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tinpraIf you haven’t seen my previous postings, I’m writing a series of essays in response to a YouTube video that supposedly tells the dirty, hitherto unknown, truth about Biblical marriages—a truth that even Christians don’t know. About fifteen examples of “Biblical” marriages are given during the four minute vid, each more outrageously unbelievable than the last.
The thing is, though, that very few of the examples given are actual Biblical marriages. So with that in mind, I’m examining the examples of so-called “biblical” marriages (or “godly” marriages since that’s what we all mean when we use the word biblical) given in the YouTube video to show how they are, in fact, rarely biblical in nature. Unfortunately, of the examples given, the marriages that are biblical are also kinda messed up. It’s not the institution of marriage that’s at fault in these relationships, but the way the marriages are lived.
To date I’ve written about “one man, one woman, and the son she seduces after he’s killed his only brother” (Adam, Eve and Cain), “one man and his sister” (Abraham and Sarah), “one man, his sister and the help” (Abraham, Sarah and Hagar)1, “one man and the table salt” (Lot and his wife), “one man, [and] a gal who’s kidnapped and raped right after her brother, father, mother and slutty sister have been slaughtered” (the tribe of Benjamin and 400+ virgins), “one man, one woman, another woman, yet another woman, a few more woman, an adulterer and a pack of raped whores!”, (David, his wives & concubines, and his son Absolom) and also between “one man, and frankly enough women to make a Mormon compound seem quaintly understaffed” (Solomon, and his wives & concubines)2.
This time we’re talking about a little known, and little discussed, guy named Sheshan, his unnamed daughter, and the guys she married, an Egyptian slave named Jarha. Or, as the Betty Bowers video puts it, a marriage that is between "one man, Daddy’s little girl and the slave Daddy hired to rape her."
This story is found in 1 Chronicles 2:34-35.
Even if you don’t click on the link, you can see that this whole incident is covered in a whopping two verses of scripture. If you did click on the link, you’ll see that the site also gives you the option read the chapter that these verses come from. Do that and you’ll see that not only is this story incredibly short, but it’s buried in the midst of a genealogical list . 1 Chronicles 1-9 is basically one long genealogical study that tends to make most people’s eyes glaze over because, quite frankly, trying to wrap your head around all those ancient names seems both tedious and terrifying. But in the midst of these strange names you get these blink-and-you’ll-miss-it stories like Sheshan’s, or Jabez who refused to live up to his name (I Chron 4:9-10).
There’s also virtually no theological commentary on this verse. I don’t believe that’s because it’s so short (whole sermons are preached on “Jesus wept.” which is the shortest verse in the Bible), but because it’s such a plain section of scripture. It’s a small facet in the life of a particular branch of Israel’s family tree that shows us how the family line continued when this particular person had no sons of his own with which to do so. Remember, for most of the world and throughout much of history, sons carried on the family name and did all the inheriting. Wanted your name to continue, have a son. Didn’t have a son? Adopt one.
The issue here is that the Betty Bowers video makes it seem as if Sheshan sold his daughter to the first available guy to pass by his tent so that he could get around having to either adopting a son or letting the inheritance pass on to another branch of the family.
The truth is…we don’t know what happened. Seriously, the Bible says Sheshan had no sons, only daughters, so he gave her away in marriage to his Egyptian slave, and she had a son who became the heir—and that’s all it says. There’s some speculation that Sheshan had a son who died young, which makes sense since, three verses earlier it says “The son of Sheshan: Ahlai” (AMP), but then never mentions the kid again. Whether Sheshan’s daughter and Jarha were into each other, or if it was of convenience/expedience, the Bible doesn’t say. It doesn’t even imply.
I, personally, am arguing for a love-match, or at least a like-match. I will be the first to admit that I have no evidence to back me up here. You read the two verses—or if you didn’t you just read the last paragraph with my paraphrase.
That’s it! The entire story as we know it in one complex sentence. However, we do know a few things about Jewish/Eastern tradition at the time that I think could back up my opinion, and also negate the Betty Bowers claims.
First, we know that sons are prized for all the reasons mentioned above: inheritance, the family name, genealogy all go through sons. We also know that it was not at all unusual for cousins, and sometimes even half-siblings, to marry each other. We know from reading the entire chapter that although Sheshan didn’t have any living sons, he had many male family member. (I know the chapter tends to only name one or two kids at a time, but it’s very possible that it’s only naming the oldest sons which is not unusual for Biblical genealogies). We also know that the person Sheshan ultimately decided to marry his daughter off to was not only a foreigner (which would have been one strike against him) but also his slave (which would have been all the other strikes against him).
