Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
Biblical Families is not a dating website. It is a forum to discuss issues relating to marriage and the Bible, and to offer guidance and support, not to find a wife. Click here for more information.
Come to think of it, Job falls into this category also. Twenty children. The first 10 old enough to have their own houses and partying. Followed by the next ten. I wonder how old his single wife was when she was finished having kids.
To be honest Job as a monogamist is rhetorically useful. His wife is one of the ones who said 'curse God and die' and given the closest thing to a case mono-monos can build is a vague 'bad effects' fallacy its handy that one of the few monogamists in scripture have it even worse than the polygamists they mentioned.
I agree. While I'm pretty certain that the kids were probably all by one woman, if Job had been polygynous, it would be the perfect example if even his detractors refrained from using it as an excuse for his predicament.
There's several ways that the data from Job could be interpreted. The mono's will always interpret according to bias or cultural acceptance as a default until their eyes are opened
Just like if a man (Jacob) had multiple wives at the same time who gave him children and they eventually all die except one, they interpret his marriage as a monogamous one because at the end he only had one wife.
While I agree with your conclusions, monogamy only types will argue with "wives died in childbirth, they were blessed by God with twins and triplets"....and so on. It's a poor way of study, but I've heard these explanations more than once.
This jogged an old memory. I remember years ago a Sunday School teacher (in an adult SS class) explaining in passing that the 12 tribes names being engraved on the New Jerusalem for eternity was not a validation of Jacob's polygamy, because if Jacob had remained monogamous, God still could have chosen to bless him with six sets of twins, or four sets of triplets, or three sets of quadruplets. I was far from believing poly at the time, but even still it seemed to me an incredibly ridiculous and spurious argument to make -- by virtue of being so unlikely, so completely uneccessary, and so hypothetical.
From what I understand, the language of the book of Job is some of the most archaic Hebrew in use and shows other internal evidence of being one of the oldest preserved accounts in the Bible. I would suggest that Eliphaz the Temanite can be linked to Gen 36:15. If this is correct, then it could answer the question of Job's restoration.
Genesis 36:15 NKJV These were the chiefs of the sons of Esau. The sons of Eliphaz, the firstborn son of Esau, were Chief Teman, Chief Omar, Chief Zepho, Chief Kenaz,
Eliphaz was the youngest of Job's friends at the time in history when average people lived between 110 - 180 years old. That's plenty of time to have a second set of kids and see several generations grow up after them. I agree that the plainest reading of the text shows that Job had one wife, at least at the time in question. There's no suggestion of other wives throughout the book that I've seen.
It is all speculation given the text does not say.
But look how many kids Abraham or Jacob had by any one wife. It seems as if they had fewer kids per woman than modern diets allow us today.
In that context Job had 10 children originally and at the end was blessed with another 10. That is a lot of children for one women, in any age. I had always presumed he just got himself another wife; nothing culturally at the time prevented him from doing so. Especially after how well she stood by his side during his trials.
Though I wouldn't put it past God to make the original wife pop out 10 more.
Twice as many animals, but the same numbers of sons and daughters. (Job 1:2-3 , 42:12-13)
So, in the kingdom, he could have twice as many sons and daughters as well. (Not going to join in if anyone starts applying that to wives... Luke 20:35)
Just looking up Josephus' comments about Lamech for another thread and came across this.
. . . Whose son was Mathusala; whose son was Lamech; who had 77 children by two wives, Silla and Ada.
T. A. o t J. 1.2.2
My own personal opinion is that Jasher was probably one of those texts as I have noticed some similarities but have not done an in depth critique/comparison of them
