In the epoch of "The Old Testament" people were ignorant of the fact that marital fidelity could not be maintained by force and therefore turned marriage into an enforced consolidation of an imaginary right of ownership
1313. People were thus as yet completely ignorant of the fact that marital fidelity could not possibly be a question of force. They did not understand that any marital fidelity that exists or is maintained solely by the threat or fear of capital punishment, or of any other punishment or unpleasantness, has nothing to do with true "fidelity", but constitutes nothing but a kind of "slavery" in which one being holds another helplessly imprisoned as the former's material "property" pure and simple. Thus they certainly did not understand that real "fidelity" exists only as a result of love. When there is true love neither "death by stoning" nor threats of other unpleasantness are needed to maintain fidelity. When one loves in the absolute sense, one is also faithful. Is it not also the same ignorance that is revealed in the forbidding of marriage with "non-Jews"? People thus did not understand that when a "Jew" loved a "non-Jew", and his or her love was returned by this being, these two beings were already joined in marriage by the Godhead Himself. Their mutual love is the hand with which the Godhead blesses or makes the absolute marriage between two beings. With what other phenomenon would he have been able to make a marriage happier and more perfect? And when love has completely left one of the parties, the Godhead has already dissolved the marriage. A marriage can exist absolutely only as reciprocal love and the natural fidelity ensuing from this. A marriage that is maintained only by law and thereby by threats of capital punishment or other forms of unpleasantness is merely an enforced consolidation of an imaginary "ownership", and has absolutely nothing to do with true marriage.
Return to start page
Previous