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Women, Men, and the Rock Climber's Rope
Numbers 30
by Captain Michael Ramsay

There was a time when this proverb applied to our culture: a man’s word is his bond.

Here we are going to look a little bit here at oaths, vows, and covenants. (For more on this I will quickly plug my book, Praise The Lord For Covenants.)[1] Specifically we are looking at Numbers 30.[2] Ronald B. Allen reminds us that, “This chapter is a significant Old Testament text on the subject of the vows.”[3] And Numbers 30:1-2 tells us,  “Moses said to the heads of the tribes of Israel: “This is what the Lord commands: When a man makes a vow to the Lord or takes an oath to obligate himself by a pledge, he must not break his word but must do everything he said.’” This is important. You will notice this statement does not say, “When a man takes an oath or makes a vow to the Lord, he must not break his word unless…” It simply says that when a man makes a vow to the Lord he must not break his vow (cf. Exodus 20:7; Leviticus 19:12; Numbers 30:2-3, and Deuteronomy 5:11; 6:3; 23:21-23). We have more than a couple of examples in the scriptures of people faithfully following through on seemingly very difficult vows (cf. for ex. Genesis 28:20–22; Numbers 21:2; Judges 11:30ff.; 1 Samuel 1:11; 14:24; Jonah 1:16; 2:9; Acts 18:18; 21:23; 23:12ff.): One is Hanna. Do you remember the story of Hanna? 1 Samuel 1: Hanna doesn’t have any children. Her husband then winds up taking another wife at the same time and has children with this other wife and Hanna then suffers much because of her apparent barrenness so she calls on the Lord, “And she made a vow, saying, ‘O LORD Almighty, if you will only look upon your servant’s misery and remember me, and not forget your servant but give her a son, then I will give him to the LORD for all the days of his life... (1 Samuel 1:11).” Her husband agrees with her and she obeys her vow. God gives her a son and they give her son right back to God to be raised by the High Priest. This son grows up to be the prophet Samuel.[4] God rewards their obedience as they follow through on this very difficult vow.

Another example is Jephthah. Jephthah vows to sacrifice to the Lord whatever meets him first upon retuning from a military victory –it is his only child, his own daughter, who is the first to meet him. As John Wesley comments, Jephthah then fulfils this vow in much the same way as Samuel’s parents, offering up his daughter to spend her life in service to God.[5]

Vows are important. They aren’t trivial. God takes them seriously. Another example from the Bible about how seriously God takes vows, oaths and covenants is the Gibeonites. Remember them? Moses, as the representative of Israel, is told by God to wipe out the inhabitants of Canaan, which the Gibeonites are (Deuteronomy 7:1-6; 20:16-18). Joshua then, as the next representative of Israel, is tricked into making a competing covenant before God to spare the Gibeonites (Judges 2:2, Joshua 9). God holds the Israelites accountable to both of these covenants (Joshua 9:15): the one to wipe out the Gibeonites and the one to spare them; the one He commanded and the one that He forbade. Israel suffers the consequences of breaking both covenants even though they are opposed to each other (cf. Joshua 9, Judges 2, 2 Samuel 21).[6] God doesn’t release us from our covenants just because we disobey them (Numbers 6; Judges 2:1; Romans 3:3-4, 7:2; 1 Corinthians 7:10-14; Luke 16:16-16; Mark 10:1-12; Matthew 5:32, 19:9).[7] The making and taking of oaths, vows and covenants is a very serious matter; therefore, Numbers 30:1-2,  “Moses said to the heads of the tribes of Israel: ‘This is what the Lord commands: When a man makes a vow to the Lord or takes an oath to obligate himself by a pledge, he must not break his word but must do everything he said.”

But is this really so? Is there not a time when we may be released from a rash vow or an oath made without thinking? Are there not some incidents when our word isn’t actually our bond? Are there not times when we can renege on an oath, a vow or a covenant made with or before the Lord? Numbers 30 does actually seem to allow some exceptions to the principle of keeping of one’s word - sort of.

Numbers 30:3-5 records one possible exception:

When a young woman still living in her father’s household makes a vow to the Lord or obligates herself by a pledge and her father hears about her vow or pledge but says nothing to her, then all her vows and every pledge by which she obligated herself will stand. But if her father forbids her when he hears about it, none of her vows or the pledges by which she obligated herself will stand; the Lord will release her because her father has forbidden her.

Numbers 30:6-8 records another possible exception:

If she marries after she makes a vow or after her lips utter a rash promise by which she obligates herself and her husband hears about it but says nothing to her, then her vows or the pledges by which she obligated herself will stand. But if her husband forbids her when he hears about it, he nullifies the vow that obligates her or the rash promise by which she obligates herself, and the Lord will release her.

Numbers 30:10-13 records the 3^rd possible exception to this rule about keeping one’s word:

If a woman living with her husband makes a vow or obligates herself by a pledge under oath and her husband hears about it but says nothing to her and does not forbid her, then all her vows or the pledges by which she obligated herself will stand. But if her husband nullifies them when he hears about them, then none of the vows or pledges that came from her lips will stand. Her husband has nullified them, and the Lord will release her. Her husband may confirm or nullify any vow she makes or any sworn pledge to deny herself.

