Meat Does Exodus 21:10 apply to non-concubine wives?

[steve]

Perhaps, indeed, I have not yet had the time to properly study through the resources I have been given now, but -- would the assumption at least apply in the case of purchase and bondservanthood, as is in Exodus 21:10??

Of course.

 

[FollowingHim]

Oh okay, but I would say owning concubines today is a separate deal. If indeed a concubine is still a wife, no qualms, of course, but the conundrum we have today as believers is inherent in two parts.

1) do not be unequally yoked to unbelievers. I would say that applies to us not taking unbeliever concubines.

2) not causing a fellow believer to stumble. Given that 1 Corinthians 7 tells us that we were bought at a price and are not to become bondservants of men, I don't see how we could take on a believer as a concubine without causing her to violate that imperative.

Thus, we cannot take an unbeliever as a concubine, and we cannot take a believer as one either, which would effectively eliminate all women from being eligible to be taken as concubines. However, I would say that if a man does have a concubine, whether he has one before coming to faith or if he took one improperly, she is still his wife and he does not sin to have her, of course.

As @steve alluded to, your logic falls over as your definition of concubine is incorrect. A concubine is not a wife who was purchased with money - in fact, it has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not money changed hands. She is a wife without a contract.

In ancient cultures it was very common to purchase people with money, be they wives or servants or whatever. This is because wages were uncommon. Consider two tribes, and a person transferring from one to the other for whatever reason (to change long-term employment, as a wife, or whatever). That person is an economic loss to one tribe (who is losing the benefit of their labour), and a gain to the other. That woman marrying the man in Tribe B will no longer be milking the goats in Tribe A. Tribe A requires some sort of compensation for this loss, or they wouldn't be able to let her leave. That compensation takes the form of a payment of goods or money, from Tribe B to Tribe A. It is called a "dowry" in the case of a formal marriage, or a "price" in any other situation, but some money changes hands. Which is why Abraham's tribe consisted of "all that were born in his house, and all that were bought with his money" (Genesis 17:23) - those were the only two ways of entering the tribe.

In that cultural context both a wife and a maidservant would be purchased with money, because it was the economic reality of the day. Labour was obtained with an up-front payment to the source tribe plus providing day-to-day living expenses of the labourer.

On the other hand, today neither a wife nor a servant (employee) are purchased with money. Our economic situation is entirely different - we do not compensate the "source tribe" for the loss of labour, but instead pay the labourer on an hourly or weekly basis.

Both wives and concubines existed when all women were purchased with money - and both wives and concubines may exist where no women are purchased with money. Because it's got nothing to do with that.

 

[Keith Martin]

Wrong assumption.
You are using a definition of concubine that doesn’t cover all of them

Thanks for pointing that out. @Luke S, you were shifting terrain when you went from talking about unbelieving concubines to talking about not being bondservants.

Beware falling into the snare of being limited by the strictures of Greco-Roman philosophy. The word concubine and its predecessors in other languages is a category of relationships that included a wide variety of relationships, which usually implied at least a sexual relationship -- but even that, as I originally learned from research my Zen Trucker Master Steve inspired me to embark upon. These were fully recognized throughout the known world -- and even China! In a sense, both Steve and Revolting Man are correct when they argue about this, because these were well-understood categories of what a woman's status could be within a man's household. He might have his mother and even a mother-in-law. He might also have daughters. But the rest of the females in his household would, in every known culture back then within the sphere of what we now call the Middle East, be assumed by everyone outside the household as existing there for the pleasure of the man of the house. And in Scripture they were referred to by basically one word, and the word meant . . . . woman. However, sometimes distinctions were made, and all extra-biblical literature from the time periods of Scripture made even stronger distinctions. This discussion is confused more than by anything else by the manner in which our current language has evolved to purposefully eliminate concepts with which we're no longer comfortable -- or, more often, that don't fit the narrative of what our ruling classes want us to be aware of. So now we have the concept 'wife,' and we all know how strongly the dominant culture works to sustain the idea that being a solitary 'wife' is the only legitimate adult male-female sexual relationship outside of monogamy-only's twin sister of prostitution. But at the time the Greeks were instituting monogamy-only, the term we now use as wife was reserved for the woman who was considered the Top Dog Female of the household. Women who were there primarily for sexual purposes and any attendant procreation were labeled mistresses. And the rest of the women were concubines. Most, as I've mentioned, were sexual relationships, but most were also slaves or some other type of bondservant. In almost all situations, concubines were considered responsible for the execution of certain assigned chores; in fact, a concubine was more likely to be a non-sexual chore-doer than to be a non-chore-doer sex partner, because that would have changed her in most cases into being in the status of mistress. We can shake our heads or back away in disbelief or think all that is way too complicated, but those distinctions were considered very important back then, especially among women -- and today we see reflections of this but just give them different labels -- if not a wink and a nod.

