Category: Marriage/Sex

Q. Why are women more restricted about sex and marrying multiple men in the Bible? It seems women are 2nd class and held to different standards.

The Bible actually holds men and women to exactly the same standard regarding sex. It teaches that neither men nor women are to have sex outside of marriage. So in that sense, it does not restrict women more than it restricts men.

Regarding marriage itself, I discuss your concern at more length in this post: Is it a sin for a man to be married to more than one woman? The Old Testament speaks into a culture that practiced polygamy (more than one spouse) and specifically polygyny (men having more than one wife). The Bible regulates the practice in order to prevent abuses, for example, a less-favored wife being denied food, clothing, and the opportunity to have children.

However, it does not specifically approve of the practice. Rather, as I say in the post linked above, “At the very beginning of the Bible, God institutes marriage between the first man and the first woman and ordains that ‘the two be united into one.’  As the Bible continues, polygamy enters human history during the inexorable course of its drift away from God after the fall.” So while the Old Testament speaks into a situation of polygamy in order to ensure fairness within it, it is not explicitly giving men, but not women, the right to have more than one spouse.

The New Testament may actually restore the ideal of monogamy. According to one way of understanding the Greek text, it says that a male church leader must be “the husband of one wife,” presumably meaning not married to more than one woman. Another way to understand the Greek is “faithful to his wife,” but that seems to have similar implications.

So I think that the way the Old Testament regulates men having more than one wife while saying nothing about women having more than one husband reflects the characteristics of the culture into which it speaks. God encounters human cultures where they are and works within them to bring them towards his intentions. And personally I think that the Bible indicates that God’s intentions are for a man who is married to have one wife and for a woman who is married to have one husband.

Q. What was King David’s mother’s name? How many children did she have with Jesse? The Bible actually does not tell us the name of David’s mother, but there is a Jewish tradition that her name was Nitzevet. According to 1 Chronicles, this woman had seven sons (Eliab, Abinadab, Shimea, Nethanel, Raddai, Ozem, and David) and at least two daughters (Zeruiah and Abigail). There is some debate among biblical scholars as to whether Jesse was the father of Zeruiah and Abigail or whether their father was a man to whom Nitzevet was married before she married Jesse (she may have been widowed). In 1 Chronicles, after the sons of Jesse are listed, Zeruiah and Abigail are called “their sisters” rather than “his daughters.” The sons of Zeruiah (Abishai, Joab, and Asahel) seem in the biblical narrative to be about the same age as David, even though he is their uncle. So Zeruiah may indeed have been many years older than David and she may have married and started to have children around the time he was born. While we do not know David’s mother’s name for certain, we do know that David took care of her. When he was running for his life from Saul, he went to the king of Moab and asked him to allow his parents to stay with him for safety, and that king agreed. We also have an indication that David’s mother was a godly woman who influenced him to be godly himself. David is traditionally considered to have been the author of Psalm 86, and in that psalm he says to the Lord, “I serve you just as my mother did.” So while the name of David’s mother has not come down to us through history, her legacy certainly has.

Q. Mary is described as a virgin in the Bible and in the Quran. However, her husband is never mentioned in the Quran. Was she married to Joseph but never had sexual relations with him, keeping her virginity?

With all due respect and no offense intended to my Catholic and Orthodox brothers and sisters in the faith and others who would also see this differently, my understanding from the Bible is that Mary and Joseph had the usual kind of marriage in which they had sexual relations and in fact had several children together, but only after Jesus was born.

Matthew tells us in his gospel that after Mary conceived Jesus as a virgin, an angel appeared in a dream to Joseph and explained to him what had happened. Matthew then relates, “When Joseph woke up, he did as the Lord’s angel had commanded him. He married Mary, but he did not have sexual relations with her until she had given birth to a son.” In other words, once Mary had given birth to a son, Jesus, then Joseph and she did have sexual relations, as husbands and wives ordinarily do.

Matthew tells us further that when, during the course of his ministry, Jesus returned to his home town of Nazareth, the people there asked, “Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us?” So it would appear that Joseph and Mary had at least seven children together after Jesus was born, the four named sons and apparently at least three daughters, based on the expression “all his sisters.” (If there had been only one daughter, the people would have said “his sister,” and if there had been only two, they would have said “both of his sisters.”)