There are some important things to realize about the three possible exceptions to keeping one’s vows here. I am going to us a question here: We note in Numbers 30 that the exceptions to keeping one’s vows apply only to women. Men, we notice in Numbers 30, that you can’t get out of your vows, oaths, and covenants for any reason (cf. Exodus 20:7; Leviticus 19:12; Numbers 30:2-3, and Deuteronomy 5:11; 6:3; 23:21-23). The women are the only ones with the loopholes. Now you will also notice that not all women can get out of covenants. Here is the question: There is one group of women who can’t get out of their vows no matter how rash they might be. What group is this? Which women, just like men, cannot be released from their oaths, vows, and covenants? Answer: single adult women, Numbers 30:9: “Any vow or obligation taken by a widow or divorced woman will be binding on her.”

Why do you think this might be? Why are men and single adult women (widows and divorcees) bound in a way that girls living in their fathers’ home and wives living with their husbands are not? The answer to this question is important. When the events in the book of Numbers were taking place, when the Israelites were following the LORD and Moses around the desert for a generation; married women and daughters living at home did not have any authority of their own. They were like the property or the employees of their husbands or fathers. Verses 3-5 record that if a girl makes a vow unbeknownst to her father that -when her dad finds out about it- if he decides that it is a vow which adversely affects her or his family, he can cancel it at that moment. Verses 10-12 state that if a wife makes a vow and her husband finds out about it later and deems that it is a vow that adversely affects her or his family, he can cancel it if he does so right away – if he delays in cancelling it, that will be interpreted as de facto approval. And Verses 6-8 say that if she made a vow before she was married and her husband didn’t know about it, he can cancel it immediately when he finds out about it.  So why, in Numbers 30, can wives and daughters get off the hook when the rest of us can’t? It is because in those days and in that time wives and daughters – unlike husbands and fathers and single women and unlike wives today - would be similar to employees as far as their authority was concerned. They didn’t have the authority to bind their employers.

Let me give you an example. If someone came into our food bank director’s office here to get some assistance and she wrote them a voucher for $1 000 000.00, would they be able to cash it? No, she doesn’t have the authority to do that. If someone else on staff volunteered me to speak at an event on a day that I was unavailable or for an event that I deemed inappropriate, would they be able to do that? No – they don’t have the authority. Likewise, no one reading this here today, I presume, could call up the President of some country and declare war on them for Canada (or some other nation). We don’t have the authority to do that. What the Bible is relating in Numbers 30 is that everyone is bound by their oaths, vows, and promises – as long as they have the authority to make them in the first place. I can’t make a vow that someone in the congregation will quit smoking or that the radio will stop playing certain kinds of music. I can’t do that because I don’t have that authority. But if I vow that the Swift Current Salvation Army will raise over $100 000.00 during our Christmas campaign, I better do everything in my power to keep that vow because I will be held accountable. Do you see the difference?

That fact is that God will hold us accountable to our covenants as we have the authority to make them. Why is this the case? Why does God hold us to every vow that we have the authority to make? Why do our vows, oaths and covenants that we make with God not break – even if we want them to? A big reason is that our covenants protect us. They are often how God saves us. You have seen rock climbing demonstrations before when people climb up the face of mountains, where there is almost nothing to hold onto? They climb up these really dangerous cliffs with all of these ropes and equipment. Picture this: The climber climbs up and up and up and then it happens: she slips, her hands fall, her legs and her feet lose their hold. She falls and then what happens? The rope catches her. She is saved by this tie that binds her to the mountain. That, my friends, is what oaths, vows, and covenants are when they are made with or before the LORD. They are the ties that save us when all else fails. They are a means by which God saves us when we are falling ultimately towards our death. This is why they do not break no matter what we tell ourselves.

God saves us via the oaths, vows, and promises through which we are tied to Him. Thomas B. Dozeman states that in ancient Israel, “Failure to fulfill a vow threatened to profane the sanctuary, influencing the health of the whole community”[8] And praise the Lord for covenants because one of their main characteristics (that we see in Numbers 30) is even if for some reason we want to be freed from them, even if for some reason we want to be cut loose, even if for some reason we want to break free and plunge to our death, God will not release us from our covenants. Unless otherwise specified, our covenants last until death do we part. As long as we still have breath in our body, God is still pulling us back to him (John 3:16). He will not let us go. He will never leave us nor forsake us (Romans 3:3,4). God promised us as recorded in Genesis 12 and God covenanted with us as recorded in Genesis 15 that as mankind sins, God would first die rather than force all humanity to suffer the punishment we would otherwise deserve. And He did. Jesus died on the cross because of our unfaithfulness and Jesus rose again so that we can all rise with Him and live a fully sanctified and holy life. So let us do that.

If there are any of us who have not been living up to our covenants with the Lord or before God with one another, I would encourage us to do so from here forward. When we don’t live up to our covenants, God doesn’t forsake us or let the tie break. When we are not living up to our covenants it is like we are that rock climber and we are just dangling by a strand from the face of that mountain. But when we are living in a proper covenant with God and each other, then we are on the rock that lasts and we can climb to new heights tied to our Lord and our salvation and we can view the world like we have never seen it before.

So then, as this is so, I would encourage us now - if for some reason we haven’t been living in a strong covenanted relationship with God and our neighbours - to confess to our Lord, repent of our sins and draw on the strength of that climber’s cord that is binding us to the mountain of eternal life. Let us draw on the cord of His life and of His covenant and let us experience the joy of His salvation for now and forever more.

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