So, in a sense, especially if one plays Twister with the linguistic differences between 2022 AD and 722 BC, all of them were wives if they were sexual or presumed to be sexual (you know Solomon no way got around to every one of those wives, mistresses and concubines) -- and at the same time there truly were and are concubines. My earlier question alluded to the fact that it really is possible for men and women to create a very wide variety of differing contracts between each other -- and who are we to judge if a man wants to pay a woman just to hang around looking hot but never touches her, any more than we would bat an eye if a man agrees to feed and house a woman because she agrees to occasional nookie and maybe even provides him with a few progeny?

The LORD above knows what's really going on.

And I see nothing in Scripture that says everything has to fit into the same mold. We've got some rules to abide by, but absolute conformity of definition isn't one of them.

Now on to the O.P.'s entreaties to return to the subject of the Original Post:

I was just trying to ask about how we apply Exodus 21:10. The question still stands as to whether the verse applies to marriages outside of the purchased servant context

Full disclosure: typically I exhort everyone to read everything within its context, but in this case as in many the structure of written Hebrew doesn't make it easy to determine the context.

I would have done the same thing with Exodus 21:10: first, look at the antecedent verses, and I'd probably start at the beginning of the paragraph. My next move would be to read on past the verse in question, at least to the end of the paragraph. There's a problem with that: ancient Hebrew had no paragraphs; in fact, it's often difficult to tell if they engaged in full sentences, because they just write one character after another, often barely leaving space between words. So we can't even be sure where sentences begin and end, much less paragraphs. After reading Exodus 21 several times just now, I've come to the conclusion that a new paragraph should have begun with 21:10, not with 21:7. :7-9 and :10-11 are related enough to be in tandem, but they're very likely two separate subjects.

And, if not -- if we insist on reading :7-11 as one coherent, inseparable whole, then we're butting up against the dictates of Leviticus 18, starting with :6 and most especially with :7a, because by this insistence we force ourselves down one of two rabbit holes:

1. The closer-proximity alternative involves dictating :10 by its contextual position to :9: "If he [the lord who purchases her] is appointing her for his son, he shall deal with her as is customary with daughters." [CVOT] In that case, we would have to abide by the context of a subsequent woman for himself having been appointed for his son and thus qualifying as a daughter; or
2. The slightly-further-away alternative involves dictating :10 by its contextual position to :7: "When a man sells his daughter as a maidservant, she shall not go forth as the manservants go forth [after 6 years, derived from other contexts]." If we're going to insist on Exodus 21:10 pertaining only to maidservants because that's what it says in Exodus 21:7, then in order to be consistent, we would also have to insist on Exodus 21:10 pertaining also to what a man does when he takes his own daughter "for himself." Because :7 is all about what a man should do when he sells his daughter as a maidservant. We can quibble about exactly what the bondage dimension is of a maidservant or whether she fits within the broad definition of 'concubine,' but we certainly aren't going to argue about the definition of a daughter. Leviticus 18 may not specifically mention not having sex with one's daughter, but it can entirely be inferred from 18:7 asserting, "The nakedness of your father and the nakedness of your mother you shall not expose." [CVOT] If a person, including a female person [pre-2022 definition], can't have sex with her father, then ipso facto a father can't have sex with his daughter. Not morally.

