Wednesday Bible Study: Sex and violence

First a reminder of the situation. David is King of Judah, while the warlord Abner has set upIsh-Bosheth, a son of Saul, as king of the rest of Israel. (Yes, there ' s a continuity problem since supposedly all of Saul ' s house was killed and then this Ish-Bosheth character suddenly comes out of nowhere. Just accept it.) There is a civil war going on between them, although the only reason for it seems to be personal ambition. There follows a convoluted story. For people who claim on Biblical authority that marriage is between one man and one woman, this poses difficulties. We already know that David has two wives currently, and one more who Saul took away from him and gave to another man. Now he suddenly comes up with four more, and then he gets Michal back, leaving him with seven. And the first six are all busy having babies. Nothing wrong with that, it seems. But then Abner gets so offended with Ish-Bosheth accuses him of having sex with a concubine of the deceased Saul that he tells Ish-Bosheth that he intends to switch sides in the war, but Ish-Bosheth doesn ' t do anything about it and just lets him go. (I don ' t know what the rules are about concubines when the owner dies. I ' m presuming that Ish-Bosheth inherited this one which would make some sense of this incident.) So Abner sends a message to David saying he wants to defect. David says fine, but only if I get Michal back. So Ish-Bosheth agrees to send his sister Michal to David  even though a) they ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs