If someone asked you to list the most practical Bible passages on marriage, where would you go? Perhaps you would turn to Ephesians 5 and Paul’s mystic theology of marriage. Or maybe you would go to Mark 10, where Jesus grounds what we ought to do in marriage based on what God created marriage to be. Or maybe you would go all the way back to Genesis 2 to see the very first husband and wife.
Probably, you wouldn’t think of 1 Samuel 14, where God uses Jonathan and his armor-bearer to rout an entire army. You won’t hear this text preached at many weddings. Both Jonathan and his armor-bearer are men, the setting is a battlefield, and the conflict is war. But this martial, masculine hierarchy offers us deep wisdom for marital hierarchy — wisdom for both husbands and wives.
Body-Head from Before the Beginning
After all, Paul tells us every human marriage points to a marriage more real (Ephesians 5:32). God imagined and invented our covenant unions to image forth his own covenant relationship with us. Marriage exists because Christ has always planned to woo and win a bride. Every marriage preaches that reality, whether husband and wife are aware of it or not.
One of the clearest ways marriage speaks about Christ and his bride is through the God-appointed roles of husband and wife. Paul says,
The husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. (Ephesians 5:23)
Christ is the head, and the church is his body. The man is the head, and his wife is his body. Paul states these realities as unalterable facts (no matter how our society militates against them). However, that doesn’t mean the reflection is always clear. Disorder distorts the image. The sermon of marriage is heresy if head and body are not healthy.
So, what does a well-ordered head-body hierarchy look like? Well, the dynamics of head and body are not limited to marriage. A king is the head of his kingdom. A general is the head of his army. A father is the head of his household. So, we can look at body-head relationships outside of marriage to glean practical wisdom for how they function within marriage.
And perhaps one of the best pictures of happy hierarchy in Scripture comes to us in 1 Samuel 14. Consider how the story of Jonathan and his armor-bearer illustrates the body-head dynamic that undergirds marriage.
Hierarchy Goes to War
The situation in 1 Samuel 14 is this. An army of Philistines — with thirty thousand chariots and more men than “the sand on the seashore” (1 Samuel 13:5) — has attacked Israel. God’s people are massively outnumbered. And instead of trusting God to deliver, King Saul has played the fool and now hides in a cave.
But Saul’s son Jonathan is no craven and refuses to allow the Philistines to continue to dishonor God and his people. So we read,
Jonathan said to the young man who carried his armor, “Come, let us go over to the garrison of these uncircumcised. It may be that the Lord will work for us, for nothing can hinder the Lord from saving by many or by few.” And his armor-bearer said to him, “Do all that is in your heart. Do as you wish. Behold, I am with you heart and soul.” (1 Samuel 14:6–7)
Jonathan then devises a test to see if God would indeed fight for them (verses 9–10). After they receive a positive sign, we read,
Jonathan said to his armor-bearer, “Come up after me, for the Lord has given them into the hand of Israel.” Then Jonathan climbed up on his hands and feet, and his armor-bearer after him. And they fell before Jonathan, and his armor-bearer killed them after him. (verses 12–13)
God uses this initial strike by two men to throw the entire army into chaos.
There was a panic in the camp, in the field, and among all the people. The garrison and even the raiders trembled, the earth quaked, and it became a very great panic. (verse 15)
In the end, the Philistines end up defeating themselves. And the story concludes, “So the Lord saved Israel that day” (verse 23).
Now, on first glance, this story has little to do with marriage. But when we inspect the healthy hierarchy at the center of 1 Samuel 14, we can glean much practical wisdom about the body-head relationship in marriage.
Jonathan the Head
We start with Jonathan, the head. A good head orients and orders the body toward a mission with his presence, words, and actions, and he empowers his members to fulfill that purpose. The head orients and empowers for mission.
Jonathan does this beautifully. He is a head with jovial ambition for a godly mission and orients his body to that end. Saul’s foolish cowardice acts as a foil for Jonathan’s daring. Saul disobeys God and hides in fear, while Jonathan — like his friend David after him — burns with zeal for God’s honor and, with steel in his spine, opposes foes innumerable with just two. It’s hard to imagine Jonathan here as anything but jovial. He has a kingly magnanimity. To borrow the words of King Lune of Archenland, Jonathan has a “first in, last out, laughing loudest” kind of daring — a jovial ambition.
