– The common sense, of several people living under the same roof, appears in many OT passages, in different ways:
– Highlighting the children:
Gen 48,8-9 : “Who are these?” “They are,” replied Joseph, “the children that God has given me here.”
– The head of the house:
Gen 12 :1 : The Lord said to Abram: “Leave your country, your family and your father’s house and go to the land that I will show you”.
Gen 38:11 : And Judah said to Tamar, his daughter-in-law, “Remain a widow in your father’s house until Selah my son is grown up.”
Num 30,4 : A maiden, who is still in her father’s house, makes a vow to the Lord, or if an obligation is imposed.
– Or more broadly:
Gen 12 :3 : All the families of the earth will be blessed in you.
Gen 28:14 : Your posterity will be as numerous as the grains of dust on the ground; you will stretch out.
Num 27,4 : Why should the name of his family disappear, because he had no children?
1Sm 9,21 : I am […] the son of the smallest tribe of Israel; and my family is the least of all the families of Benjamin.
1Sm 27,3 : He stayed with Achish in Gat, he and his people, each with his family.
Ps 68 :6 : He is the father of orphans and the protector of widows, this God who dwells in a holy temple.
Am 3,2 : Of all the races of the earth I know only you; therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.
Zc 12,12 : The whole earth will celebrate this mourning, family by family; the family of the house of David apart.
– In the NT the basic notion of family also appears:
Acts 16,15.31-32 : She was baptized together with her family.
– And it was in family homes that the early Church met:
Rom 16:5: Greet the community that gathers in your house
Col 4:15 : Greet the brethren of Laodicea, and also the Nymphs and the church that is in their house
Fm 2 : To Appia, our sister, to Archippus, our comrade in arms, and to the church that gathers in your house.
– But Christ extended the sense of family to all those who do the will of the Father:
Mt 12:50 : Everyone who does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother, sister and mother.
Mc 3,35 : He who does the will of God, that is my brother, my sister and my mother.
Lk 8,21 : He said to them: “My mother and my brothers are these, who hear the Word of God and observe it”.
Eph 2:19 : You are no longer sojourners or pilgrims, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.
