When a Man Should Depart from His Father's Household

There are many cultural assumptions we deeply believe that have not come from our making biblical arguments to verify their validity. Instead, we assume that if the Bible doesn’t issue us an explicit command about something, our culture is automatically justified in what have become, in many cases, just arbitrary customs to which we dogmatically adhere. One such issue we assume is that a man becomes an adult at 18, and is then free to leave his home to become whatever kind of adult he wishes to become. This belief is almost held as a sacred idea, not to be questioned, since it is confirmed by the fact that it is almost universally held in both the larger culture and within the American church.

I want to propose that the Bible actually does present us with instruction concerning the reason that the boy (or man under his father’s household) should leave his father’s household, and that it directly contradicts the sentiments of Western culture on the subject.

I realize that what I am about to argue is not even something that is accepted for women in our culture anymore. Women are viewed in the same way that men are. Our culture has decided that women are adults at 18 years old. They are free to move out from the rule of their parents. The modern church, by and large, has agreed with the culture. So for me to argue this point about men will be a further uphill battle. It is not an uphill battle because our church culture has a solid biblical argument that it thoroughly thought through before it dogmatically held to its convictions about the subject; but rather because, as in most assumed things, tradition has its cards stacked in its favor. It has already won the argument without arguing. Any who would question it are strange for doing so, and what is strange is alarming. We find comfort in the familiar, and what is familiar rings true, even if it is a lie. This is how tradition poisons the well.

It seems clear by numerous statements in Scripture, however, that women are kept by their parents until they are married. There are always exceptions, but exceptions that prove the rule. We argue from normative principles, not exceptions. We also need to argue from biblical principles and texts that the Bible considers prescriptive, not the fallen lives of characters depicted in the Bible, or descriptive texts that are not meant to be taken prescriptively, lest we argue that women should be elders because Deborah was a judge, or that seeking omens is acceptable to God because Gideon and the disciples in Acts do it.

Instead, as I have argued many times, the most prescriptive texts in the Bible may look like descriptive texts to some, but in fact, are not. These are the two creation accounts in Genesis 1–2. Specifically speaking, what is said of the man and woman, both by way of command, and even descriptively, is meant to be applied to ethical situations prescriptively. To give an example of this, the man and woman becoming one flesh is descriptive in the context. It merely describes what men and women become in marriage. Christ, however, uses this as a priority argument to argue that divorce and remarriage are forbidden. When the Pharisees attempt to use even another Scripture that does not prohibit divorce, Christ overrules that understanding by arguing that God’s will is best understood from the creation account, and not from inferences made from other texts that seem to counter it. Likewise, Paul draws on the creation accounts and argues that even the order of the creation of man and woman is meant to be prescriptive concerning what roles they take, even though we might think that the text is merely descriptive. He even argues that the wrong order led to the fall of all mankind. He does the same by arguing that men are in authority over women because the woman was made for the man (what appears to be descriptive in the original text to us) and taken from him (also descriptive to us).

So when it comes to only reason given in Scripture anywhere as to when the man should leave the household of his father and mother, rather than pass it off as a description of practice in ancient culture, (since in light of the way these accounts are used, it would seem that description is not its intent at all) it should be understood as prescriptive, as Torah “instruction” intended to guide the reader to right practice.

Now, if this text had said this of women, many would be in agreement. It is hard to argue that the Bible presents any other practice but that the woman should stay with her parents until married. Even this is argued against, however, by merely dismissing the whole of the biblical witness on the matter as cultural (as though even if true, ancient believing culture is somehow inferior to modern Western, unbelieving culture in its ethical practices, rather than superior in many respects). But for those who would see the biblical witness concerning women as true, they would absolutely see this text as supporting wholeheartedly the idea that women should only leave their households for the purpose of getting married. If, of course, it was the case that it said “a woman” here instead of “a man.” Since it says “a man,” however, it clashes head-on with a deeply held cultural idea concerning what it means to become a man.

Manhood in Western culture is about becoming autonomous. In fact, it is bound up with the hero’s plight to leave his home and become something other than what he was raised to become. He leaves behind the authority of the household to become a man. One is a man when he can be on his own, form his own destiny, become separate from the parents who raised him. In step with paganism throughout the generations, the hyperbolic example of this in myth is that one becomes a man, not by yielding to his father, but by supplanting him. As Zeus killed his father Kronos in Greek mythology, or Ea killed his father Apsu in Babylonian mythology, most pagan cultures have stories that portray the rite of passage as the supplanting of the father, so that kingship can be achieved. This is repeated in actual history by actual sons of kings. Biblically, Absalom seeks to supplant David because, of course, he believes himself to be a better ruler than his father. To relate it more to our original sin, the devil’s temptation of Adam and Eve was to supplant God as Lord over mankind in order to achieve godhood for himself, the very godhood he promised them. This rite of passage is how one matures, and we have adopted this understanding in our culture and in the church. As soon as a son becomes 18 years old, he magically transforms into a man, needing now to take the rite of manhood by immediately slaying any authority his father may have over him. His father supplanted, he will now rule himself. He is free from the restrictions of serving under the authority of his former household.

