Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
The bride-price is a common feature of the Bible’s stories. Jacob famously put in 14 years of hard labor for Rachel. David paid King Saul a bride-price of 100 foreskins of the hated Philistines.
For a family to give up a daughter in marriage represented a financial burden, as most of them lived a hand-to-mouth agrarian lifestyle, and all the women helped keep it going. To lose a young woman was to lose an important worker. So, the payment of a bride-price was meant to help compensate for that loss.
Upon receipt of the bride’s price, the family could then turn around and give it to the girl as her dowry. The purpose of a dowry was to ensure she was not left destitute if her husband sent her away or abandoned her. She had a gold ring she could sell for most of a year’s salary, or something like that.
In recent years, there was an area in Africa in which the practice of paying a bride-price for your wife was still an active custom. A wealthy, handsome man traveled from his village to a smaller one in search of a bride. In a classic, Cinderella scenario, the prince became enamored with the daughter of an older man, a widower who lived with his adult daughter in extreme poverty. Regarded by the rest of the village as the bottom of the barrel among their families, the two were considered worthless and were treated accordingly.
The wealthy man returned briefly to his home village. He came back with a bride-price in tow. In the sight of the rest of the village, he offered a veritable treasure to the old man in exchange for the daughter (if she would have him, of course). No woman in the village had ever garnered a bride-price like that. The girl agreed and the father agreed.
I don’t know if she and her prince lived happily ever after. What did happen, though, is that the old man was instantly regarded as the most honorable, noblest man in the village. The only thing that changed everyone’s opinion was the price paid for the bride.
It’s a free-market concept that a thing’s value is ultimately determined by what someone is willing to pay for it. You can put whatever price tag on it you want. You can ask for any amount. But whatever you’re selling is worth precisely what the market will pay for it.
The wealthy prince happily handed over a bride-price that elevated both the woman he loved and her dad in the sight of everyone. She was obviously worth a lot more than they had thought: the proof was the treasure that was given for her.
The Bible teaches that God sent his own Son to go and get a bride for himself. Not a humble girl, but an entire, vast population of people, the church. There was a price to be paid for her, and it was the lifeblood of the God-man, Jesus of Nazareth.
Consider these things when you are tempted to devalue your own worth. Your value is determined by the one who has purchased you, for a price that exceeds every other treasure.
Gordan Runyan is pastor of Tucumcari’s Immanuel Baptist Church and author of “Radical Moses: The Amazing Civil Freedom Built into Ancient Israel.” Contact him at: