In situations of dire poverty, women had very few options.
Hebrew word for right way of sex free#
Free Hebrew women also might become concubines.”
“The rights of the first two were protected by the law, but the third was unrecognized and the fourth prohibited. A Gentile captive taken in war ( Deuteronomy 21:10-14)
"Polygamy and concubinage were also allowed in ancient Israel and seem to be have been quite common in the patriarchal period (age of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), but after that most marriages of commoners were monogamous.”Ģ. Apart from working in the home and providing sexual companionship, a major role for a concubine would be to produce children, to increase the work force in a household. “In the ancient Near East, it was acceptable for a married man to have a secondary wife or concubine, so long as he had the resources to support a large family. Baker, theologian and seminary professor, said this: It’s “a non-Semitic loanword borrowed to refer to a phenomenon not indigenous to Israel,” according to Baker’s Dictionary of Biblical Theology.ĭavid L. The Hebrew word for concubine, Piylegesh, isn’t even of Hebrew origin. A concubine was endowed with rights and protections by Hebrew law but was not equal in status to a wife.Ī woman living as a concubine was more common in Israel during the patriarchal period of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob than in later periods, but it still happened among the wealthy and especially the royal like King David and King Solomon.Īlthough God provided rights and protections for concubines in the Law of Moses, God did not introduce or approve of this marital model. Her purpose was to provide a male heir in the case of a barren wife, to provide more children in general to enhance the family’s workforce and wealth, and to satisfy the man’s sexual desires.
In the Bible, a concubine was a woman acquired by a man as a secondary wife.