This is my one hundred and fifty-fifth monthly teaching letter and continues my thirteenth year of publication. I started this series entitled The Greatest Love Story Ever Told with WTL #137 with a general overview, followed by a more detailed seven stages of the story as follows: (1) the courtship, (2) the marriage, (3) the honeymoon, (4) the estrangement, (5) the divorce, (6) the reconciliation, and (7) the remarriage. While this subject is of utmost significance, very few are aware of its importance in the context of Scripture. Of all of the descendants of Adam and Eve (who are the White nations of Genesis chapter 10), only the offspring of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were chosen by Him to marry as His wife. But the wife (the twelve tribes of Israel) would prove to be unfaithful, and Yahweh had no other choice except to divorce her. However, Yahweh provided a way back (that being His death as Yahshua on the cross). The divorce (i.e., put away in punishment) would last for a period of 2520 years.

THE GREATEST LOVE STORY EVER TOLD, Part 19

“THE MARRIAGE” continued:

ISRAEL’S ARRIVAL AT MT. SINAI, WHERE HER WEDDING TO YAHWEH WOULD FINALLY TAKE PLACE:

With the last few lessons, we have established where Israel crossed the Red Sea (at the Gulf of Suez), and the highly probable location of Mt. Sinai. In the last WTL #154, I quoted several passages which confirm that Yahweh literally took the 12 tribes of Israel as His Cinderella bride! Why else would Yahweh so rigorously adhere to His own marriage laws at Exodus chapter 18, if His marriage to the twelve tribes were only figurative? And the argument that Yahweh didn’t consummate His marriage doesn’t hold water, as Yahweh in His manifestation of the Holy Spirit got Mary (the mother of Christ) pregnant with child, Luke 1:26-33! Is it too hard to understand that Yahweh would consummate His marriage to Israel? Not only did He consummate His marriage, He sought marriage with Israel according to Mal. 2:15-16 which states:

“¹⁵ And did not he make one? Yet had he the residue of the spirit. And wherefore one? That he might seek a godly seed. Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth. ¹⁶ For Yahweh, the God of Israel, saith that he hateth putting away: for one covereth violence with his garment, saith Yahweh of hosts: therefore take heed to your spirit, that ye deal not treacherously.”

Here we see that Yahweh desired a “godly seed” for the mother of His Son, and only an Israelite lady like Mary would qualify, for He (Yahweh) wanted His “godly seed” to be a perfect “kind after kind” with a full complement of 46 chromosomes. The first question on verse 15 is, “And did not he make one?” followed by a second question, “And wherefore one?” We also notice here that, “... he hateth putting away ...”, so we can know for sure that Yahweh was quite disappointed when he had no other alternative but to divorce both Israel and Judah by putting them away in punishment for 2520 years! Just as every racially pure male Israelite should desire a “goodly seed”, so also did Yahweh. So, what is the answer to, “And did not he make one? We find the answer at Matt. 19:4-6:

“⁴ And he [Christ] answered and said unto them [the Pharisees], Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, ⁵ And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? ⁶ Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.”

Now these are Christ’s own red-letter spoken words as they are presented in my KJV, and my center reference takes me to Gen. 1:27; 5:2 & Mal. 2:15, so Gen. 1:26-27 is not speaking of “two creations”, nor some kind of “narrowed down Cro-Magnon Caucasoid”, as Eli James aka Joseph November would have us believe! Yes, you heard me right! It is clear that Yahshua Christ was making reference to Gen. 1:26-27 when He addressed the Pharisees above, not some “chay” improperly applied by some from the Hebrew!

In order to show the reader how these passages are interrelated, I searched several commentaries for evidence to substantiate how they are in context with the overall Bible message. Many, in their endeavor to substantiate a defective premise, concentrate on a restricted portion of Scripture taken entirely out-of-context to somehow prove their thesis. I first checked with Adam Clarke’s 6-volume Commentary on Mal. 2:15-16, and he did quite well for the first few lines, but then his comments turned universalist in nature, which was contrary to the context. I then examined the 6-volume A Commentary by Jamieson, Fausset & Brown on this same passage, and they did excellent on verses 1 through 14, but didn’t connect Mal. 2:15-16 with Christ’s words at Matt. 19:4-6. After consulting several sources, I turned to my 14-volumes of Barnes’ Notes under “Minor Prophets” (Micah to Malachi), vol. 2, by E.B. Pussy, pages 483-484. (And I would inform the reader that this is a reprint of a book originally published in 1847, nevertheless, Pussy shows himself a Bible scholar understanding its overall context, but I did have to do a minimal amount of editing which you will see in italicized brackets):

