In this episode Jessica answers listener questions about ancient law and household dynamics.
Delve into the fascinating world of ancient biblical marriage and family structures that challenge our modern assumptions. In this eye-opening episode, we explore how the concept of household—not the individual—formed the foundation of Old Testament society and shaped everything from inheritance laws to marriage practices.
Have you ever wondered why biblical patriarchs had surrogates for their wives? Or why inheritance went to sons instead of daughters? The answers lie not in male lust or gender discrimination, but in understanding the radically different social structures of ancient times.
Most surprising is the revelation about who actually controlled reproduction in biblical households. Contrary to popular teaching, it was the matriarch—not the patriarch—who managed this domain. This explains why Sarah gave Hagar to Abraham, and why Rachel and Leah gave their handmaids to Jacob. These weren't acts driven by male desire but by women exercising their household power (sometimes to the detriment of other women).
We also unpack how concepts we take for granted—human rights, democracy, individualism—simply didn't exist when the Mosaic Law was written. This helps us understand that God was working incrementally through existing cultural frameworks, planting seeds of justice that would grow over time. As Jesus himself acknowledged when discussing divorce laws, some Old Testament practices were permitted "because of the hardness of your hearts," not because they represented God's ideal.
The story of Tamar brings these principles to life, showing how her actions weren't manipulation but a creative solution to hold Judah accountable to his family obligations. When Judah declared, "She was more righteous than I," he recognized that she understood household commitments better than he did.
Understanding these cultural dynamics doesn't mean we must approve of ancient practices, but it helps Scripture make sense in its context. What questions do you have about Old Testament marriage and family practices? Send me a message—I'd love to explore more of these topics in future episodes!
Listen to this YouTube talk to learn more about ancient households and heterarchy: https://youtu.be/OO-E36xt_2E?si=NKuPvHVrujk14VTq
......................................................
Follow We Who Thirst on Instagram, Threads, or Tiktok ! Visit www.wewhothirst.com
If you are interested in the research and sources behind this episode visit - https://rb.gy/xx0no6 - for a full Bibliography. For full shownotes including ancient sources, join my Patreon.
If you'd like more in-depth show-notes for each woman of the Bible, or a safe place to discuss the contents in greater detail - we have a private Discard channel through the We Who Thirst Patreon.
Thank you for supporting the We Who Thirst podcast! Patreon members get exclusive access to discord discussions, polls for future podcast episodes, full episode show notes, and more.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jessica LM Jenkins (00:01):
Welcome back to the we who Thirst podcast.
This episode is going to be alittle bit different.
I've had a couple requests todo a podcast episode.
That's kind of like what I doon my Instagram stories.
So if you don't follow me onInstagram, I do ask me anything.
I will talk about random topicsthat are on my mind and I do
this without a lot ofpreparation in the moment, like
(00:24):
I don't study for that topic andthen talk about it.
I just take all the knowledgeI've accumulated and we discuss,
and so I have collected aseries of questions about the
Old Testament law, thepatriarchs, marriage dynamics,
family dynamics, and we're goingto talk through those today.
Some of these questions, I willadmit up front, need more
research and I'll probably do awhole episode on certain things
(00:45):
by themselves, but for todaywe're just going to go and we're
going to start talking throughthese questions to give us a
foundation and I think it'lljust be a really fun
conversation.
So these are questions thatcame in on Instagram in my
stories through one of thequestion boxes or a couple
different question boxes, butthe first one I think and I've
(01:05):
gotten lots of variations ofthis particular question
throughout the years and theperson wrote why doesn't God
tell the patriarchs toprioritize treating women well?
I insert a variation on this inmy stories the other day why
doesn't the Mosaic Law gofarther?
Doesn't the Mosaic Law gofarther?
(01:30):
Why doesn't it give women morerights?
Why doesn't it do all of thesethings?
And so I want to take a stepback before we talk about Mosaic
Law, the patriarchs, any of it,and just kind of hone in on
some of our assumptions that wecan bring to the text without
realizing it.
We have things that are part ofour modern culture that the
ancient person, moses, thehearers of the Mosaic law,
(01:51):
ancient Israel, pretty much theentire Old Testament didn't even
have as a culture.
These were concepts that werecompletely new.
They had zero idea these thingscould even exist.
They had zero idea these thingscould even exist.
So sometimes we come to thetext going why doesn't this text
give humans freedom or point tothings that are a high value in
(02:13):
my culture, when the idea ofthat didn't even exist in
ancient culture?
Jessica, what are you talkingabout?
Let me explain.
So one thing is, since it was,why didn't God tell the
patriarchs to prioritizetreating women well?
That was the question.
One thing that the ancientsdidn't have necessarily was the
real concept of human rights.
(02:34):
If you look at the ancientcultures, they were in every way
, in many ways barbaric thekings and rulers of city states
or large empires like Assyria,babylon, egypt.
They would just brutallytorture people and murder people
and do whatever they wanted tokeep their power.
The idea of human rights is aJudeo-Christian concept that
(03:00):
came apart partly because of thetheological concepts that
started in the Mosaic Law anddeveloped throughout Scripture.
So when we look at the MosaicLaw, which is the beginning of
that concept of human rights inmany ways, and you wonder why
doesn't it spell out the fullextent of human rights that we
would like to see?
It's because it's the beginningand God is working his people
(03:22):
baby steps towards how he wantshumans to treat each other.
But the Mosaic law is not theperfect encapsulation of a
perfect society.
We see Jesus even admit this.
I believe it's Mark 7.
I might have the referencewrong on that, I'm not looking
things up.
But when Jesus is talking withthe Pharisees and they ask about
(03:43):
divorce, like why did Moses saywe could divorce our wives?
And Jesus says Moses allowedyou to divorce your wives
because of the hardness of yourheart.
So Jesus in the New Testamentand at least Matthew and Mark
freely admits that the Mosaiclaw is not the actual laws.
The commands of the Mosaic lawis not how far God actually
(04:07):
wants to go.
Moses allowed no-fault divorcefor the men.
They could just decide youburnt my toast, you're out of
here, I'm going to marry someoneelse.
And Jesus says that wasn'tGod's design, that's not God's
will.
Jesus says the Mosaic law is notan encapsulation of a perfect
society, it is not the end goal.
(04:30):
And so when we read the Mosaiclaw, when we look at the lives
of the patriarchs, we have tounderstand that this is not
where God is trying to put us atthe end.
This is the beginning.
This is your crawling toddlerwho's trying to take their first
steps.
And they keep falling on theirlittle diaper over and over and
over and over again.
And you, as a parent, you pickthem up and you encourage them
(04:50):
and you say we can do this, takeanother step.
That is what the Mosaic Law is.
It is there to help us realizewe're falling on our diaper.
It is there to help us realizewe need a hand to hold on to
because we can't walk yet I needto hold daddy's hand.
That it is.
It is as Paul says.
It is a tutor, it is aneducator, it is a helper.
(05:13):
It is not a perfect set of lawsand commands for a perfect
society.
God does not Scripture lay out ablueprint for a perfect society
.
Scripture talks about how ithas everything we need for life
and godliness.
So we have to separatesanctification from society.
(05:35):
Scripture teaches us what weneed to know to be sanctified,
to become like Jesus.
The Holy Spirit works withScripture to pull those things
together, but it does not.
Its purpose has never been.
This is how you order a perfectsociety.
So if you are looking forscripture to tell you how to
order society corporately, itdoesn't do that.
(05:57):
It talks about holiness and itcan give you idea what a holy
society could look like.
But different culturalparadigms have different ways of
going about this.
So why doesn't God tell thepatriarchs to prioritize
treating women well?
They didn't necessarily have theconcept of human rights.
To be like, they're human, youhave to treat them well.
(06:17):
They're equally human to you.
That wasn't like a concept thatthey were thinking about.
Human rights abuses didn't likethat concept that they were
thinking about.
Human rights abuses didn't likethat concept they didn't have.
