Husbands, Protect Your Wives

Numbers 30-31; Psalm 63; Proverbs 11:20-21

 

Did you realize that husbands are responsible to guard their wives not just physically, but even in their relationships with God (and fathers are to protect their daughters in the same way)?

 

These are the regulations the LORD gave Moses concerning relationships between a man and his wife, and between a father and his young daughter still living in his house. – Numbers 30:16

 

What are these regulations? What do they say?

 

These regulations tell fathers and husbands to be responsible for the ladies in their homes. When a man makes a vow to God, there’s no way out of it, even if he later realizes that he promised too much. But when a woman makes a vow to God, her father or husband can protect her if he thinks the vow will cost her too much (or perhaps if it will cost him and the family too much). He can cancel the vow. And God will not hold it against her.

 

Fathers and husbands are the heads of the home. They are the ones upon whose shoulders God has laid the responsibility not just for their own lives, but for their families. This command is grace—grace to the women, who may be freed from their vows and not have to bear the burden of fulfilling them, and grace to their fathers and husbands, to whom God gave the right to say No when someone they’re responsible for over-commits.

 

Father, thank You that the privilege You gave us husbands and fathers is the privilege of protecting our wives and daughters from commitments they can’t keep, or that we don’t want them to keep. Thank You that we don’t have to sit back and watch while our women bear burdens that are too heavy for them and for our families, but that You have given us a way to lift burdens from their shoulders, to ease their work, to give them relief and rest. Thank You for Your ministry of giving us relief and rest. Thank You that Christ, the church’s bridegroom, has died and risen to give us relief and rest from our works! We need Your rest, and You graciously give it!