When it is said
The priest says it near the start of the betrothal, the service in which the couple receive their rings.
The Greek service book prints the betrothal as the first part of the wedding.
A couple, or their family, can pray it at home after an engagement. Say both names where it asks for them.
Where it comes from
No author known
The service of the rings
In the Book of Needs that G. V. Shann put into English in 1894, the betrothal came after the Liturgy, the Communion service. The couple stood before the altar doors holding lit candles. Two rings, one gold and one silver, lay on the altar table. After this prayer and one more, the priest put the rings on their right hands. Then the rings were exchanged between the two.
G. V. Shann, Book of Needs of the Holy Orthodox Church (1894)
Engaged and married on one day?
The betrothal was once a service of its own. In Shann’s translation of the Russian Book of Needs, it ends with its own dismissal, the closing words of a service. The crowning, the wedding itself, follows only “if at the same time they desire to be crowned”.
G. V. Shann, Book of Needs of the Holy Orthodox Church (1894); Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, Greek Liturgical Texts: the wedding service
Isaac and Rebecca
Isaac was Abraham’s son. Genesis tells how Abraham sent his servant to find Isaac a wife. At a well, Rebecca gave the servant water, and his camels too. She married Isaac, and he loved her. A later prayer of the betrothal, said over the rings, tells the same story.
G. V. Shann, Book of Needs of the Holy Orthodox Church (1894)
What the words mean
Candles and rings
Isabel Hapgood, who put the service into English in 1906, explained the candles. They stand for the couple’s pure lives, shining with the light of virtue. The old rule asked for a gold ring and a silver one. By her day, she wrote, both rings were usually gold.
The Scripture in it
And Isaac brought her into the tent of his mother Sarah and took Rebekah as his wife. And Isaac loved her and was comforted after his mother’s death.
By faith he dwelt in the promised land as a stranger in a foreign country. He lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise.
And over all these virtues put on love, which is the bond of perfect unity.
Bible text: Berean Standard Bible, public domain.
In Greek
Ὁ Θεὸς ὁ αἰώνιος, ὁ τὰ διῃρημένα συναγαγὼν εἰς ἑνότητα καὶ σύνδεσμον διαθέσεως τιθεὶς ἄῤῥηκτον·
ὁ εὐλογήσας Ἰσαὰκ καὶ Ῥεβέκκαν, καὶ κληρονόμους αὐτοὺς τῆς σῆς ἐπαγγελίας ἀναδείξας·
αὐτὸς εὐλόγησον καὶ τοὺς δούλους σου τούτους, ὁδηγῶν αὐτοὺς ἐν παντὶ ἔργῳ ἀγαθῷ.
Ὅτι ἐλεήμων καὶ φιλάνθρωπος Θεὸς ὑπάρχεις, καὶ σοὶ τὴν δόξαν ἀναπέμπομεν,
τῷ Πατρὶ καὶ τῷ Υἱῷ καὶ τῷ ἁγίῳ Πνεύματι,
νῦν καὶ ἀεὶ καὶ εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων. Ἀμήν.