GREG - My daughter asked me the definition to a concubine. I
didnt know how to define it. This is what i found in
one reference,but i dont know if it is correct or
not. Does the church have a definition for it that you
know of?
con•cu•bine
Pronunciation: (kong'kyu-bîn", kon'-),
—n.
1. a woman who cohabits with a man to whom she is not
legally married.
2. (among polygamous peoples) a secondary wife,
usually of inferior rank.
3. (esp. formerly in Muslim societies) a woman
residing in a harem and kept, as by a sultan, for
sexual purposes.
JOEL - The Church doesn't really need its own deffinition of
a concubine, any one of the above deffinitions is
correct depending on the context. If you are talking
about the Bible, a concubine was a woman living in a
lawful marriage arrangement with a man, but whose
status was regarded as being less than a wife(See
deffinition #2).
Concubines were respected, had legal rights, and their
children were regarded as legitimate, although the
children of the wife (or wives) were most often given
preference in matters of inheritance. The inability of
a wife to have children was the most common reason for
the presence of a concubine in the family.
Anciently some concubines were given to a few of the
prophets by the Lord, as in the cases of Abraham and
David (D&C 132: 37-39), although some of the
concubines David had were not given to him by the
Lord, as explained in Jacob in the Book of
Mormon(Jacob 2:24).
King Solomon later turned away from God, started
worshipping idols, and eventually collected 700 wives
and 300 concubines, which were deffinately not given
to him by the Lord (1 Kings 11:1-6).
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