 

[Keith Martin]

Given that 1 Corinthians 7 tells us that we were bought at a price and are not to become bondservants of men, I don't see how we could take on a believer as a concubine without causing her to violate that imperative.

Speaking of context, it's always useful to remember that not all but a significant amount of I Corinthians was written to the very Greek ex-to-some-extent-pagan Corinthians about certain problems that were particular to their community at that time. By verse 23, Paul may have circled back to the general, but it comes at least at the tail end of exhortations being made that dealt with the confusion the Corinthians were experiencing with reconciling their birth culture to the new Gospel of Christ. Note that just verses earlier Paul is explaining to them that they don't have to cut off the end of their dicks in order to be proper members of the Body of Yeshua. He then, in :21-22 addresses the fact that, whether one is called a slave within the overall culture due to status, even if "being called a slave, is the Lord's freedman. Likewise, he who is being called, being free, is a slave of Christ." Immediately, Paul continues, "With a price are you bought. Do not become the slaves of men. Each one, in what he was called, brethren, in this let him remain with God." [both passages CLNT]

The passage is clearly not talking about being a literal bondservant or slave, because Paul has just asserted that, even if you are a slave to a human master, recognize within you that you are now only a slave to Yeshua. This exhortation on his part is entirely consistent with his running theme of running from seeking approval from the world while running into the arms of seeking approval from Yah and Yeshua.

And I will just add that, if we're really going to start defining what bondservanthood is in modern times, don't we have to acknowledge how little difference there is between one's family being paid in advance for one's services and one being paid after-the-fact on an hourly or weekly basis for those same services? Many if not most of us these days are essentially bondservants in effect, but Paul would just exhort us to refrain from allowing our hearts to see those who pay for us as our masters.

 

[Luke S]

As @steve alluded to, your logic falls over as your definition of concubine is incorrect. A concubine is not a wife who was purchased with money - in fact, it has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not money changed hands. She is a wife without a contract.

In ancient cultures it was very common to purchase people with money, be they wives or servants or whatever. This is because wages were uncommon. Consider two tribes, and a person transferring from one to the other for whatever reason (to change long-term employment, as a wife, or whatever). That person is an economic loss to one tribe (who is losing the benefit of their labour), and a gain to the other. That woman marrying the man in Tribe B will no longer be milking the goats in Tribe A. Tribe A requires some sort of compensation for this loss, or they wouldn't be able to let her leave. That compensation takes the form of a payment of goods or money, from Tribe B to Tribe A. It is called a "dowry" in the case of a formal marriage, or a "price" in any other situation, but some money changes hands. Which is why Abraham's tribe consisted of "all that were born in his house, and all that were bought with his money" (Genesis 17:23) - those were the only two ways of entering the tribe.

In that cultural context both a wife and a maidservant would be purchased with money, because it was the economic reality of the day. Labour was obtained with an up-front payment to the source tribe plus providing day-to-day living expenses of the labourer.

On the other hand, today neither a wife nor a servant (employee) are purchased with money. Our economic situation is entirely different - we do not compensate the "source tribe" for the loss of labour, but instead pay the labourer on an hourly or weekly basis.

Both wives and concubines existed when all women were purchased with money - and both wives and concubines may exist where no women are purchased with money. Because it's got nothing to do with that.

Oh this will be a fun embarkation indeed (even though this exact topic was not my intention with this thread )! I would like to clarify though, because I may have misspoken or given the wrong impression -- I was not trying to imply that a concubine is purchased and a wife is not, I was coming at it from the angle that a concubine is a wife who is still a legal bondservant (perhaps as a matter subservient to the other wives, of status). I think I got this from Galatians 4, in light of how Hagar is in Genesis called Abraham's wife as well as his concubine, but here in Galatians, is called the bondwoman, whereas Sarah is the freewoman. Thus, I concluded that a concubine is a wife who is still a bondwoman. However, I fully admit that I may have extrapolated that particular case to cover the entire definition of biblical concubinage. This will be fun to look into though! A good challenge to learn from -- should the evidence conclude y'all's definition superior to mine in it's truthfulness, I have no issue relinquishing it.


