I’m sorry if this has been asked before and I missed it.
If this is the wrong place to ask I guess it will get moved.
I don’t really want a discussion, although it could turn into one.
I really just want a factual answer.
I know it talks of men having multiple wives and concubines.
I know it says that when a man dies his widow is supposed to marry his brother.
Is there any place that defines marriage as one man and one woman?
I am so tired of arguing with people who say the Bible defines it as such and they tell me that since I am not Christian I don’t know what I am talking about.
I’m not a bible expert, so I won’t pretend to know the answer to your question*, but have you considered asking them to show you where it says that?
*but I’m familiar enough with the Bible to know that an explicit definition isn’t there. You have to infer it indirectly from something like And and Eve, not Adam and Steve or Adam and Eve and June and Betsy.
The bible incorporates commonly held interpretations of what words mean. It doesn’t define what an apple is either. It certainly doesn’t describe was circumcize means, it just uses the world you should circumcize your boys. So there was a preexisting defeinition of what marriage means, as marriage has always been between men and women, something the lefties wish they could deny.
But it was also between one man and many women. If you remember, when Isaac wanted to marry Rachel, he was forced to marry her older sister, Leah first, then work some more, and finally marry Rachel. I’d suspect polygamy was allowed for most of human history.
So, any Biblical definition of marriage must include it, and if one wants to go by the Biblical definition, it should be allowed.
What the hell? If my husband dies, I’m supposed to marry his brother? His gay brother? Would that mean I’d have to marry my husband’s gay brother’s gay husband as well?
Sorry, sahirrhee, I know you’re not making this claim. Apologies for the hijack; the silliness of such a “law” drove me temporarily insane :D.
It’s not a silly law at all, in context. It provides a mechanism which forces the dead husband’s family to provide for his childless widow, who otherwise would probably have been relegated to a pretty crappy position in a patriarchal society.
If that wiki entry is accurate, then explain what happened to Onan who was punished for not giving his widowed sister-in-law a child. Certainly sounds like he did not have an opt-out clause.
Since your new, you might want to take some time to read the registration agreement and the rules for the various forums. The mods are very strict about keeping politics out of this forum.
The opt-out clause is explicitly discussed in the Bible, so it doesn’t really seem to be a point of debate:
The Onan story portrays him as marrying his brother’s widow because his father (Judah) told him to. It would seem likely that he or Judah wanted to avoid the social disgrace resulting from not going through with the marriage. Then, although he publicly married her, he privately refused to father a child who would carry on his brother’s name.
This isn’t exactly the question, but since we’re looking for a defining of marriage, Matthew 19 goes on define it a little further. It says that divorce is forbidden and equates to adultery. Jesus was pretty big on the divorce=adultery topic and it appears several times in the Bible. Except in rare circumstances, marriage is for life and divorce is a sin, and not only would it get you stoned (the painful kind) in the old testament, the Bible says that adulterers can’t get into heaven either.
So, people using the bible to define marriage put themselves in a corner question. First, there’s a good chance they’re divorced or married to a divorcee and are going to hell right alongside the homosexuals anyway and second, why aren’t they fighting against the million divorces per year as much as they are against the relatively few gays that want to get married? I’ve always thought it would be logically difficult to be on that side of the argument.
I am happy not to have to live within that context, and it wasn’t the “law” itself I consider silly but the application of it to modern life. I adore both of my brothers-in-law, but none of us wants me to be married to either of them under any circumstances. And as far as the impregnating :eek: goes, we’re all on the darker side of 50 and I’m missing some parts. What happened under this law to widows who were beyond childbearing age or were unable to bear children?