11.24.24 ~ 3 Components of Marriage (and Prayer)
Good morning!
Let's start this morning with a question: When do you think the first time love is mentioned between a married couple in Scripture? Surprising to say, it's not until you get to Isaac and Rebecca (Gen.24:67).
And Isaac took Rebecca, she became his wife, and he loved her.
In the beginning see man leaving father and mother and clinging to his wife, but that implies physical obligation, not the emotional bond of love (Gen. 2:24). Therefore man should leave his father and mother and cleave/v'davak to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
Though Abraham and Sarah are the father and mother of our faith, though they blazed a new trail, though they heeded God's word, overcame perilous times as a couple and conflict within their own marriage, we don't have any mention of 'love'.
There must have been something significant with Isaac and Rebecca where this statement is never repeated in the Torah.
We know that Jacob loves Rachel (Gen. 29:18). But that’s before he married her: And Jacob Loved Rachel, and he said [to Laban]: "I will work for you for seven years for your youngest daughter Rachel.
With Jacob and Rachel, the love precedes the marriage. With Isaac and Rebecca, the love follows the marriage. Why the difference?
What is more, with our other patriarchs and matriarchs we observe moments of tension (Gen. 16:5; 30:2). In contrast, between Isaac and Rebecca, no friction is ever recorded. However, this isn't because they always agreed (Gen. 25:28; Ch. 27).
Commercial: Shabbat morning's zoom call: Love and Marriage, Marriage and Love: Navigating the emotion in our relationships through prayer and action; both vertically, with God, and horizontally, with our covenant partner
And Isaac took Rebecca, she became his wife, and he loved her.
In the beginning see man leaving father and mother and clinging to his wife, but that implies physical obligation, not the emotional bond of love (Gen. 2:24). Therefore man should leave his father and mother and cleave/v'davak to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
Though Abraham and Sarah are the father and mother of our faith, though they blazed a new trail, though they heeded God's word, overcame perilous times as a couple and conflict within their own marriage, we don't have any mention of 'love'.
There must have been something significant with Isaac and Rebecca where this statement is never repeated in the Torah.
We know that Jacob loves Rachel (Gen. 29:18). But that’s before he married her: And Jacob Loved Rachel, and he said [to Laban]: "I will work for you for seven years for your youngest daughter Rachel.
With Jacob and Rachel, the love precedes the marriage. With Isaac and Rebecca, the love follows the marriage. Why the difference?
What is more, with our other patriarchs and matriarchs we observe moments of tension (Gen. 16:5; 30:2). In contrast, between Isaac and Rebecca, no friction is ever recorded. However, this isn't because they always agreed (Gen. 25:28; Ch. 27).
Commercial: Shabbat morning's zoom call: Love and Marriage, Marriage and Love: Navigating the emotion in our relationships through prayer and action; both vertically, with God, and horizontally, with our covenant partner
Scripture, matching the 3 times of sacrifices, offers up 3 times daily, times of prayer (Psa. 55:17).
Evening and morning and at noon, will I pray and cry aloud, and He shall hear my voice
Traditionally, these are compared to Abraham, morning prayer (shacharit), Isaac, noon prayer (mincha) and Jacob, evening prayer (maariv).
Upon further study in the life of these three Patriarchs of our faith, we find the life qualities aligning with these offerings in prayer. Morning brings with it a fresh and exhilarating energy. As a new day emerges, we have this sense that new possibilities are beaconing upon us (Lam. 3:23). As the first rays of light cast their glow on our horizon, a new dawn also triggers our imagination. Morning brings with it new frontiers to conquer and fresh glimmers of hope. It's when God hits the restart button.
This is the story of Abraham (Gen. 19:27; 21:14; 22:3). He embodied the dawn of a new era to earth. He opened humanity to a new reality, a new vision of earth. He heralded a novel message. The world is not a hopeless jungle; it is a Divine palace. We are not an insignificant speck of dust on the surface of infinity; we matter. Humanity is not a helpless folk subjected to the whims of competing gods, but part of a single narrative, united in the image of a moral and loving Creator. Abraham taught that there was purpose in history and meaning in life.
Jacob, in contrast, embodies the night of our journey (Gen. 28:11; 31:38,40; 32:24; . The kingdom of night is full of mystique, solitude, darkness, drama, and romance. Jacob’s life is riddled with darkness, uncertainty, loneliness, and struggle, fraught with drama and mystery. Already emerging from the womb he struggles with his twin brother; later he wrestles with a mysterious adversary, and in the process he receives a new name, Israel, which means struggling with God. In the words of the prophet Isaiah:
Why do you say, O Jacob, why declare, O Israel, ‘My way is hidden from the Lord, my cause is ignored by my God’? (Isa. 40:27)
Jacob taught us and the world how to encounter the Divine during the turbulence and obscurity of night (Gen. 28:16).