So I understand from these passages that while Mary conceived Jesus as a virgin and she remained a virgin until he was born, even though she married Joseph before that, once Jesus had been born, Joseph and Mary raised a family together as husband and wife. To me, that takes nothing away from the special role that Mary played as the mother of Jesus and that Joseph played as his legal father though not his biological father. Rather, I see this as God affirming marriage and child-rearing as beautiful elements of his intentions for human thriving.

Q. Why was it considered adultery when David had sexual relations with Bathsheba (and rightly so ! 7th commandment ……….) and yet not when he had sexual relations with his 7-8 wives and many concubines. In reality he was ‘living’ in adultery all the time….I have struggled with this for most of my Christian life and have never found a satisfying answer. It is totally illogical to me.

There is a difference between adultery and polygamy. If a man who is married has sexual relations with a woman who is not his wife, that is adultery, whether or not the woman is married. And if a man has sexual relations with a woman who is married to another man, that is adultery, whether or not the first man is married. This, as you noted, is explicitly forbidden by the seventh of the Ten Commandments.

However, if a man has more than one wife and has sexual relations with each of his wives, that is not adultery, since the man is not having sexual relations with a woman who is not his wife or a woman who is the wife of another man. It is polygamy. Please see the post below for a discussion of whether polygamy is sin, according to the Bible. I hope this post will help answer your question.

Is it a sin for a man to be married to more than one woman?

Q. King David sought the Lord consistently in battles. However, I don’t know of any time he sought the Lord about anything to do with his wives. Did he and I’m not finding it?

You’re right that David sought God’s guidance about how he should protect his people by fighting against their enemies. In fact, he did this in a way that is exemplary for us. In one instance, the Philistines attacked Israel and, with God’s guidance, David attacked them directly and defeated them and drove them off. Later the Philistines returned and attacked Israel at the very same place. Many of us would probably assume that if God wanted us to attack directly the last time, we should also do so this time. But David sought God’s guidance again, and God told him, “Do not go straight up, but circle around behind them.” Following this guidance, David once again defeated the Philistines, this time definitively.

It would be good if David had been just as diligent in seeking God’s guidance about marriage, but he was not. As you say, we cannot find any place in Scripture that describes David asking God about this. David married Michal, the daughter of King Saul, even though she appears to have been an idol-worshiper rather than someone devoted to God as David was. Michal later showed that she indeed did not share David’s devotion to God when she criticized him for dancing exuberantly before the Lord as he brought the tabernacle into Jerusalem.

In addition, before he became king, David married two other women, Abigail and Ahinoam, but there is no indication that he sought God about this. And after he became king, David married more wives, including at least one who was the daughter of another king, so he may have been making marriage alliances. But once again the Bible says nothing about David seeking God’s guidance. And we know from the rest of David’s story what great trouble came about because of the rivalry between the sons of David’s various wives. Some of this may have been due to the influence of the wives themselves, if they did not inculcate godly character and values in their sons.

The issue you raise is very important. My late wife and I ministered directly to college and university students for 25 years. We served churches next to schools, and then in our 50s we became front-line campus staff. (Lots of adventures to tell about there!) From our sad observations, we had to warn students that nothing was more likely to undermine their effectiveness in God’s service or even turn them away from the Lord than getting involved in a relationship with someone who was not devoted to God as they were. But the desire to love and be loved is so strong that many people are likely to get involved in such relationships unless they are committed to doing nothing except what God clearly directs them to do.

In other words, a Christian should only marry someone as an act of obedience to God. Certainly, if things are as they should be, this will be joyful and enthusiastic obedience! But this must be the principle. If God says no, then the answer is no.

Remember the promise of Jesus: “Everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.” In this context, I would take “leaving wife” to mean not marrying someone if God says no, and “a hundred times as much” to mean potentially finding a much better match later on if we obey God in that way.

To quote the apostle Paul, “I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord.”

Q. What is the difference between wives and concubines in the Bible? I understand wives had higher status and that Abraham’s and Jacob’s concubines were their wives’ servants. Is concubine basically a technical term for servants that double as sex slaves? Or did they actually have rights within the family structure?