And that ambition moves toward a godly mission — to defy the enemies of Yahweh. That mission is grounded in God’s character. Jonathan says, “Let us go over . . . for nothing can hinder the Lord from saving by many or by few” (1 Samuel 14:6). Nothing! Jonathan’s faith in God makes him fearless, and when that faith fuels a mission — well, God loves to use men, husbands, heads like that. What is more, Jonathan protects his ambitious mission from becoming reckless hubris by setting up a test to verify God’s pleasure in his plan. He rattles the doorknob to see if God will throw wide the door.
Finally, he doesn’t go it alone. He is no island. He orients his body, his armor-bearer, toward the godly mission: “Come, let us go over to the garrison of these uncircumcised” (verse 6). Jonathan presents a wonderful example of a godly head. But like a ship without sails, a head without a body goes nowhere.
His Shield-Bearing Support
Jonathan’s body in this story consists of one armor-bearer. As a metaphor, an armor-bearer is a good image for a godly wife. In ancient Nordic warfare, women sometimes supported men in combat. Male warriors wielded weapons and stormed the field, while the women offered fitting feminine help. Often, they brought up the rear carrying shields, so they were called “shield-maidens.” Like the excellent wife of Proverbs 31 or Tolkien’s Lúthien, shield-maidens are dressed in feminine strength, laugh at the times to come, and are more valuable than diamonds (Proverbs 31:10, 17, 25).
Of course, I am not advocating that women literally go to war, that girls bodyguard presidents, or that wives wield physical weapons. But as a metaphor, the shield-maiden helps create a category in our imaginations of how a godly wife can support her husband.
And Scripture hints at this connection. In Genesis 2:18, the woman is named the man’s “help,” ezer in Hebrew — a term that often describes God, especially in connection with the image of a shield. For example, God is called “the shield of your help” (Deuteronomy 33:29), or repeatedly in the Psalms, God is “our help and our shield” (Psalms 28:7; 33:20; 35:2; 115:9–11). Clearly, Scripture closely associates shields and help.
And few embody the connection better than Jonathan’s armor-bearer. After Jonathan expresses his ambitious mission, his armor-bearer responds with pure poetry: “Do all that is in your heart. Extend your hand. Behold, I am with you heart and soul” (1 Samuel 14:7, my translation). He receives, affirms, and amplifies the head’s mission — with grace more like a dance than a battle.
So it is in marriage. A good body receives the mission from the head, affirms or refines it with counsel, and amplifies that mission with support. And when a wife shoulders the shield of support, what army can stand against her husband? What foe will not fall? What dragon can stand against him? What mission will he shy away from? The grace on her lips will put steel in his spine. The help in her hands will make their home blossom into a fruitful garden.
Just as a sword needs a shield, the head needs the help of the body. Adam makes no poetry without Eve.
Disproportionate Fruitfulness
One final observation from our passage: God rewarded this beautiful hierarchy of head and body with disproportionate fruitfulness. Two friends, one sword, one shield, rightly ordered, and God put to flight an army as numerous as the sand on the seashore! God used Jonathan’s jovial ambition and his armor-bearer’s eager submission for the good of his people and the glory of his name.
And he loves to do the same in well-ordered marriages. Christian husband and wife, do you long to see God work the same kind of wonders through you? Do you want his kingdom to advance through your happy hierarchy as it did with Jonathan and his armor-bearer?
Man of God, do you realize every interaction you have with your wife declares something about how Christ heads his bride — either truth or lies? Every look, every tone of voice, every snap reaction, every touch. All your leadership or abdication, all your sacrifice or selfishness, all your loving pursuit or lazy passivity — every time you wage war for her or against her — all of it preaches. So cultivate a jovial ambition for a godly mission, and lead your shield-maiden in the charge. Be a “first in, last out, loudest laughing” kind of head. Love her like Jesus does.
And woman of God, do you know that the rhythm and harmony of your dance with your husband tells a tale about the bride of Christ? Every glance, every smile, every word, every caress, every meal made, every child raised, every time you take up a shield at his side — all your fruitfulness or faithlessness, all you support or sabotage, all your respect or reproach — all of it speaks. So practice the happy discipline of eager submission. Receive his godly mission, hone it to a point with your feminine counsel, and then glorify it, amplify it, make it fruitful and beautiful beyond what he could have ever imagined. Honor him as the church does Christ.
What kind of disproportionate fruitfulness might God be pleased to grant our well-ordered marriages if more Christian husbands were willing to say, “Come, let us. . . . It may be that the Lord will work for us,” and if their faithful wives responded, “Do all that is in your heart. Behold, I am with you heart and soul”? May God make it so.
