Inclusive, but not exclusive...correct?
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MGTOW A Culture Killer?
- Thread starter Nikud
- Start date
I'll have to admit that you're too clever for me here Steve. What are you getting at? There are all kinds of verses that deal with sex.
Yes, if I understand you correctly.
As there are many psaaages about marriage, which don’t define, or codify everything about it.
So if we must have chapter and verse about how marriage must be practiced, shouldn’t we have chapter and verse about how intimacy is practiced?
How can you prove that your particular use of your body is correct?
If the Word never mentioned a distinction between wives and concubines, then I would agree that concubines don’t exist and there is no need to ever consider them.
But the distinction exists and it behooves us to consider what little evidence that we have and be open to further input from the Creator of the universe if He has situations where a concubine relationship would bear good fruit.
For my purposes, the only need that I could ever see is that if a woman was not willing to put her full, forever, trust in a man, that she might decide to have a time limited marriage. Say one or two years. With the ability to walk away if she believes that the guy has not become the husband that she thought he would be. That is a form of concubine marriage. I would rather accept that relationship than have her walk away because of her fears.
I would say that I have actually experienced a limited form of this, unknowingly at the time.
On that we most likely agree.
Why is "ordain, define and codify" the standard of acceptance? God didn't clearly ordained and regulate my choice of occupation either. But somehow I don't think he was upset at me over it being as neither did He condemn my choice. The law came to teach us what is sin via the command against it. Concubines were no more condemned than polygamy was. I will not be quick to condemn where God has been silent.
To the contrary, many men of great faith had both concubines and wives (which apparently were regarded as separate things), without a single word of condemnation or clarification on the matter from God or His prophets or the people around. Whether it was regulated or not is of no import, only that it was not prohibited.
However, concubinage was indeed regulated in Exodus 21:7-11,20-21,26.
I could belabor this on the lack of definition of marriage but I think that'll just take us into the weeds here.
I freely admit I haven't figured this all out yet. There is a lot unsaid about both marriage and concubinage in the scriptures and its been confounded and corrupted by several millennia of different cultures and traditions.
There is nothing unsaid about marriage. It is one of the most clearly defined concepts in all of the Bible.
Exodus 21 proves my point. It says clearly that if a man with a maid servant he's bought takes ANOTHER wife then he can't reduce the portion of the maid servant who is clearly a wife.
Look, the name isn't important. We could all call our wives "swamp witch" and as long as we treated them like wives we'd be in submission to scripture.
But I have never found a biblical definition of what is the difference between a wife and a concubine and so I have to assume there isn't one or risk adding to scripture.
So I left with no other choice, lacking new information, that there are two categories of wives; those who chose to marry and those who didn't. Those who didn't get some extra protections that those who chose to don't. Exodus 21 is the proof text for that.
Exodus 21 proves my point. It says clearly that if a man with a maid servant he's bought takes ANOTHER wife then he can't reduce the portion of the maid servant who is clearly a wife.
Look, the name isn't important. We could all call our wives "swamp witch" and as long as we treated them like wives we'd be in submission to scripture.
But I have never found a biblical definition of what is the difference between a wife and a concubine and so I have to assume there isn't one or risk adding to scripture.
So I left with no other choice, lacking new information, that there are two categories of wives; those who chose to marry and those who didn't. Those who didn't get some extra protections that those who chose to don't. Exodus 21 is the proof text for that.
From our point of view, there are free women and bond women. Where there are bondwomen, there are some bondwomen who are servants of the man, but there are other bondwomen who are servants of one of the freewomen. There are different nations, different cultures, and within those cultures, different times and different attitudes of what was politically correct in those times. And of course there are those who try and follow God, while other don’t try and follow him at all.
From God’s point of view, there’s a man, and there’s his woman.
Things were nice and neat in Eden, but it wouldn’t have needed a lot of human history before everything became far less tidy.
From God’s point of view, there’s a man, and there’s his woman.
Things were nice and neat in Eden, but it wouldn’t have needed a lot of human history before everything became far less tidy.
So you have chosen a definition that accuses King Solomon of raping 3-400 women?
Comprehension check:
@ZecAustin - Wife, concubine, my woman....all wives under a covenant, just acquired differently.
@rockfox and others- Concubine and wife are distinct and under differing covenants.
Help.
@ZecAustin - Wife, concubine, my woman....all wives under a covenant, just acquired differently.
@rockfox and others- Concubine and wife are distinct and under differing covenants.
Help.
You're close on me Mojo. I get hung up on that word covenant sometimes but other than that yeah, a concubine is a wife in God's eyes.
In Exodus 21:1-4, I see what appears to be a master buying a Hebrew servant and giving a woman to that servant, the woman bears children by that servant, then later, if the servant leaves, the woman and children stay with the master. It doesn't appear that this is something that Moses apparently wrote like the part about the a man putting away his wife (because of hardness of heart), I think this came straight from God. I wonder what her status or title might be in this case.
If so, why does scripture differentiate between wives and concubines? Why use two different words? Why have different rules for concubines?
It doesn't, in the Hebrew it doesn't say wife, only 'another'. That could imply another maidservant or another woman in general. This subject is difficult enough I couldn't even start to comprehend things without looking at the original text. Too much is papered over in translation.
There are a lot of things unsaid about marriage. To start with, Ancient Hebrew didn't even have a word for 'marriage' or for 'marry'. The word 'Marriage' doesn't even occur in the OT Hebrew and 'marry' translates from various different words which aren't even all verbs. It doesn't have a word for 'wife', only 'female', but it did have a word for concubine. Concubines are still females, why would they feel the need to have a differentiating word unless they were different?
