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Come and study the Holy Scriptures with us as Fr. Stephen DeYoung teaches verse-by-verse on the podcast, The Whole Counsel of God. Fr. Stephen holds a Ph.D. in Biblical Studies and is an Orthodox priest serving at Archangel Gabriel Orthodox Church in Lafayette, Louisiana.

Before we finish tonight, let's talk about some vows. Not wedding vows. A whole different thing. Now Moses told the children of Israel, everything is the Lord commanded Moses. Then Moses spoke to the rulers of the tribes of Israel, saying, This is the word the Lord commanded. If any man should vow a vow to the Lord, or swear an oath to bind his soul with an obligation, he may not defile his word. He shall do everything that proceeds out of his mouth. So, point one, and this point's going to be conditioned by some other things, But point one is, you make a vow to God, you make a promise to God, you have to keep it. You'd think that would go without saying, but it doesn't always. And we should know that, if we're honest with ourselves, right? In hard times, we make lots of promises to God that we don't necessarily follow through on for the rest of our lives, right? Verse 4, But if a woman should vow a vow to the Lord and bind herself with an obligation while in her father's house in her youth, and her father should hear her vows and obligations with which she bound her soul, and her father should pass over it in silence, then all her vows and every obligation with which she bound her soul shall stand and remain in force for her. So what's that all about? So the idea here is that a woman, while she's in her father's house, so this is a very young woman, because remember, marriages are arranged marriages, women are married off at puberty, basically, so around 12, 13. So this is talking about a girl under the age of 12 or 13. so if she makes a vow right or a promise at that extremely young age right her dad basically could veto it her dad could say uh not so much right but if her dad doesn't then that stands and she needs to keep it right she can't then use the excuse well i was just a little kid or i was just like no there was an adult involved who right said this is a good thing right and so it sort

of stands it's similar to consent laws in modern day so right you can't sign a contract every yeah yeah yeah and then it continues but if on the day her father should hear and disapprove

all her vows and obligations with which she bound her soul, then her vows shall not stand before the Lord, will not stand, therefore the Lord will consider her blameless because her father disapproved. But if she should actually be married, and she binds her soul with vows made by an explicit statement of her own lips, and her husband should hear it and pass over it in silence, the day he hears, then all her vows and obligations with which she bound her soul shall stand, But if her husband should disapprove on the day he hears, then all her vows and obligations with which she bound her soul shall not remain in force because her husband disapproved of her. Therefore, the Lord will consider her blameless. Now, you may say, well, this is chauvinist. Why does she have to get her approval? This is actually nice if you think about it, because this is saying the Lord will hold her blameless. Right. So what does this prevent? Well, one, this prevents different vows from breaking up marriages. right from violating these authority structures but it also gets the way to go away blameless this is actually much harder on men men don't get any take backs if a man makes a vow and his wife disapproves too bad god will not will hold him to blame if he breaks it or if a little boy makes a vow and his dad disapproved too bad okay well why is that why is god being stricter with men than with women okay you can you can we could be a modern feminist and be like oh they thought women were stupid right no right just made rash vows not at all no who has authority right in this culture in this society the husband the father these

the people with authority and so what does that mean as we've seen all the way through including moses just a couple chapters ago the more authority you have are given by god the more accountable god holds you so if you are in a position you're a female child or even an adult woman in this society where you don't have any authority right god is going to hold you less accountable because you you don't have free will essentially you're not able to necessarily do what you want to do or do what seems right to you and so god is not going to hold you to this high standard when you don't have the the power and authority and ability to to act on it right but if you're a man in this society who therefore has that power and authority then god's going to hold you to a higher standard that's how it works this is christ summarizes this from him who has been given much much will be required the opposite being true also if you only have a little right then relatively little is required verse 10 also any vow of a widow or divorced woman whatever she should vow concerning her soul shall remain in force for her right? Because she's on her own recognizance, right? If you're a widow or a divorced woman, you're making your own decisions. And so you're held accountable for them. But if her vow should be made in her husband's house, or if her obligation concerning her soul should be made with an oath, and her husband should hear and pass over it in silence, and not disapprove her, then all her vows shall stand, and every obligation with which she bound her soul shall stand meaning if you make the vow before your husband dies or before you get divorced right the fact that your husband died or you got divorced doesn't let you out of it right it would close a potential loophole right yeah yeah this is case law this is all the potential ways of you know and what why is why is moses that's why moses is addressing the elders, right? The leaders of the tribes, because they're the ones who are going to have to decide cases when something comes up. Oh, my wife made this vow. I told her at the time it was dumb. I don't think she should follow through on it. She feels like she made a vow to God. She has to follow through on it. What do we do? Right? noses is saying here's what you do with that situation or if it's my wife made this vow but i don't want to follow through on it and they would say well did you say at the time