Tho perhaps this is my fault -- I apologize to all -- my question may be misworded, I should not have inserted the term "concubine", but focused on what the verse in question is talking about -- maidservants taken as wives.

 

[steve]

However, I fully admit that I may have extrapolated that particular case to cover the entire definition of biblical concubinage.

Bingo

 

[steve]

There were definitely concubines that came from the servant’s quarters.
But it has never been proven that the servant’s quarters is the source for all concubines.

 

[Luke S]

Thanks for pointing that out. @Luke S, you were shifting terrain when you went from talking about unbelieving concubines to talking about not being bondservants.

Beware falling into the snare of being limited by the strictures of Greco-Roman philosophy. The word concubine and its predecessors in other languages is a category of relationships that included a wide variety of relationships, which usually implied at least a sexual relationship -- but even that, as I originally learned from research my Zen Trucker Master Steve inspired me to embark upon. These were fully recognized throughout the known world -- and even China! In a sense, both Steve and Revolting Man are correct when they argue about this, because these were well-understood categories of what a woman's status could be within a man's household. He might have his mother and even a mother-in-law. He might also have daughters. But the rest of the females in his household would, in every known culture back then within the sphere of what we now call the Middle East, be assumed by everyone outside the household as existing there for the pleasure of the man of the house. And in Scripture they were referred to by basically one word, and the word meant . . . . woman. However, sometimes distinctions were made, and all extra-biblical literature from the time periods of Scripture made even stronger distinctions. This discussion is confused more than by anything else by the manner in which our current language has evolved to purposefully eliminate concepts with which we're no longer comfortable -- or, more often, that don't fit the narrative of what our ruling classes want us to be aware of. So now we have the concept 'wife,' and we all know how strongly the dominant culture works to sustain the idea that being a solitary 'wife' is the only legitimate adult male-female sexual relationship outside of monogamy-only's twin sister of prostitution. But at the time the Greeks were instituting monogamy-only, the term we now use as wife was reserved for the woman who was considered the Top Dog Female of the household. Women who were there primarily for sexual purposes and any attendant procreation were labeled mistresses. And the rest of the women were concubines. Most, as I've mentioned, were sexual relationships, but most were also slaves or some other type of bondservant. In almost all situations, concubines were considered responsible for the execution of certain assigned chores; in fact, a concubine was more likely to be a non-sexual chore-doer than to be a non-chore-doer sex partner, because that would have changed her in most cases into being in the status of mistress. We can shake our heads or back away in disbelief or think all that is way too complicated, but those distinctions were considered very important back then, especially among women -- and today we see reflections of this but just give them different labels -- if not a wink and a nod.

So, in a sense, especially if one plays Twister with the linguistic differences between 2022 AD and 722 BC, all of them were wives if they were sexual or presumed to be sexual (you know Solomon no way got around to every one of those wives, mistresses and concubines) -- and at the same time there truly were and are concubines. My earlier question alluded to the fact that it really is possible for men and women to create a very wide variety of differing contracts between each other -- and who are we to judge if a man wants to pay a woman just to hang around looking hot but never touches her, any more than we would bat an eye if a man agrees to feed and house a woman because she agrees to occasional nookie and maybe even provides him with a few progeny?

The LORD above knows what's really going on.

And I see nothing in Scripture that says everything has to fit into the same mold. We've got some rules to abide by, but absolute conformity of definition isn't one of them.

Now on to the O.P.'s entreaties to return to the subject of the Original Post:



Full disclosure: typically I exhort everyone to read everything within its context, but in this case as in many the structure of written Hebrew doesn't make it easy to determine the context.

