virginity, sex, marriage?

Question

man's bigamy(polygamy) is a common place in the bible. but god apparently opposes the idea. what about concubines? nothing about this practice is mentioned in the bible. nothing about woman's bigamy is mentioned. woman's virginity is important. what about man's virginity? can anyone help?

Answer 1

A man is a virgin also if he is chaste, just as a woman should be. Bigamy is allowed in some circumstances for men when a lot of men have been killed and there is a dearth of men in proportion to women. Bigamy is not allowed for women as the child's father becomes doubtful.

When there are more women than men, then there are four options for the extra women to follow:

The extra women should become spinsters and live their lives alone, as all available men are already taken and married to those women they could marry first.

Become nuns and spend their days in a convent.

Become mistresses of a man you like who is already married.

Become a prostitute and sleep with any man you wish even if he is married.

Lastly, become a second or third wife of a man who already has wives and help in recovering the population back to normal.

Virginity is not required for a woman or a man who has been married before. Chastity is required at all times for both men and women. Chastity is essentially not creating unwanted children out of wedlock.

Sex outside marriage is not allowed, as that leads to children and then you have the predicament of either aborting (killing) the child or abandoning the child if conception takes place and it is decided to keep the baby. The burden of caring for the child falls solely on the mother, which is not fair.

So, the Lord has required that people get married first before they get involved in actions that lead to new life. We are not animals, whose off springs needs are physical only and the time frame is shorter as well, in which case, mothers of these animals can raise the new generation.

In the case of humans it takes a long time for a child to grow and mature and needs not only physical support but mental, social, psychological, financial as well as spiritual support.

Concubines used to be taken when one tribe would attack another tribe and the men folks and women are taken prisoner of the tribe that got defeated. It was never allowed for the religious to attack someone. However, if people attacked them and lost, their males and females were turned into slaves, which were sold to pay for the war damage the attacking tribe caused.

Now that system is gone, so we do not see any concubines. Concubines were also created because of non-payment of taxes by land owners. The king could take the daughters or sons as serfs and concubines. This is how Hagar had become a concubine of the Pharoah, who later presented her to Sarah.

Sarah did not buy Hagar. Thanks for asking the question.

Answer 2

Actually polygyny was okay in the OT. That is to say, a man was allowed to have more than one wife if he could provide them both (or them all) with food, clothing and shelter, and also he had to make sure they were all 'satisfied'.

A man wanted to marry a virgin because if she had a baby he wanted to make sure it was his! When a baby is born there's never any doubt as to who the -mother- is! 8^) A man's virginity was not considered as important. As I've heard people say, on the wedding night -someone- has to know what to do. 8^D

Ancient peoples believed that all of the baby's DNA came from the man. The woman was just an incubator. The ancient Greeks believed there was a little tiny person inside a man's sperm, called a 'homunculus'. That made the question of who the father was just that much more important.

In the Mosaic Law it said that a man who marries a woman and finds she isn't a virgin can KILL her! But OTOH it was perfectly okay for a divorced woman to marry again. (But she had to be divorced by the man, she couldn't divorce him!)

Jesus would have been seen as a radical feminist in his own time. He saw his job as being to teach about a new world coming, and in this new world he believed women would have the same rights as men. So he treated women that way.

Answer 3

"First Kings 11:1-3 indicates that King Solomon had 700 hundred wives and 300 hundred concubines, many from lands of which God had previously instructed the Israelites to avoid intermarrying. God knew that such intermarrying would lead to the worship of false gods. Why, then, did Solomon do this?

History reveals that Solomon was very aggressive in his foreign policy. In sealing treaties in ancient days, it was customary for a lesser king to give his daughter in marriage to the greater king (in this case, Solomon). Every time a new treaty was sealed, Solomon ended up with yet another wife. These wives were considered tokens of friendship and “sealed” the relationship between the two kings.

In the process of doing all this, Solomon was utterly disobedient to the Lord. He was apparently so obsessed with power and wealth that it overshadowed his spiritual life and he ended up falling into apostasy. He worshipped some of the false gods of the women who became married to him." ---christiananswers.net

So....there's one example.

I think you have to understand each situation in terms of it historically and culturally....and don't think that just because someone in the Old Testament did it, that means God thinks it's okay.


Women's "bigamy" isn't mentioned because, again, women had a whole different role in their cultures as we understand them today.

As for virginity, YES, men's and women's is sacred.

Answer 4

man's virginity is equally important, in Acts we are told to avoid fornication (sex outside of wedlock), not just women. God's stated intent was a man was to unite with his wife (not wives) Gen 2:24 — Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. God put up with things that he didn't like for his own reasons (i.e. divorce) but really they weren't what he wanted to see.

Answer 5

According to Jesus Fornication is wrong.

Answer 6

If you don't have better things to worry about, you're fortunate.