I edited the following post to take out sarcasm and taunting that I originally wrote. Sorry about that. This is too important an issue for me to take lightly. -- gabe
To be clear, this is not a place for condoning or condemning the practice.
That's not going to be easy, but I don't want this post deleted, so I'll try.
To go back to the beginning, we have to start with Adam, the first man (all quotations and allusions from Genesis 1-3 unless otherwise specified). God saw that he needed a wife, so he made one out of Adam's side. Adam had 2 sides, so God could have made him 2 wives, but God saw that he needed
a wife, and made him only one.
As time went on, the First Couple had a lot of kids; Jewish history says a total of fifty-six.
Jewish History... um...
a footnote in Josephus to be precise... says that Adam had 33 sons and 23 daughters. It doesn't say that Eve had all these children, but since the only women on the Earth were Adam's daughters, and since at least 9 of Adam's sons did not get wives out of the first generation, I would agree that it is safe to assume that Eve may have been the mother of these 56... if (and evidently we are) we are taking Josephus account as relevant.
That would have been a lot of work, without anyone else around to help. God could have looked down and said, "Wow, Eve sure has her hands full with that huge passel of kids. It must get awfully lonely during the day when Adam is off pulling weeds, not having any adult conversation.
So, Eve had 56 kids under the age of, lets say 20? Or how long did it take to become an adult back in the day? Maybe kids couldn't really engage in adult conversation until they were, say 112. Eve having a baby every 2 years... OK... odd, but maybe that's the history you are referring to here?Sorry... this was not really on topic, and it doesn't really make my point regardless of what I think of the argument.
I'll just put old Adam back to sleep and make another wife out of the other side so Eve will have some help and companionship."
So, why would Adam have to have relied on God to give another wife... wouldn't he have just taken one of his daughters or granddaughters? I mean his sons were taking sisters, right?
So, is this really a discussion of history... or is this mostly conjecture?
...according to Genesis 4, Cain had a wife, like his father did. With all those sisters to pick from, he seems to have picked just one--at a time anyway.
All those sisters... 33 brothers and 23 sisters... I am not sure about this... but it was probably more of a war, not a choosing. Not that this is germane, but it is history, and does shed light on the topic.
Actually, if the number of sons and daughters were pretty equal, there wouldn't have been any additional wives available to him--given that Abel's widow, if he left one, would not have been in any mood to marry her husband's murderer.
Of Cain's descendants, we hear no more direct mention of wives until we get to his great-great-great grandson Lamech, who is specifically said to have taken two wives, Adah and Zillah. Both brought forth sons, so infertility doesn't seem to have been a reason for doing this. Polygamy seems to fit in with the general immorality which characterized the line of Cain and increasingly infected the line of Seth as God's judgment against all flesh drew nigh.
So Cain's line was immoral as demonstrated by Lamech taking two wives. I don't remember this being an actual part of the historical commentary. Actually what I recall is that Lamech was defensive because he had killed two men... and that his defense was made to his two wives. If I read this correctly, it seems that he understood that the murder was against God, but that having two wives, at least in this context, was not at all on his conscience.
As for immorality infecting the line of Seth? Was is perhaps a disease? Yeah... off topic and lame.
Okay, we're studying the topic of wives in the Bible, and contrasting the character and circumstances of those with more than one wife to those with only one.
Is this Bible study? Or modern character analysis of ancient people... or what? I thought this was a historical analysis of Polygamy?
So far the score is:
One wife (not like they had any choice): Adam and Cain
Two wives: Lamech
However many they wanted: Sons of God
Now we come to Noah, who found grace in the eyes of the Lord. We really don't know anything about Noah's early life; the story picks up when he is around 500 years old and married, with three sons. But we do find something very interesting about this whole story, and that is the enforced monogamy aboard the ark.
Every animal had only one mate.
This is a little surreal... are you saying that God brought the creatures in pairs because He perceived that "monogamy" among animals was morally better than animal "polygamy?"
Did they have little animal weddings back then? Maybe you are mistaking this story for one written by a Mr. Lewis in the last century? Unnecessary and taunting.