Morning and evening are filled with freshness and mystery, but what about the middle of the day? What is the spiritual heartbeat of the flat hours in the day, when I’m just waiting to go home?
It is the story of Isaac.
Isaac’s life was—superficially speaking—not as colorful as his father’s or son’s life. Nor did his life contain the drama of his son Jacob.
Isaac lived in one location, and he never left it. His was more of a simple life. The only thing the Torah tells us about his vocation is that he grew grain and dug many a well (Gen. 26) Isaac represents the long and seemingly tedious "afternoon" of our lekh lekha.
Therein lies his singular uniqueness. His life represents the daily consistent and unwavering commitment to God and His work. Abraham was a revolutionary; he cast a new light on the world, but it was Isaac who created the vessels to contain and internalize the light. Isaac dug the wells that were covered up with the dust/afar of men's traditions. He went deeply into himself and the world around him and revealed the subterranean living wellsprings of faith and commitment, ensuring that the flow never ceases.
Isaac at one point of his life lay on an altar, ready to become an offering for God (Gen. 22). This became the hallmark of his life: He embodied absolute dedication and resilience, consistent, unwavering, and unbending...the true definition of love.
He showed us that a relationship with God does not consist only of the spontaneous exuberant morning inspiration, or of the drama and romance of the night. A relationship with God is expressed even more profoundly in the daily commitment and sacrifices we make for truth, love, goodness, and holiness.
And as we discussed yesterday, during our zoom all, these three Patriarchs, three times of prayer equate nicely with the three marriages of our Patriarchs and give us clear instructions for our covenant relationship.
Marriage, too, has three components: the morning, the night, and the period of afternoon.
When we meet our soulmate, a new dawn overwhelms our heart’s horizon. We are overtaken by the newness and freshness of the experience. We are excited, inspired, full of hope of what our joined future might look like. This is the "Abraham" of marriage, the morning—shacharis— of a relationship.
Marriage also has those special moments of moonlight mystery and drama. The passion and electricity that comes from the unknown, from discovering the untold layers of depth in our spouse’s soul; the special awareness that is born from dealing with struggle and uncertainty. This is the "Jacob" element of marriage, the evening—"maariv"—of a relationship.
But then there is the "mincha" of marriage—the simple, unromantic, non-dramatic, commitment of two people to each other, during the boring and flat days of life. Two souls holding hands together through the difficult times, in serene times, in monotonous moments, and in thrilling moments. It is the loyalty and trust built over years of supporting each other, day by day, hour by hour, in buying tomatoes, taking the kid to the doctor, and fixing the leak in the basement.
This creates a unique type of love. There is the love born out of thrill, drama, and exhilaration. This is the love that precedes marriage. You fall in love with your new partner, you are swept off your feet by the sunrise in your life. But there is another type of love that is born out of the daily commitment and dedication to each other. This love can never be experienced before marriage, only afterward.
This was Isaac’s love. It’s the "mincha" love, the one that comes from an ongoing, consistent bond in the daily grind of life. It is why the Torah states: "And Isaac took Rebecca, she became his wife, and he loved her." First Isaac marries her, and only then does he come to love her.
What is the difference between the two loves?
In the first love, born out of the ecstasy of a new passionate relationship, the shorter we are married, the more the love; the longer we are married, the more difficult to love. As the thrill wanes, boredom sets in, and we sometimes grow disinterested. In the latter Isaac-type love, it is the reverse: the longer we are married, the deeper we grow in love. We don’t fall in love; we climb in love. The love becomes like a deep well, discovered in the depths of the earth, and its life-sustaining waters never cease to flow. This is not a "boring" marriage. Rather, its intensity is profound and enduring, because it is contained and integrated into the fabric of daily life, and into the experiences of two human beings confronting the full spectrum of our emotions and circumstances.
May our marriages (vertically and horizontally) be true of the prayerful model in the lives of the Patriarchs.
Shalom
Evening and morning and at noon, will I pray and cry aloud, and He shall hear my voice
Traditionally, these are compared to Abraham, morning prayer (shacharit), Isaac, noon prayer (mincha) and Jacob, evening prayer (maariv).
Upon further study in the life of these three Patriarchs of our faith, we find the life qualities aligning with these offerings in prayer. Morning brings with it a fresh and exhilarating energy. As a new day emerges, we have this sense that new possibilities are beaconing upon us (Lam. 3:23). As the first rays of light cast their glow on our horizon, a new dawn also triggers our imagination. Morning brings with it new frontiers to conquer and fresh glimmers of hope. It's when God hits the restart button.
This is the story of Abraham (Gen. 19:27; 21:14; 22:3). He embodied the dawn of a new era to earth. He opened humanity to a new reality, a new vision of earth. He heralded a novel message. The world is not a hopeless jungle; it is a Divine palace. We are not an insignificant speck of dust on the surface of infinity; we matter. Humanity is not a helpless folk subjected to the whims of competing gods, but part of a single narrative, united in the image of a moral and loving Creator. Abraham taught that there was purpose in history and meaning in life.