Another concept they didn't havein the Old Testament was a
strong concept of self or theindividual.
Now that's going to soundshocking because we are a very
individualistic society and oursense of self is completely
(06:42):
central to our personal identity.
That is everything in ourculture points us back to.
Who am I, who is myself?
In our society and in ourgovernment, the self, the
individual person, is consideredthe smallest unit of society.
So a family is made up ofindividual people.
For me it's my husband, me andmy two kids.
(07:03):
We are four individual people.
There are four individual, tinyunits in our family, and then a
city is made up of a bunch ofindividuals and states and
countries are all made up ofindividuals.
That is a post-enlightenmentconcept In the ancient world,
especially in the Old Testament.
The smallest unit of society isnot the individual, it is the
(07:26):
household, and household couldrange in size.
An average peasant household isgoing to be 8 to 15 people and
this could be grandparents,parents, children, grandchildren
.
It could have three or fourgenerations in it.
It could be 8 to 15 people, anexceptionally wealthy household
like Abraham and Sarah.
It talks about how Abraham had315 or 50 or something like that
(07:47):
over 300 fighting men born inhis household.
Obviously they're not allAbraham's children, because at
this point he doesn't even havechildren of his own, but his
household is.
If all those 300 plus men aremarried and have 1.5 children,
abraham's household is over athousand people and yet that is
(08:09):
considered the smallest unit insociety.
For an average family it's 8 to15.
For Abraham it was over athousand, which go listen to my
episode on Hagar and Sarah.
That household dynamic makestheir story make a lot more
sense.
So when you consider OldTestament law, you have to
consider that by and large, lawsare oriented to protect the
(08:34):
smallest unit of society, whichis the household, not
necessarily the individual.
There are laws that protectindividuals, but overall we're
trying to protect the smallestunit of society In our day,
that's the individual.
In the ancient world it was ahousehold.
So there's a lot of laws thatrub us wrong, especially when it
comes to women, because it'slike hey, she has rights.
(08:55):
Well, a, human rights didn'treally exist.
And B, we're considering thegood of the household, not
necessarily the good of theindividual.
You don't have to love that,you don't have to love that, you
don't have to like that,especially from our individual
self-culture, but you have tounderstand this is the way, as
far as I understand, the ancientworld worked, so their laws are
going to be much more focusedon household dynamics and needs,
(09:18):
not necessarily the individual.
This even plays out with God'scontinued care for the widow and
the orphan, because these arepeople who's outside a household
or they make up a household bythemselves, and so God's like we
got to care for these manydisenfranchised, impoverished
households.
Even if it's just one or twopeople, they need to be brought
(09:40):
in and they need to be cared for, and that is part of my concern
.
So I want to lay out thesefoundational concepts because
they are really important.
We today, even if you'relistening and you believe that
feminism is bad and it's notgood, all these things, the way
it's often used in evangelicalcircles even if you believe that
(10:03):
the benefits of feminism modernday feminism first wave, second
wave, third wave, fourth wave,whatever wave it impacts how we
view women and how we viewsociety Women having a vote in
elections, women being able toget their own checking accounts,
women being financiallyindependent from a man, from a
(10:24):
household, as an individual.
These are modern concepts thatcome because of feminism.
The ancient world didn't havefeminism.
They didn't even really see theindividual as a separate unit.
So they didn't have feminismand democracy.
If we talk about having a votedemocracy.
If I'm correct, the Greeks kindof came up with democracy, at
(10:48):
least as far as we know, atleast on a broad scale, and that
was in the 300s BC.
Moses, and it depends when youthink the Mosaic Law was written
.
Earliest dates for Moses'Mosaic Law would be like 1500 BC
.
Later dates if you believe itwas done during the Persian
period, during the exile orduring the kingdom, it could be
(11:10):
as late as 400 or 500 BC, nomatter where you put it, it
happens pre-invention ofdemocracy.
So you're dealing with aculture that doesn't necessarily
, culture-wise, believe in humanrights.
God is planting the seeds ofhuman rights because in many
ways that is a Judeo-Christianconcept that even atheists have
(11:32):
benefited from, fromChristianity.
So we're pre-democracy, we arepre-human rights, we are pre way
pre, because it's theenlightenment that really the I
think, therefore, I amphilosophical idea for the
individual person.
They are communal, they thinkin household terms, they think
in family terms, large tribeterms.
(11:53):
So the smallest unit of thesociety is the household.
Then you have your tribe, whichis made up of households, et
cetera, and it expands out fromthere.
So why doesn't God tell thepatriarchs to prioritize
treating women well?
He does lay out concepts ofcharacter, kindness, justice,
mercy that you are supposed touse in all of your relationships
(12:17):
, but the law is focused onhouseholds, not the individual
relationships nearly as much.
And if you interpret the MosaicLaw through that lens, it will
make so much more sense andyou'll see how God is actually
working continually in theMosaic Law to benefit women.
But he doesn't necessarilydirectly, even though we would
(12:39):
like him to be like.
Treat women well, give themfreedom, give them a right to
vote, give them a right to ownproperty, all of those things
Right.
Those are new concepts that theancient world, when the Mosaic
law was written, didn'tnecessarily have.
So we're wanting to place amodern concept into the ancient
world and it just can't workthat way.
So we can talk more about allof that in the future.
(13:03):
But I'll go on to the nextquestion.
The next question is didAbraham and Sarah separate after
Isaac's not sacrifice?
We do not know.
I don't necessarily think theydid.
We kind of see them together,though I know there are scholars
who claim that they separated,even one who even says Abraham
(13:23):
went back to Hagar after thesacrifice.
The text doesn't tell us.
It's all conjecture.
I don't love going downconjecture rabbit trail so we
don't know.
Alongside that is a questionabout Moses and Zipporah.
Moses sends Zipporah away beforethe exodus.
(13:43):
Does he potentially marrysomeone else?
We do know Moses marries asecond wife who is Cushite, and
that's when Miriam and Aaron getall upset because he married
this other woman who is Cushite,and that's when Miriam and
Aaron get all upset because hemarried this other woman.
Some people think that mighthave been Zipporah, described a
different way.
I haven't looked into it enoughto have a hard and fast.
(14:04):
I've always read it as separatewomen.
Moses does send Zipporah awaybefore the Exodus.
I have always read and again Iwant to dive into this more
deeply I've always read thatmore just as a protective
husband.
He and Zipporah and their boysgo to Egypt and then things
start getting heated withPharaoh and Moses sends her back
to her dad, which I couldtotally see my husband doing.
He's like this is gettingdangerous.
I'm going to send you back toyour daddy where you're safe.
(14:25):
And then daddy brings her backto him once they have exited
Egypt him once they have exitedEgypt.
So I've always just read that.
As I need to keep this womanand my kids safe, I'm going to
put them out of harm's way whileI do my prophetic shake up the
world thing, but I don't wantthem to get caught in the
crossfire or have to go throughall these plagues.
That's how I read it.
(14:45):
I could be wrong.
I love Zipporah, so itdefinitely deserves a deeper
dive.
Um, it definitely does.
I love Zipporah, so itdefinitely deserves a deeper
dive.
So why?
Um?
I got a lot of questions on likepolygamy and Jacob's wives and
all of those things.
Questions about, um, sarah andTamar.
I'm just going to refer you tothat episode.
(15:06):
I went through Sarah and Tamarin depth with laws and all sorts
of things.
Those are excellent episodes.
Go listen to those.
I think they're very early on,so you'll have to scroll all the
way back to the beginning ofthe podcast.
But I'm not going to talk aboutSarah and Hagar today, not
Tamar.
Sarah and Hagar you can headback to listen to that.
I do want to do a whole episodeon Tamar.
(15:29):
There's a question about her.
I'll answer it briefly.
We will be having a wholeepisode on Tamar because she's
amazing.
So polygamy Some peoplementioned Jacob, having two
sisters as wives and how ickythat is.
One thing to keep in mind withthe Old Testament patriarchs is
that they are descriptive, notprescriptive.
