DEUT330 Parental educational duties extend beyond the narrow limits of religious instruction. Parents of the biblical era were expected to continue the supervision of their children for the duration of their lives in the parental home. Parents were charged with the duty of marrying off their children and seeing to it that they took proper mates. The Bible warned against the giving of a child in marriage to a heathen [this verse]. When Sampson sought parental consent for his marriage to a Philistine girl, he was administered a stern rebuke, "Is there never a woman among the daughters of thy brethren, or among all my people, that thou goest to take a wife of the uncircumcised Philistines?" (Judges 14:3). The fact that Sampson's parents eventually surrendered to his persistence illustrates a common parental weakness in permitting love to overcome their sense of responsibility. Parental control over the marriage of their children had as its primary aim the safeguarding of religious continuity. However, it was also intended to be used as a restraint on hasty marriages to individuals of improper character. Ecclesiasticus declared: "Marry they daughter, and so shalt thou have performed a weighty matter, but give her to a man of understanding" (7:25).