that she made the vow that you didn't want to follow through on it well no too bad you're going to follow through on it right that's so that's that's where this is going verse 13 but if her husband should cancel them on the day he hears then whatever proceeded from her lips concerning her vows of obligations binding her soul they shall not remain in force for her husband canceled them therefore the lord will consider her blameless again every time the result is she is considered blameless which i don't find derogatory toward women the idea is here's a case in which she is held blameless every vow and binding oath to afflict her soul her husband shall establish or her husband shall cancel but if her husband should remain silent for more than a single day so we've got to give a time right because what's going to happen in real life you know well i didn't say anything at the time but like a month later i said hey maybe that's a bad idea no that's you know it's very similar to modern contract law yeah yeah yeah that's because it's it's serving the same function essentially practically if he should remain silent for more than a single day then he shall establish all her vows for her and he shall establish for her the obligations binding her because he remains silent regarding her on the day he heard them now notice he shall establish all her he said right ultimately because he's the one in authority he's the one who's actually on the hook because what kind of vows to god are we talking about like offering sacrifices she says i'm going to offer 10 bowls every day he's got yeah he's got to immediately say hold on honey we don't own 10 bulls yeah yeah yeah so ultimately ultimately the people who right in terms of the

practical effects of this, there's going to be a whole lot of men who end up on the hook for stuff they don't want to do. And there are going to be some women who get off the hook from some stuff that could potentially cause a lot of problems in their marriage. So on a very practical level of the effects of this, women will come out better from this than men from the way it's set up, right um that's it doesn't let men off the hook really well no because even like it shouldn't

miss a vow that's something that's good and then he cancels it then he's on the hook for that

right she's blind right there is no scenario here where a man gets off the hook for anything there are a few scenarios where women get off the hook for some things that's um yeah and that gets hammered home in this next verse 16 but if he should cancel them the day after he heard them then he shall bear her guilt right meaning what meaning if he tries to get out of it right if he tries to get out of it right but is found to be responsible he's the one who bears the guilt not her right he bears the guilt not her it's not that right she's blameless if he cancels it but she's blameworthy if he tries to get no he's blameworthy if he tries to he's ultimately responsible because he has the authority these are the ordinance the lord commanded moses between a husband and his wife and between a father and his daughter in her youth in her father's house so last note on this before we end what we're going to see we're going to see more of this we've already seen some of this and talked about it a little bit and we'll see more of this in Deuteronomy is an important interpretive key when we're understanding these laws that talk about men and women and husbands and wives and fathers and daughters and all these things is that all of these structures within the torah we'll see again and again are put into place to protect those who don't have power in society from those who do same is true of the legislation that we saw for example about slavery right the reality of ancient near eastern economies was they were going to have slaves right yeah that's yeah that's it right so every once in a while you get some knucklehead who's like well why didn't god tell moses to establish capitalism or socialism or something right like yeah no it's the same reason he didn't explain like quantum physics to moses right like der right but that's so that was a reality so right but so what is the what are the commandments of the torah concerned with with regard to slavery right not with allow me to explain a whole different concept of economics to you that you've never thought about but but okay so there are going to be people who are in this position based on the instant social institution of slavery right here are commands that are going

to protect them from physical abuse from the breaking up of families from generational slavery because all the slaves had to be freed in the jubilee year right so you might be born into slavery but you wait till jubilee year you're supposed to be released right now you're free now you can make a new start right regardless of what your dad did that ended up with you being born in slavery right um so right so those are the structures right and so that's again with this the goal here is women don't have this sort of practical authority right within the society women can make vows and by those vows can obligate fathers and husbands right certain percentage of those fathers and husbands will try to get out of those obligations right so what are the structures surrounding that that protect the woman right in that situation right and and hold the man responsible for the authority that he possesses and wields culturally interesting because i'm sure

it has some kind of play on the woman's intuition you know a whole marriage element where a woman's intuition can Thank you.

often be too forward right well i don't know where this is headed but yeah it just seems to have this understanding of female and male yeah yeah god you know yeah women are you know more likely to do it this way right and so there are timeless elements there are trans temporal elements like that but then there are also temporal elements so like we've said before our society now in various ways women have more authority much more than they did then right and but that brings with it so part of the principle we get here from the torah is that brings with it a greater share of the accountability and responsibility right um and so that's it so same thing with slavery right uh the idea that somehow the bible is indicating that you shouldn't abolish slavery is ridiculous right the only society is to ever abolish slavery in the history of the world we're christian ones um so right and that wasn't going against the bible because the bible doesn't say bad things about slavery it's like we wrackled the situation where we don't have slaves so now it doesn't matter how you treat slaves because we don't have any right um and that's you know well see our discussion about philemon a while back that's um right so it's not that the bible can't envision a time when these will gladly become less relevant right it's that at the time they were given they were relevant and there are principles in there about the relationship between authority power and responsibility and accountability for example that are trans-temporal that are always true right regardless of the societal constructs right and even so another one of those trans-temporal principles is that again god is concerned with protecting those who don't have power in a situation from those who do so those rules about slavery apply in different ways but they apply to if you own a business how you treat employees right how you treat people who you have authority over if you're a teacher how you treat students if you're right whoever you have authority over in whatever circumstance right how you wield that authority over them right all of those things apply right just not as directly because they're technically not your slave right they're your employee and there is a legitimate difference there right slaves can't quit right they can't form unions uh if you think that works out well ask spartacus um yeah so right it is different in various ways but the principles underlying that still apply so all that said next time

we will pick up in Numbers chapter 31. Thank you, everybody.

Listen next time as Father Stephen DeYoung continues his study of the Scriptures on the whole counsel of God. Father Stephen's email address is wholecouncil at ancientfaith.com That's wholecouncil at ancientfaith.com