"The High Priest may marry only a virgin. He may not marry a widow, a woman who is divorced, or a woman who has defiled herself by prostitution. She must be a virgin from his own clan" (Leviticus 21:13, 14).
Jesus Christ, our High Priest and the Minister of the Sanctuary and True Tabernacle, has been given the highest standard for marriage by His Father. As Abraham sought Rebecca with qualifications in mind for Isaac, so the Holy Spirit seeks to procure a bride with qualifications in mind for Christ. The Lamb for Whom the marriage supper has been prepared is Himself spotless and without blemish; and the lamb upon the brazen altar of sacrifice is female and without blemish. The Levite who offers the spotless lamb must be washed and purified, and so the bride of the Levite must herself be undefiled and spotless.
The Father has certain condtions that must be fulfilled in a woman who is to be the bride of His Son. The Holy Spirit ventures out and seeks such, knowing that the High Priest is forbidden to marry a widow, or a woman who has lost her first husband but yet still mourns for him. Though she is separated by death from a union of defilement and abuse, she still grieves and laments and mourns her dearly beloved. Her time of mourning will never be finished, and although she tries to fool potential suitors, the Spirit's flaming eyes pierce her soul and see the perverse longing she reserves for her former mate. In public, such widows wear white robes of liberty, but in private they wear the black gown. They are sometimes known to even communicate with their dead husbands and necromance behind closed doors. The High Priest is forbidden to marry such women.
Another unsuitable bride for the High Priest is a divorced woman. Here is a woman who is no longer united with the love of her youth, and thus bears the stigma of being caught between two husbands. Though she has been released from her old covenant, she has failed to enter into a new one. This woman has not been rebirthed into a New Marraige, whereby making all things, including her virginity, new. She remains in her defilement and falls beneath the standard required to be the bride of the High Priest.
The High Priest must not marry a harlot. These unfaithful, double-minded and unstable women have many foreign lovers and defile not only themselves, but their husbands as well. They bring shame upon the name of the Goodman of the House and cannot be trusted alone when he goes on long journeys. They prostitute themselves on the street corner of hypocrisy and wink the eye, they perform lewd acts in the alleyways of compromise but require no signet ring or bracelet or staff as a pledge for payment. Such veiled harlots align themselves with the clan of the High Priest, and these expect to wear His ring and sit at the table of His feast. The whore profaneth her father, and she shall be burnt with fire (Lev. 21:9).
The only bride suitable for the High Priest is a maiden like Rebecca, one who is taken in her virginity, and also from the Father of the Bridegroom's own people. It is important to see that these two qualifiers are mutually necessary: It is not enough that the bride merely be taken from among the Bridegroom's own people, as there are widows, divorcees and whores galore among the clan of Israel. And it musn't be enough that the bride only be a virgin, for there are multitudes of virgins who are yet unprepared with their lamps of devotion for their would-be Bridegroom.
He shall only take a virgin of his own people to wife.
Brother Paul
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Paul Frederick West
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