Jesus the Bridegroom

Phillip J. Long argues that Jesus combined the tradition of an eschatological banquet with a marriage metaphor in order to describe the end of the Exile as a wedding banquet. When Jesus says in Mark 2:19 that the wedding guests should not fast “while the bridegroom is with them,” he is claiming to be a bridegroom by intentionally alluding to a rich tradition from the Hebrew Bible. By eating and drinking with “tax collectors and other sinners,” Jesus was inviting people to join him in celebrating the eschatological banquet. While there is no single text in the Hebrew Bible or the literature of the Second Temple Period which states the “messiah is like a bridegroom,” the elements for such a claim are present in several texts in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Hosea. By claiming that his ministry was an ongoing wedding celebration, he signaled the end of the Exile and the restoration of Israel to her position as the Lord’s beloved wife.