Here’s the thing…Sheshan might not have had sons, but he probably had brothers and nephews and cousins. Even if you take the position that Sheshan’s daughter had no say in who she was going to marry, the logic of the time would have been to marry her off to one of her cousins. If you’ve ever read Genesis, you’ll see this was a typical practice. Abraham and Sarah were half-siblings; Isaac and Rebecca were cousins; Jacob, Leah and Rachel were cousins. Marrying foreigners was kinda frowned on. It happened, of course, but it could make for tense family connections. Plus, for Jarha to marry Sheshan’s daughter, and then have the grandson become Sheshan’s heir, Jarha would have to convert to Judaism. This might not have been true of it was a man marrying a foreign woman because she’d be joining his family and nation by default, but since Jarha is the one that needs to join the family and nation it’s a different story.
And let’s not overlook Jarha being a slave. So far, he has nothing to offer Sheshan that Sheshan couldn’t find closer to home. What could he give to Sheshan for his daughter, since it was typical to give a bride gift at the time. If he’d had the money for that, he should have been able to buy his freedom first. And although Sheshan gets an heir out of this (and from his perspective, that would have been a maybe, not a definite), there’s no added status in bringing a former foreign slave into his household. Had his daughter married a relative, particularly a distant one, it probably would have been a lateral move politically and financially. It might have even strengthened family ties. Instead, he marries her off to his foreign slave.
Do you see how little sense it would have made to “hire a man to rape Daddy’s little girl”?
However, I can see where an argument could be made that Sheshan tossed his daughter at his slave for his own purposes. As I said for my own position, the Bible simply doesn’t say whether this was strictly a marriage of convenience or if there were romantic feelings between Sheshan’s daughter and Jarha, and so it’s always possible that it was in fact a marriage of convenience. Also, in nearly every translation of these two verses you’ll see it say that “Sheshan gave his daughter to Jarha…” (italics added), which seems to imply that he put a bow around her neck and left her on Jarha’s doorstep the way you might do a Christmas puppy.
The only problem is that if you read it like that, you’re either forgetting or ignoring a common turn used when daughters get married. I know it’s not popular anymore because of its modern connotations, but women are “given” in marriage. (As far as I know, men don’t per se “receive” anything, but maybe that was the case and the part of the terminology has disappeared.) It’s a fairly new thing for single women to live on their own before marriage, unless they were well-to-do spinsters. For the most part, women lived in their parents’ house and were part of the general household until they married or became independent “old maids”—although you had to have some independent money to go with that independent old maid-ness, since many women in many places around the world couldn’t own property and/or had very few ways of legally making money on their own.
The concept, and definitely the phrase, are outmoded for us now, but look up a traditional wedding ceremony and you’ll find that section where the minister asks “Who gives this woman away?” They’re talking to the parents/guardians about the bride, and they probably don’t mean “Who gives this woman away, whether she likes it or not.”
So to build an argument that Sheshan gave his daughter away like you’d give away free samples at the mall on that one phrases is shaky at best, when the term means only that she left her father’s household to join her husband’s, and does not include a positive or a negative in and of itself.
And so, once again, we simply don’t know if Sheshan’s daughter loved or liked Jarha, if she went into the marriage kicking and screaming, or even if she cared at all. Heck, for all we know this was her idea.
What we do know that it would have probably been easier and more logical for Sheshan to marry his daughter to a cousin if all he was looking for was an heir. Claiming that Sheshan “hired a slave to rape Daddy’s little girl” is pouring a lot of meaning into a very bare bones section of the Bible.
So is this a Biblical marriage in the sense that it’s found in the pages of the Bible? Yes. Assuming you can find it of course. (Good grief…just 2 verses?!) But is it a Biblical marriage in the sense that it reflects the character of God/Godly behavior. It might be. Or it might not. There’s no way to tell.
Assuming that Jarha was a good husband and Sheshan’s daughter a good wife, that they loved and honored God, etc, then yes it was a Biblical marriage in the way that we usually mean Biblical. If, on the other hand, Jarha used his newfound freedom to quickly marry a dozen other women, causing strife in his family (because we have yet to find a plural marriage that is anything but a wreck), and Sheshan’s daughter manipulated her children, or stepped out on her husband…or any of the half dozen examples of really bad marriage decisions we’ve seen so far, then it’s not an example of a Biblical marriage in the way that we usually mean it. But we’ll never know.
Next on the list: Slavery in the Bible. In case you’re wondering, no, it’s not directly linked to marriage, but it was mentioned in the video, so here we are.
1 - "Abraham and Sarah" and "Abraham, Sarah and Hagar" are covered in the same essay, hence the same link.
