Numbers 30:16 These are the regulations the LORD gave Moses concerning relationships between a man and his wife, and between a father and his young daughter still living at home.
During what I call my “starvation years” I had a job doing door to door sales. As you can tell from the title I give those years, I was not very good at my job. I had a hard time getting people to sign on the dotted line. I was so desperate for money to take care of my young family that when they told me about their financial hardships, I couldn’t press them to sign.
One of the things I learned during my training was that people had three days to pack out of the contract they had signed. We did everything we could to ensure they didn’t back out. Our income was on the line. But I still had people back out. Thus the “starvation”.
Have you gotten one of those invitations to visit a resort for free? Did you ever notice that both spouses have to be present for the presentations? They need both signatures because they know that the other person, the one not attending, is probably the more reasonable financial person, so they will back out of the contract.
All these types of provisions go back to provisions like our text in the Hebrew Bible. But because of our Western, 21st Century cultural lens, we read texts like this and we get offended. But the provisions of this section of Scripture are reasonable and helpful.
The first thing we need to understand is that their cultural surroundings didn’t give equal rights to men and women. That was a reality. But in the formation of this new community, women were given much greater rights that others around them. Women could enter into contracts.
But there were exceptions to this greater freedom. If the husband or father, the one who would be held responsible for the decisions of his wife or daughter, objected to the contract, the contract was null and void. The one who would actually have to pay the price had the opportunity to weigh in on purchases.
Remember, most women did not have the means to support themselves during this timeframe. They worked hard, but their labor was not normally translated into cash. Like housewives of the last century, their work was appreciated, but not compensated.
What I really wish is that some of my purchases could have been reversed! I haven’t had problems with my spouses purchases, but some of mine have been too impulsive. Has anyone else had this issue? Don’t let me hang out here by myself. Someone say an “Amen!” Please!
The provisions of this section of Scripture provide protections for the family unit. They give the opportunity for cooler thinking to prevail. We can all get caught up in the emotion of a purchase. Then we rationalize and defend. Not a good position to be in.
This provided a protective covering for the wives and daughters. If they had been swayed by a slick tent to tent salesperson, the husband or father could step up and rescue the family. I guess the men reconciled the checkbooks back then. Maybe they had the online passwords for their bank accounts.
But I can see how we could read these verses and see some level of injustice and inequity. I hear that complaint. And from our perspective over three thousand years later, there was inequity. But there was also a grace, a protection that wasn’t part of their past. This new community took family obligations more seriously than when they were slaves in Egypt.
The Arnold Journey 