(15:49):
God is not spelling out this isthe type of marriage you should
have.
In fact, I think a lot of thepatriarch's marriage
relationships actually arecautionary tales against
polygamy and against having twowives that are sisters.
I also believe and again Ididn't look it up, but I
remember there being a passagethat says you cannot sleep with
(16:11):
your wife's sister.
So the Mosaic law.
Later, when Moses writes,hundreds of years after Jacob,
he says you can't even do thisLike this is an illegal
relationship.
So first Genesis shows us howhaving two wives that are
sisters is a bad idea.
And then Moses later on saysand it's against the law.
(16:33):
So we get the livingillustration bad idea.
And then law you may not do it.
So scripture often shows usthings that are not working to
help us realize that they arenot good ideas.
Next question is surrogacy.
Again, I talk about that in theSarah and Hagar episode quite
(16:54):
frequently, but one question Ithought was really good was
Jacob's concubines.
Why did Jacob take theconcubines, since he had so many
children with Leah?
Was it lust, something else?
This is a fantastic questionand it shows our assumptions,
which I've had for years.
Reading into these texts, I seea lot of people and I've heard
(17:16):
sermons talking about Abrahamand Hagar or Jacob and Zilpah
and Bilhah, I believe, are theirnames talking about his
concubines.
Talking about his concubinesthat it was the man's lust.
(17:38):
The man is lustful.
This is why he's takingconcubines and I want to gently
push back on that, because wedon't necessarily know whether
there's lust involved and sowe're reading motives into their
hearts.
But as I've studied OldTestament marriage dynamics and
I have a whole lecture on thison YouTube, I'll try to put a
link in the show notes.
You can go watch that and itbreaks down how a heterarchical
(18:01):
household works in Old Testament.
But we often come to OldTestament texts assuming a
hierarchy where men rule women,men own women.
That's not really how it worked.
From my research in the OldTestament, if there was a
hierarchy in the household, itis an age-based hierarchy, not a
(18:23):
gender-based hierarchy in thehousehold.
I'm not talking about outside,I'm talking about in the
household.
It's an age-based.
So you have your patriarch,which is your oldest male, and
you have your matriarch, whichis the oldest female.
They are each kind ofresponsible for certain areas in
the household and they worktogether kind of concurrently.
Push comes to shove, heprobably has the final say, but
(18:46):
they work concurrently and thereare times she's going to have
the final say and then they arein charge of the men and women
under them in their respectiveareas.
And what we often don't realize,partly because of our purity
culture, complementarianevangelical mindset, especially
evangelical sex duty mindsets,where it's like women, you have
to give sex to your husbands oryou're in sin, that kind of vibe
(19:09):
.
We come to the text with thoseassumptions in our mind, just
like we have feminism anddemocracy and human rights and
individualism in our brains aspre-assumptions.
So we read about the concubinesand we assume that the men are
ruling all the women and weassume that it's a lustful
action because men have thisinsatiable need for sex, when
(19:29):
actually the Old Testament sayssex is a duty that the husband
owes his wife.
The Old Testament doesn't saywomen ever that I recall owe sex
to men.
It's something the man owes tohis wife.
It is his husbandly dutytowards her, and I've even
interacted with Jewish peoplewho are like they still talk
about how the husband owessexual relations to the wife.
It is not the duty, does notreverse.
(19:51):
That is an evangelical purityculture concept that is twisted
scripture and does notunderstand the Old Testament.
So could Abraham and Jacob hadsome lust?
Sure, they are human.
Do we know that they had lust?
The text does not tell us.
And what we do not talk about inthe surrogacy passages is that
(20:13):
one of the things the matriarchis in charge of is reproduction.
That is the matriarch's domain.
Okay, the husband owes thewomen sexual relations, a child.
That is his duty to her and thematriarch is in charge of this.
This is why we see Rachel andLeah.
(20:33):
Leah says I'm going to buy fromRachel because Rachel's the
beloved.
So Leah comes up and says I'mgoing to buy from you.
I'm going to barter with youthat I get to have sex with our
husband tonight and I'm going togive you these mandrakes and
Rachel's like okay, I accept themandrakes, you may have sex
with the husband.
The women are bartering for whogets to sleep with the man,
(20:55):
because the women were in chargeof the reproduction.
Could a man force his way ontoa woman and do nasty things?
Of course it happens all thetime.
Men have done that allthroughout history.
So we're not saying thatdoesn't happen, but in the
(21:16):
structure the matriarch is theone kind of in charge to make
sure this is happening.
And so when it comes tosurrogacy, it is not the husband
who is bringing in thesesurrogates.
Neither Abraham or Jacob say,hmm, I think I should get a
surrogate for my wife.
No, it is the women saying, forwhatever reason.
(21:47):
And with Jacob well, with bothSarah and Jacob's wives it's the
women saying I'm not havingchildren, so I'm going to give
my husband a surrogate andinform him he now has another
wife Because, again,reproduction is the matriarch's
role.
And with Rachel and Leah it'stricky because you don't have a
clear matriarch.
So that structure gets realfishy because they are sister
wives.
They are kind of equal wives.
You don't necessarily havefirst wife, second wife, dynamic
, older wife, younger wife.
You have sister wives and sothey butt heads constantly.
(22:08):
You have the surrogacy thingand the surrogatesrogates Bilhah
and Zilpah.
They are clearly secondarywives.
They are wives, they are.
They talk about them using thesame types of language that they
do, rachel and Leah.
But it was Rachel who realizedshe couldn't have children, so
she informed Jacob that he's nowsleeping with her maidservant
so that Rachel could havechildren through her maidservant
(22:31):
.
Leah stops having children andthen does the same thing with
her maidservant, and so this isa woman's way, actually, of
using another woman to benefitherself.
It is not the man making thischoice.
It is the women making thischoice for themselves and for
(22:52):
other women who may or may nothave had a choice in the matter.
We do find in Babylonian recordsthat surrogates often entered
into a written contract with theperson they were carrying for
Right, and so there may havebeen a level of choice that we
assume they didn't have,especially with Sarah and Hagar
(23:13):
and you can listen to the wholeepisode.
I go through the laws, all ofit With Sarah and Hagar, we kind
servant women, and Hagar wasthe one who agreed to do the
(23:34):
surgency, and they had some sortof agreement together, which
makes actually, in my opinion, awhole lot more sense of the
story.
Go listen to that episode.
And so the same with Rachel andLeah.
They could have had multiplemaidservants and they could have
entered into an agreement withBilhah and Zilpah, that you were
going to be a surrogate for meand they would at times write
these surrogacy agreements outin contracts and there was
(23:57):
protections for the surrogatesand a whole bunch of stuff.
I go through it in the Sarahand Hagar episode.
So I don't think it was Jacob'slust because he had two wives.
His hands were full.
The wives gave him two morewives, secondary concubine wives
but it was because the womanhad charge of reproduction and
(24:20):
it was a woman's job to providean heir.
Because again, we're dealingwith household dynamics.
If you're going to have ahousehold that continues on, you
have to have children or yourhousehold dies, unlike an
individualistic society where wejust assume every individual is
going to be born, live and die.
You want your household tocontinue.
There isn't supposed to be adeath of a household.
(24:42):
It is supposed to continue, sothat we assume the smallest unit
of society is going to have anend.
They assume the smallest unitof society is supposed to
continue, which also impacts allthe inheritance laws of the Old
Testament.
Somebody said that they reallystruggle with the fact that
inheritance is given to theoldest son, not the oldest child
(25:05):
, potentially a daughter, andthere's some reasons for this?
It's because and there's somereasons for this it's because
(25:33):
again, we're dealing withhousehold, not individuals.
And so the oldest son was givenin Old Testament law, the
Mosaic law, he was given adouble portion.
So let's say the man has foursons, one each.
The oldest son, with his twoportions of the inheritance, has
to care for the parents,unmarried sisters, all of the
things.
