Monday, November 14, 2011

JEWISH MARRIAGE CUSTOMS: Part Five

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The Marriage Contract (Ketubah)

The Ketubah is a written contract between the bride and the bridegroom and was the groom’s responsibility to draft. It contained the bride price, the promises of the groom, and the rights of the bride. The covenant's purpose was to lay down the terms of the union. The Ketubah is the Old Testament scriptures.

Parallels to the Church…

The New Testament Ketubah is the New Covenant prophesied in Jeremiah 31:31-33, revealed in Matthew 26:28 and fulfilled when Jesus hung on the Cross in Matthew 27:45-50. The New Covenant is the atoning Blood of Jesus Christ that He paid for His bride when He died on the Cross. The new covenant gave us access to the Holy of Holies and the presence of God.

It is important that we list Jeremiah 31:31-33 because it is a promise from God to us toward the coming of the Lord and a new covenant.

v31 Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah:

v32 Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD:

v33 But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people [1].

You might say, wait a minute; didn’t God already make a marriage covenant with His bride through Abraham? Yes He did. However, one of the reasons that Jesus could make a new covenant with Israel is that He had divorced her from the old covenant. Israel had broken the covenant a number of times and the Lord put her away [2].

This is one of the main scriptures that have split the Jewish people from Christianity. They argue that when entering into a marriage contract, if there are any changes, it takes the signature of both parties to make it legal. Since Abraham was dead when Christ fulfilled the New Covenant, they postulated that the new covenant was “null and void.”

However, without going into a complete Greek word study, suffice it to say that the term “will make” means “to complete that which already is,” and the word "new" means "to make better in quality," not to “make better in time.” The new covenant was not changed. Christ made it better.

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[1] Jeremiah 31:31-33
[2] Jeremiah 3:8

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Interesting series James. It's been fun following it.

On this post your last paragraph makes a reference to "Greek word study", I'm assuming you mean Greek as in the LXX. Looking at the Hebrew word used in Jeremiah for "new" it carries a slightly different meaning than the Greek. The Hebrew word used actually does have the emphasis of "new" - "both in the sense of something recent or fresh (as the opposite of old) and in the sense of something not previously existing." Just a thought.