Every man only had one wife. Despite the risks of starting the world over again with only three fertile couples--and only one of the vast majority of animals--God didn't see fit to throw in an extra mate or two just in case.
No, and evidently if Noah had had more than one wife, God would have left the evil one behind to make His point. Right? I mean, that is what you are saying if I discern correctly.He started it the first time with one couple... that He started it the second time with four I don't think it was any jeopardy to Him. That each man had one wife is interesting, but drawing conclusions from this example apart from others in the Bible does not make sense to me.
Now, there were obviously more than two of each clean animal. After all, the carnivores needed something to eat while they were waiting for the next generation of prey to come along! But despite the fact that these kinds are typically extremely polygamous, there were still only seven pairs of each. The language is very clear: The Male (singular) and his Female (singular).
Now I admit, Bible translators have a hard time determining for sure whether there were seven of each clean animal, or seven pairs. The Hebrew just says something like seven, seven, male, female--so we're not sure if it's seven males and seven females, or seven total--even the KJV wisely carries the ambiguity of the Hebrew over into English. But even if it was three pairs and a spare, the spare was probably for sacrificing afterward (other than the raven and dove), and that still left 3 pairs to more widely propagate the post-flood world.
Oh, but the sacrifices... hmmm... Noah only sacrificed one of each clean animal of course (not recorded, but... you know, naturally), and there is no other reason for there to have been equal numbers of males and females (which, I think the text is clear on, btw) except to demonstrate to humans (evidently, since the animals don't seem to have had the rationality required to take the hint) that monogamy was better than polygamy. This, and not an explicit command, like what Noah got once he got off the Ark.
After the flood, many animals no doubt assumed polygamous ways.
OK, this is ridiculous... there is no such thing as animal polygamy... animals are animals and breed according to their nature. Many birds, oddly enough, typically breed with one mate for years. Many insects have a system whereby many males breed with one female. This was not because they went bad... this is the way they were made. You don't see animals going back to murder and violence (the crime for which according to the historical commentary God destroyed the world with the flood...).
The eleventh chapter of Genesis starts with Babel and ends with the family of Abram, ten whole generations removed from Noah, who died around the time Abram was born. So in the lifespan of a single man we have the entire world populated. During this time all the ancient nations of the world emerged: China, India, Chaldea, Sumer, Assyria, Anatolia, Greece, and Egypt. Polygamy was a way of life in virtually all these cultures, while Noah and his sons remained monogamous.
We do see that intermarriage was common; both Abram and his brother Nahor took as wives the daughters of their older brother Haran (
See Josephus). Abram made much of this relationship when it suited him, but did admit that he was related to Sarai only on his father's side in Genesis 20:12--as if to say he would not have married a full niece.
This is interesting in that it (maybe) foreshadows an actual law in the Mosaic law regarding marrying near kinsmen. I don't think it has anything to do with polygamy though, except to demonstrate possibly that the reason Shem, Ham and Japheth only took one wife each was not a conscience against polygamy, but one against marrying too closely within the family?
By the way, Genesis does name two daughters of Haran, and neither was Sarai... and Abram does call Sarai his sister, his father's daughter... not his brother's daughter. In this instance Genesis differs with Josephus... FYI.
This could imply a couple of things: one, that Abram and Nahor were only half-brothers to Haran. Two, that the line of consanguinity was drawn so close that a man could marry a paternal niece so long as her mother wasn't a close relative. Either way, we can't exclude the possibility that Terah was polygamous. If he wasn't, he was going against the general culture of his day, which allowed all the sorts of marriage relationships that his son Abraham was eventually involved in.
Seems likely, since at this time there was (apparently) no law against it. Not to mention Abraham, in Genesis, says, "Gen 20:12 And yet indeed [she is] my sister; she [is] the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife." Pretty plain I think.
I think it's important to note that God called Abram out of the idolatrous culture that he was raised in, and reflective of that call is the notable fact that Abram had only one wife.