And there is much unsaid about marriage. One important example is, what creates/starts it (contract? sex? license? ceremony, what?). There is no broad consensus on that; probably because the text doesn't clearly say. Marriage ceremonies are a big part of that, both now and in the past. Yet they are never specified in the law and only obliquely mentioned a couple times in the narrative.
Close. I think it is obvious in scripture that they are different. But what that difference is and how much it matters I am not sure yet. This isn't an area of theology well explored, just mostly ignored.
There are different rules in the OT scripture for wives vs. concubines, few though they are, but covenants? I am less certain of that because it might well be that the definitional difference between them is a lack of a covenant in concubinage.
I ran across something yesterday about concubinage I missed earlier. Adultery was treated differently. For the wife: death. For the concubine: 'punishment'. He wasn't required to send her away; he could do that if she displeased him in any way to begin with. And it is interesting that in the Judges 19 narrative, the cheating concubine leaves of her own volition and her master tries to woo her back.
In this treatment of adultery, modern marriage is more like OT concubinage than OT marriage.
A concubine wasn't a wife; wife implied a number of things which did not apply to a concubine.
This may come across as extremely controversial or just pedantic silliness, a distinction of almost no distinction, depending on how you look at it. But there are some difficult questions for which these differences matter a great deal.
It would be more accurate to say they were both relationships in which a woman cohabited with her master (sexually, almost always physically, and exclusively; at least on her part). How this comes to be and how it dissolves is different between the two.
We moderns have a wide variety of sexual relationships between men and women. We give them a number of different names and around one of those types built up this edifice we call marriage. But there is not a 1:1 mapping between then and now. To say a concubine is a wife implies it was what we modern's call marriage; but modern marriage excludes relationships the ancients included and there are things ancient marriage had that no modern relationship has today.
The Ancient Hebrews were much more simple. Either you belonged to a man or you didn't. Whether you were a concubine or wife seems to have depended on how you got there.
I don't know how to say this without sounding condescending but I promise you that I don't mean to be be condescending so please see through to my heart here.
Everything you just listed has been debated here deeply and passionately a number of times and I.have become convinced that it is all very clear.
Look, God is a righteous judge. If something is important than He tells us. If he doesn't tell us then its not important.
When marriage begins is very easy (although people will fight to the death over it) it can begin with a promise to marry or it can begin with sex. There is no ceremony anywhere in scripture so that has no bearing on marriage at all. We do know that Christ attended some kind of a marriage celebration so there's nothing wrong with having one (windblown and I had a beautiful ceremony) but it played no role in forming our marriage.
I've been going down this road for over 10 years now. I've been active on the forum since 2010. I've seen a lot on thus topic. But if you will take a deep breath and assume that God is trying to illuminate you while not overburdening you and that He can write and edit a book to communicate clearly with you then all the theology gets very easy. It's the practical application that is so difficult.
I favor arranged marriage too, but tingles arn't bad. It's just the most direct way of producing them are usually taught against in our culture. The manosphere is so revolutionary for many people because masculinity basics arn't really taught, and the manospehre teaches them.
Well, can we agree to find fault with the poets and artists that promote the nebulous idea of romance?
I would say men tend to get sucked in by them less.
You have a good point. But the status of marriage is fading and people are being told not to have children. I think the worst of these kinds of women are selecting their traits out of our population.
As to later stuff, between Zec and Rock, I gotta say with Rockfox that there is clearly a special term for concubine and it is tangibly different than a free woman that belongs to a man (which we translate as wife, though has no special term of its own, as Rockfox said).
This all maps out very easily in a 'marriage as ownership' paradigm of the ancients, but little sense can be made of it in the context of the modern ideas of marriage. A concubine is a woman of slave status possibly belonging a free woman who belongs to you. Husband>Wife>Concubine as an authority and ownership structure. That was as it was in the case of Billah and Zillah.
To relate this to whatever ones modernized idea of marriage may be is difficult. But Rocks last line:
Is pretty well all there is too it. The rest is technicalities or over-thinking.
Very true. Yet weirdly most women still want to get married, eventually. And it has been commonly observed that many women who swore they never wanted children suddenly in their early 30's crave it deeply and to to all sorts of desperate measures to have them. Biology rules.
Large chunks of a couple generations of women are about to get selected out of the population. In some cases this will be helpful, in others not. Unfortunately welfare and child support are propagating traits we don't necessarily want.
Yes I think this is a key insight. It is obvious in the very language itself if you look at the words translated husband, wife, marry. It is there in the text of the scriptures too, but it is easy to miss from a modern mindset if you're not looking.
Then you must be wiser than I.
The enemy of our souls fights that which he fears. He fights anything that gives righteousness an advantage.
Of course marriage is under attack.
There is strong dissension amongst the brethren over the prospect of polygyny.
What I find fascinating is how strong the opposition is to any concept of concubinage. The pressure bury it in the OT is, to me, an indication that the enemy fears this as s useful tool also.
I don’t see the point of it in this day, but I have found that you find the most gold where you find the most opposition.
Of course marriage is under attack.
There is strong dissension amongst the brethren over the prospect of polygyny.
What I find fascinating is how strong the opposition is to any concept of concubinage. The pressure bury it in the OT is, to me, an indication that the enemy fears this as s useful tool also.
I don’t see the point of it in this day, but I have found that you find the most gold where you find the most opposition.