Deuteronomy 21 Be fair to all wives

seekeroftruth

Well-Known Member
Deuteronomy 21:15 If a man has two wives, and he loves one but not the other, and both bear him sons but the firstborn is the son of the wife he does not love, 16 when he wills his property to his sons, he must not give the rights of the firstborn to the son of the wife he loves in preference to his actual firstborn, the son of the wife he does not love. 17 He must acknowledge the son of his unloved wife as the firstborn by giving him a double share of all he has. That son is the first sign of his father’s strength. The right of the firstborn belongs to him.​

This is from the easy English site.

The son born first should receive a double share in the property. The father must not give the double share to the son of his favourite wife. (Jacob did that with Joseph in Genesis 37:3-4. But when that happened, it was because of God’s gift. The son could not demand it. However, Jacob’s first son had lost his place. See Genesis 49:3-4.) God wanted a man to be fair to all his wives. A man could have a favourite wife, but he had to obey the law.

This is from bibletrack.org.

Jacob did show a partiality toward the firstborn son of Rachel (Joseph) who was actually the eleventh of twelve sons born to Jacob. This law literally protects the rights of the firstborn no matter how much you hated his mom. Ironically, had Abraham been subject to this law, he could not have blessed Isaac over Ishmael with the rights of the firstborn. Here we see a definition of firstborn rights as a "double portion of all that he hath."​

These writings in Deuteronomy seem to be mixed writings from Moses. It's like someone is pulling all the files on law from the file cabinet.


:coffee:
 
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