Can 6-year-olds form a marriage covenant?
Question:
If God takes every word I say into judgment ... This is going to seem silly but when I was around 6 years old I got “married” to a boy on the playground. As a kid I took it as seriously as a 6-year-old could, I suppose. I know it shouldn't make a marriage covenant but would us being in front of friends at that age and agreeing to make a covenant? It’s probably the silliest thing I’ve thought of in a long time. But I’m due to get married and I’ll admit after seeing tons of videos on divorce and remarriage, my anxiety spiked and came back to this childhood ceremony.
Thank you, minister.
Answer:
In secular law, we recognize that people have to mature to a certain point before they are allowed to make binding contracts or enter into a marriage. In the Bible, children were not held responsible for the decisions of their parents because they did not possess a knowledge of good and evil (Deuteronomy 1:39). It is then this lack of accountability that caused provisions in the law to have parents oversee the decisions of their children. For example, vows made by children could be overridden by parents. "Also if a woman makes a vow to the LORD, and binds herself by an obligation in her father's house in her youth, and her father hears her vow and her obligation by which she has bound herself, and her father says nothing to her, then all her vows shall stand and every obligation by which she has bound herself shall stand. But if her father should forbid her on the day he hears of it, none of her vows or her obligations by which she has bound herself shall stand; and the LORD will forgive her because her father had forbidden her" (Numbers 30:3-5). By the way, this is where we get the tradition that a man is to ask the woman's father for permission to marry her.
You pretended to marry someone when you were 6 years old. It was another game, just like many of the other games you played when you were young. But that game did not form a true covenant.