“15. And did not He, God, of Whom he had spoken as the witness between man and his wife, make one, viz. Adam first, to mark the oneness of marriage and make it a law of nature, appointing ‘that out of man (created in His own image and similitude,) woman should take her beginning, and, knitting them together, did teach that it should never be lawful to put asunder those, whom He by matrimony had made one?’ ‘Between those two, and consequently between all other married, to be born from them, He willed that there should be one indivisible union; for Adam could be married to no other save Eve, since no other had been created by God, nor could Eve turn to any other man than Adam, since there was no other [Adamite] in the world. ‘Infringe not then this sanction of God, and unity of marriage, and degenerate not from your first parents, Adam and Eve.’ ‘If divorce had been good, Jesus says, God would not have made one man and one woman, but, having made one Adam, would have made two women, had He meant that he should cast out the one, bring in the other; but now by the mode of creation, He brought in this law, that each should have, throughout, the wife which he had from the beginning. This law is older than that about divorce, as much as Adam is older than Moses.’

“Yet had he the residue of the spirit; the breath of life, which He breathed into Adam, and man became a living soul. All the souls, which God would ever create, are His, and He could have called them into being at once. Yet in order to designate the unity of marriage, He willed to create but one. So our Lord argues against divorce, Have ye not read, that He which made them at the beginning, made them male and female? They both together are called one man,and therefore should be of one mind and spirit also, the unity of which they ought faithfully to preserve.

“And wherefore one? Seeking a seed of God, i.e. worthy of God; for from religious [sic kindred] marriage, religious [sic kindred] offspring; may most be hoped from God; and by violating that law, those before the flood brought in a spurious, unsanctified generation, so that God in His displeasure destroyed them all. And take heed to your spirit,which ye too had from God, which was His, and which He willed in time to create. He closes, as he began, with an appeal to man’s natural feeling, let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth.

“16. He hateth putting away. He had allowed it for the hardness of their hearts, yet only in the one case of some extreme bodily foulness, discovered upon marriage, and which the woman, knowing the law, concealed at her own peril. Not subsequent illness or any consequences of it, however loathsome (as leprosy), were a ground of divorce, but only this concealed foulness, which the husband found upon marriage. The capricious tyrannical divorce, God saith, He hateth: a word naturally used only as to sin, and so stamping such divorce as sin.

“One covereth violence with his garmentor, and violence covereth, his garment, or, it might be in the same sense, he covereth his garment with violence, so that it cannot be hid, nor washed away, nor removed, but envelopes him and his garment; and that, to his shame and punishment. It was, as it were, an outer garment of violence, as Asaph says, violence covereth them as a garment; or David, he clothed himself with cursing as with a garment. It was like a garment with fretting leprosy, unclean and making unclean, to be burned with fire. Contrariwise, the redeemed saints had washed their robes and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb. Having declared God’s hatred of this their doing, he sums up in the same words, but more briefly; and this being so, ye shall take heed to your spirit, and not deal treacherously.” When we consider that this commentary was written in England near the time of America’s Civil War, we have to be amazed at the scholarship!

What we need to do now is examine verses 10 through 14 that preceded Mal. 2:15-16 which reads:

“¹⁰ Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us? why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother, by profaning the [marriage] covenant of our fathers? ¹¹ Judah hath dealt treacherously, and an abomination is committed in [all twelve tribes of] Israel and in Jerusalem; for Judah hath profaned the holiness of Yahweh which he loved, and hath married the daughter of a strange god. ¹² Yahweh will cut off the man that doeth this, the master and the scholar, out of the tabernacles of Jacob, and him that offereth an offering unto Yahweh of hosts. ¹³ And this have ye done again, covering the altar of Yahweh with tears, with weeping, and with crying out, insomuch that he regardeth not the offering any more, or receiveth it with good will at your hand. ¹⁴ Yet ye say, Wherefore? Because Yahweh hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously: yet is she thy companion, and the wife of thy [marriage] covenant.”