There is no question that concubinage was an exploitative practice. However, women who were concubines were not exploited primarily for sex. They were exploited for the children they could have. In the agricultural Old Testament culture, children were needed to work the land, and they were also needed to carry on the family name and preserve family rights to property. So most typically, men would marry concubines when their wives could not have children or when men felt they needed more children.

A concubine was legally married to the man whose concubine she was. We see this, for example, in the terminology of “father-in-law” and “son-in-law” that is used in one Old Testament account for the relationship between a man and the father of his concubine. But a concubine had a lower status than a wife.

The difference in status was not that the wife was free while the concubine was a slave. It is true that the Old Testament discusses cases in which a man might marry one of his female slaves, who would then become his concubine as well. It is also true, as you noted, that a man could marry one of his wife’s female slaves as a concubine. So there was a connection between concubinage and another very exploitative practice, slavery.

But the essential difference between a wife and a concubine was that the children of the wife were certain to have inheritance rights to the property of their father, while the children of the concubine did not necessarily have such  rights. I think it would probably be too much to say that children of concubines could not inherit from their father, but their situation was very tenuous.

For example. when Abraham’s wife Sarah could not have children, she had him marry her female slave Hagar so that she could adopt the son of Hagar. But when Sarah later had a son of her own, Isaac, she insisted that Abraham send Hagar and her son Ishmael away so that only Isaac would inherit. After Sarah died, Abraham married a woman named Keturah as a concubine, but he gave her sons gifts in lieu of inheritance and sent them away as well.

By contrast, when Jacob married Bilhah and Zilpah, the slaves of his two wives Rachel and Leah, in order to have more children, he gave the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah full inheritance rights along with the sons of Rachel and Leah.

But in general the position of concubines and their children within the family structure was very insecure. It seems that women who were already in a vulnerable position, for example, as slaves or foreigners or both, were further exploited as concubines for the children they could have. Later in Israelite history, kings would marry many concubines as a symbol of royal prestige and perhaps to pursue certain political ends. These women were not being exploited for their children, since such kings already had many wives and many children by them, but they were still being exploited for those other reasons.

So I think it would not be quite accurate to describe a concubine as a “secondary wife.” While she was legally married, her situation was so different from that of an actual wife that I think a separate term should be used to identify it. Marriage is meant to be a relationship characterized by mutuality and equality. The power differential in concubinage is so great that it is not true marriage. And so I believe we should work to eliminate the practice of concubinage in our world today, just as we should work to eliminate slavery. The fact that concubinage is depicted and described in the Bible does not indicate any sanction for it or approval on God’s part.

Q. How should we understand Ezekiel 23? Is it pornographic?

The parable that the prophet Ezekiel tells about two sisters named Oholah and Oholibah is not pornographic in itself. However, since it does use explicit sexual imagery, I would encourage people who struggle with pornography to be careful about reading it. I’ll discuss some options for them at the end of this post.

Pornography, by definition, is gratuitous. That is, it uses explicit sexual imagery only to excite sexual desires in readers or viewers. The imagery serves no higher purpose.

In Ezekiel’s parable, by contrast, all of the sexual imagery is used carefully to serve a higher purpose. Ezekiel wants the people of the southern kingdom of Judah to feel a proper sense of shame for their worship of idols instead of the true God. He also wants them to realize how foolish it is for them to worship idols when they have already seen God judge and punish the people of the northern kingdom of Judah for doing exactly the same thing.

The parable is essentially an extended metaphor: Idol worship is like infidelity in marriage. Because the people of Judah would have felt a sense of horror and shame about infidelity, Ezekiel describes it in explicit terms to try to make them feel the same thing about the way they have betrayed God by worshiping idols. All of the imagery, while graphic, is presented in a controlled and purposeful way. It is subordinated to the higher purpose of trying to call shamelessly disobedient people back to God before it is too late and they need to be judged and punished for their disobedience and disloyalty.

However, as I said, if someone struggles with pornography, then it may be difficult for them to read this passage without losing ground in that struggle. In that case, one possibility I would suggest is that they not read it. Even within a program to read through the Bible, such as many churches and other organizations sponsor, the understanding could be that in the interests of the highest goal of that program—a closer walk with God—participants would be free not to read this chapter if doing that might lead them to stumble.

Another possibility would be to read the chapter in a version of the Bible that translates it less explicitly. This might be a version translated at a simpler reading level whose intended audience includes children.