I would have done the same thing with Exodus 21:10: first, look at the antecedent verses, and I'd probably start at the beginning of the paragraph. My next move would be to read on past the verse in question, at least to the end of the paragraph. There's a problem with that: ancient Hebrew had no paragraphs; in fact, it's often difficult to tell if they engaged in full sentences, because they just write one character after another, often barely leaving space between words. So we can't even be sure where sentences begin and end, much less paragraphs. After reading Exodus 21 several times just now, I've come to the conclusion that a new paragraph should have begun with 21:10, not with 21:7. :7-9 and :10-11 are related enough to be in tandem, but they're very likely two separate subjects.

And, if not -- if we insist on reading :7-11 as one coherent, inseparable whole, then we're butting up against the dictates of Leviticus 18, starting with :6 and most especially with :7a, because by this insistence we force ourselves down one of two rabbit holes:

1. The closer-proximity alternative involves dictating :10 by its contextual position to :9: "If he [the lord who purchases her] is appointing her for his son, he shall deal with her as is customary with daughters." [CVOT] In that case, we would have to abide by the context of a subsequent woman for himself having been appointed for his son and thus qualifying as a daughter; or
2. The slightly-further-away alternative involves dictating :10 by its contextual position to :7: "When a man sells his daughter as a maidservant, she shall not go forth as the manservants go forth [after 6 years, derived from other contexts]." If we're going to insist on Exodus 21:10 pertaining only to maidservants because that's what it says in Exodus 21:7, then in order to be consistent, we would also have to insist on Exodus 21:10 pertaining also to what a man does when he takes his own daughter "for himself." Because :7 is all about what a man should do when he sells his daughter as a maidservant. We can quibble about exactly what the bondage dimension is of a maidservant or whether she fits within the broad definition of 'concubine,' but we certainly aren't going to argue about the definition of a daughter. Leviticus 18 may not specifically mention not having sex with one's daughter, but it can entirely be inferred from 18:7 asserting, "The nakedness of your father and the nakedness of your mother you shall not expose." [CVOT] If a person, including a female person [pre-2022 definition], can't have sex with her father, then ipso facto a father can't have sex with his daughter. Not morally.

Yes, I indeed did shift terrain, but without realizing it, and I apologize for that. I will still contest that there is at least some overlap between purchased bondservant wife and concubine, but I may have overextended that overlap to be all-encompasing. I will not commit either way until I have more thoroughly tested the definitions I previously started with.

As for the definition of concubine and mistress in ancient middle eastern context, and all the women being for the man's pleasure -- I'm really not sure that holds biblical grounds. If all the women in the household were sexual with the man as a given, there would be no need for Sarah to give Abraham Hagar and no need for Bilhah and Zilpah to be given to Jacob. Clearly, some sort of change took place upon them being given to the man as wife that allowed for sexuality thereafter. Likewise, I think it rather unreasonable to assume that the servants born in Abraham's household were all his sons by his maidservants, as it is about as unlikely as Abraham acquiring three-hundred-something pregnant women as servants before they subsequently gave birth to sons. Now, the maidservants in Abimelech's household in Genesis 20 may have also been his sexual paramours, hard to say one way or the other, but I think it plenty reasonable that they may have simply been the wives of the manservants (or perhaps some of each camp).

As for Solomon, I'd conjecture he likely enough had sex with each of the thousand at least once -- even if only on the wedding day/night, perhaps Ahaseurus style.


I liked your analysis of the passage too! One question comes to mind though -- what exactly are you saying about the daughters? Isn't vs 9 putting that in the context of the purchased betrothing her to his son, thereby saying he treats her as a daughter thereafter. At the very least, this would make sense as she would be his daughter-in-law, at which point she certainly could not be the wife of the purchaser.

