23. (a) To ensure happy, theocratic marriage what steps should be taken? (b) How should marriage be kept after it is once entered into?

²³ Because of so many serious things that are tied in with the solemn arrangement of marriage, each one should investigate his intended mate’s background thoroughly and then determine whether it would be theocratic or lead to happy bonds to propose marriage or to accept a marriage proposal. If one enters a marriage engagement, then one should keep it clean by pure moral conduct that one may have presented to himself an undefiled mate as in the case of Jesus and his bride: “that he might present the congregation to himself in its splendor, not having a spot or a wrinkle or any of such things, but that it should be holy and without blemish.”—Eph. 5:27, NW.

Marriage Ceremony and Requirements

1. What wedding customs prevailed among the Israelites?

The books of the Bible written expressly to and for Christians give no form of marriage ceremony for them. They do show that after the marriage was arranged for by the parents and through a go-between or marriage agent there was an engagement period of about a year in the case of virgin girls. Then on the wedding evening the bridegroom went to the bride’s home and took her away to her new home. There was a procession homeward by the couple amid a joyful group of celebrators. So the wedding became public property and was registered on the public consciousness, and on his bringing her home there was a wedding feast that was joined in by all the invited, as arranged by the bridegroom’s parents. Happy were those who were invited to the wedding evening meal. The bride did not keep her betrothed lover waiting before she put in appearance. She waited for him, all dressed up in her prettiest, ready to be given to him by her father or guardian.—Matt. 1:24; 22:1-11; 25:1-10; John 2:1-11; 3:29; Mark 2:19; Isa. 61:10; 62:5; Rev. 19:7, 8; 21:2, 9-11.

2. What facts regarding marriages are apparent from the Bible record?

² It must be remembered that the first Christians were Jews, or Israelites, even as Jesus himself was. Reasonably, then, these Jewish Christians carried over their marriage customs and arrangements from their former Jewish social system to the new Christian system of things. But one thing is to be noted without fail, that