If there’s anything the Western world is infatuated with, it’s infatuation. We love love. We are swept off our feet by romance.
If we believe in anything, it’s that the greatest achievement any of us can aspire to, it’s the finding of a soul mate.
What tipped me off was a wedding I attended several years ago. It had a $50,000 price tag. It was worth it, they said, because they’d found their soul mate in each other.
Disney animated films prepared us as kids to believe that there’s a prince for every princess. And romantic comedies tickle our hearts with absurd plots about absurdly beautiful people falling absurdly in love.
Yes, our culture tells us, the greatest thing of all is to be in love.
So, we feel a little cheated when only one out of the 150 psalms in the Bible is about marriage. With how much ink we spill on books about relationships, you’d think we’d have 30 to 40 psalms about marriage and an equal number about parenting (plus another 20+ about sports). But no dice. We get one book of the Bible (the Song of Songs) and one psalm (Psalm 45), a handful of proverbs, and a few verses in Ephesians.
The lack of writing about marriage in the Bible is shocking. I don’t know how marriage bloggers pull it off.
What’s also shocking is this: We’ve only got one marriage psalm and I’ve never heard it read or referred to in any wedding I’ve been to or heard about. Never. Psalm 45 just doesn’t play in weddings.
We’ve got one wedding psalm and it doesn’t fit our conception of marriage and feels inappropriate, being about a royal wedding.
Think about that for a minute. We’ve got only one psalm out of the 150 that deals with something we are super keen on, but it deals with the theme in such a way that it feels inaccessible to us.
Did God strike out here? Why didn’t he give us something different? Why not something we’d find more useful? Something more relevant? We long for a marriage psalm and he gives us this?!
I could’ve done better. In fact, I did. Here’s the song I wrote for my wedding (sung by the incomparable Nate Andrews).
Hello, my love
Today’s the day we bind our hearts together
Today, my love
Just like two streams that join to form one river
Today, I am yours
Today, you are mine
I couldn’t care
If the sun didn’t shine
Because by the Father
And through the Son
In the Spirit
You and I
Become one
Simple. Sweet. Spiritual. What more could you ask? It even has the sappy line about the sun not shining. But that was appropriate, because we got married in Seattle in January and I knew the sun had no chance of shining.
So, what gives with Psalm 45?
It starts our promisingly. It even has a sappy line of its own, the ever-humble “my tongue is the pen of a skillful writer.”
My heart is stirred by a noble theme
as I recite my verses for the king;
my tongue is the pen of a skillful writer (Ps. 45:1).
My song is looking better already!
And then, instead of praising the beauty of the bride, the sons of Korah write about the dashing young king.
You are the most excellent of men
and your lips have been anointed with grace,
since God has blessed you forever (Ps. 45:2).
Wait a moment! It’s not his dashing good looks that are on display here. It’s his lips! And not because they are kissable. It’s because the words that come from them are as gracious as our God. The groom’s excellence is determined by the wisdom of his tongue, not by six-pack abs.
Beauty comes through the ear, not through the eye.
Those looking for good husbands should close their lids and open their ears.
And then this strapping young man straps on a sword.
Gird your sword on your side, you mighty one;
clothe yourself with splendor and majesty.
In your majesty ride forth victoriously
in the cause of truth, humility and justice;
let your right hand achieve awesome deeds.
Let your sharp arrows pierce the hearts of the king’s enemies;
let the nations fall beneath your feet (Ps. 45:3-5).
Things get violent quickly, but the violence isn’t in the marriage. It’s against the king’s enemies. His cause? Truth, humility, and justice.
What a fascinating trio. Romance isn’t among them. The horse he rides out on is a warhorse. He doesn’t ride in on a snow white stallion to steal her away. There is no kissing in this psalm.
But when you think of it, could there be three better characteristics for a husband?
Truth. He is ultimately trustworthy. No hiding. No secrets. No manipulating with partial truths.
Humility. All that he has (strength, wisdom, wealth, etc.) is turned toward others and not toward himself.
Justice. He sees what is wrong and broken in the world and works to make them right and whole.
Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever;
a scepter of justice will be the scepter of your kingdom (Ps. 45:6).
In the middle of the psalm, we get a single verse of prayer. The justice of the king has inspired a burst of praise to God whose rule is defined by his justice. His scepter, the sign of his authority, is one of justice.
There is a reason why the word “ruler” means both a person who rules over us and a measuring stick. When the ruler in charge establishes the ruler by which we measure things, then no one gets cheated. And when justice is done in the small business transactions of daily life, justice can also extend to the rich and the powerful.