Jacob, in contrast, embodies the night of our journey (Gen. 28:11; 31:38,40; 32:24; . The kingdom of night is full of mystique, solitude, darkness, drama, and romance. Jacob’s life is riddled with darkness, uncertainty, loneliness, and struggle, fraught with drama and mystery. Already emerging from the womb he struggles with his twin brother; later he wrestles with a mysterious adversary, and in the process he receives a new name, Israel, which means struggling with God. In the words of the prophet Isaiah:
Why do you say, O Jacob, why declare, O Israel, ‘My way is hidden from the Lord, my cause is ignored by my God’? (Isa. 40:27)
Jacob taught us and the world how to encounter the Divine during the turbulence and obscurity of night (Gen. 28:16).
Morning and evening are filled with freshness and mystery, but what about the middle of the day? What is the spiritual heartbeat of the flat hours in the day, when I’m just waiting to go home?
It is the story of Isaac.
Isaac’s life was—superficially speaking—not as colorful as his father’s or son’s life. Nor did his life contain the drama of his son Jacob.
Isaac lived in one location, and he never left it. His was more of a simple life. The only thing the Torah tells us about his vocation is that he grew grain and dug many a well (Gen. 26) Isaac represents the long and seemingly tedious "afternoon" of our lekh lekha.
Therein lies his singular uniqueness. His life represents the daily consistent and unwavering commitment to God and His work. Abraham was a revolutionary; he cast a new light on the world, but it was Isaac who created the vessels to contain and internalize the light. Isaac dug the wells that were covered up with the dust/afar of men's traditions. He went deeply into himself and the world around him and revealed the subterranean living wellsprings of faith and commitment, ensuring that the flow never ceases.
Isaac at one point of his life lay on an altar, ready to become an offering for God (Gen. 22). This became the hallmark of his life: He embodied absolute dedication and resilience, consistent, unwavering, and unbending...the true definition of love.
He showed us that a relationship with God does not consist only of the spontaneous exuberant morning inspiration, or of the drama and romance of the night. A relationship with God is expressed even more profoundly in the daily commitment and sacrifices we make for truth, love, goodness, and holiness.
And as we discussed yesterday, during our zoom all, these three Patriarchs, three times of prayer equate nicely with the three marriages of our Patriarchs and give us clear instructions for our covenant relationship.
Marriage, too, has three components: the morning, the night, and the period of afternoon.
When we meet our soulmate, a new dawn overwhelms our heart’s horizon. We are overtaken by the newness and freshness of the experience. We are excited, inspired, full of hope of what our joined future might look like. This is the "Abraham" of marriage, the morning—shacharis— of a relationship.
Marriage also has those special moments of moonlight mystery and drama. The passion and electricity that comes from the unknown, from discovering the untold layers of depth in our spouse’s soul; the special awareness that is born from dealing with struggle and uncertainty. This is the "Jacob" element of marriage, the evening—"maariv"—of a relationship.
But then there is the "mincha" of marriage—the simple, unromantic, non-dramatic, commitment of two people to each other, during the boring and flat days of life. Two souls holding hands together through the difficult times, in serene times, in monotonous moments, and in thrilling moments. It is the loyalty and trust built over years of supporting each other, day by day, hour by hour, in buying tomatoes, taking the kid to the doctor, and fixing the leak in the basement.
This creates a unique type of love. There is the love born out of thrill, drama, and exhilaration. This is the love that precedes marriage. You fall in love with your new partner, you are swept off your feet by the sunrise in your life. But there is another type of love that is born out of the daily commitment and dedication to each other. This love can never be experienced before marriage, only afterward.
This was Isaac’s love. It’s the "mincha" love, the one that comes from an ongoing, consistent bond in the daily grind of life. It is why the Torah states: "And Isaac took Rebecca, she became his wife, and he loved her." First Isaac marries her, and only then does he come to love her.
What is the difference between the two loves?
In the first love, born out of the ecstasy of a new passionate relationship, the shorter we are married, the more the love; the longer we are married, the more difficult to love. As the thrill wanes, boredom sets in, and we sometimes grow disinterested. In the latter Isaac-type love, it is the reverse: the longer we are married, the deeper we grow in love. We don’t fall in love; we climb in love. The love becomes like a deep well, discovered in the depths of the earth, and its life-sustaining waters never cease to flow. This is not a "boring" marriage. Rather, its intensity is profound and enduring, because it is contained and integrated into the fabric of daily life, and into the experiences of two human beings confronting the full spectrum of our emotions and circumstances.
May our marriages (vertically and horizontally) be true of the prayerful model in the lives of the Patriarchs.
Shalom
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