He is going to become the nextpatriarch and it is his job to
make sure everybody in thehousehold is taken care of.
And that's his birthright,that's his job.
So this isn't favoritism.
It's the CEO passing off thekeys to the company to the next
(25:56):
person who's supposed to takecare of the company, whereas the
other guys get to start theirown company, if that makes sense
.
So the oldest gets the doubleportion.
What about the daughters?
Why couldn't she?
Well, daughters married outsidethe household and became part
of a new household.
Again, we're not thinkingindividually.
You have households.
So a household has a man, hiswife and children.
(26:17):
Let's say they have two sonsand two daughters.
So in their household the sonsare going to inherit this
household's property, thehousehold in many ways Carol
Myers talks about.
It's likely that it'sconsidered the whole household's
property, not the man's.
We read it because the man isthe face of the household.
And so, like my family, youwould call us the Jenkins.
(26:37):
We have a last name and so youjust talk to us about the
Jenkins family.
In the ancient world theydidn't necessarily have last
names, so we talk aboutAbraham's family.
He's the face of the household,like Jenkins is the face of our
household.
It's the face of the household,like Jenkins is the face of our
household, our overarching lastname.
That groups us all together.
So it's not that the man onlyowned the land, it's that it
(26:57):
belongs to the household.
And so when you're divestingyour property, your sons get it
because they stay in thehousehold.
Again, these laws are abouthousehold dynamics, not
individual dynamics.
The sons stay in the household,so they get to keep the land.
The oldest gets more because hehas to take care of parents,
(27:18):
unmarried siblings, widows, etc.
He has to run the familybusiness.
The daughters when they marryand every woman marries the idea
of staying single as a man orwoman in the ancient world
didn't exist.
Everybody got married.
Being single wasn't an option.
The daughters when they marry,they join a new household.
(27:38):
So, especially under the MosaicCovenant where the land belongs
to specific tribes and familiesfor perpetuity.
Because, again, households aresupposed to last.
They don't end, likeindividuals end.
So you have to keep the landwithin the tribe, within the
household, within that tribe.
(27:58):
So if you're of the tribe ofJudah and you marry your
daughter to the tribe of Simeon,which is perfectly fine to do
you can't give some of Judah'sland to the tribe of Simeon.
It just doesn't work that way.
Because she transfers to thenew household, she, as the
individual, is now part of a newgroup because, again, they're
not thinking on the individuallevel, they're thinking on the
(28:19):
group level.
So she goes to the newhousehold.
Now there would be dowries,there would be bride prices, and
they're not buying, sellinglike cows, dowries.
Bride prices are we can affordto take care of your daughter
and we're going to make kinshipties between our families, and
then dowries are she needs tohave money in case you fools or
(28:41):
jerks, and we are choosing toinvest in your family unit.
It's kind of like giving amarried couple a down payment on
their business, like Jack andJill want to get married and
they want to dig wells.
We'll just go with the Jack andJill.
They want to dig wells.
That's what they want to do.
They want to have this wellbusiness.
So at their wedding, both oftheir families pitch in and say
(29:03):
we're going to give you $30,000to start your well business.
Think about dowries and brideprices more about business
investments into a couplestarting a business, because
your household and your businessare completely combined.
There is no separate familyversus economy.
In the ancient world, economyand family are two sides of the
(29:24):
same coin.
And so bride price and thosethings they're not buying
selling Give me 30 shekels forthe cow, give me 40 for your
daughter.
It's usually more.
We're investing in this couple,for their future, so that they
can have sheep, they can havegoats, they can have the things
they need to start their familybusiness sustenance, agrarian
(29:45):
farming kind of deal.
So women didn't get inheritancebecause you have to keep it with
the household per the law andbecause when they got married
they went to a new household.
It doesn't seem fair to usbecause we think individually.
I as a woman should get thesame inheritance as my brother
does, because we're individualand my parents' inheritance
(30:08):
would be an individual thing forus, individual children and
it's their individual propertythat they have, separate from
their parents and mygrandparents, etc.
The ancient world.
Again, we're talking households, not individuals.
So that is a lot of backgroundon these questions.
(30:30):
I am going to end our episodethere.
I have a few more, but I just Ihope these sorts of
interactions are helpful to youto just understand the law and
the Old Testament and what isgoing on, because there's so
much that sometimes just doesn'tmake sense.
You read it and you're likethat's not fair, that doesn't
(30:51):
seem right.
Well, when you understand theculture, you don't have to like
it.
I'm not saying you have to likeit.
My goal is to make it makesense.
If you understand the culture,it at least makes sense.
Maybe there's still a bettersolution.
A lot of the marriage examplesfrom the patriarchs are ick.
Oh, I did say I was going totalk about Tamar briefly and I
(31:13):
want to do that before we close.
So the question came in wasTamar manipulating Judah?
I was taught that she was.
This is common.
She does trick him.
She gets pregnant by him.
Real quick recap for those whoare like oh, I can't place Tamar
Judah had three sons.
His oldest son married Tamarand the text very simply says he
was evil and God killed himDone, okay.
(31:34):
So we have the concept ofleverant marriage, and I will do
a whole episode on this.
So I'm going to go really fast.
We have the concept of leverantmarriage because, again, two
households, when they join acouple together in marriage,
both households are saying wetake on the obligation to make
sure this woman has children,because reproduction is the
matriarch's, the woman's roleand it is her lifeline to the
future.
There are no 401ks, there areno retirements.
(31:57):
She cannot exist outside of ahousehold.
Nobody can, not even men, butespecially women.
And so the families areagreeing we are going to make
sure she has children, becausethat is what she needs to
survive in our culture.
And so that's where leverantmarriage comes in, because the
family takes on the obligationfor that bride to have children.
Now her husband is supposed toget that done.
(32:18):
That is the way it's supposedto happen.
And if he stays alive and theydon't have children, they
generally blame it on the woman,which was not fair, but it's
the way it was.
We know men can be infertile aswell, but I digress.
So, anyway, but it's the way itwas.
We know men can be infertile aswell, but I digress, so anyway.
Judah marries his oldest son toTamar.
That means his family has takenon the responsibility to make
(32:39):
sure she has a son, a child.
God kills his oldest sonbecause he's evil.
So Judah marries Tamar to hissecond son, who may have had
other wives, we don't know.
That guy decides not to get herpregnant.
He sexually uses her and thenejaculates on the floor and God
says I'm not having that andkills him.
Great Now Moses has lost twomen, two sons, in marriage to
(32:59):
Tamar.
He tells Tamar I will marry youto the youngest son when he's
old enough to be married.
Evidently he was too young atthe time.
Go back and live with yourparents until he's old enough.
Tamar says okay, that's fair,with your parents until he's old
enough.
Tamar says okay, that's fair,he is a kid, I'll go back.
So she goes back.
Kid grows up.
Judah does not fulfill hispromise.
He's like she's a black widow.
I've lost two boys to heralready.
(33:20):
I'm not doing it.
Tamar is sitting there going.
You are not fulfilling yourfamily obligations to me Because
when I married your oldest son,your whole household took on an
obligation to make sure I hadchildren.
You are dropping the ball.
You owe me a sexualreproductive obligation and so,
(33:43):
because he's not doing what hewas supposed to do, she deceives
him and she dresses as aprostitute and he goes and
visits a prostitute poor formand she basically takes the
ancient equivalent of hisdriver's license and social
security card as collateral forthe payment he promises her.
And they do the deed and shegets pregnant and she goes back
(34:05):
to her parents' house likenothing ever happened.
And then neighbors are all likeJudah Tamar is pregnant, and it
wasn't your kid, oh no.
And Judah's like this is bad,she has dishonored my family,
she's dishonored us all.
I'm gonna deal with her becausehe has the right to do that.
She's part of his household,even though she's not living
(34:25):
there, and so he's gonna enactpunishment upon her for getting
pregnant from someone not in hishousehold, because, again, we
have to keep reproduction andeverything in the household.
