© 2009 Jan Herca (license Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0)
According to experts, ancient Jewish wedding customs are quite difficult to determine. We only have scattered and fragmentary references that prevent us from forming a complete picture. Moreover, customs varied from one Jewish district to another.
This is confirmed by Joachim Jeremiah in his book The Parables of Jesus:
The misconception has arisen because we do not possess a description of a wedding feast connected with the time of Jesus, but rather modern collections of material which attempt to construct a connected mosaic apart from the scattered allusions found in rabbinic literature. There is evidence that these collections of material are incomplete. This is not surprising in view of the situation with regard to the sources; the material is limited and widely scattered, and the picture is extraordinarily varied; then and now, wedding customs differed from one district to another; moreover, after the destruction of the temple, under the repeated impact of national disasters, the Jews suffered great restrictions; but above all, the occasional reports we possess are widely distributed in space and time: in space they come from Palestine and Babylon, while in time they extend over many centuries.
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Bearing these limitations in mind, we will try to summarize the typical process of a wedding at that time.
The young suitor would usually go to the bride’s father’s house carrying a large sum of money, a betrothal contract, called shitre erusin (drawn up by the authorities and paid for by the future groom), and a skin of wine.
As soon as a young man carrying these things entered a house, it was clear what he was up to. The suitor would then discuss with the girl’s father and older brothers the agreed price for marrying his daughter. The cost was usually at least two hundred denarii for a maiden and one hundred denarii for a widow, while the priestly council in Jerusalem fixed four hundred denarii for marrying a priest’s daughter. Of course, these figures indicate only the legal minimum, and could be increased at will. If the father finally agreed, he would drink a glass of wine with the suitor, and the daughter would be invited in. If the daughter agreed (she would rarely object to a prior agreement by the father), then the agreement was made, and the daughter and the suitor sealed their marriage agreement by drinking from the same cup of wine, while a blessing was pronounced.
From that time until twelve months later the betrothal took place. The moment of the beginning of the betrothal was marked by a wedding gift (or mohar, Gen 34:12, Ex 22:17, 1 Sam 18:25). From the time of the betrothal the bride was treated as though she were really married. The union could not be dissolved except by legal divorce; breach of fidelity was treated as adultery; and the wife’s property virtually passed into her husband’s, unless he expressly renounced it (Kidd. IX:1). But even in this case he was the natural heir.
After the marriage contract, the bride and groom remained separately, each in their parents’ house. During this period, the bride prepared herself for her future role as wife and the groom was responsible for finding future accommodation for his wife, which could even be a room in the parents’ house.
Finally the day of the wedding (nissuin) arrived. Alfred Edersheim, in his Sketches of Jewish Social Life, tells us more details:
Marriage followed [the betrothal] after a more or less long period, the limits of which were fixed by law. The ceremony itself consisted of leading the bride to the bridegroom’s house, with certain formalities, most of them dating from ancient times. Marriage with a maiden was commonly celebrated on a Wednesday afternoon, which left the first days of the week for preparations, and enabled the husband, if he had any accusation against the supposed chastity of his betrothed, to make it at once before the local Sanhedrin, which met every Thursday. Marriage with a widow, on the other hand, was celebrated on a Thursday afternoon, which left three days of the week “for rejoicing with her.”
The processions prior to the ceremony were an important part of the ritual, as Joachim Jeremias describes:
Late in the evening the guests were entertained at the bride’s house. After hours of waiting for the groom, whose arrival was repeatedly announced by messengers, he would finally arrive half an hour before midnight to meet the bride; he was accompanied by his friends; illuminated by the flames of the candles, he was greeted by the guests who had come to meet him. The wedding party then moved, again amid many lights, in a festive procession to the house of the groom’s father, where the marriage ceremony and entertainment took place.
Continuing with Edersheim, he comments in several passages:
In Judea, there were two friends of the groom at every wedding. Before the marriage, they acted as intermediaries between the couple; at the wedding, they offered gifts, assisted the bride and groom, and looked after them in the bridal chamber, and were also guarantors of the bride’s virginity.
With a blessing, preceded by a brief formula, with which the bride was given to her husband (Tobit VII 13), the wedding festivities began. Then the couple was led to the bridal chamber (cheder) and to the bridal bed (chuppah). The bride was already with her hair uncovered.
The custom of the bridal veil, whether worn by the bride alone or spread over the couple, dates back to ancient times. It was suppressed for a time by the rabbis after the destruction of Jerusalem. Even older was the wearing of crowns (Song 3:11, Is 61:10, Ez 16:12), which was also forbidden after the last Jewish war. Palms and myrtle branches were carried before the couple, grain or coins were thrown upon them, and music preceded the procession, which it was a religious obligation to join if one happened to be with them. The parable of the ten virgins, who with their lamps awaited the arrival of the bridegroom (Mt 25:1), is based on a Jewish custom. For, according to the rabbinical authorities, such lamps supported by staffs were frequently used, ten being the number always mentioned in connection with public solemnities. The marriage festivities lasted a week, but the wedding days extended over a whole month.
Prior to the wedding, the bride had to purify herself properly in a miqwaoth or ritual bath. The groom, for his part, had to prepare the bridal chamber or chuppah.
The ceremony, called kiddushin, involved the making of a second contract, or kethubah. This contract involved the so-called “friends of the groom,” two special witnesses who were responsible for attending to the couple’s needs. After these witnesses had signed, the contract was taken to the bride’s parents. The contract contained the promises that the groom agreed to make to his future wife.
After the ceremony, the bride and groom would retire to their nuptial chamber, or cheder, which had been previously prepared by the groom, where a marital bed or chuppah would be arranged. Here the groom would give some gifts to the bride.
For a week (although in certain districts this custom was probably shortened to a few hours so as not to lengthen the wait of the guests too much) the bride and groom remained in the bridal chamber at all times, watched over by the “two friends of the groom.” When the groom finally gives the word, the friends enter and leave with the good news of the consummation of the marriage. At this point the bride and groom leave the cheder, at which point the bride is seen for the first time with her veil (badecken) uncovered.
This event was received with great joy by the guests, which initiated the wedding party, where food was served, dancing and singing to the sound of music (Ps 45:1-17). The meals required the use of a large amount of water to perform the frequent ritual ablutions and washings. The party lasted a whole week, at the end of which all the guests returned to their homes.
I have used all of this information to form an idea of what weddings were like in Jesus’ time and to use it in describing the events at the wedding at Cana.[1] It is significant and worth noting here that Jesus frequently used wedding customs as examples for his parables. It seems that Jesus enjoyed these social events, as he used them in several of his speeches (Mt 25:1-13, Mt 24:45-51, Lk 12:35-48, Lk 5:33-35, Jn 3:26-30). The Master so frequently used examples from wedding customs that almost more information on these customs can be obtained from the gospels than from many rabbinical treatises written later.
¶ External links
¶ References
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Joachim Jeremiah, Las parábolas de Jesús (The Parables of Jesus), Verbo Divino Publishing House, 1974.
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Alfred Edersheim, Sketches of Jewish Social Life, 1876. Available on-line.
¶ Notes
In the novel «Jesus of Nazareth», a biography of the Master based on The Urantia Book which is in preparation by the author. ↩︎