In biblical manhood, however, the means to becoming a man is through submission to the federal head as lord until one becomes a federal head himself. In other words, it is not through the supplanting of his father, but through the continuation of his father’s household via fatherhood. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and join himself to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” His father, his federal head, grants to him the permission to continue his family. Adulthood is acquired by a participatory permission of the federal head, not a usurping of his role. 

The father lives on through his children rather than being removed by them. Hence, Solomon instructs his son to listen carefully to his father and mother and not to his culture consisting of friends with unbiblical advice and adulteresses. What will destroy him will be foolishness that does not adhere to what his father commands. What will bring life to him is inclining his ear to his father.

In the story of Abraham, Abraham is worried that he will not have a son, and he is worried about this because all of his household will go to another family line, and not his own. The son, in the biblical idea of manhood, is to continue his father’s household, and ultimately, continue the life of the father when he is gone. The son is a continued presence of the father upon the earth even after he dies. Likewise, therefore, the role of the son in becoming a man is to continue his father’s household, not to break from it and then start his own separate one.

In one scenario (the pagan one), therefore, the father’s authority is brought to an end. In the other, his authority is passed on and continued through participation in the household that has now been extended through his children. In one scenario, patricide is encouraged. In another, the honoring and obeying of the father as king and priest of the household is encouraged and supported. The son is under the dominion of the king of the household, and the king of the household grants to him the good work of extending the household (as Christ grants to his subjects the good work of extending His household/kingdom rather than granting them the right to break off from him and start their own separate life).

So a great deal of biblical manhood is caught up in honoring the father by continuing him and his work as one extends that work from the previous one. There is no break from the previous one, no intermediate period where the son does his own thing, no selfish and self-focused living that ignores his purpose in extending his father’s household into his own. What exactly is the purpose of such a period anyway if not to practice the opposite of what he is supposed to be doing? Abraham doesn’t even allow Isaac to leave the household to go look for a wife, but sends his servant to do it, even though Isaac is likely 37 years old. Isaac is an extension of Abraham, not his own man. And this is, perhaps, the biggest difference between the biblical idea of manhood and pagan ideas of manhood. In the pagan vision of manhood, boys become men through various means of self-granted autonomy. In the biblical vision, boys become men by taking up their father’s role of ruling through a parentally-granted fatherhood.

In the first creation account, the act of ruling/kingship is accomplished through the means of fatherhood. This is often missed by those who read the creation mandate as though it is made up of separate commands. The command is “Be fruitful [in order to multiply], multiply [in order to fill up the earth], fill up the earth [in order to subdue it], subdue it [in order to rule over it], and rule over it.” In other words, manhood is bound up with kingship/lordship/authority and kingship/lordship/authority, this authority which characterizes true manhood in the image of God, is only through the means of fatherhood. This is why the second creation account argues that a man leaves the shepherding nest of his father and mother to enter into true manhood, i.e., to become a father and federal head of his own household that continues his father's.

To be clear, I think biological fatherhood is the norm to which these accounts call us, but the NT tells us that spiritual fatherhood, as taken on by people like the Apostle Paul, is also acceptable. This departure from the physical household would, however, just like biological fatherhood, be permitted by the authority and permission of the son's federal head. In other words, the son does not commit a final act of treason against his father's authority in his departure, but his departure is immersed in the act of honoring his father.

He does not leave to become autonomous, free from responsibility of a family under which he was once accountable in submission to his federal head, but rather to take upon the continued responsibility as one who will now continue his father’s role in an extended household.

In the modern West, and paganism in general, the plight of manhood can be about conquest through sex, violence, and self-accomplishment, but it almost always includes the throwing off of the father’s authority. In the Bible, the plight of manhood is about conquest through fatherhood. Hence, the son does not leave the domain of the household in which he serves his family to serve himself, but to serve his own household that continues the one from which he came.

It is not merely a coincidence that a culture that sees the biblical father as a tyrant has abandoned the biblical model for the pagan one; nor is it a coincidence that a church that assumes the culture as the final authority to set familial norms rejects it as well. But wisdom is vindicated by her children, and rotten fruit comes from rotten trees. The one who takes such a fire in his bosom will not go unscathed, and if anyone cannot see the good and truth in what I have said above, may he be convinced instead by all of the burn victims around him. What is true begets what is good in those who have been regenerated, and what is false begets what is chaotic even in those who have been regenerated. Let, therefore, both cultures cry out loudly to us in their fruit. Let us compare biblical culture with modern Western culture and let it be the boast with which each makes their case. It is clear to me by its fruit alone, the West has failed to make a good one.