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In this episode we lay the foundation to better understand the government of Israel and how David became the polygamist king of Israel. Acknowledging the difficulty of Old Testament stories and morality, we discuss possible ways to engage with and find value in the text.

Summary

In this episode, Michelle Stone begins an exploration of King David’s polygamy, setting the historical and cultural stage for understanding how polygamy evolved within ancient Israel. She delves into biblical leadership structures, the instability of the system of judges, and how the shift to monarchy under King Saul and David influenced the acceptance of polygamy.

Key Themes:

  1. The Challenge of Interpreting the Old Testament
    • Stone discusses how reading the Old Testament is often difficult and complex, requiring an open mind.
    • She critiques dogmatic biblical interpretations, arguing that the Old Testament often contradicts itself and should be studied with humility.
  2. King David’s Rise and the Development of Polygamy
    • David’s youth and heroic image are contrasted with his later moral failings as a polygamous king.
    • She examines how David became king, fleeing from King Saul, gaining power, and eventually establishing his rule.
    • The origins of David’s polygamy are questioned—was it inherited from his family or his political position?
  3. Misinterpretations of David’s Legacy
    • The phrase “a man after God’s own heart” (Acts 13:22) has been used to justify David’s actions, but Stone challenges this idea.
    • She compares David’s admiration to modern sports celebrities, suggesting that his success and charisma led to his idolization.
    • The Greek god-like hero status of David is explored, arguing that biblical figures should not be blindly placed on pedestals.
  4. The System of Judges and Its Instability
    • Before kings, Israel was ruled by judges, but the system was unstable and often led to chaos and oppression.
    • Stone outlines how Samuel, Eli, and other judges struggled to maintain order, leading to the demand for a monarchical system.
    • The corruption of Eli’s and Samuel’s sons, who abused power, contributed to Israel’s decision to demand a king.
  5. The Shift from Judges to Kings
    • Samuel was resentful when the Israelites asked for a king, interpreting it as a rejection of God’s rule.
    • Stone questions whether the real rejection was of God or of corrupt leadership under judges.
    • She highlights how early LDS teachings on church leadership parallel the challenges faced by ancient Israel.
  6. Polygamy as a Political and Cultural Shift
    • Polygamy was not the norm in David’s genealogy, suggesting it was a learned behavior from political rulers rather than a family tradition.
    • The Bible specifically mentions when a man had multiple wives, reinforcing that polygamy was an exception, not a rule.
    • Stone draws a connection between power, polygamy, and the dangers of unchecked authority.
  7. Lessons from Biblical Government for Modern Faith and Society
    • Stone suggests that the U.S. Constitution’s system of checks and balances may have been influenced by the failures of biblical government models.
    • She encourages critical thinking in faith, arguing that both religious and governmental structures should be examined for flaws.
    • The episode serves as a foundation for the next discussion on David’s marriages, inviting listeners to reflect on the broader implications of biblical polygamy.

Transcript

[00:00:01] Welcome to 132 Problems revisiting Mormon Polygamy, where we explore the scriptural and theological case for plural marriage. I always recommend listening to these episodes in order, since they are designed to build on one another, and they all cover different important topics. My name is Michelle Stone, and this is episode 22, the first part of David’s polygamy, where we’ll lay the groundwork by looking at the history and build up to David’s role as the polygamist king of Israel. Thank you for joining us as we take a deep dive into the murky waters of Mormon polygamy. OK, I hope that some of you have read enough of the Old Testament to understand what I mean when I say that it is difficult. It is really a struggle to get through, to read, to understand, and to, um, you know, to, I guess to see the value and the purpose in it, we really have to come to it with an open mind, I think. And, um, I think a lot of people who thump the Bible and, you know, who are really dogmatic and black and white and their beliefs. My, my guess is that most of them haven’t actually read particular the Old Testament. And um so as I am going through these stories, I am going to kind of share my grapple with these with these texts and um I think that one thing that they should do for us, one gift that they really can give us is to help us remain humble, ideally, to help us recognize that we have a lot less certainty than we might think we have that, um, you know, pretty much every rule and certainty that we have is undermined somewhere in the Old Testament. And I think that we should be aware of that and acknowledge it, and it will hopefully help us be more understanding and accepting of different ideas and different cultures and You know, also more open to maybe our certainty is just ours and isn’t necessarily eternal certainty in every aspect of that. I hope that all make sense. So anyway, I’m going to invite you into my journey with the story of David. I haven’t ever delved into it like I did in preparation for this episode. I did decide to go ahead and break this story into two. Because I think it is important to get an understanding of how David came to be the king of Israel by looking at the history of Israel and the things that were going on. I think this is this is all important for us. So this episode we’ll look at the history. Next episode we’ll look specifically at the life of David and more particularly the marriages of David. So, OK, so I think what, you know, what we grow up knowing the most about David are his boyish exploits. We think very highly of him. He slew a lion and a bear, and then he slew a giant and saved Israel, and he became popular, he became the king, so we know that about him. Then we know that he fled like he was ordained by Samuel to become the king. He was a threat to Saul, so he constantly had to flee and he led his, I don’t know, I guess I kind of think of it as David and his band of merry men, like almost like Robin Hood, you know, he was a renegade with a, with a bunch of followers with with his army of followers that had to keep himself safe from Saul, who was trying to kill him because his kingship was threatened. And so, so we know all of that history until David does become king, there are all of the wars and all of that.

