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Love and
Marriage in the Bible
FAQs About Old Testament
Husbands, Wives, and Lovers
by Cynthia Astle
Love and marriage in the
Bible were quite different from what most people experience today.
Here are some frequently
asked questions about husbands, wives, and lovers in the Old Testament.
How many wives did King David have?
According
to 1 Chronicles 3, which is a genealogy of David’s family for 30 generations, Israel's great
hero-king hit a jackpot regarding love and marriage in the Bible.
David had seven wives:
Ahinoam of Jezreel, Abigail of Carmel, Maachah the daughter of King Talmai of
Geshur, Haggith, Abital, Eglah and Bath-shua (Bathsheba) the daughter of
Ammiel.
With all those wives, how many children did David have?
David's
genealogy in 1 Chronicles 3 says that he had 19 sons by his wives and
concubines and one daughter, Tamar, whose mother isn't named in scripture.
David was married to Ahinoam,
Abigail, Maacha, Haggith, Abital, and Eglah during the 7-1/2 years he reigned
from Hebron.
After he moved to Jerusalem,
he married Bathsheba, who bore him four sons including the great King Solomon.
Scripture says that David
fathered a son with each of his first six wives, plus his four sons by
Bathsheba make 10, leaving another nine sons whose mothers are presumed to be
among David's concubines since they aren't named.
Why did the biblical patriarchs take so many wives?
Aside
from God's command to "be fruitful
and multiply" (Genesis 1:28), there are likely two reasons for
patriarchs' multiple wives.
First,
health care in ancient times was much more primitive, with skills such as
midwifery passed down through families as an oral tradition rather than formal
training.
Thus childbirth was one of
the life's most dangerous events. Many women died in childbirth or from
post-natal diseases along with their newborns.
So the sheer necessities of
survival motivated many plural marriages.
Second,
being able to care for many wives was a sign of wealth in ancient biblical
times.
A man who could sustain a
large extended family of several wives, children, grandchildren and other kin,
along with the flocks to feed them, was considered rich.
He also was considered
faithful to God, who commanded that humans increase their numbers on the earth.
Was polygamy a constant practice among the biblical
patriarchs?
No,
having multiple wives wasn't a uniform marital practice in the Bible.
For example, Adam, Noah, and
Moses are each noted in scripture as being the husband of only one wife.
Adam's spouse was Eve, given
to him by God in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2-3).
According to Exodus 2:21-23,
Moses' spouse was Zipporah, the eldest daughter of a Midianite sheik, Reuel
(also called Jethro in the Old Testament).
Noah's wife is never named,
only acknowledged as part of his family who accompanied him on the ark to
escape the great flood in Genesis 6:18 and other passages.
Did women ever get to have more than one husband in
the Old Testament?
Women
really weren't considered equal players when it came to love and marriage in
the Bible.
The only way that a woman
could have more than one husband was if she remarried after being widowed.
Men could be simultaneous
polygamists, but women had to be serial monogamists because that was the only
way to assure the identity of children's fathers in ancient times before DNA
testing.
Such
was the case with Tamar, whose story is told in Genesis 38. Tamar's
father-in-law was Judah, one of the 12 sons of Jacob.
Tamar first married Er, the
eldest son of Judah, but they had no children. When Er died, Tamar married Er's
younger brother, Onan, but he refused to impregnate her.
When Onan also died not long
after marrying Tamar, Judah promised Tamar that she could marry his third son,
Shelah, when he came of age.
Judah's refusal to keep his
promise when the time came, and how Tamar outsmarted this marriage system, is
the plot of Genesis 38.
This
practice of younger brothers marrying their older brothers' widows was known as
levirate marriage.
The custom was one of the
more curious examples of love and marriage in the Bible because it was intended
to make sure that the bloodline of a widow's first husband was not lost if the
husband died without fathering children.
According to levirate
marriage, the first child born of a union between a man's widow and his younger
brother would be considered legally a child of the first husband.
Cynthia Astle
· Award-winning journalist who covered religion for
25 years
Cynthia B. Astle is a former writer for
ThoughtCo who contributed work on Christianity. She is a certified
spiritual director and professional journalist and editor. Her work in
religion writing has won many national and international awards over the past 25
years. She served as the managing editor of The
Progressive Christian, a magazine and multimedia forum for socially
concerned Christians and religious leaders.
Cynthia earned her A.A. in English and
journalism from St. Petersburg College and studied religion and English at
the University of North Texas.
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