And then she's like well, theman who got me pregnant here's a
driver's license, socialsecurity card.
He's like oh shoot, that was me.
And then he says she was morerighteous than I Because she was
(34:49):
the one who understood andupheld the familial reproduction
commitments that were made ather wedding and he dropped the
ball and he publicly owned it.
So was she manipulating Judah?
Not really.
She was using a creativeworkaround to hold him to his
commitments.
Now it was his son, not him,who was supposed to, but God
(35:10):
used that anyway and she becomespart of the line of Jesus.
So, but hopefully, as we'vetalked through all those other
things, hopefully even the storyof Tamar makes a lot more sense
when you understand a lot ofthese background pieces of
information.
I'm going to close our episodehere.
It's gone a little long, but Ireally hope this was fun for you
.
I would like to do more ofthese.
(35:32):
Let me know your feedback.
You can send me an email, youcan send me a DM, you can talk
on Discord if you're a member ofmy Patreon.
But I can't wait to dive intoall of these women and all of
these situations in more depthand detail and give you laws and
all of the things at a laterpoint.
But as we enter into summer, Ihope the Lord will bless you and
(35:52):
keep you and make his faceshine upon you and give you rest
.
Have a great day.
Welcome back to the we who Thirst podcast.
This episode is going to be alittle bit different.
I've had a couple requests todo a podcast episode.
That's kind of like what I doon my Instagram stories.
So if you don't follow me onInstagram, I do ask me anything.
I will talk about random topicsthat are on my mind and I do
this without a lot ofpreparation in the moment, like
(00:24):
I don't study for that topic andthen talk about it.
I just take all the knowledgeI've accumulated and we discuss,
and so I have collected aseries of questions about the
Old Testament law, thepatriarchs, marriage dynamics,
family dynamics, and we're goingto talk through those today.
Some of these questions, I willadmit up front, need more
research and I'll probably do awhole episode on certain things
(00:45):
by themselves, but for todaywe're just going to go and we're
going to start talking throughthese questions to give us a
foundation and I think it'lljust be a really fun
conversation.
So these are questions thatcame in on Instagram in my
stories through one of thequestion boxes or a couple
different question boxes, butthe first one I think and I've
(01:05):
gotten lots of variations ofthis particular question
throughout the years and theperson wrote why doesn't God
tell the patriarchs toprioritize treating women well?
I insert a variation on this inmy stories the other day why
doesn't the Mosaic Law gofarther?
Doesn't the Mosaic Law gofarther?
(01:30):
Why doesn't it give women morerights?
Why doesn't it do all of thesethings?
And so I want to take a stepback before we talk about Mosaic
Law, the patriarchs, any of it,and just kind of hone in on
some of our assumptions that wecan bring to the text without
realizing it.
We have things that are part ofour modern culture that the
ancient person, moses, thehearers of the Mosaic law,
(01:51):
ancient Israel, pretty much theentire Old Testament didn't even
have as a culture.
These were concepts that werecompletely new.
They had zero idea these thingscould even exist.
They had zero idea these thingscould even exist.
So sometimes we come to thetext going why doesn't this text
give humans freedom or point tothings that are a high value in
(02:13):
my culture, when the idea ofthat didn't even exist in
ancient culture?
Jessica, what are you talkingabout?
Let me explain.
So one thing is, since it was,why didn't God tell the
patriarchs to prioritizetreating women well?
That was the question.
One thing that the ancientsdidn't have necessarily was the
real concept of human rights.
(02:34):
If you look at the ancientcultures, they were in every way
, in many ways barbaric thekings and rulers of city states
or large empires like Assyria,babylon, egypt.
They would just brutallytorture people and murder people
and do whatever they wanted tokeep their power.
The idea of human rights is aJudeo-Christian concept that
(03:00):
came apart partly because of thetheological concepts that
started in the Mosaic Law anddeveloped throughout Scripture.
So when we look at the MosaicLaw, which is the beginning of
that concept of human rights inmany ways, and you wonder why
doesn't it spell out the fullextent of human rights that we
would like to see?
It's because it's the beginningand God is working his people
(03:22):
baby steps towards how he wantshumans to treat each other.
But the Mosaic law is not theperfect encapsulation of a
perfect society.
We see Jesus even admit this.
I believe it's Mark 7.
I might have the referencewrong on that, I'm not looking
things up.
But when Jesus is talking withthe Pharisees and they ask about
(03:43):
divorce, like why did Moses saywe could divorce our wives?
And Jesus says Moses allowedyou to divorce your wives
because of the hardness of yourheart.
So Jesus in the New Testamentand at least Matthew and Mark
freely admits that the Mosaiclaw is not the actual laws.
The commands of the Mosaic lawis not how far God actually
(04:07):
wants to go.
Moses allowed no-fault divorcefor the men.
They could just decide youburnt my toast, you're out of
here, I'm going to marry someoneelse.
And Jesus says that wasn'tGod's design, that's not God's
will.
Jesus says the Mosaic law is notan encapsulation of a perfect
society, it is not the end goal.
(04:30):
And so when we read the Mosaiclaw, when we look at the lives
of the patriarchs, we have tounderstand that this is not
where God is trying to put us atthe end.
This is the beginning.
This is your crawling toddlerwho's trying to take their first
steps.
And they keep falling on theirlittle diaper over and over and
over and over again.
And you, as a parent, you pickthem up and you encourage them
(04:50):
and you say we can do this, takeanother step.
That is what the Mosaic Law is.
It is there to help us realizewe're falling on our diaper.
It is there to help us realizewe need a hand to hold on to
because we can't walk yet I needto hold daddy's hand.
That it is.
It is as Paul says.
It is a tutor, it is aneducator, it is a helper.
(05:13):
It is not a perfect set of lawsand commands for a perfect
society.
God does not Scripture lay out ablueprint for a perfect society
.
Scripture talks about how ithas everything we need for life
and godliness.
So we have to separatesanctification from society.
(05:35):
Scripture teaches us what weneed to know to be sanctified,
to become like Jesus.
The Holy Spirit works withScripture to pull those things
together, but it does not.
Its purpose has never been.
This is how you order a perfectsociety.
So if you are looking forscripture to tell you how to
order society corporately, itdoesn't do that.
(05:57):
It talks about holiness and itcan give you idea what a holy
society could look like.
But different culturalparadigms have different ways of
going about this.
So why doesn't God tell thepatriarchs to prioritize
treating women well?
They didn't necessarily have theconcept of human rights.
To be like, they're human, youhave to treat them well.
(06:17):
They're equally human to you.
That wasn't like a concept thatthey were thinking about.
Human rights abuses didn't likethat concept that they were
thinking about.
Human rights abuses didn't likethat concept they didn't have.
Another concept they didn't havein the Old Testament was a
strong concept of self or theindividual.
Now that's going to soundshocking because we are a very
individualistic society and oursense of self is completely
(06:42):
central to our personal identity.
That is everything in ourculture points us back to.
Who am I, who is myself?
In our society and in ourgovernment, the self, the
individual person, is consideredthe smallest unit of society.
So a family is made up ofindividual people.
For me it's my husband, me andmy two kids.
(07:03):
We are four individual people.
There are four individual, tinyunits in our family, and then a
city is made up of a bunch ofindividuals and states and
countries are all made up ofindividuals.
That is a post-enlightenmentconcept In the ancient world,
especially in the Old Testament.
The smallest unit of society isnot the individual, it is the
(07:26):
household, and household couldrange in size.
An average peasant household isgoing to be 8 to 15 people and
this could be grandparents,parents, children, grandchildren
.
It could have three or fourgenerations in it.
It could be 8 to 15 people, anexceptionally wealthy household
like Abraham and Sarah.
It talks about how Abraham had315 or 50 or something like that
(07:47):
over 300 fighting men born inhis household.
Obviously they're not allAbraham's children, because at
this point he doesn't even havechildren of his own, but his
household is.
