Flipping through Genesis, the first book in the Bible, I noticed that, despite numerous records on marriages, there are really only four detailed accounts of how a couple came together (excluding the Judah/Tamar account in Genesis 38, which is more a story of lust and selfishness than love).
Genesis 2:20-25
First was, of course, Adam. This pre-Fall account is every guy's dream of paradise - he only had to take a deep nap to wake up to the most perfect woman for him. No guy since can say with as much certainty as he that a certain woman is the one for him (she was made from his rib, and there was no one else!)
Genesis 24:1-67
Isaac had to wait a little longer for his bride than Adam, but it was almost just as easy. Here daddy Abraham did all the work of dispatching a servant to find a woman back in the family homeland, and God arranged a smooth meeting between that servant and the bride-to-be Rebekah. Isaac saw her for the first time simply by looking up while meditating in a field, after she had already agreed to marry him and was making her way to him.
Genesis 29:14-30
Jacob gets tricked by his father-in-law-to-be Laban into working seven years for Leah, whom he didn't love, and an extra seven years for Rachel, whom he did. 14 years of waiting and hard labor for a girl - doesn't matter what your gender is, you gotta give it up for persistent Jacob...
Genesis 34:1-31
In one of the lesser-known and saddest Bible stories, Shechem raped Dinah, the girl he loved. When he still sought to marry her, her indignant brothers tricked him and, amazingly, all his fellow male citizens in the city into getting circumcised (major ouchee for adults). In the end, the brothers killed off Shechem and all other men. Shechem and his unrestrained passion and devotion ended only in the death of himself and all his friends and relatives.
All four stories took place in the first age of human history, all under the same God. Which of these four men do I resemble most? To varying degrees, each of them. I would tell you more if I knew. Perhaps next year God, that perfectly creative Author, will bring me greater understanding of where my own story is heading. I suspect its greatest similarity to those of the four Genesis bachelors will be its uniqueness.
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