[00:03:35] So that’s the broad view. Of David. I want to look a little bit more into the um specifics of, I guess the governmental and political system. But first, I do want to address a couple of things because David is described by, um, I want to say it’s by Paul, I think it’s by Paul in Acts 13:22, as um as a man after God’s own heart, right? There’s a lot of praise for David of what a good Um, what, what, uh, I, I guess a lot of descriptions that he had, uh, he was a man after God’s own heart. He, his heart was turned to God or I, I can’t, uh, I miss, I’m misquoting it. I should have looked it up, but anyway, we’ll just go with a man after God’s own heart, and I’ve tried to go, what does that mean? Because as you read the life of David. I don’t want God to be like David. I don’t want David to be a representation of what God is. There are some hugely troubling aspects of David, both as a man, and I think especially as a man in power, as a king. And, um, there’s just so much bloodthirstiness. Like maybe, maybe it’s not fair to call it bloodthirst thirstiness, but so much worrying and Um, you know, and so I’ve tried to really break down what maybe that could mean or how I can think about that, rather than, oh my hair is having quite a day, rather than thinking, um, OK, David is a representation of God, and so by understanding more about David, I can understand more about God. I don’t, that does not ring true to me and um so I’ve tried to think about it and I kind of think, here’s here’s kind of I guess what I came up with or what I was like, oh this makes more sense. I can think of it this way. Um, us today, we today in our culture, we have these, um, sports, right? Like, like our celebrities in a way represent the wars of the old world. We like, especially in our team sports, we can all have a rivalry and we can all cheer our team on, and then we can have a sports hero who saves us and leads us to victory, and we raise him up and we, you know, and you can think of some of these people who are, I guess, particularly men. Who are like beautiful, they’re they’re gorgeous people. They’re incredibly talented at their, I guess we’ll go with sport, the sports analogy. They’re just so amazingly talented. They and they have

[00:06:00] this wealth and this fame and this and you’re like. How is that even fair? How did God make someone like that? Like, right, like I guess the examples I thought of were Cristiano Ronaldo, the soccer player, for those of you who follow soccer, or um when I was growing up, Michael Jordan, right? He could just do these things and like we all knew his name and Um, I always thought Karl Malone, I grew up in Utah with the jazz. I always thought Karl Malone was better looking, but anyway, you understand what I’m saying about these beautiful sports stars, or my husband told me, oh, I’m embarrassed. Oh, Tom Brady, I had to ask like, who’s a football guy like this, you know, there are, there are these characters that we tend to idolize and I guess I’m thinking of it in a in a a little bit that way, like David was beautiful and he was not just a sports hero. He was the war hero, like he led the Israelite team on to victory in ways that mattered even far more than sports matter to us. And so in a way I’m thinking of it as a description of like this was a man touched by God, like this was a God, a man that Um, you know, in, in the Olympics, we describe the Olympians. Olympus was the place where the gods lived. So the Olympians, we are literally calling these athletic heroes gods. And um, so in a way, I can interpret this by saying, OK, David was practically a god, right? He had everything going for him and he was Idolized and practically worshiped by all of Israel because of his personal gifts and beauty and charisma and his victorious, um, you know, he, he slew Goliath as a boy and then he led Israel onto victory. So I hope that makes sense. I think that for me, that is a much better way to understand the descriptions of David. Describing his demeanor and his talent and his abundance and his just incredible gifts, rather than describing like his um spiritual state or his, um, you know what I mean? Like, like looking at David, we can look at this great hero rather and and sort of a Greek god type rather than he is a representation of the one true God that um you know, like Jesus. Isn’t that similar to David in a lot of ways. So does that, that I hope you understand what I’m saying. So I’m just going to lay that out that there are all of the descriptions of David having a godly heart and being a man after God’s own heart. I’m really distracted by my hair, so I apologize. And um I think that this is a better way to interpret that. So that’s what I’m going to go with. I think we can look at the good and bad about David in every way. I just in general think it’s a mistake to put humans on pedestals, right? And to say, David,