 

[Luke S]

Speaking of context, it's always useful to remember that not all but a significant amount of I Corinthians was written to the very Greek ex-to-some-extent-pagan Corinthians about certain problems that were particular to their community at that time. By verse 23, Paul may have circled back to the general, but it comes at least at the tail end of exhortations being made that dealt with the confusion the Corinthians were experiencing with reconciling their birth culture to the new Gospel of Christ. Note that just verses earlier Paul is explaining to them that they don't have to cut off the end of their dicks in order to be proper members of the Body of Yeshua. He then, in :21-22 addresses the fact that, whether one is called a slave within the overall culture due to status, even if "being called a slave, is the Lord's freedman. Likewise, he who is being called, being free, is a slave of Christ." Immediately, Paul continues, "With a price are you bought. Do not become the slaves of men. Each one, in what he was called, brethren, in this let him remain with God." [both passages CLNT]

The passage is clearly not talking about being a literal bondservant or slave, because Paul has just asserted that, even if you are a slave to a human master, recognize within you that you are now only a slave to Yeshua. This exhortation on his part is entirely consistent with his running theme of running from seeking approval from the world while running into the arms of seeking approval from Yah and Yeshua.

And I will just add that, if we're really going to start defining what bondservanthood is in modern times, don't we have to acknowledge how little difference there is between one's family being paid in advance for one's services and one being paid after-the-fact on an hourly or weekly basis for those same services? Many if not most of us these days are essentially bondservants in effect, but Paul would just exhort us to refrain from allowing our hearts to see those who pay for us as our masters.

Thank you for this as well! This has actually been a topic I've been trying to look into for a little while, so thank you for the insights! You'd be surprised (actually, probably not at all surprised) how difficult it is of a topic to discuss with people

 

[Keith Martin]

As for the definition of concubine and mistress in ancient middle eastern context, and all the women being for the man's pleasure -- I'm really not sure that holds biblical grounds. If all the women in the household were sexual with the man as a given, there would be no need for Sarah to give Abraham Hagar and no need for Bilhah and Zilpah to be given to Jacob.

Let me clarify: I was referring to all wives, mistresses and concubines being there for the man's pleasure. If there were other women there who weren't there for some aspect of a man's pleasure (not necessarily sexual) aside from daughters and mothers and mothers-in-law, they were most likely sisters-in-law or something like that. Men in general simply weren't in a position to just welcome in the world with no expectation that they make some kind of uplifting contribution.

And be careful; you just apologized for conflating things and shifting meaning -- and do it once again in the sentence I quoted above. You assert that you're "not sure" that my assertion that the additional women were there for the pleasure of the man "holds biblical grounds." First of all, I wasn't quoting Scripture; I was talking about the surrounding cultural context, which included many cultures and numerous religions, so it's a red herring whether it's biblical. More importantly, though, you shifted "for the man's pleasure" to asserting that "if all the women in the household were sexual with the man as a given, there would be no need for . . ." Straw man argument, because I never asserted that all of them were sexual relationships. Most, in all likelihood, would have been, but you can't prove some hypothesis about some assumed lack of need for certain women to give their slaves to their husband by shooting down an assertion someone else never made.

And what we don't know is that such a need even existed or didn't exist in the examples you provided. We know that they gave their slaves to their husbands, but that doesn't mean he couldn't have just taken them if the women in question hadn't suggested it. My opinion, with no scripture to back it up, is that, up until the offers, the men you've mentioned simply didn't consider all the ramifications to be worth the experience of having congress with the women in question -- but then once their wives were doing the suggestion, it made accepting the full ramifications much more appealing.

Just imagine if your wife were to approach you and heavily suggest that you take on one of her single friends as a concubine (or whatever title you want to give her); she wouldn't be a bondservant, but my point is that being encouraged to expand one's family by one's own wife has an extensive degree of persuasiveness in such a matter.

 

[Keith Martin]

As for Solomon, I'd conjecture

That's all we can do. We can be certain about some, but as for the rest it's just a matter of conjecture.

 

[Keith Martin]

One question comes to mind though -- what exactly are you saying about the daughters? Isn't vs 9 putting that in the context of the purchased betrothing her to his son, thereby saying he treats her as a daughter thereafter. At the very least, this would make sense as she would be his daughter-in-law, at which point she certainly could not be the wife of the purchaser.