So he was in an idolatrous culture, and we take special note that the main artifact of this culture in Abram's life is that he only had one wife? Or maybe... he only took one wife because he was called to leave his family? Or perhaps God called him because He saw that Abram only had one wife?
He was a rich man (which of necessity goes along with polygyny) and a childless man (which almost invariably leads to polygyny in a culture where it is practiced), but there he was, one decade after another, faithfully married to only one wife.
This is interesting to me as well. In my opinion it has something to do with the fact that he was a man of faith... and probably that he had a really great relationship with Sarai.
There was one weakness in Abram's marriage, and that was due to his consanguinity with Sarai. He was constantly tempted to pass her off as his sister and so expose her to the dangers of polyandry--twice she was actually taken into a harem due to his duplicity. But from the language used in ch. 12 and ch. 20, it's fairly clear that neither of the kings who 'took' Sara ever consummated the relationship--only because God intervened.
God came to those men who would have taken her and threatened both of them with death because they were taking another man's wife, that would be adultery. God spoke in a night vision to a man that had more than one wife and told him that taking one specific woman was sin because she was another man's wife. He (God) said nothing about that man's other wives.
So, if God found fault with Abraham (which is not recorded, quite the opposite actually... maybe your accusation here is against God and not Abraham at all?) it was not because he married his half sister... quite to the contrary! God chose the bloodline of this half sister over Hagar who was Egyptian and over Keturah, and over "his concubines" all of which were not said to be close in bloodline.
Note carefully: if we are going to excuse polygyny due to Abram's example, we had better be ready to excuse polyandry by the same token, because Abram was as prone to engage in one as the other when the pressure was on. Certainly Sara was as much a party to one as the other; their approaches differed only in that Abram suggested polyandry, and Sara suggested polygyny, as a solution to their respective problems.
As I see it, he was divorcing his wife at the point he allowed her to be taken by another man. That is certainly the way the other men would have seen it... they surely would not have given Sarai back for weekend visits. This was not polyandry. This was Abram preferring to live (presumably to find another wife) than to die because his wife was too beautiful. In any case this was not a woman having more than one man. It was a woman going from one man to another... which was legal even under the law of Moses.
I think it's clear that Abram knew full well what he was doing when he passed Sara off as his sister. You have to understand that in a polygamous society, the king is totally unlimited in the amount of women he can 'take', either as wives or concubines. The only thing that would hold him back was if a woman was already the wife of another man. But even this was little of a hindrance, as the king could always order the death of the woman's husband and snatch up the widow. This is what Abram was hoping to avoid
OK, so we are agreed that Abram understood that once Sarai left to go to the other man, Abram would never see her again. If he did, the impetus for killing Abram would be much greater, and completely legitimate.
Hmm, where else did we hear about this? Oh yeah, that's exactly what David actually did with Uriah. Except that God didn't protect him from jumping the gun a bit and 'taking' Bathsheba while Uriah was still alive.
Except for the law of Moses... remember that? That was a pretty big "protection" or threat, or whatever you might call it. Remeber, God spoke face to face with this one guy, and it was all written down... and David himself wrote all these songs about how much he loved to read that law...
David was much more "protected" from his evil than were either of the other men... and David committed the crime anyway. God lays this very crime against David, even in his death.
Your account, on the other hand, seems to directly indict God.
There are some possible implications to this.
But we're getting ahead of our history a bit here. Perhaps we should stop and at least list the possible conclusions that could result from this Bible Study:
This is a Bible Study? OK... this is in the wrong board. We will remedy that in a minute.
We're close to getting down to the brass tacks with Abraham. We know that he had sons by three different women and the question is, Did This Justify Polygamy In Any Way?
The very beginning of this thread stated that this was a history, not a good / bad analysis. I think we already had this discussion in the Bible Discussion board, and... that thread is still open. So I will continue to comment, but under the supposition that this series of posts is indeed a Bible Study attempting to determine whether a man having more than one wife is good or bad.
We are going to try not to answer that question directly, since this is a history thread, but it is obviously going to be in the back of our minds as we look at the story.
Right... or not.
