Treasured possession, treasured possession. It took lakah one step further. It meant I don't only want to make you mine, like Cecilia, I don't want to just make you mine. I want you to be my treasured possession. Everybody loves that, and so in Exodus 19, so the children of Israel, they heard lakah from God. So what would they be longing to hear next? Segullah, so Exodus 19:5, so this group of people, they're just journeying with God from slavery to freedom. They've been in lakah for a little while, I think like 11 days or something and they're standing somewhere and God says this to him: Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My commandments and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me. In the NIV it says a treasured possession. The word special treasure there is segullah, segullah. So they'd be standing there and it would be like wait a minute, did He just say segullah? Did God - He said lakah and I think He just said segullah - I think - does He really want to marry us? Does He really want to marry us?
Now next, once you heard segullah what would be the next thing you'd long to hear? Mikveh, mikveh. Now mikveh is a little bit more blunt and not as romantic. So we have a night, we go on a date, we go to see Rambo Four. [Laughter] Let the bodies hit the floor, let the bodies - okay, so we go to see Rambo Four, yes and then afterwards we go and we shoot possums in a field. [Laughter] And there's this moment, I take her home and there's this moment and she smells - she shot a possum and she went and got it, then it used the toilet on the front of her. [Laughter] There's this moment; I'm thinking this is the woman for me. [Laughter] So I look at her and with the longing of a treasured possession in my heart I say to her mikveh, mikveh. Mikveh means go wash. [Laughter] Like good Lord, you stink! Mikveh is what they baptise people in. They baptise people in a mikveh. It was a baptismal pool. It also meant go wash. It was very important that you were not tamei for your betrothal, because you wanted to be able to be touched for obvious reasons, okay?
So you wanted to be tahor, so it was very important to the man that the woman was tahor, clean - was tahor for the betrothal because he wanted to be able to touch her. If she was tamei could not touch her, so he would give her a warning that the betrothal was coming by saying mikveh, go wash, go wash. The Hebrew people found this very important, like remember Ester? What did she do before she went and saw her husband? She bathed in perfume for a year - which is a bit overkill I think. [Laughter] Like can you imagine the man waiting, like oh man, that's the longest bath in history. Would you come on! [Laughter] Of course he had like 1000 wives so it didn't matter to him, but she bathes in perfume for a year to go see him. Mikveh was go wash, a betrothal is coming. Now in Exodus 19:5 He says treasured possession; in verse 10 He commands them to prepare themself for three days and to wash their clothes. The word is mikveh, wash, to go wash, so consecrate themself and let them wash their clothes. In other words we're going to be clean because a betrothal is coming.
So here is a group of marginalised, oppressed slaves and God is saying lakah, segullah, mikveh to them. So what would they naturally be expecting next? Ketubah. Now Ketubah was a very important part of this process. This is where we get real serious. I'm going to ask her to marry me, but before I ask her to marry me we have to work out a ketubah. We have to work out a ketubah okay, and what would happen in that is this. [Laughter] They're all ratting somebody out over there, like it was her! It was her! Ketubah was your marriage contract. Let me give you some negative connotations of it. It was a pre-nup. This was a marriage contract. It wasn't so much a pre-nup as how we think of it, but it was positive. Every marriage had to have a ketubah and can I be honest? Every marriage today needs one - not a pre-nup. Every marriage today needs an agreement between the husband and the wife as to what boundaries are going to define our marriage. When I do premarital counselling now or when I do marital counselling, I always sit down and I'll say what is your ketubah? Of course they never know what that means, so they say what's a ketubah? Then I explain it.