If all those 300 plus men aremarried and have 1.5 children,
abraham's household is over athousand people and yet that is
(08:09):
considered the smallest unit insociety.
For an average family it's 8 to15.
For Abraham it was over athousand, which go listen to my
episode on Hagar and Sarah.
That household dynamic makestheir story make a lot more
sense.
So when you consider OldTestament law, you have to
consider that by and large, lawsare oriented to protect the
(08:34):
smallest unit of society, whichis the household, not
necessarily the individual.
There are laws that protectindividuals, but overall we're
trying to protect the smallestunit of society In our day,
that's the individual.
In the ancient world it was ahousehold.
So there's a lot of laws thatrub us wrong, especially when it
comes to women, because it'slike hey, she has rights.
(08:55):
Well, a, human rights didn'treally exist.
And B, we're considering thegood of the household, not
necessarily the good of theindividual.
You don't have to love that,you don't have to love that, you
don't have to like that,especially from our individual
self-culture, but you have tounderstand this is the way, as
far as I understand, the ancientworld worked, so their laws are
going to be much more focusedon household dynamics and needs,
(09:18):
not necessarily the individual.
This even plays out with God'scontinued care for the widow and
the orphan, because these arepeople who's outside a household
or they make up a household bythemselves, and so God's like we
got to care for these manydisenfranchised, impoverished
households.
Even if it's just one or twopeople, they need to be brought
(09:40):
in and they need to be cared for, and that is part of my concern
.
So I want to lay out thesefoundational concepts because
they are really important.
We today, even if you'relistening and you believe that
feminism is bad and it's notgood, all these things, the way
it's often used in evangelicalcircles even if you believe that
(10:03):
the benefits of feminism modernday feminism first wave, second
wave, third wave, fourth wave,whatever wave it impacts how we
view women and how we viewsociety Women having a vote in
elections, women being able toget their own checking accounts,
women being financiallyindependent from a man, from a
(10:24):
household, as an individual.
These are modern concepts thatcome because of feminism.
The ancient world didn't havefeminism.
They didn't even really see theindividual as a separate unit.
So they didn't have feminismand democracy.
If we talk about having a votedemocracy.
If I'm correct, the Greeks kindof came up with democracy, at
(10:48):
least as far as we know, atleast on a broad scale, and that
was in the 300s BC.
Moses, and it depends when youthink the Mosaic Law was written
.
Earliest dates for Moses'Mosaic Law would be like 1500 BC
.
Later dates if you believe itwas done during the Persian
period, during the exile orduring the kingdom, it could be
(11:10):
as late as 400 or 500 BC, nomatter where you put it, it
happens pre-invention ofdemocracy.
So you're dealing with aculture that doesn't necessarily
, culture-wise, believe in humanrights.
God is planting the seeds ofhuman rights because in many
ways that is a Judeo-Christianconcept that even atheists have
(11:32):
benefited from, fromChristianity.
So we're pre-democracy, we arepre-human rights, we are pre way
pre, because it's theenlightenment that really the I
think, therefore, I amphilosophical idea for the
individual person.
They are communal, they thinkin household terms, they think
in family terms, large tribeterms.
(11:53):
So the smallest unit of thesociety is the household.
Then you have your tribe, whichis made up of households, et
cetera, and it expands out fromthere.
So why doesn't God tell thepatriarchs to prioritize
treating women well?
He does lay out concepts ofcharacter, kindness, justice,
mercy that you are supposed touse in all of your relationships
(12:17):
, but the law is focused onhouseholds, not the individual
relationships nearly as much.
And if you interpret the MosaicLaw through that lens, it will
make so much more sense andyou'll see how God is actually
working continually in theMosaic Law to benefit women.
But he doesn't necessarilydirectly, even though we would
(12:39):
like him to be like.
Treat women well, give themfreedom, give them a right to
vote, give them a right to ownproperty, all of those things
Right.
Those are new concepts that theancient world, when the Mosaic
law was written, didn'tnecessarily have.
So we're wanting to place amodern concept into the ancient
world and it just can't workthat way.
So we can talk more about allof that in the future.
(13:03):
But I'll go on to the nextquestion.
The next question is didAbraham and Sarah separate after
Isaac's not sacrifice?
We do not know.
I don't necessarily think theydid.
We kind of see them together,though I know there are scholars
who claim that they separated,even one who even says Abraham
(13:23):
went back to Hagar after thesacrifice.
The text doesn't tell us.
It's all conjecture.
I don't love going downconjecture rabbit trail so we
don't know.
Alongside that is a questionabout Moses and Zipporah.
Moses sends Zipporah away beforethe exodus.
(13:43):
Does he potentially marrysomeone else?
We do know Moses marries asecond wife who is Cushite, and
that's when Miriam and Aaron getall upset because he married
this other woman who is Cushite,and that's when Miriam and
Aaron get all upset because hemarried this other woman.
Some people think that mighthave been Zipporah, described a
different way.
I haven't looked into it enoughto have a hard and fast.
(14:04):
I've always read it as separatewomen.
Moses does send Zipporah awaybefore the Exodus.
I have always read and again Iwant to dive into this more
deeply I've always read thatmore just as a protective
husband.
He and Zipporah and their boysgo to Egypt and then things
start getting heated withPharaoh and Moses sends her back
to her dad, which I couldtotally see my husband doing.
He's like this is gettingdangerous.
I'm going to send you back toyour daddy where you're safe.
(14:25):
And then daddy brings her backto him once they have exited
Egypt him once they have exitedEgypt.
So I've always just read that.
As I need to keep this womanand my kids safe, I'm going to
put them out of harm's way whileI do my prophetic shake up the
world thing, but I don't wantthem to get caught in the
crossfire or have to go throughall these plagues.
That's how I read it.
(14:45):
I could be wrong.
I love Zipporah, so itdefinitely deserves a deeper
dive.
Um, it definitely does.
I love Zipporah, so itdefinitely deserves a deeper
dive.
So why?
Um?
I got a lot of questions on likepolygamy and Jacob's wives and
all of those things.
Questions about, um, sarah andTamar.
I'm just going to refer you tothat episode.
(15:06):
I went through Sarah and Tamarin depth with laws and all sorts
of things.
Those are excellent episodes.
Go listen to those.
I think they're very early on,so you'll have to scroll all the
way back to the beginning ofthe podcast.
But I'm not going to talk aboutSarah and Hagar today, not
Tamar.
Sarah and Hagar you can headback to listen to that.
I do want to do a whole episodeon Tamar.
(15:29):
There's a question about her.
I'll answer it briefly.
We will be having a wholeepisode on Tamar because she's
amazing.
So polygamy Some peoplementioned Jacob, having two
sisters as wives and how ickythat is.
One thing to keep in mind withthe Old Testament patriarchs is
that they are descriptive, notprescriptive.
(15:49):
God is not spelling out this isthe type of marriage you should
have.
In fact, I think a lot of thepatriarch's marriage
relationships actually arecautionary tales against
polygamy and against having twowives that are sisters.
I also believe and again Ididn't look it up, but I
remember there being a passagethat says you cannot sleep with
(16:11):
your wife's sister.
So the Mosaic law.
Later, when Moses writes,hundreds of years after Jacob,
he says you can't even do thisLike this is an illegal
relationship.
So first Genesis shows us howhaving two wives that are
sisters is a bad idea.
And then Moses later on saysand it's against the law.
(16:33):
So we get the livingillustration bad idea.
And then law you may not do it.
So scripture often shows usthings that are not working to
help us realize that they arenot good ideas.
Next question is surrogacy.
Again, I talk about that in theSarah and Hagar episode quite
(16:54):
frequently, but one question Ithought was really good was
Jacob's concubines.
Why did Jacob take theconcubines, since he had so many
children with Leah?
Was it lust, something else?
This is a fantastic questionand it shows our assumptions,
which I've had for years.
Reading into these texts, I seea lot of people and I've heard
(17:16):
sermons talking about Abrahamand Hagar or Jacob and Zilpah
and Bilhah, I believe, are theirnames talking about his
concubines.