What we have in the passage just quoted are two marriage covenants; one between Yahweh and His people Israel at verse 10, and another between a man and his wife at verse 14. If you don’t understand them, read it again! As I stated before the 6-volume A Commentary by Jamieson, Fausset & Brown did excellent on verses 1 through 14, so I will use them on verses 10 through 14, with a minimum of editing:

“10. Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us? why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother, by profaning the covenant of our fathers? – why, seeing we all have one common origin ‘do we deal treacherously against one another,^’ especially in respect to the marriage relation (1 Thess. iv. 3-6). ‘His brother’ is a general expression, implying that all are ‘brethren’ and sisters as children of the same Father above, and thus includes the wives so injured. ‘We deal treacherously’ by putting away our Jewish [sic Judahite] wives and taking foreign women to wife (cf. v. 14 and v. 11; Ezra ix. 1-9) ; and so we violate ‘the covenant’ made by Jehovah [sic Yahweh] with ‘our fathers,’ by which it was ordained that we should be a people separated from the other peoples of the world (Exod. xix. 5; Lev. xx. 24, 26; Deut. vii. 3). Whilst there is an ulterior reference to the common Fatherhood of God in relation to all mankind, the primary reference here is to His common Fatherhood in relation to all alike of the covenant-people Israel (in the more special sense as their God and Father peculiarly). To intermarry with the heathen would defeat this purpose of Jehovah, [sic Yahweh] who was the common Father of the Israelites, in a peculiar sense in which He was not Father of the heathen. The ‘one Father’ is Jehovah [sic Yahweh] (Job xxxi. 15; 1 Cor. viii. 6; Eph. iv. 6). ‘Created us’ implies not merely physical creation, but ‘created us’ to be His peculiar and chosen people. So ‘created’ is elsewhere used (Ps. cii. 18; Isa. xliii. 1; xlv. [4-]8; lx. 21; Eph. ii. 10). (Calvin.) How marked the contrast between the honour here done in the Word of God to the female sex, and the degradation to which Oriental females are generally subjected. Such a marked difference can only be accounted for by the fact that the Jews [sic Judahites] were under a direct Divine guidance, such as the Gentiles [sic heathen] did not enjoy. 11. Judah hath dealt treacherously – viz., in respect to the Jewish [sic Judahite] wives who were put away (v. 14; also v. 10, 15, 16). For Judah hath profaned the holiness of the Lord which he loved – by ill-treating the Israelites (viz., the wives), who were set apart as a people holy unto the Lord. ‘The holiness of the Lord’ means ‘the holy seed’ (Ezra ix. 2; cf. Jer. ii 3, ‘Israel was holiness unto the Lord’). Or, ‘the holiness of the Lord’ means His holy ordinance and covenant, forbidding marriages with the heathen (Deut. vii. 3). But ‘which he loved’ seems rather to refer to the holy people Israel, whom God so gratuitously loved (ch, i. 2), without merit on their part (Ps, xlvii. 4). Therefore the former explanation is preferable. and hath married the daughter of a strange god – (Ezra ix. 1, 2; x. 2; Neh. xiii. 23, &c.) the daughter of a strange god – i. e., women worshipping idols: as the worshipper in Scripture is regarded in the relation of a child to a father (Jer. ii 27, ‘Saying to a stock, Thou art my father’). The Jews [sic Judahites], as Nehemiah found on his return to Jerusalem (Neh. xiii. 6), had ‘married wives of Ashdod, of Ammon, and of Moab.’ 12. The Lord will cut off the man that doeth this, the master and the scholar [hn[w r[] – lit., ‘him that watcheth and him that answereth.’ So ‘wakeneth’ is used of the teacher or ‘master’ (Isa. 1. 4); masters are watchful in guarding their scholars. The reference is to the priests, who ought to have taught the people piety, but who led them into evil. ‘Him that answereth’ is the scholar who has to answer the questions of his teacher (Luke ii. 47). (Grotius.) The Arabs have a proverb, ‘None calling and none answering’ – i.e., there being no one alive. So Gesenius explains it of the Levite watches in the temple (Ps. cxxxiv. 1), one watchman, calling and another answering. But the scholar is rather the people, the pupils of the priests ‘in doing this’ – viz., forming unions with foreign wives. The clause – out of the tabernacles of Jacob – proves it is not the priests alone. God will spare neither priests nor people who act so. and him that offereth an offering unto the Lord of hosts – his offerings will not avail to shield him from the penalty of his sin in repudiating his Jewish [sic Judahite] wife and taking a foreign one. 13. And this have ye done again [tynX] – ‘a second time:’ an aggravation of your offence (Neh. xiii 23-30), in that it is a relapse into the sin already checked once under Ezra (Ezra ix. 1-10). (Henderson.) Or, again, ‘a second time’ – means this: your first sin was your blemished offerings to the Lord; now ‘again’ is added your sin towards your wives (Calvin.) I prefer the former view. Malachi supported Nehemiah in his second reformation of the people, after the former work of reformation had been undone during his absence at the court of Persia (Neh. xiii. 5, 6). covering the altar of the Lord with tears – shed by your unoffending wives, repudiated by you that ye might take foreign wives. Calvin makes the tears to be those of all the people, on perceiving their sacrifices to be sternly rejected by God. I prefer the former view. 14. Yet ye say, Wherefore? – why does God reject our offerings? Because the Lord hath been witness between thee and the wife – (so Gen. xxxi. 49, 50). of thy youth. The Jews [those who are jews now, not Judah] marry very young, the husband often being but thirteen years of age, the wife younger (Prov. v. 18; Isa. liv. 6). yet is she thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant – not merely joined to thee by the marriage-covenant generally, but by the covenant between God and Israel, the covenant-people, whereby a sin against a wife, a daughter of Israel, is a sin against God (Moore). Marriage also is called ‘the covenant of God’ (Prov. ii. 17), and to it the reference here may be (cf. Gen. ii. 24; Matt. xix. 6; 1 Cor. vii. 10).”