[00:08:45] this. So therefore, whatever David did is good to do. I think that that will not lead us to good places in general, if we do that. So, OK, now looking at David and his story, my, I want, I had a lot of questions that I wanted to investigate, like, where did David’s polygamy come from? Um, where did he get the idea to have more than one wife or that it was acceptable to? Um, it wasn’t necessarily a given that he would have more than one wife, because even in the Old Testament, polygamy really seems to be far more the exception than the rule, and um, So I looked at his family tree, like maybe polygamy was handed down through his family line and it was just his culture. But I can’t find any evidence for it in David’s family tree. We have his entire genealogy all the way back and going all the way back, the first actual polygamist I can find in this family line is Jacob, and then, you know, Jacob’s grandfather Abraham. And so I want to talk about that a little bit like um the the Bible explicitly tells us when a man has more than one wife. We’ll we’ll get to an example of this in the chapters of the Bible that we’re covering. So it’s not safe to just assume that everyone had more than one wife, cause it definitely is not the case. If, you know, it’s kind of like if it goes without saying, I, I mean, if it has to be said he had two wives, then we can assume that if it doesn’t say that, that they didn’t, right? It seems like that’s the more natural default that we can assume and in any case, Jesse, um, like, OK, yeah, it’s Elkinna that we’re gonna go over the father of Samuel, who will discuss who it explicitly tells us who has two wives. And um so other than the polygamist exceptions, they follow the monogamist rule, and you know. It’s just the OK. I think that we should need to have some evidence that someone was a polygamist before we just assumed that they were. And so, um, there’s zero support for it anywhere. Jesse, it looks like has had one wife. Um, his father, I think obeyed, like all the way up and then we go up, um, Boaz and Ruth, who we’ll talk about just a little bit. Well, actually. Maybe we won’t, but the Book of Ruth is here in this section of the Bible that tells us about Ruth, um, Naomi’s daughter-in-law, and I’ve been told multiple times that Boaz was a polygamist. So I approached that, I guess in the same way I approached Moses, expecting to find evidence for it that I could go, Oh, this is why we think Boaz was a polygamist. But I was shocked to find. Like, at least with Moses, there’s one verse that people can go, oh look, we think this means he’s a polygamist, even though if I hope you’ve watched the episode on Moses to see how incredibly weak that is, I think. But with Boaz, we don’t even have that. There is nothing that would give us any indication that Boaz is a polygamist,

[00:11:31] and I think that. There is actually plenty to tell us that he was not, that he was, not that he was a polygamist, but that he was married before he married Ruth. So when in marrying Ruth, he either already was or became a polygamist. I, I, there’s just zero evidence for that and actually much evidence to show us that he wasn’t married until he married Ruth. And so, um, I, I I wanted to go into that today, but I actually think it might be better to do an episode on sort of the non-polygamists in the Bible, like people who, um, characters in the Bible who people claim are polygamists and we can look at those claims. They’re like Boaz is an example, Jesus is an example. I just read um a Facebook post that the man writing it was claiming that Lehi was a polygamist, which was a new one and I don’t think a very good argument. So it might be interesting to look at a lot of these examples at one point and just kind of go, OK, let’s just show you why these claims. I mean, people are free to believe whatever they want to believe, but the evidence for those is just Not even weak, it’s just not there and there’s a lot of very solid evidence to point to the contrary. So, so I’m not gonna go into that right now. I invite you, I hope with all of these um episodes that everyone’s taking them more as an invitation, right? And in Patient to delve into these topics, to delve into the scriptures with your own, um, curiosity and your own questions. In fact, I was so glad. Just, oh, I can’t remember her name, but someone just sent me a question this week that I’m really excited to get into. And, and she said even exactly that. She’s like, I’m trying to do what you’re doing and study this. And I have this question, I’d love to know your thoughts. And it made me really happy. I’m like, Oh, I hope more people are doing that. Like, I don’t think we should set people up on pedestals, and that includes me. Please nobody tend to set me up on a pedestal and think, I mean, I’m, I feel stupid even saying that cause I don’t think any of you would. But in general, you know, like, let’s all, let’s all go to the text and grapple with it and see what we think and have a conversation. That’s what I’m hoping that we can that we can do because I think that’s what’s the most valuable. So anyway, OK, that’s that’s maybe a future episode. And then, OK, and then here’s some of the evidence. I think that Jesse was not a polygamist. We have to jump forward a little bit in the text of 1 Samuel 18:25, but there’s a little back and forth between Saul and David when Saul is constantly plotting against David and um.

[00:14:01] So Saul tells his servants, hey, go hint to David that he could marry my daughter. And David, you know, sends his to the servants back saying, Oh, I’m, that’s a great thing to be the, the son-in-law of the king, but I’m a poor man and not well renowned, and I don’t, basically, I don’t have the dowry needed. And the king says, Saul said, and Saul said, that shall you say to David, the king desireth not any dowry, but in 100 foreskins of the Philistines to be avenged of the king. enemies, but Saul thought to make David fall by the hands of the Philistines. So it shows from this verse, the point I’m wanting to make is that this was a culture where they had a bride price. And, um, if you do any research and I’ve, I’ve studied quite a bit of sociology, and you can look at cultures still today where the practice of bride price exists. It’s kind of different. Like, usually I think of a dowry in our vernacular, usually a dowry means the price that the um you know, that the wife brings, I think, and a bride price is the price that the husband’s family has to pay to the bride’s father or act to kind of buy a bride, right, to buy one of his daughters in a way, and it’s actually a really not good practice. Like first of all, it’s so extremely patriarchal or misogynistic like this is where we get the OK, so women are possessions to be bought and sold. It’s kind of troubling in that way. But I think um it’s it it just is not good for societies. It doesn’t work well where this happens. In some families like where this happens, the family will scrimp and save and go into debt to buy a bride, and then they think they own her and sometimes. The sons have to share her cause they can only afford one, like, like there are just lots of problems with it. So anyways, anyway, the point I am making with this verse is showing this was a culture where a bride price was expected. David claims that he was poor, which means his father Jesse was poor and couldn’t have afforded more than one wife, right? Most likely, like. Um, David, rather than letting the bear and the lion get the sheep, he kills the bear and the lion. Like it doesn’t sound like he was able to go, Dad, a bear attacked the sheep, you know, I’m, anyway, I don’t know if that’s a good, good claim, but it is saying they were poor and bride prices were required. So there’s one piece of evidence against just assuming that they were polygamist. Because they wouldn’t have had the means to be so, um, aside from the fact that the Bible doesn’t say anything that they were, and it always tells us when someone did have more than one wife. So I think in any case, I think it’s safe to assume that David’s polygamy wasn’t inspired from the example of his family, um, because as I said, Jacob is 11 generations back,