Talking about his concubinesthat it was the man's lust.
(17:38):
The man is lustful.
This is why he's takingconcubines and I want to gently
push back on that, because wedon't necessarily know whether
there's lust involved and sowe're reading motives into their
hearts.
But as I've studied OldTestament marriage dynamics and
I have a whole lecture on thison YouTube, I'll try to put a
link in the show notes.
You can go watch that and itbreaks down how a heterarchical
(18:01):
household works in Old Testament.
But we often come to OldTestament texts assuming a
hierarchy where men rule women,men own women.
That's not really how it worked.
From my research in the OldTestament, if there was a
hierarchy in the household, itis an age-based hierarchy, not a
(18:23):
gender-based hierarchy in thehousehold.
I'm not talking about outside,I'm talking about in the
household.
It's an age-based.
So you have your patriarch,which is your oldest male, and
you have your matriarch, whichis the oldest female.
They are each kind ofresponsible for certain areas in
the household and they worktogether kind of concurrently.
Push comes to shove, heprobably has the final say, but
(18:46):
they work concurrently and thereare times she's going to have
the final say and then they arein charge of the men and women
under them in their respectiveareas.
And what we often don't realize,partly because of our purity
culture, complementarianevangelical mindset, especially
evangelical sex duty mindsets,where it's like women, you have
to give sex to your husbands oryou're in sin, that kind of vibe
(19:09):
.
We come to the text with thoseassumptions in our mind, just
like we have feminism anddemocracy and human rights and
individualism in our brains aspre-assumptions.
So we read about the concubinesand we assume that the men are
ruling all the women and weassume that it's a lustful
action because men have thisinsatiable need for sex, when
(19:29):
actually the Old Testament sayssex is a duty that the husband
owes his wife.
The Old Testament doesn't saywomen ever that I recall owe sex
to men.
It's something the man owes tohis wife.
It is his husbandly dutytowards her, and I've even
interacted with Jewish peoplewho are like they still talk
about how the husband owessexual relations to the wife.
It is not the duty, does notreverse.
(19:51):
That is an evangelical purityculture concept that is twisted
scripture and does notunderstand the Old Testament.
So could Abraham and Jacob hadsome lust?
Sure, they are human.
Do we know that they had lust?
The text does not tell us.
And what we do not talk about inthe surrogacy passages is that
(20:13):
one of the things the matriarchis in charge of is reproduction.
That is the matriarch's domain.
Okay, the husband owes thewomen sexual relations, a child.
That is his duty to her and thematriarch is in charge of this.
This is why we see Rachel andLeah.
(20:33):
Leah says I'm going to buy fromRachel because Rachel's the
beloved.
So Leah comes up and says I'mgoing to buy from you.
I'm going to barter with youthat I get to have sex with our
husband tonight and I'm going togive you these mandrakes and
Rachel's like okay, I accept themandrakes, you may have sex
with the husband.
The women are bartering for whogets to sleep with the man,
(20:55):
because the women were in chargeof the reproduction.
Could a man force his way ontoa woman and do nasty things?
Of course it happens all thetime.
Men have done that allthroughout history.
So we're not saying thatdoesn't happen, but in the
(21:16):
structure the matriarch is theone kind of in charge to make
sure this is happening.
And so when it comes tosurrogacy, it is not the husband
who is bringing in thesesurrogates.
Neither Abraham or Jacob say,hmm, I think I should get a
surrogate for my wife.
No, it is the women saying, forwhatever reason.
(21:47):
And with Jacob well, with bothSarah and Jacob's wives it's the
women saying I'm not havingchildren, so I'm going to give
my husband a surrogate andinform him he now has another
wife Because, again,reproduction is the matriarch's
role.
And with Rachel and Leah it'stricky because you don't have a
clear matriarch.
So that structure gets realfishy because they are sister
wives.
They are kind of equal wives.
You don't necessarily havefirst wife, second wife, dynamic
, older wife, younger wife.
You have sister wives and sothey butt heads constantly.
(22:08):
You have the surrogacy thingand the surrogatesrogates Bilhah
and Zilpah.
They are clearly secondarywives.
They are wives, they are.
They talk about them using thesame types of language that they
do, rachel and Leah.
But it was Rachel who realizedshe couldn't have children, so
she informed Jacob that he's nowsleeping with her maidservant
so that Rachel could havechildren through her maidservant
(22:31):
.
Leah stops having children andthen does the same thing with
her maidservant, and so this isa woman's way, actually, of
using another woman to benefitherself.
It is not the man making thischoice.
It is the women making thischoice for themselves and for
(22:52):
other women who may or may nothave had a choice in the matter.
We do find in Babylonian recordsthat surrogates often entered
into a written contract with theperson they were carrying for
Right, and so there may havebeen a level of choice that we
assume they didn't have,especially with Sarah and Hagar
(23:13):
and you can listen to the wholeepisode.
I go through the laws, all ofit With Sarah and Hagar, we kind
servant women, and Hagar wasthe one who agreed to do the
(23:34):
surgency, and they had some sortof agreement together, which
makes actually, in my opinion, awhole lot more sense of the
story.
Go listen to that episode.
And so the same with Rachel andLeah.
They could have had multiplemaidservants and they could have
entered into an agreement withBilhah and Zilpah, that you were
going to be a surrogate for meand they would at times write
these surrogacy agreements outin contracts and there was
(23:57):
protections for the surrogatesand a whole bunch of stuff.
I go through it in the Sarahand Hagar episode.
So I don't think it was Jacob'slust because he had two wives.
His hands were full.
The wives gave him two morewives, secondary concubine wives
but it was because the womanhad charge of reproduction and
(24:20):
it was a woman's job to providean heir.
Because again, we're dealingwith household dynamics.
If you're going to have ahousehold that continues on, you
have to have children or yourhousehold dies, unlike an
individualistic society where wejust assume every individual is
going to be born, live and die.
You want your household tocontinue.
There isn't supposed to be adeath of a household.
(24:42):
It is supposed to continue, sothat we assume the smallest unit
of society is going to have anend.
They assume the smallest unitof society is supposed to
continue, which also impacts allthe inheritance laws of the Old
Testament.
Somebody said that they reallystruggle with the fact that
inheritance is given to theoldest son, not the oldest child
(25:05):
, potentially a daughter, andthere's some reasons for this?
It's because and there's somereasons for this it's because
(25:33):
again, we're dealing withhousehold, not individuals.
And so the oldest son was givenin Old Testament law, the
Mosaic law, he was given adouble portion.
So let's say the man has foursons, one each.
The oldest son, with his twoportions of the inheritance, has
to care for the parents,unmarried sisters, all of the
things.
He is going to become the nextpatriarch and it is his job to
make sure everybody in thehousehold is taken care of.
And that's his birthright,that's his job.
So this isn't favoritism.
It's the CEO passing off thekeys to the company to the next
(25:56):
person who's supposed to takecare of the company, whereas the
other guys get to start theirown company, if that makes sense
.
So the oldest gets the doubleportion.
What about the daughters?
Why couldn't she?
Well, daughters married outsidethe household and became part
of a new household.
Again, we're not thinkingindividually.
You have households.
So a household has a man, hiswife and children.
(26:17):
Let's say they have two sonsand two daughters.
So in their household the sonsare going to inherit this
household's property, thehousehold in many ways Carol
Myers talks about.
It's likely that it'sconsidered the whole household's
property, not the man's.
We read it because the man isthe face of the household.
And so, like my family, youwould call us the Jenkins.
(26:37):
We have a last name and so youjust talk to us about the
Jenkins family.
In the ancient world theydidn't necessarily have last
names, so we talk aboutAbraham's family.
He's the face of the household,like Jenkins is the face of our
household.
It's the face of the household,like Jenkins is the face of our
household, our overarching lastname.
That groups us all together.
So it's not that the man onlyowned the land, it's that it
(26:57):
belongs to the household.
