They insist that it was a marriage like any other marriage, with no sexual ownership, no lower status, and no concubinage problem.

There is no enjoyment, and the line remains open.

She must also be Jewish and convinced of Judaism in order for him to marry her.

Purity and holiness do not change. This is the true God.

This claim collapses under the weight of Jewish law, Christian reference works, the Talmud, and Rashi’s explanation of Deuteronomy 21.

It is apologetic patchwork.

This was permissible in the polygamy system, as concubines were usually taken from slaves and bought for a price, such as Hagar, Bilhah, and Gideon’s concubine.

Sometimes they were girls sold by their fathers, or prisoners of war.

Divorce of a concubine was easier than divorce of a mistress, but her rights were preserved according to Mosaic law.

Concubines were lower than wives.

They were often slaves.

They could be bought.

They could be sold by fathers.

They could be prisoners of war.

The law in Mesopotamia allowed the husband to have intercourse with his female slaves.

In the Assyrian state, the husband could take many concubines in addition to his free wife, and they were subject to the wife.

The children of the concubine had the right to inherit.

The law of Hammurabi stipulated that a concubine who bore children and behaved arrogantly could be treated as a slave, but she could not be sold.

For your info: This scan is used to show that concubinage was connected to ownership, slavery, and sexual access to female slaves. It also explains that concubines existed alongside free wives and had lower status. The key point is that this was not ordinary marriage between two free spouses. It was a lower-status arrangement involving a slave woman or captive woman.

She enjoyed the same rights in the house as the legitimate wife.

Since it was regarded as the highest blessing to have many children, while the greatest curse was childlessness, legitimate wives themselves gave their maids to their husbands, at least in part, for their own barrenness, as in the cases of Sarah and Hagar, Leah and Zilpah, Rachel and Bilhah.

The concubine commanded the same respect and inviolability as the wife; and it was regarded as the deepest dishonor for the man to whom she belonged if hands were laid upon her.

The same encyclopedia later explains that the wife had formal betrothal and marriage contract, while the concubine did not.

According to Jewish law, does a concubine enter into a full marriage contract with her master simply because she is a concubine?

“What is the difference between wives and concubines? R. Judah said in the name of Rav: Wives have ketubbah and kiddushin, concubines have neither.”

Sanhedrin 21a; Maimonides, Yad, Melakhim 4:4

A concubine is not the same as a wife.

A wife has kiddushin and ketubbah.

A concubine, according to the majority reading, has neither.

According to the Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 21a, the difference between a concubine and a legitimate wife was that the latter received a ketubah and her marriage was preceded by a formal betrothal, kiddushin, which was not the case with the former.

Wives receive a marriage contract and betrothal; concubines are taken without a marriage contract and without betrothal.

Concubines were not taken through the same process as wives.

No amount of apologetic decoration changes this.

David had four hundred children in his army, and all of them were sons of beautiful women taken captive from their Gentile homes during war.

Therefore, Tamar was not considered the daughter of David according to halakha.

The Talmudic discussion says Tamar’s mother was a captive woman and Tamar was born before her mother converted.

“When you go out to fight against your enemies and the Lord your God delivers them into your hand, and you take some of them captive,

and you see among the captives a woman beautiful in appearance, and you cling to her and take her as your wife,

then when you bring her into your house, you shall shave her head and trim her nails.

And she shall strip off her captive garments, and shall remain in your house and mourn for her father and mother for a whole month;

and after that you shall go in to her and take her as your wife.

But if you do not delight in her, then you shall let her go for herself.

You shall not sell her for money, nor make her a slave, because you have humbled her.”

But Rashi gives a very different explanation.

She must let them grow, so that she should become repulsive to her captor, to induce him to change his mind about marrying her.

And she shall remove the garment of her captivity:

So that she should not be attractive to her captor, for they are pretty clothes, because Gentile women adorn themselves during wartime in order to seduce others to have relations with them.

And stay in your house:

Upon entering, he will stumble upon her, and upon leaving, he will stumble upon her, see her weeping and see her unsightly appearance — all this, so that she should become despicable to him.

And weep for her father and her mother:

Why is all this necessary?

So that an Israelite woman should be happy, and this Gentile captive woman should be sad-stricken; an Israelite woman should be dressed up, and this one should make herself repulsive.

The shaving of the head and the growing of the nails were not presented as some beautiful conversion ritual.

They were meant to make the captive woman unattractive and repulsive to the Israelite man.

“And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines; and his wives turned his heart away.”

“And David knew that the Lord had established him king over Israel, and that he had exalted his kingdom for the sake of his people Israel.

And David also took concubines and wives from Jerusalem after he came from Hebron; and sons and daughters were born to David.”

“And Gideon had seventy sons coming out of his loins, for he had many wives.

And his concubine who was in Shechem also bore him a son, and he named him Abimelech.”

The sons of Leah: Reuben, Jacob’s firstborn, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun.

The sons of Rachel: Joseph and Benjamin.

The sons of Bilhah, Rachel’s handmaid: Dan and Naphtali.

The sons of Zilpah, Leah’s handmaid: Gad and Asher.

These are the sons of Jacob who were born to him in Padan-aram.

These are the names of the sons of Esau:

Eliphaz, the son of Adah, Esau’s wife, and Reuel, the son of Basemath, Esau’s wife.

And Timna was a concubine of Eliphaz the son of Esau, and she bore Amalek to Eliphaz.

So the missionary claim that a concubine was merely a normal wife is contradicted by the Bible’s own wording.

When you go out to fight against your enemies, and the Lord your God delivers them into your hand, and you take some of them captive,

and one of you sees among the captives a woman beautiful to look at, and his heart is drawn to her and he marries her,

and when he brings her into his house, he shall shave her head and trim her nails,

and strip her of her captive clothing, and she shall remain in his house mourning her father and mother for a month.

After that, he may go in to her and be her husband, and she shall be his wife.

And if he desires not to keep her afterward, he must set her free and not sell her for money or enslave her, because he forced her to sleep with him.

These questions expose the apologetic problem:

The missionary cannot keep calling this “normal marriage” while the text itself speaks in the language of captivity, humiliation, and release.

For your info: This scan states that the slave girl or concubine was not equal to the wife. It explains that the man could buy a woman as a slave girl, but she remained of lower rank. This supports the central argument of the article: biblical concubinage was not ordinary marriage between equal spouses.

Wives are those whom a man marries with a marriage contract, while concubines do not have a marriage contract.

For your info: This scan quotes Rashi’s distinction between wives and concubines. Wives are connected to marriage contract, while concubines lack that contract. This directly refutes the claim that concubines were simply wives like any other wives.

Biblical concubinage was not ordinary marriage.

Christian and Jewish sources admit that concubines were often slaves, bought women, sold girls, or captives of war.

The Talmud explicitly distinguishes wives from concubines: wives have marriage contract and betrothal, while concubines do not.

Encyclopedia Judaica defines the concubine as a woman who cohabits with a man without kiddushin or ketubbah according to the majority reading.

Deuteronomy 21 deals with a captive woman taken after war, brought into the house, made to mourn, and then taken by the captor.

Rashi explains that her appearance was deliberately made repulsive so that the Israelite man might lose desire for her.

The Bible itself repeatedly separates wives from concubines.

Therefore, the claim that biblical concubinage was just pure, ordinary marriage is not scholarship.

It is damage control.