[00:16:44] and that’s the first clear polygamist you can find in his family line unless You want to count Judah, the son of David with the strange story of Tamar, where Tamar, so maybe some of you know those stories as a quick recap. Tamar was married to Judah’s son, Judah’s Judah’s son died in the New Tes I mean in the law of Moses, um. Women couldn’t hold property, women couldn’t inherit women, so they had this weird law of the brother, like if a brother’s wife died, another brother married her to leave an heir for his brother. It’s a weird thing that we’ll get into at another point when we look at the law of Moses more in depth, but um Judah didn’t keep his promise to Tamar, so Tamar, because Judah had a younger son that was supposed to grow up and then marry Tamar and so Tamar disguised herself as a prostitute. And after Judah’s wife died, he was traveling and he came upon the prostitute and went in unto the prostitute and didn’t have anything to pay her, so she took a pledge anyway. So then she went back and look and and said, look, it was me and you’re the father of my child and you know, so, so it’s just strange because if we want to claim, look, there was polygamy in David’s family line and thus in Jesus’ family line if we You know, look at the, if we think that those those genealogies given in Matthew and Luke are valid even though they’re very different, right? The point I’m making is, sure you can say there’s polygamy in Jesus’ family line, but there’s also prostitution. In Jesus’ family line. It’s not like a two thumbs up. These things are good because they’re in the genealogy, right? Does that make sense? So anyway, so I don’t know if we count Judah as a polygamist or not because he slept with Tamar when she was disguised as a prostitute and he didn’t know who she was. But um, we can decide, you can decide how you want to take that. It’s just making the point that it’s not a good argument. I’m just looking at the culture. Why was David a polygamist? Where did that come from? So, um, I think that we can assume it didn’t come from his family culture, but there are, there is another place that it came from, the example of those in power. So I studied quite a bit to try to understand leadership in Israel. It’s really um I don’t know, it’s a lot to understand. I had to really delve in to get it. So Moses was the first leader of Israel, right, for obvious reasons, and then Joshua, and then after Joshua, um, Israel had a system of judges for somewhere between 350 or 30 to 450 years. Acts 13 says it was 450 years. People who have looked at the history say it was closer to between 330, 380, so. So anyway, from that period of time we have the entire book of Judges, right? It goes Joshua, Judges, Ruth, and then First Kings, and that’s kind of what we’re covering. And so um. Again, I couldn’t find anything about how judges were chosen. It doesn’t seem that there were elections or appointments. It doesn’t look like the previous judge chose the next judge.

[00:19:48] It like I really found myself, it just kind of describes God rose up a judge, and it’s like, well, how, how did that happen? What did that process look like? How did everyone else agree that, you know, someone could feel like God is raising me up, but everyone else has to agree with them, right? How did that happen? I couldn’t find anything. So if anyone has any information on that, I’m really curious because leadership of an entire society is a really big deal and usually isn’t just like there for the taking, right? So I want, I want to understand this better and I, I haven’t yet found any information. Um, So judges, from what I can see, judges served as military and political leaders, as well as prophets and judges in our sense, like arbiters of um conflict. So um we’re going to talk in a future episode more about judges, particularly in my opinion, the most important judge who was Deborah. The woman who was the judge and the prophet and the military who served in all of these positions as a judge, again, coming to the Bible with open minds, trying to understand what it teaches us, and we have some pretty set ideas that have come through us through our more modern history from when the church was restored until now about what women do and what women are capable of and women’s role in the kingdom of God. And I think it’s good to address some of the Bible stories that might help us see, oh, maybe we don’t know as much as we think we know, right? Deborah is one of those. So we’ll come back to that later. But anyway, um, let me see where it was. OK, so again, It there seems to be a pattern, at least I kind of get a pattern. 11 downside of the system of judges is that it feels like it was quite unstable. A judge, the, the pattern seems to be that a judge is raised up, again, we don’t know how that happens, how they, how they gain authority in Israel, um, but they are raised up and they call the people to repentance and deliver them from slaughter and bondage, you know, they’re usually being Slaughtered by some other group and put in bondage, the judge leads them to victory against them after calling them to repentance. Then the judge dies and then it seems that they fall back into wickedness and then slaughter and bondage, and then the Lord raises up another judge, and that process continues. And so, you know, again, I’d like to hear your take on that. I’m just trying to sum up how it looks to me. So it feels very unstable and I do find the question of is the reason that they fall into slot and slaughter and bondage because there is a succession crisis each time, so they’re experiencing some kind of civil war that weakens them. To their neighbors until someone emerges victorious from their infighting, like, like that’s one possible explanation I can find, you know, I would like, I would like to understand how this works because it is, it’s just a big topic that’s not explained to us, how you get authority in the in the land of Israel and become

