The Royal Bridegroom

Symbolic Reflections on Bridal Symbolism in Scripture and Antiquity (4)

God, the Divine King, is the Bridegroom of the World. In preceding posts, we have developed this imagery across a myriad of relations in order to understand its inner logic and explore its implications. The king is the bridegroom of his kingdom. We see this imagery appear in several contexts throughout the Book of Samuel. For example, when Saul comes to the land of Zuph, where he encounters Samuel and is told that he will be king, he encounters women coming to draw water (1 Samuel 9:11). This scenario is a classic marital image in scripture. When Moses firsts meets his bride, she is drawing water (Exodus 2:16) with her sisters. Likewise, when Abraham’s servant first sees Rebekah, who will be chosen as wife for Isaac, she is carrying a water jar on her shoulder (Genesis 24:15). And when Jacob sees Rachel for the first time, she is coming to a well to water her sheep (Genesis 29:6-10). Saul, therefore, in learning of his destiny as Israel’s king, is meeting his bride-to-be. He is the husband of the nation. David’s displacement of Saul is likewise framed in bridal terms: after defeating Goliath, it is the women who “sang to one another” of David’s military prowess: “Saul has struck down his thousands, and David his tens of thousands” (1 Samuel 18:7). Saul reacts as a jealous husband would: he is “very angry” (1 Samuel 18:8). When God rebukes David for his sexual immorality, He reminds David that “I gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your arms and gave you the house of Israel and Judah” (2 Samuel 12:8). We therefore see here the analogy which exists between the House of Israel and the Royal House. David has been given protective responsibility over Saul’s household. It is the Husband who is entrusted with the responsibility to “cultivate and guard” the household over which he is the head. And the household is personally embodied in the person of the bride, for which reason the first Woman is described as having been built from Adam’s side (Genesis 2:22), evoking architectural imagery.