“Complete the week of this one, and we will give you the other also in return for serving me another seven years.” Genesis 29:27

If you are familiar with the Bible stories in the Book of Genesis that detail the events surrounding the formation of the nation of Israel, then you might already know the context of the above verse. And if you’ve been around the church for a while, or grown up in the church, you’ve probably already learned how to filter out the problematic details of that story. You might be so skilled at filtering out the problematic bits that you can actually find yourselves celebrating a virtue from this story.

However if you are not familiar with the series of narratives in that comprise the book of Genesis, you might be shocked to find out the “this one” and the “other one” mentioned in Genesis 29:27 are actually young women being given in marriage.

Laban is basically telling Jacob to finish a honeymoon week with Jacob’s new bride Leah, and then he can marry the other sister, Rachel, right after that. And Jacob is able to marry these two sisters because he will have worked a combined 14 years for Laban in exchange.

For us long-time Christians, this story may be familiar enough that we are able to move past the the details that highlight how radically different this culture was than our own today. In fact, because of that familiarity I was able to preach from this story on Sunday and the emphasis of that sermon was Jacob’s love for Rachel. From a scripture text that describes a man marrying two sisters in exchange for 14 years of labor, I attempted to highlight love as a virtue that is to be celebrated.

But I probably first heard this story in Sunday School classes when I was in elementary school. I grew up knowing that in Bible stories men had multiple wives, and even slaves, with whom they had children.

Not long ago however, in a discussion with someone who wasn’t formed by christian teaching since childhood, the topic of “biblical marriage” came up. This is such a loaded phrase in our culture and in our current moment is usually a way to talk about the church and its relationship with LGBTQ people.

In the course of that conversation, it was not assumed that a marriage between one man and one women is the biblical understanding of marriage. In fact, the challenge was put out there to provide evidence demonstrating the modern day nuclear family anywhere in the Bible.

Why doesn’t biblical marriage mean one man married to two sisters who also had sexual relationships with the servants of the the wives. After all that is exactly what happened here in Genesis 29 and 30 with Jacob, Leah, Rachel, Bilhah, and Zilpah. Would this then not also be a “biblical marriage”? Since God’s word teaches us about this kind of marriage, doesn’t that mean that its okay with God?

This same type of logic appears in the American churches of the 19th century when discussing slavery. Because the Bible has many stories and teachings that involve slaves, including a part telling slaves to obey their masters, doesn’t that mean that God allows slavery? This was one of the arguments of southern Christians during the period surrounding the American Civil War. It’s in the Bible; the Bible is given to us to teach us how to live; therefore this behavior is prescribed to us.

At this point, I hope its clear that I’m not suggesting that the Bible tells us to support polygamy or slavery. But rather, we are highlighting how a flat and uninformed use of the Bible can lead us down a variety of paths.

I use the words flat and uninformed to describe an approach to scripture that starts with the assumption that all scripture is the same and that the purpose of scripture is to tell us exactly what to do. That approach will create more problems than it solves.

In a gross oversimplification, it can be said that the Bible is both prescriptive (providing instruction on what to do) and descriptive (capturing and detailing life as it was in the ancient cultures, but not instructing the audience to replicate that behavior). And this can be tricky as we apply this to interpretation and application.

There are many commands in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament, that we ignore today because we understand them to be commands directly connected to a particular culture, and therefore do not prescribe behavior to us today.

For example, in Deuteronomy 22:28-29, the Bible gives clear instruction that requires a rapist to marry his victim. Divorce after that is never an option.

There is little interpretation needed as this command is quite clear. Yet something like this today would be rightly understood as the worst possible resolution for a victim of rape, and not God’s justice. So while it is clearly a direct instruction, the bible here is describing a culture to us that would label a rape victim as a damaged good; not of value to her family; not desirable for anyone to marry her. So the solution 3,000 years ago was to make the rapist be responsible for her care for the rest of their lives. Instead of being a castaway, she was to be cared for.

So how do we know what the Bible is prescribing for us to do versus simply describing to us an ancient way of life? We have to use wisdom and discernment. We have to commit to not being satisfied for superficial and easy answer.

We need to always remember that the “bible clearly says” many things, but that the bible is a collection of ancient stories, poems, letters, and more. Its purpose is not to simply be an instruction manual, but rather to point us towards an understanding of who God is. The Bible is revelation, not regulation.

This may seem unnecessarily complicated, but it is simpler than it sounds. If a young boy reads this story about Jacob and asks “should I marry two girls when I grow up?” or a young girl asks “someday should I marry someone who is already married?”, instinctively we already know the answer to that question. We know that is not what God wants for them. We have the filter that helps us approach this text in a more developed way. We simply need to be aware of it, honest about it, and not ignore it when it suits are desires.

Reading the Bible is not the same thing as reading the operator’s manual that came with your car. It requires reflection, discernment, a commitment to listen and learn. And as we run across some of these more difficult texts that might make us uncomfortable or when we see things that we aren’t sure what God is doing in them, we can know that facts and Truth are not the same thing. We can dig deeper in those moments, seek God more diligently, prayer all the more earnestly. These texts that make us wonder what is going on or leave us scratching our heads can lead to important questions; questions can cause us to drawn nearer to God. And by drawing nearer we can see God all the more clearly.

The Bible works to reveal God to us. Revelation, not regulation.

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