[00:22:50] viewed by the entire, um, the, the entire society as the. So, um, in the book of Judges, Samson is the last judge, and you know, and we also know there are lots of problems with some of these judges. Some of them seem to be very righteous. Some of them seem to have a lot of problems like Samson in some ways. And so, and then after Samson dies, things fall into chaos again and um we have after, so the the final chapters of the book of Judges. After Samson dies, we have the story of Micah with the graven images. So Micah, I guess kind of tries to set him up as himself up as a prophet, and he hires false priests who were then stolen by the Dan of tribe, who, I mean, the tribe of Dan, who then use them to commit a genocide. It’s, it’s just really interesting. Then right after that we have the story that we covered in episode. I think episode 11 is the episode where we talk about concubines. We have that very difficult story of the concubine who is raped to death and then cut into 12 pieces by her husband, who was the one who threw her out to be raped to death and then sent to the 12 tribes, and that starts a civil war and they fight against Benjamin, and I mean, the tribe of Benjamin is slaughtered completely except for all the women and children, except for the 600 who escape. And then they feel bad about slaughtering Benjamin, so they figure out a way to get wives for these 600 men so that the tribe of Benjamin can be revived. So they go and choose a city that didn’t help in the slaughter against Benjamin, and they go and slaughter that city except for all of the girls. Ah sorry, this stuff is hard, except for all of the young girls, any girl who was a virgin, you know, ah. They kidnap them, they find 400 to give them to these men of Benjamin, and then that’s not enough, so they plot a way to go kidnap the girls from Shylum or Shiloh, I think, to, and they, you know, so they can get more girls to give to the tribe of Benjamin and anyway, it’s just really, really strange and so um. In this time, we don’t know who it is making these decisions. It just talks about the elders of Israel, and I don’t know if they had a judge. I did kind of think maybe they had a judge who didn’t want his or her name recorded because I don’t know if I would want to take responsibility for all of these things that happened. I wouldn’t want credit for it, but, but in any case, I don’t know. and through Throughout all of these difficulties, we are told 4 times in those days there was no king in Israel. It’s in Judges 176, in Judges 18:1, in Judges 194, and then the Book of Judges, it’s the very last book, I mean the very last verse in the book of Judges, which ends with what sounds like a lament. It’s Judges. 21, 25. In those days there was no king in Israel. Every man did that which right was that which was right in his own eyes. So it sounds like they’re saying, hey,

[00:25:45] this system of judges isn’t working really great for us because there’s just maybe too much anarchy. Maybe that’s kind of how we can describe it. So, um, OK, so that’s the system of judges, and then we’re going to go forward now to where it, it changes. So as I said, the system of judges wasn’t without its problems, and the problems do continue into um the next chapter. So first of all, before after judges, um, Joshua Judges, Ruth, yeah, we go to Ruth, and that is we have kind of a sidetrack telling us about Ruth and. Boz Boaz again, who was not a polygamist, and um, and then we return to the story of Israel and so we encountered then after Ruth we go back to Kings and it um kings, yeah, so we go back to the Book of Kings, but it does still start with judges. So at the beginning of the Book of Kings we encounter the high priest who is Eli. And so the high priest in Israel was I guess, I mean, I guess we could say he’s equivalent to the president, like he was the highest authority, right? He held the highest calling in um the church. He’s described as the presiding officer by by others, so we’ll get back to him. But um, OK, and then we also, so we have the story of Hannah, we we encounter a polygamist family. So quickly and first Samuel, um, we hear. Yeah, sorry, I mixed it up. It’s Samuel that comes after Ruth. So we’re going to the book of Samuel that tells us about the kings and about David and Solomon. I got it mixed up, so it goes Joshua Judges, Ruth, Samuel. So now we’re into the book of Samuel, not Kings. That comes in eggs. So in the beginning of Samuel, we meet a man named Elkinna who had two wives. This is first Samuel 12, and he had two wives. The name of one was Hannah and then uh name of the was Pennina, and Pennina had children, but Hannah had no children. So again, note it specifies when a man has more than one wife. It’s noteworthy. It’s the exception, not the rule. It’s not the default. Um, OK, and it sounds to me like this situation was similar to Jacob with Rachel and Leah, um, in that, well, first of all, I want to point out. One reason for polygamy can be childlessness, right? Like with my great um great great grandmother, I need to, I’m a little flustered to do the math right now. But anyway, um,