My point is entirely that the narrative is shifting from sentence to sentence -- and that we can't therefore assume that the sentence we arbitrarily pick as the first absolutely dominates every sentence after it. We can't even assume what 'he' refers to definitively in Exodus 21:10, and in the absence of that being clearly delineated as only applying to one particular individual or subset of individuals, we're almost obliged to consider it to be something that applies to all men -- and perhaps, depending on the circumstances and context -- to all people.

 

[Keith Martin]

Thank you for this as well! This has actually been a topic I've been trying to look into for a little while, so thank you for the insights! You'd be surprised (actually, probably not at all surprised) how difficult it is of a topic to discuss with people

No surprise whatsoever, but, then again, people regularly surprise me with how willing they are to discuss it once they discover that I'm not only willing to do so but eager to do so and prepared to do so.

We're not the only ones who chafe at the bits and bridles that organized religion attempts to force on us.

 

[steve]

After many years of discussion of this topic on this forum, I have learned that the fundamental difference between a "concubine" and a regular "wife" is quite simply that a "wife" has some sort of formal marriage contract / covenant / ketubah and a "concubine" does not.

I would have to disagree with that definition. It covers many situations, but it is not true in many cases.

I think that you could agree with;
What defines a concubine relationship is that it varies, for whatever reason, on one or more details that are different from what the standard definition of what a wife is.

In reality, some of the standards that we accept for a wife today would have defined a relationship as concubine 4,000 years ago in Israel.
That a wife could leave (divorce) a husband.
That she could take the kids with her when she left.

 

[The Revolting Man]

Wrong assumption.
You are using a definition of concubine that doesn’t cover all of them

There is no definition of concubines. He can use whatever one he wants. That’s the problem.

 

[The Revolting Man]

Thank you for this as well! This has actually been a topic I've been trying to look into for a little while, so thank you for the insights! You'd be surprised (actually, probably not at all surprised) how difficult it is of a topic to discuss with people

Just do yourself a favor and start with defining what a concubine is from scripture, not from anything else. Go to God’s Word and find out how He defines a concubine and then come back here with your conclusion.

One flesh is a metaphor for our relationship with God and God doesn’t have concubines.

 

[Keith Martin]

Just do yourself a favor and start with defining what a concubine is from scripture

I'm going to quibble with you about this, my revered friend: it is entirely acceptable to look for surrounding time-based cultural definitions for words in Scripture. The term 'concubine' was well understood with wide latitude at the times of Scripture.

We don't wait for Scripture to define 'wheat' or 'chaff' or 'campfire' or 'walls' before having comprehension of what they mean when used in scriptural contexts.

 

[steve]

One flesh is a metaphor for our relationship with God and God doesn’t have concubines.

If only that were true.
Most so-called Christians are more concubine than they are wife.

 

[MiloCroton RN BSN B.S.]

What is a ‘wife’ Biblically, especially given there is not an equivalent Biblical Hebrew or Greek word. ‘Wife’ is treated as a special position or office in our western worldview, however I believe the Biblical worldview treats marriage, or binding to a man, as the expectation or even the definition of ‘woman’ in a way. I think that is the real problem here. It is ‘concubinage’ that is actually the extra thing, or an extra ‘binding’/‘slavery’.

Exodus 21:10 applies the most basic rights to ANY woman bound/married to a man , whether she is ‘free’ or ‘bound’ in concubinage. Both are what we term ‘wives’, though Biblically that term/ideal does not really exist.

 

[The Revolting Man]

I'm going to quibble with you about this, my revered friend: it is entirely acceptable to look for surrounding time-based cultural definitions for words in Scripture. The term 'concubine' was well understood with wide latitude at the times of Scripture.

We don't wait for Scripture to define 'wheat' or 'chaff' or 'campfire' or 'walls' before having comprehension of what they mean when used in scriptural contexts.

Considering that sending away a wife unrighteously leads very directly to carrying the weight of the sin of adultery, this issue needs to be based solely on scripture.

Adultery brings with it the death penalty. It is a form of idolatry, one of the worst sins imaginable. I find this obsession with concubines dangerous and frankly bizarre. If she’s good enough to be a concubine why wouldn’t you just make her a wife?