ISRAEL MAKES READY TO PLEDGE, “WE WILL”

At Exodus 19:5 it is recorded that Moses was to take Yahweh’s words to the twelve tribes of Israel thusly:

“Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my [marriage] covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine ...”.

At Exodus 19:8 it is recorded the answer of the people back to Yahweh thusly:

“And all the people answered together, and said, All that Yahweh hath spoken we will do. And Moses returned the words of the people unto Yahweh.” And Yahweh and the twelve tribes of Israel became Husband and wife! It is absolutely ludicrous to claim that Yahweh’s marriage to the twelve tribes of Israel was only figurative as Jeremiah speaks of Israel’s betrothal to Yahweh at Jeremiah 2:2 saying: “Go and cry in the ears of Jerusalem, saying, Thus saith Yahweh; I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown.” The Hebrew word translated by the KJV as “espousals” is #3623 in Strong’s and is defined by him as: “... from #3618; “bridehood (only in the plural) ...”. From #3618, Strong instructs to go to #3634 which is defined as: “to complete ...”. Just as a man is not complete without a bride, neither was Yahweh. Who are we, then, to deny Yahweh of his rightful bride by claiming it was “a figurative marriage? By doing so, one is also making Christ a figurative being! Had Yahweh’s marriage to Israel not been “literal”, Jer. 2:32 could not have stated: “Can a maid forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire? yet my people have forgotten me days without number.” Forget your wedding anniversary just one time, and you will find what your wife has to say to you!

Not only were Yahweh and the twelve tribes “literally” married to each other, but after Christ died to satisfy His own law, Yahweh in the flesh (as Yahshua) will remarry them again, Jeremiah 3:12-16:

“¹² Go and proclaim these words toward the north [Assyria], and say, Return, thou backsliding Israel, saith Yahweh; and I will not cause mine anger to fall upon you: for I am merciful, saith Yahweh, and I will not keep anger for ever. ¹³ Only acknowledge thine iniquity, that thou hast transgressed against Yahweh thy God, and hast scattered thy ways to the strangers[2114] under every green tree, and ye have not obeyed my voice, saith Yahweh. ¹⁴ Turn, O backsliding children, saith Yahweh; for I am married unto you: and I will take you one of a city, and two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion: ¹⁵ And I will give you pastors according to mine heart, which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding. ¹⁶ And it shall come to pass, when ye be multiplied and increased in the land, in those days, saith Yahweh, they shall say no more, The ark of the covenant of Yahweh: neither shall it come to mind: neither shall they remember it; neither shall they visit it; neither shall that be done any more.”

Well, if this is true, then Ron Wyatt is 100% in error! Wyatt claimed he found the Ark of the Covenant in a cave directly below where Christ was crucified, so in essence he claimed he “visited it”. If Wyatt is correct, then Jeremiah is a false prophet! On the other hand, if Jeremiah is correct, then Wyatt is an out-and-out liar! How much more evidence do we need to understand the Ark of the Covenant is a thing of the past!