[00:28:14] yes, my grandmother’s parents, the first My wife was Baron and that was their motivation to take a second wife. So that could very well be the motivation here with Elkkina, his wife, who was his beloved wife, Hannah was Baron and so maybe he married a second wife for that reason. But in any case, it was a similar situation with Rachel and Leah where Hannah, like Rachel was beloved but childless. It sounds to me like Pennina, like Leah had children but maybe lacked that same connection to her husband and and um. Unfortunately. Pennina was um. I’m, I’m trying to find my spot. Pennina, things between Pennina and Hannah were not good, right? It again introduces the word we talked about in episode 12 in Jacob’s polygamy. It it introduces the word Sara. Which in Hebrew means adversity, affliction, anguish, distress, tribulation, trouble, and plural wife. Pennina is described as Hannah’s Sarah, which is translated, depending on the translation we read as either adversary or rival, and she is cruel to Hannah and provokes and taunts her viciously, as it says in various um translations because she is childless. So it’s really heartbreaking and um. I think it’s important to again remember we tend to look to Old Testament accounts of polygamy to say, look, they did it, therefore we should do it without going, look, every time they did it, there is untold heartbreak and sorrow and misery. Why would we want to do that? Why would we think it’s of God? It’s something that they did, and we can look at the fruits of it, right, which are here in this story. So, um, I’m, I’m thankful that in my history that although I think my great grandmother, the second wife was not. Treated very well in all occasions. She was kind and loving to the first wife, and she never in any way um gave her a hard time for being childless or rubbed that in her face, and that actually something I’m really thankful for, even though I wish that she herself had been treated a little bit better, but um. In any case, in some ways, maybe Pennina was a blessing to Hannah because the misery she inflicted in on Hannah motivated Hannah to cry and pray until she got Eli’s attention at the Tabernacle. They didn’t have a temple, but still they had that tabernacle. Eli was the high priest of the tabernacle and um. He got her attention. He thinks she’s drunk. She’s like, No, I’m just heartbroken. So he blesses her that she would have a child, and, you know, she makes the promise that she would give the child to the Lord. So she takes she has Samuel. As soon as he’s weaned, she takes him back and gives him to Eli, dedicating him to the Lord. And, and, um, and then Eli blesses her and Elkkina, and they go on to have 5 more children and

[00:31:12] In keeping with other polygamist families, it seems that as soon as the favorite wife has children, the other wife seems to become irrelevant. We never hear more of Penina other than that she vexed Hannah and um made her very unhappy. We don’t hear any more about any of the other children other than That Samuel is dedicated to the Lord, given to Eli, and then Hannah and Elkinna are blessed to go on and have 5 more children. So that’s that part of the story. So, OK, but now we’re going to look back to the, because that, that will come up later. We’re going back to look at the um system of judges they have. So Eli is the high priest and also the judge, and he has an interesting problem that later Samuel repeats that we should address. Eli, in his position of authority, um, he, we’re told that he was the judge of Israel for 40 years. That’s in 1 Samuel 4:18. In what seems to me like complete nepotism that doesn’t seem to have happened through the book of judges, he ordained his sons as priests, and he kept and supported them as priests, even though priests, even though they were extremely wicked. And they really polluted and perverted the office, the sacrifices, the tabernacle. The people and the women, um, Huffney and Phineas stole the meat offerings from the people and the Lord. They threatened to take it by force. They, they, they had the tradition of how it was supposed to be done, but they were like, no, we just want all of your meat and we want it raw. We don’t want a part of the sacrifice, and if you don’t give it to us, then we’re gonna take it from you. And um it also says they use their position, their priest positions to sleep with women. Oh, I need to find the verse for this. You can look it up if I can’t find it. They, it says they lay with the women at the um that assembled at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, so that was interesting, sounds familiar to the spiritual wifery system and Early church history that Bennett and others were taking care of saying, I mean, we’re saying, hey, you know, using their position of authority to tell the women it was good for them to sleep with them, using their position of authority to gain access to women is what these women were doing. And so all I mean what these sons of Eli were doing and all of the people bitterly complained to Eli, who he gives his sons a talking to, but he does nothing to punish them or to remove them from their positions of authority. Or to end the abuse, the abuse continues and so. It’s really an interesting thing to consider again that like the person in authority enables their children to really misbehave and uses their position of authority to help them avoid judgment and to give them more ability to to abuse than they otherwise would have. If Eli didn’t sustain his sons in the office of priests and judges, they couldn’t have done what they were doing. So it’s really troubling and um. OK, so this is another thing that I find interesting that we should pay attention to. First Samuel 2:27 says, and there came a man of God unto Eli and said unto him,

