64 John Makujina inseparable from procreation: “take wives and bear sons and daughters”20. It is also linked to the succession of the institution of marriage itself into the future: “and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to men”. Jer 29,4-7, then, definitively establishes that the combination of taking wives and giving daughters in marriage can impart a teleological nuance, describing the ongoing institution of marriage and the family. When Jer 29,6 is combined with the earlier examples, the numerical extension of the family, as the lowest common denominator of the expres- sion, seems inescapable. It should further be observed that in the previous examples the enlargement is horizontal, focusing on the family’s imme- diate, lateral expansion through the incorporation of existing families. In Jer 29,6, however, the extension is primarily vertical, family building through marriage and procreation, repeated in subsequent generations. (For convenience I will refer to the horizontal version as family expan- sion and the vertical as family building, with the phrase family extension encompassing both nuances.) In either case, the growth of the family, through marriage, becomes the common thread uniting all occasions of this expression. 2. Γαμέω-Γαμίζω and the Institution of Marriage and the Family Against this background, I propose that γαμέω and γαμίζω not only represent jql and /tn respectively, but when teamed up possess an idi- omatic value that advances beyond the literal and isolated meaning of each verb, just like the combination jql-/tn in the above-cited passages. Since the common theme in all the examples of jql-/tn was not only marriage but family, and the enlargement thereof, it can be assumed that if γαμέω-γαμίζω are calques on this expression, family extension is likewise their sense in the Gospels21. 20 So Jer 16,2. See also 1 Chr 14,3; 2 Chr 24,3; CD 7.6-7. Note that “let them bear sons and daughters” is missing from the LXX (Jer 36,6). 21 Even so, differences do exist. The expression in the controversy passages assumes husbands and daughters/wives to be the grammatical subjects of the respective verbs, not all of which are in the active voice. Our OT examples, however, have fathers as the subjects of both verbs (jql and /tn, active voice), with the exception of Judg 3,6 and Jer 29,6, where at least the husband is more central. Nevertheless, these differences are nominal and not enough to decouple Jesus’ logion from what is evidently its OT milieu. Furthermore, an alternative form of this construction appearing in Matt 24,38 does largely transcend these differences and conforms more closely to the OT examples. There ἦσαν…γαμοῦντες καὶ γαμίζοντες, “they were…marrying and giving in marriage”, requires male grammatical subjects for the participles, both of which occur in the active voice.