The final suggestion I would make is that if someone who struggles with pornography decides that they do need to read the chapter (in order to read all the way through the entire Bible, for example), they should not read it online or in any Bible app that appears on a screen. Instead, they should read it in a printed Bible. This will avoid reinforcing any connection between sexually explicit material and the greater visual stimulation of a glowing screen.

Q. I just want to know where it is categorically written in the Bible that men should not marry more than one wife because the way things are going with the Christian ladies is terrible for us.

I believe you’re saying that there aren’t enough godly Christian men out there to provide husbands for all of the Christian women who desire to be married, and so it would help if men (specifically, godly Christian men) could marry more than one woman. Before I offer any reflections about that from the Bible itself, let me say first that I am very sympathetic to your concern. In response, I’d like to challenge all the men who read this who might be hovering around the edges of the faith to step up and commit to following Christ and becoming godly so that they could be a suitable husband, if that turns out to be God’s will for them, to one of the many wonderful Christian women who have this desire. And I wish the comfort and companionship of God for those women as they wait for their longing to be fulfilled. I do appreciate how difficult that can be.

It is important, however, to seek to understand God’s ideals for human life as they are disclosed in the Bible, and not come to conclusions based on the needs and constraints of our present situations. And so, to pursue the biblical teaching on the subject you’re asking about, let me say that I believe it is actually not embodied in a categorical statement. That is, I’m not aware of any biblical commandment along the lines of, “Thou shalt not marry more than one wife.” Rather, the clearest teaching on the subject is found by analogy to an answer that Jesus gave to a different question about marriage.

According to the gospel of Matthew, some Pharisees came to Jesus and asked him whether men could divorce their wives for any reason they wished. Jesus answered, quoting from Genesis, “Haven’t you read that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

The Pharisees responded, “Then why did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?” They were referring to a law in Deuteronomy that actually says that if a man divorces his wife and gives her a certificate of divorce, he can’t take her back again if she marries someone else and that second husband subsequently divorces her as well. So it isn’t actually the case that Moses commanded men to give their wives certificates so they could divorce them. Nevertheless, the Law of Moses does regulate the situation of divorce (the certificate would have proved that the woman was legally free to remarry, which was important for her protection and provision), and thus the Law tacitly recognizes that situation.

Jesus explained this distinction in his reply to the Pharisees. “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives”—he didn’t command this—”because your hearts were hard. But it was not that way from the beginning.” Jesus added that therefore if a man divorced his wife for a reason other than marital unfaithfulness and then married another woman, he would be committing adultery.

I think there is a clear analogy here to the issue you’re asking about. Suppose the Pharisees had instead asked Jesus whether a man could marry more than one wife. He would likely have answered the same way at first, by quoting from the Genesis creation account. And the Pharisees would likely have responded in the same way, by appealing to the law of Moses, which regulates various situations that might arise from a man having more than one wife and so tacitly recognizes that situation as well.

For example, a law in Exodus says that if a man marries one of his female slaves (so that she becomes his concubine, both his slave and his wife) and he then marries another woman, “He must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing, and marital rights. If he does not provide her with these three things, she is to go free, without any payment of money.” And another law in Deuteronomy says that if a man has two wives and the less-preferred wife bears his firstborn son, he can’t deny that son the double share of his inheritance that’s the “right of the firstborn” and give it instead to a son of the more-preferred wife.

But even though the Law of Moses regulates and thus recognizes the situation of a man having more than one wife, I believe that Jesus would have said the same thing about this situation that he did about divorce: “It was not that way from the beginning.” So while we must acknowledge that the practice of men marrying more than one wife has been followed in many different times and places (indeed, Old Testament figures such as Abraham, Jacob, and David followed it themselves), and that this practice in fact continues in some places today, if we are looking for God’s ideal for human life as disclosed in the Bible, we find it embodied in the answer that Jesus gave to the question he was asked about divorce: As it was at the beginning, “A man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” Just the two of them.

Once again, let me say that I am very sympathetic to the concern that leads you to ask about this. But I would encourage you to resolve to pursue God’s ideal, and nothing else, in this area and in all others, so that no matter what happens, whether a desire to be married is ultimately fulfilled or not, you will be drawing closer and closer to God over the course of your whole life.