2 - "David, his concubines and his son Absolom" and "Solomon and his wives & concubines" are also covered in the same essay, hence the same link.
The thing is, though, that very few of the examples given are actual Biblical marriages. So with that in mind, I’m examining the examples of so-called “biblical” marriages (or “godly” marriages since that’s what we all mean when we use the word biblical) given in the YouTube video to show how they are, in fact, rarely biblical in nature. Unfortunately, of the examples given, the marriages that are biblical are also kinda messed up. It’s not the institution of marriage that’s at fault in these relationships, but the way the marriages are lived.
To date I’ve written about “one man, one woman, and the son she seduces after he’s killed his only brother” (Adam, Eve and Cain), “one man and his sister” (Abraham and Sarah), “one man, his sister and the help” (Abraham, Sarah and Hagar)1, “one man and the table salt” (Lot and his wife), “one man, [and] a gal who’s kidnapped and raped right after her brother, father, mother and slutty sister have been slaughtered” (the tribe of Benjamin and 400+ virgins), “one man, one woman, another woman, yet another woman, a few more woman, an adulterer and a pack of raped whores!”, (David, his wives & concubines, and his son Absolom) and also between “one man, and frankly enough women to make a Mormon compound seem quaintly understaffed” (Solomon, and his wives & concubines)2.
This time we’re talking about a little known, and little discussed, guy named Sheshan, his unnamed daughter, and the guys she married, an Egyptian slave named Jarha. Or, as the Betty Bowers video puts it, a marriage that is between "one man, Daddy’s little girl and the slave Daddy hired to rape her."
This story is found in 1 Chronicles 2:34-35.
Even if you don’t click on the link, you can see that this whole incident is covered in a whopping two verses of scripture. If you did click on the link, you’ll see that the site also gives you the option read the chapter that these verses come from. Do that and you’ll see that not only is this story incredibly short, but it’s buried in the midst of a genealogical list . 1 Chronicles 1-9 is basically one long genealogical study that tends to make most people’s eyes glaze over because, quite frankly, trying to wrap your head around all those ancient names seems both tedious and terrifying. But in the midst of these strange names you get these blink-and-you’ll-miss-it stories like Sheshan’s, or Jabez who refused to live up to his name (I Chron 4:9-10).
There’s also virtually no theological commentary on this verse. I don’t believe that’s because it’s so short (whole sermons are preached on “Jesus wept.” which is the shortest verse in the Bible), but because it’s such a plain section of scripture. It’s a small facet in the life of a particular branch of Israel’s family tree that shows us how the family line continued when this particular person had no sons of his own with which to do so. Remember, for most of the world and throughout much of history, sons carried on the family name and did all the inheriting. Wanted your name to continue, have a son. Didn’t have a son? Adopt one.
The issue here is that the Betty Bowers video makes it seem as if Sheshan sold his daughter to the first available guy to pass by his tent so that he could get around having to either adopting a son or letting the inheritance pass on to another branch of the family.
The truth is…we don’t know what happened. Seriously, the Bible says Sheshan had no sons, only daughters, so he gave her away in marriage to his Egyptian slave, and she had a son who became the heir—and that’s all it says. There’s some speculation that Sheshan had a son who died young, which makes sense since, three verses earlier it says “The son of Sheshan: Ahlai” (AMP), but then never mentions the kid again. Whether Sheshan’s daughter and Jarha were into each other, or if it was of convenience/expedience, the Bible doesn’t say. It doesn’t even imply.
I, personally, am arguing for a love-match, or at least a like-match. I will be the first to admit that I have no evidence to back me up here. You read the two verses—or if you didn’t you just read the last paragraph with my paraphrase.
That’s it! The entire story as we know it in one complex sentence. However, we do know a few things about Jewish/Eastern tradition at the time that I think could back up my opinion, and also negate the Betty Bowers claims.
First, we know that sons are prized for all the reasons mentioned above: inheritance, the family name, genealogy all go through sons. We also know that it was not at all unusual for cousins, and sometimes even half-siblings, to marry each other. We know from reading the entire chapter that although Sheshan didn’t have any living sons, he had many male family member. (I know the chapter tends to only name one or two kids at a time, but it’s very possible that it’s only naming the oldest sons which is not unusual for Biblical genealogies). We also know that the person Sheshan ultimately decided to marry his daughter off to was not only a foreigner (which would have been one strike against him) but also his slave (which would have been all the other strikes against him).