First of all, some definitions. While it's true that there is no distinctive word in the original languages of the Bible that means "wife" as opposed to just "woman", there is a reason for this. In the Biblical cultures, to be a woman was to be a wife, or at least an ex-wife. Single women just didn't fit into the culture.
Single women didn't fit into the culture? What?
A female was either a daughter, for however long she lived with her father, or a wife, for however long she lived with her husband. They had other words for women who didn't fit either category.
So, single women did fit, it was just a matter of semantics and word definitions.
One such word we find in Joshua chapter two, where a single women with her own house was called a harlot. It was probably assumed that any single women with her own house was that kind of woman. In fact, the Hebrew word seemed to have been used for any woman who had her own house, even if she didn't intend to use it for ill repute.
Since this is a Bible Study maybe you could give examples? Even as a history lesson, examples would be nice.
They had another word which was specifically used just for harlots, but the connotation carried over to the other word, whether the single women of the day liked it or not.
Are these words unspeakable? I am not sure that I am following you here. Can you be a little more direct and tell us the words you are talking about?
Without a man there to protect her, a woman living alone was considered fair game to any man who could manage to 'take' her (see the
Book of Judith in the 1611 KJV for an example of an unremarried widow in just such a predicament).
I agree with this... not sure of the point really. There were many single women that were neither harlots, nor "the other word" that were neither daughters in their father's houses, nor wives in their husband's houses. They were either considered widows or fatherless and were to be taken care of by near-kinsmen. There were also maidservants that may or may not become concubines and if they did, they may or may not ever have intercourse with the man that owned them. They might be given to a son or even to male slave.
So, a female in the Patriarchal age was expected to progress from daughter/maiden/virgin to wife/woman. Should she be widowed, her brother-in-law was expected to take her in (more on that later, when we get to Ruth). But there were other options available: a girl could become either a harlot or a concubine, depending upon whether she was in business for herself, or bound to her employer. And this was not often a decision that was left up to the girl herself.
Are you saying here that a woman, sold as a slave and given in marriage to another of her owner's slaves is the same as a woman that hires herself out for s*x?
Thus we come upon the scene in Genesis chapter 12. Abram enters Egypt with Sara under the guise of being his virgin sister
Virgin?
--and by the looks of her, it was high time he married her off. Pharaoh made a very attractive offer, giving Abram sheep, oxen, asses, slaves, and camels in compensation for taken his 'sister' into the royal harem. Abram, according to plan, accepted the gifts, but, contrary to the custom of the day, didn't appear to take any of the female slaves he received as concubines.
He didn't?
Despite having lost his wife (although he may have held out some hope that she would be returned as damaged goods when it was discovered that she wasn't a virgin after all),
Abram made no claim as to her virginity... he was trying to stay alive. Had he told the man that she was a virgin, don't you think the man wouldn't have had serious cause for anger against Abram? The whole point was for Abram to stay alive. In the law of Moses, a man that gives a virgin to be a wife, and turns out not to have given a virgin at all has that virgin daughter stoned in front of his house. Probably these kings might have been similarly angered... but not having Hebrew law to guide them, Abram's life would possibly be at stake... at least if I were Abram I would think along those lines.
...he remained faithful to her memory--
What? He remained faithful to her memory? What is that supposed to mean? That he didn't take concubines? What about after she was dead? What about the concubines he had at his death?
Andy'sDad, I have to tell you, I think that a lot of this is not from the text and you are construing as if it were.
despite the lack of faith that led to this fiasco. And God, for reasons of His own, restored Abram's wife to him undamaged by her brief stay in the harem.
If there is anything that God says about Abraham, it is that he had faith. As a matter of fact that he was the father of all those who have faith... not to mention that Abraham was called specifically a "friend of God." Whatever he may have lacked here, I am pretty sure that it wasn't faith. In any case the Biblical account does not, as I read it, verify this.
--gabe
Please note: What I have said / argued in this post does not imply that I encourage an American man to marry more than one woman. If any have questions about this, they can ask... I just don't really see the point though. My objective in just about all I do is to understand God and who He is. Here my interest is to take the Biblical record as it stands, and to understand it.
