Page 21 - The Marriage Covenant

as one that described him rescuing a group of young maidens from a band of pirates.
Having delivered them from being ravished by these evil men, the maidens all honored
Hymen on their wedding days, and their Wedding songs became known as Hymeneal songs,
from which we get our present day term “hymnal.” That the church has continued the use
of the term hymnal is not altogether inappropriate, for the church has been espoused to
Christ as a pure virgin (II Corinthians 11:2), and she does stand in anticipation of her
marriage union with Christ.
The names of the gods were often given to individuals, a practice that continues to this
day, though often in ignorance. In Scriptures we find saints who bore the names of the
Greek gods Apollos and Hermes. There is even one named who bore the name of the god
Hymen.

I Timothy 1:20
Among these are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have delivered over to Satan,
so that they may be taught not to blaspheme.

I am demonstrating the relationship between the word hymen and the veil to
encourage understanding of the points which will follow. Although the Greeks, and many
other cultures, were quite vain in their worship of strange gods and goddesses, there were
elements of truth mixed in with their myths and fables. The Greeks, as did other cultures
before them, recognized that the female hymen, that thin veil of flesh, a living membrane
that covers the entrance to the vagina, served as a type and shadow of the veil of the
temple. The human body was designed to be the temple, or tabernacle, of God, and no
matter how much Satan and fallen mankind has corrupted this knowledge, the basic fact
remains as ordained by the One true God, Yahweh.
It is this association of the hymen being the veil of the human temple that has given
rise to the prominence of veils as part of a virgin bride’s dress. The veil worn by a bride is
a testimony of her virginity. Even as a virgin’s wedding gown is typically white, to denote
purity, the wedding veil provides testimony to the bride’s chastity. During the wedding
ceremony the bridegroom removes the bridal veil, as testimony that his bride has remained
pure and that he is given the honor of being the first to enter into sexual union with her.
In the Old Testament, the intact hymen provided evidence of a woman’s virginity.
When a virgin has sexual intercourse for the first time, the hymen is torn, and bleeding
results. On her wedding night, the bride would carry a piece of cloth with her to catch the
blood that flowed when her hymen was thus torn. The cloth would then be given to the
woman’s father to be kept as proof that she was a virgin when she wed.

Deuteronomy 22:13-21
"If any man takes a wife and goes in to her and then turns against her, and charges
her with shameful deeds and publicly defames her, and says,' I took this woman, but
when I came near her, I did not find her a virgin,' then the girl's father and her
mother shall take and bring out the evidence of the girl's virginity to the elders of
the city at the gate. And the girl's father shall say to the elders, 'I gave my daughter
to this man for a wife, but he turned against her; and behold, he has charged her
with shameful deeds, saying, "I did not find your daughter a virgin." But this is the
evidence of my daughter's virginity.' And they shall spread the garment before the
elders of the city. So the elders of that city shall take the man and chastise him, and