[00:34:24] so we’re going to go on to that, but I want to pay attention to this part of it. Eli was the high priest, in other words, the presiding officer, um, the prophet, the judge. And God sends a man of God to bring a message to him. That’s really interesting, right? Like, I just think that’s something that we should consider. That’s really interesting. It, it should give us pause to go, OK, what does this mean? So God’s message is that Eli was chosen to be the priest, but that he scorns the offerings and sacrifices, and then quote, honor thy sons above me to make yourself fat with the chiefest of all the offerings of Israel, my people. So he curses Eli that his sons will die and his house will fall. They’ll, they’ll be completely, they’ll, they’ll all die in a day and, um, there will be nothing left of the house of Eli. And so Eli accepts that, but interestingly, it seems, allows his sons to Continue to serve as priests for maybe years longer, because in the meantime, Samuel is growing up. Like Samuel is young when this is happening and is growing up in the Lord and continues to grow up as we wait for the curses of God to be visited on the house of Eli. So even after this warning, this is still happening. So the people of Israel are like, hey, we are being massively like abused here, but there’s nothing we can do about it because we’ve complained to the high priest and the judge. And he’s not fixing it. So that’s really interesting that the sons of Eli are still allowed access to the people and to the sacrifices and to the women for we don’t know how many years, even after this. So then God sends another warning to Eli through the young prophet Samuel, and that’s the story when, um, Samuel runs in 3 times he hears his name called, he runs into Eli to see what he’s wanted, and then Eli finally says, Oh, it’s God. So Samuel listens to God. And um God tells Samuel he’s reaffirming the curse against Eli. He says, for I have told him that I will judge his house forever, for the iniquity which um which he knoweth because his sons made themselves vile and he restrained them not. So God is going to curse Eli for not reining his sons in, but um, yeah, you know, we have to wait for God to do it. So that’s what Eli did. Samuel. Brings in this promise and still, still it is unsettling that the high priest still allowed his sons to behave so horribly and to have, like, even after these warnings, he still just kept his sons in their place waiting for God to finally destroy them. And then finally one day um after they had continued robbing the people and polluting the the offerings and abusing the women. Um, they finally were in war and the two sons of

[00:37:14] Eli take the ark to the battle, and they are both killed in one day. The word is brought to Eli, who by this time it says he’s very old and very heavy. He’s blind and Overweight, he’s sitting on a stool. He falls backward and breaks his neck, and he dies. And that same day, his daughter-in-law is giving birth to his grandchild and she dies in childbirth. So that, that curse from the Lord comes true in this day. And, um, so I am really glad that God took care of the um corruption, but it’s hard that. You know that it took that long and there was no system in place to curb that kind of corruption. The children of Israel had to bear under that for quite a long time without any means of removing it or taking care of it. So that’s interesting. So Samuel, in the meantime had already been recognized as a prophet that he knew the word of God, and so when Eli died, he became the next judge and high priest, but strangely the cycle continued. And Samuel, just like Eli, ordained his sons as judges, and they also were corrupt. We don’t get quite as much information, but first Samuel 8:3 says, and his sons walked not in his ways, but turned aside after Luke Lucer and took bribes and perverted judgment. And so that’s when the elders of Israel came to Samuel saying, behold, thou art old and thy sons walk not in thy ways. Now make us a king and judge us like all the nations. OK, so this is, this is where it gets really interesting. I think when you understand the history of what’s happened, the instability, the Potentially the infighting to get the next judge. Like, I don’t know how that happened, but every time a judge died, Israel was plunged into chaos and into slaughter and bondage, right? And so they’re seeing this really unstable system. That then in most recent memory, Eli was also tinged with like corruption and nepotism. They couldn’t do anything about these corrupt judges and priests that were over them and that they were subjected to because The person, the, the, the only person who had power, the high priest and the judge wouldn’t do anything about it because they were his sons. So they looked at this recent history of these horrible sons of Eli that they had had to deal with, and now they have Samuel, and he installs his his sons, so they’re looking at how many more years into the future of evil corrupt sons with no remedy and um cause Samuel was keeping his sons in their position as well. So it makes a lot of sense to me that they were like, hey, we need a different system, and look, all of these other places around us are doing kings. This king thing looks pretty good. Maybe that was the only idea they had, right? Like it looks more stable, it looks more so they come to Samuel and and I just, I mean, I know that in the Bible we look at them as the bad guys like they wanted kings and God is saying he’s he’s rejecting them. We’re gonna get into that cause I find it. Really interesting. Um, let’s see, cause it says, um,

[00:40:20] so I think that I’m, I’m still, I think it anyway, I’ve, I’ve lost my place and I apologize to not know where, what chapter I’m in. I think I’m in 1 Samuel 8. And um it said the Lord Samuel um when the elders come to Samuel, it says in verse 6, but the thing displeased Samuel when they said, Give us a king to judge us. So first of all, Samuel did not like this, and I can understand that because Samuel was the judge and his sons were the judges with him, and he personally was being rejected. right? We don’t want your rule, we want kings. And so Samuel didn’t like it. And I find that interesting because I talk about in episode, I think episode 11 maybe that’s about concubines and preconceptions. So it’s one I’ve already addressed, but how when you have preconceptions, it’s sometimes hard to get the pure word of the Lord because your thoughts and feelings can get in the way sometimes, right? And so I, it’s, it’s hard for me to understand how, um, I could understand why Samuel was upset by the people wanting a different system, but um, let’s see where I, where I wanted to say this. In any case, I know that God says to him, and OK, here it is, and Samuel prayed unto the Lord, and the Lord said unto Samuel, hearken unto the voice of the people and all that they say unto thee, for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me that I should not reign over them. That’s the part that I really had to grapple with. I’m like, how are these corrupt sons of Samuel and Eli Eli and Samuel in that order? How are they a representation of being ruled over by the Lord? Like, how is the Lord reigning over them manifest in this corruption? Does that make a lot of sense, right? And so I’m trying to understand what that means. Maybe the Lord had a different lesson he wanted to teach them or a different way of going about it. I don’t know, but it seems to me that it was very much the corruption that was being rejected and the instability, not the Lord. So I, I, I don’t, I would love to know your thoughts on that cause it’s a little bit. Confusing to me about, uh, you know, I guess, I guess how I look at it, why I brought up preconceptions is cause I wonder if Samuel was like, you’re not you’re just rejecting me, you’re rejecting God, you know, we see that kind of thing happen. So I don’t know, I’m curious about it, but as I look at the story, I actually personally until someone helps me see it otherwise I’m really impressed with the elders of Israel because first of all they They were doing exactly what like we give Nephi credit in um when they’re wandering in the wilderness that he goes to his father and says, tell me where I should go for meat, and that’s when Lehi was even murmuring against God. But Lehi, but Nephi recognizes his authority, right? These elders of Israel were recognizing the authority of Samuel. They weren’t saying, hey, we’re going to do a coup. We’re going to overthrow things.