Further verification of Israel’s marriage to Yahweh is found at Jer. 3:20-22: “²⁰ Surely as a wife treacherously departeth from her husband, so have ye dealt treacherously with me, O house of Israel, saith Yahweh. ²¹ A voice was heard upon the high places, weeping and supplications of the children of Israel: for they have perverted their way, and they have forgotten Yahweh their God. ²² Return, ye backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings. Behold, we come unto thee; for thou art Yahweh our God.”

YAHWEH MARRIES ISRAEL

We cannot understand “redemption” unless we understand that Yahweh married Israel. This wedding took place in Deut. 26:17-18 as when both the people and Yahweh took their vows:

“¹⁷ Thou hast avouched Yahweh this day to be thy Elohim, and to walk in his ways, and to keep his statutes, and his commandments, and his judgments, and to hearken unto his voice: ¹⁸ And Yahweh hath avouched thee this day to be his peculiar people, as he hath promised thee, and that thou shouldest keep all his commandments ...”

In other words Israel was asked: “Do you take Yahweh this day to be your Elohim?” And they answered: “We will”. Yahweh was asked: “Do you take this people Israel to be your “peculiar” people? Yahweh answered and said: “I will”. Therefore, Israel became Yahweh’s own possession. With this there came a wife-husband relationship between Yahweh and the twelve tribes of Israel. We do not have any record where Yahweh covenanted or married any other people as He did Israel!

To verify that this was actually a wedding that took place between Him and His people, lets consider some scriptures which prove this at Jeremiah 3:14, 20; 31:32:

Jeremiah 3:14, 20: “¹⁴ Turn, O backsliding children, saith Yahweh; for I am married unto you: and I will take you one of a city, and two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion.... ²⁰ Surely as a wife treacherously departeth from her husband, so have ye dealt treacherously with me, O house of Israel, saith Yahweh.”

Jeremiah 31:32: “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 [marriage] covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith Yahweh ...”

Once we understand this husband-wife relationship between Yahweh and Israel, then we can begin to understand what “redemption” is all about. This husband-wife relationship went well at first, but then Israel began to break her marriage vows by incorporating pagan religions and thus adulterating the true tenets of Yahweh. Because of this it became necessary for Yahweh to divorce Israel for her unfaithfulness. Now lets see some scriptures which confirm the reason for the divorce and that actually Yahweh did divorce Israel Jer. 3:8; Deut. 24:1 & Isa. 50:1:

Jeremiah 3:8: “And I saw, when for all the causes whereby backsliding Israel committed adultery I had put her away, and given her a bill of divorce; yet her treacherous sister Judah feared not, but went and played the harlot also.”

Deuteronomy 24:1: “When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her: then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house. ...”

Isaiah 50:1: “Thus saith Yahweh, Where is the bill of your mother’s divorcement, whom I have put away? or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Behold, for your iniquities have ye sold yourselves, and for your transgressions is your mother put away.”

Now that Yahweh has married and divorced Israel, Where in this story does it bring us? Being divorced from Yahweh, Israel can no longer call herself by His name, therefore she became known by other names. At this stage of the game, things look hopeless as neither Yahweh nor Israel can marry again lawfully. The only way by law that either can remarry is if one or the other’s spouse were to die. To verify we shall go to Romans 7:1-4:

“¹ Know ye not, brethren, (for I speak to them that know the law,) how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth? ² For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband. ³ So then if, while her husband liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress: but if her husband be dead, she is free from that law; so that she is no adulteress, though she be married to another man. ⁴ Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the [marriage] law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God.”

