for men that we have argued is present in Gen 2:24. Each of
these findings supports the conclusion of this word study that the authors of Gen
2:24 had in mind the issue of intermarriage. In light of this evidence, Gen 2:24
ought not to be read as if it were the only instance in the Hebrew Bible of the use of
the verb in a context concerning a relationship between two individuals that
does not also concern intermarriage. My hypothesisthat the authors of Gen 2:24
were responding to a pressing social issue of their own time, that of intermarriage
between Israelites and non-Israelitesis supported.

V. Conclusion: Genesis 2:24, Intermarriage,

and the Problem of Aloneness

I began by observing that conservative Christian scholars have appealed to the

creation narratives of Genesis in order to open a second front in the battle over
homosexuality in the Bible. They argue that Gen 2:24 establishes a normative and
prescriptive definition of marriage that precludes homosexual expression and estab-
lishes a biblical theology of sexuality that should be brought to bear on interpretation
of all subsequent biblical texts. The findings of our study, however, indicate that this
second front is a dead-end. Although Gen 2:24 certainly presents an etiology, it is
not a normative etiology of marriage that precludes homosexuality (or whatever the
presenting issue might be at any given time) but a descriptive etiology of the strong
draw and attraction that calls men and women into relationship with one another.
Far from setting out to regulate and restrict the institution of marriage, Gen 2:24
acknowledges, without narratorial censure of any kind, the propensity of men to pur-
sue inappropriate marriages that defy the wishes and schemes of their parents and,
by implication, society and religious institutions. This study suggests that the particu-
lar brand of inappropriate relationship that the authors of Gen 2:24 had in mind was
intermarriage. In our day the presenting issue might be homosexual marriage, but
the implication is the same: the cause of this propensity is to be located in Gods solu-
tion to the problem of the aloneness of the .
In the end this second front may prove to be something of an own goal for
the opponents of same-sex marriage. They are wrong to argue that Gen 2:24 offers
a normative definition of marriage that precludes marriage between people of the
same gender; nevertheless, they may well be absolutely right in their assessment
that Gen 2:24 should be understood as foundational for the interpretation of the
entire body of Scripture. It is in Gen 2:24 that we come to understand the power of
the need for relationship that is the result of Gods actions in creation.
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