You love righteousness and hate wickedness;
therefore God, your God, has set you above your companions
by anointing you with the oil of joy (Ps. 45:7).
His justice — his commitment to what is right and his rejection of what is wrong — is what sets him apart from the rest. This is what makes him worthy to be anointed king.
The fragrance of olive oil running down his head and beard is offset by other fragrances. And those beautiful scents are joined by the wealth of ivory adorned palaces, lovely music, and a bride in a dress of spun gold.
All your robes are fragrant with myrrh and aloes and cassia;
from palaces adorned with ivory
the music of the strings makes you glad.
Daughters of kings are among your honored women;
at your right hand is the royal bride in gold of Ophir (Ps. 45:8-9).
Finally! At last, we get to the beautiful bride.
I don’t know how many times I’ve heard wedding days referred to as the bride’s day. And our culture feeds that. Not only do girls plan their weddings from early years, but woman are almost completely in charge of most of them. Know of any wedding magazines aimed at men?
I was in Canada in the first semester of graduate school while my wife (and her mom) did all of the legwork preparing for our wedding. I didn’t avoid participation, but all of the detail work was done by her.
But before we get to the beauty of the bride, the sons of Korah have some strong words for her.
Listen, daughter, and pay careful attention:
Forget your people and your father’s house (Ps. 45:10).
Most of the world for most of history has practiced arranged marriages. The wisdom of the experienced has been valued over the passion-clouded impulses of youth. The unhappiness of modern marriage does nothing to promote the superiority of romantic courtships.
The words to the bride are harsh: Forget your people and your father’s house.
As a royal wedding, the bride was almost certainly from a different ethnic group with whom the king was making a treaty. And here she is being asked to forget her ethnicity. (Imagine how that would be received today.) She is no longer a member of her previous people. She has become part of a new people and is to embrace them and them only. She has left the protection of her father’s house and is a part of her husband’s household.
Ruth’s vow to Naomi echo these marriage words and are so fitting to those entering marriage. In fact, my wife gave them to me on our wedding day (leaving the United States and joining me in Canada made them even more poignant).
Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God (Ruth 1:19b).
Ruth was giving up her Moabite gods in favor of Yahweh by following Naomi. And so too is the bride in Psalm 45, trading her former gods for the God of Israel.
This leaving of the former and cleaving to the new reality of marriage is essential. There is no going back to what we were before. We move forward into our new relationship.
As the father of a daughter whom I fell in love with at first sight on the day she was born, I don’t cherish being “forgotten” when she gets married. But I know its importance. My wife had to do the same and I’m grateful that she did.
Let the king be enthralled by your beauty;
honor him, for he is your lord.
The city of Tyre will come with a gift,
people of wealth will seek your favor.
All glorious is the princess within her chamber;
her gown is interwoven with gold.
In embroidered garments she is led to the king;
her virgin companions follow her —
those brought to be with her.
Led in with joy and gladness,
they enter the palace of the king (Ps. 45:11-15).
And there she is in all her beauty, surrounded by gifts and bridesmaids and stunning in her gown. This is the wedding we were expecting. Kinda.
They don’t go to a church or the temple. They go to the groom’s house instead.
Remember, weddings were about the transfer of the bride from one house to another. If this would have taken place among poor farmers in a village, the groom and his friends would have parading with torches and other lights through the dusky evening to the house of the bride’s father. There, she would be ceremonially handed over to him and paraded back to the groom’s house. The marriage would be consummated. A token of the bride’s purity would be given to her. And a party of several days would commence, hosted by the groom.
There is some of this in the words of Jesus:
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am (John 14:3).
Marriage in the ancient world wasn’t the business transaction modernists have made it out to be. Women weren’t possessions to be bartered — at least, most weren’t. Fathers loved their daughters then, too. But a transaction was being made. A transfer from one home to another took place.
Your sons will take the place of your fathers;
you will make them princes throughout the land (Ps. 45:16).
And so affections adjust. The woman’s heart shifts from her father to her children, as she ceases to be a daughter and becomes a mother.
Yes, love for the husband is in there somewhere. But the psalm skips quickly to motherhood. There was no decade of childless play. There was the serious business of establishing a home to be filled with children.
Children are the only real legacy any of us has. Our work is quickly forgotten as are we ourselves. But if we have children and they have children and so on, we have truly changed the world.
And so the biblical vision of marriage is less about finding a soul mate who will complete me and more about the end of childhood and the beginning of parenthood as husband and wife become a new family, a new household, a new people who will fill and change the world.
And so Psalm 45 ends with this:
I will perpetuate your memory through all generations;
therefore the nations will praise you for ever and ever (Ps. 45:17).
Maybe we should be using this psalm in weddings after all.