Get the advice and
consent of your parents
Then he came up and told his father and mother, “I saw one of
the daughters of the Philistines at Timnah. Now get her for me
as my wife. - Judges 14:2
Herein he is an example to all children (Samson).
Conformably to the law of the fifth commandment,
children ought not to marry, nor to move
towards marrying, without the advice and consent of their
parents; those that do (as bishop Hall here expresses it)
willfully unchild themselves, and exchange natural affections
for violent.
Parents have a property in their children as parts of
themselves. In marriage this property is transferred; for such
is the law of the relation that a man shall leave his father and
his mother and cleave to his wife. It is therefore not only
unkind and ungrateful, but very unjust, to alienate this
property without their concurrence; whoso thus robs his father
or mother, stealing himself from them, who is nearer and dearer
to them than their goods, and yet says, It is no transgression,
the same is the companion of a destroyer, Proverbs 28:24.
- Matthew Henry, Matthew Henry's Commentary on
the Whole Bible