Here’s the thing…Sheshan might not have had sons, but he probably had brothers and nephews and cousins. Even if you take the position that Sheshan’s daughter had no say in who she was going to marry, the logic of the time would have been to marry her off to one of her cousins. If you’ve ever read Genesis, you’ll see this was a typical practice. Abraham and Sarah were half-siblings; Isaac and Rebecca were cousins; Jacob, Leah and Rachel were cousins. Marrying foreigners was kinda frowned on. It happened, of course, but it could make for tense family connections. Plus, for Jarha to marry Sheshan’s daughter, and then have the grandson become Sheshan’s heir, Jarha would have to convert to Judaism. This might not have been true of it was a man marrying a foreign woman because she’d be joining his family and nation by default, but since Jarha is the one that needs to join the family and nation it’s a different story.
And let’s not overlook Jarha being a slave. So far, he has nothing to offer Sheshan that Sheshan couldn’t find closer to home. What could he give to Sheshan for his daughter, since it was typical to give a bride gift at the time. If he’d had the money for that, he should have been able to buy his freedom first. And although Sheshan gets an heir out of this (and from his perspective, that would have been a maybe, not a definite), there’s no added status in bringing a former foreign slave into his household. Had his daughter married a relative, particularly a distant one, it probably would have been a lateral move politically and financially. It might have even strengthened family ties. Instead, he marries her off to his foreign slave.
Do you see how little sense it would have made to “hire a man to rape Daddy’s little girl”?
However, I can see where an argument could be made that Sheshan tossed his daughter at his slave for his own purposes. As I said for my own position, the Bible simply doesn’t say whether this was strictly a marriage of convenience or if there were romantic feelings between Sheshan’s daughter and Jarha, and so it’s always possible that it was in fact a marriage of convenience. Also, in nearly every translation of these two verses you’ll see it say that “Sheshan gave his daughter to Jarha…” (italics added), which seems to imply that he put a bow around her neck and left her on Jarha’s doorstep the way you might do a Christmas puppy.
The only problem is that if you read it like that, you’re either forgetting or ignoring a common turn used when daughters get married. I know it’s not popular anymore because of its modern connotations, but women are “given” in marriage. (As far as I know, men don’t per se “receive” anything, but maybe that was the case and the part of the terminology has disappeared.) It’s a fairly new thing for single women to live on their own before marriage, unless they were well-to-do spinsters. For the most part, women lived in their parents’ house and were part of the general household until they married or became independent “old maids”—although you had to have some independent money to go with that independent old maid-ness, since many women in many places around the world couldn’t own property and/or had very few ways of legally making money on their own.
The concept, and definitely the phrase, are outmoded for us now, but look up a traditional wedding ceremony and you’ll find that section where the minister asks “Who gives this woman away?” They’re talking to the parents/guardians about the bride, and they probably don’t mean “Who gives this woman away, whether she likes it or not.”
So to build an argument that Sheshan gave his daughter away like you’d give away free samples at the mall on that one phrases is shaky at best, when the term means only that she left her father’s household to join her husband’s, and does not include a positive or a negative in and of itself.
And so, once again, we simply don’t know if Sheshan’s daughter loved or liked Jarha, if she went into the marriage kicking and screaming, or even if she cared at all. Heck, for all we know this was her idea.
What we do know that it would have probably been easier and more logical for Sheshan to marry his daughter to a cousin if all he was looking for was an heir. Claiming that Sheshan “hired a slave to rape Daddy’s little girl” is pouring a lot of meaning into a very bare bones section of the Bible.
So is this a Biblical marriage in the sense that it’s found in the pages of the Bible? Yes. Assuming you can find it of course. (Good grief…just 2 verses?!) But is it a Biblical marriage in the sense that it reflects the character of God/Godly behavior. It might be. Or it might not. There’s no way to tell.
Assuming that Jarha was a good husband and Sheshan’s daughter a good wife, that they loved and honored God, etc, then yes it was a Biblical marriage in the way that we usually mean Biblical. If, on the other hand, Jarha used his newfound freedom to quickly marry a dozen other women, causing strife in his family (because we have yet to find a plural marriage that is anything but a wreck), and Sheshan’s daughter manipulated her children, or stepped out on her husband…or any of the half dozen examples of really bad marriage decisions we’ve seen so far, then it’s not an example of a Biblical marriage in the way that we usually mean it. But we’ll never know.
Next on the list: Slavery in the Bible. In case you’re wondering, no, it’s not directly linked to marriage, but it was mentioned in the video, so here we are.
1 - "Abraham and Sarah" and "Abraham, Sarah and Hagar" are covered in the same essay, hence the same link.
2 - "David, his concubines and his son Absolom" and "Solomon and his wives & concubines" are also covered in the same essay, hence the same link.