And so when you're divestingyour property, your sons get it
because they stay in thehousehold.
Again, these laws are abouthousehold dynamics, not
individual dynamics.
The sons stay in the household,so they get to keep the land.
The oldest gets more because hehas to take care of parents,
(27:18):
unmarried siblings, widows, etc.
He has to run the familybusiness.
The daughters when they marryand every woman marries the idea
of staying single as a man orwoman in the ancient world
didn't exist.
Everybody got married.
Being single wasn't an option.
The daughters when they marry,they join a new household.
(27:38):
So, especially under the MosaicCovenant where the land belongs
to specific tribes and familiesfor perpetuity.
Because, again, households aresupposed to last.
They don't end, likeindividuals end.
So you have to keep the landwithin the tribe, within the
household, within that tribe.
(27:58):
So if you're of the tribe ofJudah and you marry your
daughter to the tribe of Simeon,which is perfectly fine to do
you can't give some of Judah'sland to the tribe of Simeon.
It just doesn't work that way.
Because she transfers to thenew household, she, as the
individual, is now part of a newgroup because, again, they're
not thinking on the individuallevel, they're thinking on the
(28:19):
group level.
So she goes to the newhousehold.
Now there would be dowries,there would be bride prices, and
they're not buying, sellinglike cows, dowries.
Bride prices are we can affordto take care of your daughter
and we're going to make kinshipties between our families, and
then dowries are she needs tohave money in case you fools or
(28:41):
jerks, and we are choosing toinvest in your family unit.
It's kind of like giving amarried couple a down payment on
their business, like Jack andJill want to get married and
they want to dig wells.
We'll just go with the Jack andJill.
They want to dig wells.
That's what they want to do.
They want to have this wellbusiness.
So at their wedding, both oftheir families pitch in and say
(29:03):
we're going to give you $30,000to start your well business.
Think about dowries and brideprices more about business
investments into a couplestarting a business, because
your household and your businessare completely combined.
There is no separate familyversus economy.
In the ancient world, economyand family are two sides of the
(29:24):
same coin.
And so bride price and thosethings they're not buying
selling Give me 30 shekels forthe cow, give me 40 for your
daughter.
It's usually more.
We're investing in this couple,for their future, so that they
can have sheep, they can havegoats, they can have the things
they need to start their familybusiness sustenance, agrarian
(29:45):
farming kind of deal.
So women didn't get inheritancebecause you have to keep it with
the household per the law andbecause when they got married
they went to a new household.
It doesn't seem fair to usbecause we think individually.
I as a woman should get thesame inheritance as my brother
does, because we're individualand my parents' inheritance
(30:08):
would be an individual thing forus, individual children and
it's their individual propertythat they have, separate from
their parents and mygrandparents, etc.
The ancient world.
Again, we're talking households, not individuals.
So that is a lot of backgroundon these questions.
(30:30):
I am going to end our episodethere.
I have a few more, but I just Ihope these sorts of
interactions are helpful to youto just understand the law and
the Old Testament and what isgoing on, because there's so
much that sometimes just doesn'tmake sense.
You read it and you're likethat's not fair, that doesn't
(30:51):
seem right.
Well, when you understand theculture, you don't have to like
it.
I'm not saying you have to likeit.
My goal is to make it makesense.
If you understand the culture,it at least makes sense.
Maybe there's still a bettersolution.
A lot of the marriage examplesfrom the patriarchs are ick.
Oh, I did say I was going totalk about Tamar briefly and I
(31:13):
want to do that before we close.
So the question came in wasTamar manipulating Judah?
I was taught that she was.
This is common.
She does trick him.
She gets pregnant by him.
Real quick recap for those whoare like oh, I can't place Tamar
Judah had three sons.
His oldest son married Tamarand the text very simply says he
was evil and God killed himDone, okay.
(31:34):
So we have the concept ofleverant marriage, and I will do
a whole episode on this.
So I'm going to go really fast.
We have the concept of leverantmarriage because, again, two
households, when they join acouple together in marriage,
both households are saying wetake on the obligation to make
sure this woman has children,because reproduction is the
matriarch's, the woman's roleand it is her lifeline to the
future.
There are no 401ks, there areno retirements.
(31:57):
She cannot exist outside of ahousehold.
Nobody can, not even men, butespecially women.
And so the families areagreeing we are going to make
sure she has children, becausethat is what she needs to
survive in our culture.
And so that's where leverantmarriage comes in, because the
family takes on the obligationfor that bride to have children.
Now her husband is supposed toget that done.
(32:18):
That is the way it's supposedto happen.
And if he stays alive and theydon't have children, they
generally blame it on the woman,which was not fair, but it's
the way it was.
We know men can be infertile aswell, but I digress.
So, anyway, but it's the way itwas.
We know men can be infertile aswell, but I digress, so anyway.
Judah marries his oldest son toTamar.
That means his family has takenon the responsibility to make
(32:39):
sure she has a son, a child.
God kills his oldest sonbecause he's evil.
So Judah marries Tamar to hissecond son, who may have had
other wives, we don't know.
That guy decides not to get herpregnant.
He sexually uses her and thenejaculates on the floor and God
says I'm not having that andkills him.
Great Now Moses has lost twomen, two sons, in marriage to
(32:59):
Tamar.
He tells Tamar I will marry youto the youngest son when he's
old enough to be married.
Evidently he was too young atthe time.
Go back and live with yourparents until he's old enough.
Tamar says okay, that's fair,with your parents until he's old
enough.
Tamar says okay, that's fair,he is a kid, I'll go back.
So she goes back.
Kid grows up.
Judah does not fulfill hispromise.
He's like she's a black widow.
I've lost two boys to heralready.
(33:20):
I'm not doing it.
Tamar is sitting there going.
You are not fulfilling yourfamily obligations to me Because
when I married your oldest son,your whole household took on an
obligation to make sure I hadchildren.
You are dropping the ball.
You owe me a sexualreproductive obligation and so,
(33:43):
because he's not doing what hewas supposed to do, she deceives
him and she dresses as aprostitute and he goes and
visits a prostitute poor formand she basically takes the
ancient equivalent of hisdriver's license and social
security card as collateral forthe payment he promises her.
And they do the deed and shegets pregnant and she goes back
(34:05):
to her parents' house likenothing ever happened.
And then neighbors are all likeJudah Tamar is pregnant, and it
wasn't your kid, oh no.
And Judah's like this is bad,she has dishonored my family,
she's dishonored us all.
I'm gonna deal with her becausehe has the right to do that.
She's part of his household,even though she's not living
(34:25):
there, and so he's gonna enactpunishment upon her for getting
pregnant from someone not in hishousehold, because, again, we
have to keep reproduction andeverything in the household.
And then she's like well, theman who got me pregnant here's a
driver's license, socialsecurity card.
He's like oh shoot, that was me.
And then he says she was morerighteous than I Because she was
(34:49):
the one who understood andupheld the familial reproduction
commitments that were made ather wedding and he dropped the
ball and he publicly owned it.
So was she manipulating Judah?
Not really.
She was using a creativeworkaround to hold him to his
commitments.
Now it was his son, not him,who was supposed to, but God
(35:10):
used that anyway and she becomespart of the line of Jesus.
So, but hopefully, as we'vetalked through all those other
things, hopefully even the storyof Tamar makes a lot more sense
when you understand a lot ofthese background pieces of
information.
I'm going to close our episodehere.
It's gone a little long, but Ireally hope this was fun for you
.
I would like to do more ofthese.
(35:32):
Let me know your feedback.
You can send me an email, youcan send me a DM, you can talk
on Discord if you're a member ofmy Patreon.
But I can't wait to dive intoall of these women and all of
these situations in more depthand detail and give you laws and
all of the things at a laterpoint.
But as we enter into summer, Ihope the Lord will bless you and
(35:52):
keep you and make his faceshine upon you and give you rest
.
Have a great day.
Popular Podcasts
United States of Kennedy
United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com