to give in marriage: to hand a woman over to a husband, the act of her family rather than of the couple
In the world of the New Testament a marriage was arranged and granted by the woman's family, so Greek could say two different things about the same wedding. One verb, "to marry" (γαμέω), is what the bride and groom do. This one is what someone else does on their behalf: hand the woman over to a husband. English has no single word for it and falls back on the phrase "give in marriage." A grammarian writing about a century after the New Testament spelled the difference out plainly: the first verb means taking a share in marriage, this one means giving someone else a share in it.
Six of its seven verses set the two verbs side by side, and the pair works as a single picture of ordinary life going on. Before the flood people were eating, drinking, marrying and giving in marriage right up to the day Noah entered the ark. In the resurrection, Jesus says, people neither marry nor are given in marriage. The point in each case is not two separate activities but the whole business of forming households, which belongs to this present age. Luke alone adds the reason: those counted worthy of that age cannot die anymore, so there are no more places to fill.
The one verse where the word stands alone is 1 Corinthians 7:38, and it is the hardest one. Paul says the man who "gives her in marriage" does well, and the man who does not does better. Some read that as a father deciding about an unmarried daughter, others as a man deciding whether to marry the woman he is engaged to, and English Bibles print it both ways.
The word is also strikingly rare. Outside the New Testament it turns up almost nowhere, it is missing from the Greek Old Testament, and the everyday marriage contracts of the period use a plain legal word for giving a daughter away instead. The wedding itself, the celebration and the married state it begins, has its own word (γάμος); this one names only the act of granting a woman to a husband.
Nuances
Whether 1 Corinthians 7:38 describes a father or guardian deciding about giving his unmarried daughter in marriage, or a man deciding whether to marry the woman he is engaged to.
- majorityPaul is addressing the man engaged to the young woman, so the verb here means simply to marry.; Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, NICNT, p. 355; W. G. Kümmel, "Verlobung und Heirat bei Paulus (I. Cor 7,36 to 38)," in Neutestamentliche Studien für Rudolf Bultmann, ed. W. Eltester (Berlin: Alfred Töpelmann, 1954), 275 to 95; Hans Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, Hermeneia, on 1 Corinthians 7:36 to 38; C. K. Barrett, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, Black's New Testament Commentaries, on 1 Corinthians 7:36 to 38
- minorityThe verb keeps its ordinary force, so the subject is the father or guardian who bestows the young woman on a husband.; A. T. Robertson, Word Pictures in the New Testament, on 1 Corinthians 7:38; F. F. Bruce, 1 and 2 Corinthians, New Century Bible, on 1 Corinthians 7:36 to 38; LSJ, s.v. γαμίζω
- minorityPaul is addressing a man and a woman who have agreed to live together in consecrated celibacy rather than marry.; Hans Achelis, Virgines subintroductae: ein Beitrag zum VII. Kapitel des I. Korintherbriefs (Leipzig, 1902)
Disputed
Whether the verb still carried its distinct causative force in the first century, or had already faded into a synonym of γαμέω, the ordinary verb for marrying.
- majorityThe distinction held: the second-century grammarian Apollonius Dyscolus still separated the two verbs sharply, and every uncontested New Testament occurrence means "give in marriage."; BDAG, s.v. γαμίζω; LSJ, s.v. γαμίζω, γαμίσκω; A. T. Robertson, Word Pictures in the New Testament, on 1 Corinthians 7:38
- minorityHellenistic Greek broadly levelled the causative -ίζω verbs into their -έω counterparts, so this verb may mean simply "marry."; Moulton and Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament, s.v. γαμίζω, citing G. N. Hatzidakis, Einleitung in die neugriechische Grammatik, p. 395; Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, NICNT, p. 355; Hans Lietzmann, An die Korinther I-II, Handbuch zum Neuen Testament