Well, I finally read through the whole thing. The verse was mentioned at the bottom of page 7 but no one noticed it provides the definition and no one refuted that it does.
Solomon had 300 women of royal descent and had 700 concubines.
That is the definition right there. A concubine was a woman who was not of royal descent.
If you are not a princess, then you are a concubine (after a man takes you).
My only conjecture is that the term can be relative to the status of the man.
If the man is a king, any of his women who is not a princess, is a concubine.
If the man is the head of a tribe, any of his women who is not the daughter of the head of a tribe, is a concubine.
If the man is 19th in command, any of his women who is the daughter of someone less than 19th in command is a concubine.
My speculation on how this came to be:
The fathers of the prestigious women, demanded that your other women be labeled as lower status, as a way to elevate their own daughter's status.
"If you ever take a woman who is lower class than my daughter, you had better give her a lower class title so everyone knows that mine was more prestigious. And you are going to vow that to me right now or you can't have her."
This is the only definition given in scripture, so it is the only one I hold to.
Philip, I see how you have got to your conclusion. However, it is a major assumption, because there are multiple ways to interpret this verse. I feel that you have latched onto one interpretation and are asserting it as a fact. I also feel that you read this thread solely looking for any evidence to back your presupposition, rather than seeking to learn from others perspectives.
There is truth in your understanding, but only part of the truth, I don't think you're seeing the fundamental core truth yet but are latching onto a result of it only, not the core itself.
I agree with you that Solomon's queens were
probably 'princesses' by birth - or rather noblewomen by birth as the word doesn't mean the same in Hebrew*. I have no problem with the idea that there were 700 important men (kings, smaller local rulers, tribal chiefs, rich landowners, wealthy merchants etc) who wanted to curry favour with the king by giving him their daughter in marriage. I myself
assume that his 'wives' were those who came into his home formally, as part of a formal marriage which both united him with them and often formed part of a formal political alliance or at least an informal understanding of favour towards their father's tribe / business interests. And this means that the concubines
may be those wives whom he took informally, without any such ulterior motive - they were not daughters of some rich guy, but rather a woman that Solomon chose himself because he wanted them specifically, but had no such formality and paperwork surrounding them.
You and I are essentially assuming the same scenario. But we take different conclusions from it.
1) You assume that the wives were called "wives" because they were of noble birth - and other women of high-status birth are also "wives", others of lower-status birth are "concubines".
2) I assume that the wives were called "wives" because they were taken by Solomon formally - and other women taken formally are "wives" and less formally are "concubines". The fact they were of noble birth is the reason he took them formally, not in itself the reason they were "wives".
This particular passage can be interpreted consistent with either of the above assertions. It does NOT prove your position any more than it proves my own.
To figure out which is closer to the truth, we have to consider other sources also. And when you consider other examples, such as what
@Keith Martin has stated above, you find that the distinction between concubine / wife tends to be about the understood marriage terms / agreement / contract conditions. Obviously the nature of those conditions differs between times and cultures, but the distinction is about those conditions. This is consistent with my statement above (that they are wives or concubines depending on the conditions of their marriage), and not because of their birth status.
Today we still have the same distinctions between women based on conditions and formality, in the distinction between "legal wife" and "de-facto partner" - one has paperwork and clear legal status, one does not, but both are equally "wives" in the eyes of God.
*I agree with @steve that this status of noblewoman could have been given by Solomon himself but find this less likely. It seems more arbitrary and gives little reason for the distinction between wife and concubine other than Solomon's arbitrary choice, and I think that there's usually more of a reason behind things in scripture than that. If they were noblewomen because they were married to Solomon, then why weren't all 1000 of them noblewomen? How come the concubines were not considered noblewomen? And what message is scripture teaching us by including this?
Remember though that just because I find it "less likely" doesn't mean it's not true!