When I tried to find information on Romans 7:1-4 in different commentaries concerning the divorce and remarrying of Israel to Yahweh, I was not able to find anything worthwhile. Matthew Henry’s Commentary tries to promote the idea that we somehow are no longer under the Law. He says, “The sentence of the law against us is vacated and reversed, by the death of Christ, to all true believers.” This is not at all what this passage is portraying! What it is saying is: By the death of Yahshua we are free from the letter of the divorce law. Another thing that is taught here by Paul is: The Law has power over a man as long as he lives, and secondly, a wife is bound under the authority or law of her husband as long as she lives and no longer. In other words, the wife is bound to the Law of Yahweh through her husband. Adam Clarke’s Commentary on the Bible, Abridged by Ralph Earle, page 1052, indicates that Paul was preaching to some “jews” and therefore Paul had to refer to the law of Moses or maybe the “jews” wouldn’t “embrace the gospel.” Clarke says of the 4^th verse, “You were once under the law of Moses and were bound by its injunctions, but now you are dead to that law .... God has determined that it shall be no longer in force. So that now, as a woman whose husband is dead is free from the law of that husband.... the law has consequently ceased.” Here Clarke is teaching the Law was abolished with the death of Yahshua when in fact Yahshua obeyed His Own Law to the minutest detail. Yahshua didn’t die to abolish the Law, but so by the Law might be able to remarry Israel and redeem her, and her only unto Himself.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown Commentary on the Whole Bible says, “... that believers are ‘not under the law but under grace’ the apostle here shows how this change is brought about.” OH REALLY?

The Concise Bible Commentary by The Reverend W. K. Lowther Clarke has this to say, “The man dominated by law turns into a woman, the law unto her husband. The husband (= law) dies, in the application the Christian (= the wife) dies. No attempt to make sense of the parable is possible. The application in ⁴ is forcible Pauline doctrine, but the parable itself is best disregarded as one of the Apostles failures.” OH, REALLY, I BELIEVE THAT THIS PASSAGE IS ONE OF PAUL’S GREATEST SUCCESSES! (If you are wondering what the “⁴” means, it points to some more spurious remarks by this commentator.)

The Believers Bible Commentary by William MacDonald has this to say, “The point of the illustration is just as death breaks the marriage relationship, so the death of the believer with Christ breaks the jurisdiction of the law over him.” OH, AGAIN I SAY, “REALLY?” I didn’t know that we “the believers” died with Yahshua. I was under the impression that Yahshua died alone to ransom us.

The Interpreters Bible by Abingdon Press, a 12 volume work with 36 consulting editors and 124 contributors has this to say of this passage, “Paul feels the need of giving his idea of the believer’s necessary separation from sin further emphasis and clarification and decides to try one more analogy. By means of it illustration from marriage becomes even more awkward than the proceeding one from slavery. Again the general intention of the apostle is clear enough: we were formerly married to sin; but sin has now died, and we are free to belong to another husband, even Christ, and in fact we do belong to him. We formerly bore ‘fruit for death’; now we bear ‘fruit for God.’ Some such idea as this is apparently in Paul’s mind but his statement in detail is confused.” Poor old Paul just doesn’t understand; he is “confused”, or is it the “editors” of The Interpreters Bible who are “confused”? The Interpreters Bible goes on: “Paul we must remember, was a speaker, with the added difficulties inseparable from being tied to the slow capacities of an ancient amanuensis (secretary). Anyone who has read with shame the confused dictation which his secretary has brought back for correction will feel himself quite at home in the opening verses of ch. 7. The confusion may also be attributed to the fact that two thoughts are present in Paul’s mind — there is the old nature, married to sin, which has been put to death, so that our true self can be united to Christ; and there is law which also belonged to the old order, and whose power has ended by the death we share with Christ [more hocus-pocus]. The ideas are related: they are both intimately connected with death as the decisive breach between the old order and the new; and both are inseparable from any full consideration of what Christ has accomplished for us. So Paul launches out on his analogy, and as the scribe painfully scratches down his words, his active mind, so quick to grasp interrelated thoughts, races ahead, and when the dictation is completed, the result is the confusion before us. Owing to the method he has chosen and the difficulties inherent in the analogy he uses, this passage does not constitute one of Paul’s great statements of the gospel.”

From all of this, one can see that The Interpreters Bible and the other similar reference commentaries have missed the entire point of this passage. All of these reference books should have referred to Deut. 24:1-4, but they did not. The reason they didn’t is because they were so intent on the abolishment of Yahweh’s marriage laws, which they call “the law of Moses” that they were entirely blind to the true meaning of “redemptive law.”

There are many misinformed, unlearned people who attempt to include the nonwhite races under Yahweh’s marriage to the twelve tribes of Israel. If such a thing were possible (and it isn’t), of necessity, Yahweh would have to have a separate prenuptial marriage covenant with them, which would amount to “adultery”, as it would not be kind after kind, as stated many times in the early chapters of Genesis.

Amos 3:2 states: “You [Israel] only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.” To maintain otherwise goes contrary to the proper context of the rest of the Bible!