How would you classify marital vows to forsake all others?

[frederick]

The way many of the marital vows are worded are they're done as an exchange. The people aren't exchanging vows with or to God, so far as I can tell, they're exchanging vows between two parties before God, or with God as a witness.

I discovered people will force whatever belief they want into the situation of vows. I'll give you an example of a situation I had to deal with. A man who claims to be a Christian(!) and who was not present when I married my first wife challenged me about the vows I "likely" said. He rebuked me for breaking my vows for a monogamous marriage even though I told him I never said any such thing. His response was to claim I'd made the vow in the context of those who believe in monogamy-only, so it applied to me. He went on to tell multiple people I was committing adultery and did his utmost to persuade my wives to divorce me. I confronted him over his sin of bearing false witness against me and breaking God's commandment which he ignored.

Until people set aside their erroneous presuppositions about monogamy-only and think biblically they won't act righteously. The thing is, we answer to the One who made the rules, not the religious self-righteous clowns. We need to stand blameless before Him, and that includes dealing with any vows we've made.

 

[Stanfam7]

We have discussed this at length. The first thing I thought was Jesus on the cross asking the Father to forgive the people for crucifying Him because they didn’t know what they were doing Luke 23:24, which reminded me of the OT in Hosea 4:6 saying we perish for lack of knowledge of the law of God and reject knowledge. We do so much out of ignorance believing we are doing right.

It then reminded me of Jephthah, who vowed that if God gave victory he would burnt sacrifice the first thing that came out of his house. I mean why on earth would he make a vow like that? He also went through with it. Judges 11:29-40. Perhaps she lived in perpetual virginity, but his oath was burnt sacrifice. In Hebrews 11:32 Jephthah is in the hall of fame! I can’t even process this.

My mind then went to Numbers 30, which lays down the instructions concerning vows. On the day it is learned that a daughter or wife has made a vow that the father or husband is not okay with they can release her from it.

Matthew 12:36 Jesus says we will give account for every idle or careless word spoken.

Matthew 5:33-37 let your yes be yes and your no be no- don’t make oaths or false vows- keep your vows to the Lord

So all this percolated. Once I learned that our vows made before the Lord, not to the Lord, but to one another were mostly unbiblical I released my husband from any that would hinder his obedience to God. We had renewed our vows to each other in God’s presence two years ago, and they were mostly about my submission to him and his covering of me- very biblical.

We look at what we did when we were married in 1994 as a covenant/contract that we can revisit and update terms, conditions, and agreements, as we mature and have better understanding, before the Lord as a witness like we did in 2024.

Husband is allowed to release me of my vow once he learns. That means he is released from exclusivity. It doesn’t appear to me by Numbers 30 that I have much say in this? . I mean, I immediately repented to God for my ignorance in the whole matter, asked forgiveness, renounced my participation in Babylonian systems regurgitated by Roman-Greco influence on us today. I released my husband and fully agreed to submit to him in everything as unto the Lord. I fully recognized that I am joined to him and he is my master. I have zero issue with being considered his property, which cracks me up since I used to be a feminist.

I definitely have peace in my spirit and my conscience does not trouble me for doing this. We certainly understand better oaths, vows, obligations, and how powerful our words are more now than we have in the past!!! . We were blind, but now we see (we are sure there is yet more to see).

If God is not releasing us from monogamous vows, we sure aren’t receiving conviction on this, and I literally have just come out of entering the spirit of judgement and spirit of burning mentioned in Isaiah 3. With the crucible of refining I have gone through in the past two plus months it doesn’t make any sense to me why He wouldn’t address this with me if it were problematic to Him. He sure hasn’t held back anywhere else.

We sure don’t want to be deceived and therefore sin as a result.

 

[The Revolting Man]

This is an ideal. In the real world a wife has every authority to enforce a husband's vow by visiting consequences upon the husband who violates

Right, I would make a distinction between ability and authority; we could even say power and authority. The husband has the authority but the wife has the ability to contravert that authority.

We could debate what the results of controverting that authority might ultimately be but there’s no denying that ability can thwart authority for a time at least.