[00:43:09] We’re going to, you know, they went to Samuel with their problem, and they brought a solution because it sounds like they had been going to Eli with their problems for a long time about, hey, this isn’t working, your sons are corrupt, and, and Eli didn’t fix it, and that probably were coming to Samuel saying, hey, this isn’t working, your sons were corrupt. And Samuel wasn’t fixing it, so they were like, hey, we’re coming up with a solution, we’ll do this. And um that’s really interesting to me. Also, it’s important to me that they weren’t seeking power. They weren’t saying, I want to be the king. I wouldn’t like it seemed to me that they were actually quite humble saying we want a king, so will you as our high priest and Prophet and judge choose a king, which is what they all, which is what happens. So I find it really interesting that um this seems like a good way to deal with it. Um, I don’t think that the people of God should necessarily, I mean, it doesn’t make sense to me that the people of God should just expect that they will always be ruled over by corruption, by corrupt judges who take advantage of the women and take bribes and pollute their sacrifices. Like that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. So. I would like to know your thoughts for that. This is going a lot longer than I had wanted it to, and I’m sorry. Um, in any case, Samuel agrees, as God does, but he then goes on to blame them for the problems, um, for the problems they’ve had because of their idol worship, which maybe there’s some truth to that. But again, I find it interesting whenever in a system something fails and the leader blames the people, right? That’s always interesting because it seems to me there’s more room for introspection of Samuel going, hey, you know, Eli was supporting his corrupt sons. I’m supporting my corrupt sons. Maybe that’s part of the problem instead of just, it’s your, you guys’ fault cause you were worworshiping faults. I. So, which also came about in the system of judges, right? So, um, anyway, I had some challenges figuring out the differences between judges and kings, because I can’t see really what the differences were. But the main things I came up with are that kings are dynastic. They, they were hereditary and judge judges until we get to Eli and his sons and um Samuel and his sons didn’t seem to be hereditary, but still with Eli and Samuel introducing that, that makes the difference a little bit less too. Um, kings, from what Samuel describes, kings, kings seem to have more power. Again, I don’t know how the power of judges was limited. We don’t know how that worked at all, so I don’t know why

[00:45:30] kings would be more powerful, but that’s what Samuel warns the people. He warns them that, um, this is already going long, so I won’t read all of this, but basically he warns them that basically they will own everything and everyone will be their servants. They’ll be able to take the children to serve them. They’ll. Be able to take the land, they’ll be able, you know, but one thing it says again, looking at a holy cow, how do we take our current belief system and apply it with the Bible, right? It says, um, and he will take the 10th of your seed and of your vineyards and give to his officers and to his servants, and he will take your men’s servants and your maidservants and your goodliest young men and your asses and put them to work, and he will take the 10 of your sheep, and ye shall be his servants. That was really interesting to me that taking a tent is symbolic of sort of tyranny, dictatorship like um greed of leadership. I, I again want to grapple with that, um. And understand. I think maybe at some point we’ll do a um episode on the history of tithing and how that grew and where that came out of it in in both in the in the Bible, biblical times and also in the modern church, cause that is a really interesting story that I think is a topic that is Worthwhile to grapple with. We’re not gonna go into that more here. I just came across it in this narrative and I find it really interesting. So, um, OK, so anyway, we’re going from things were unstable in judges to being more stable under kings, but with the Um, and you know, they were always plunged into chaos and with kings there would be more stability, but it sounds like there would be more of a danger of, um, too much power, right? So it kind of feels like you’re between a rock and a hard place like. The devil, you know, the devil you don’t know, right? I, I was, I was just trying to go, OK, what is it we’re supposed to learn from this? And I wonder, as I really grappled with this and thought about it, I had kind of an insight that I want to share that, um, I wonder if a lesson that we can take care. First of all, I thought it’s almost like no form of government is good government because people are corrupt, right? So whether you’re gonna have corrupt judges or corrupt kings, you’re gonna be in trouble. And we know from the Book of Mormon that if you have righteous kings like be like. Like a system of kings isn’t necessarily a pro a problem cause we had King Mosiah and King Benjamin, and kings can be even in those stories, it says it’s good for you to have kings if the kings would always be righteous, but you can’t rely on them to always be righteous, right? So it’s kind of like like neither of these feels like a solution and um and as I thought about it, it was really interesting cause I had this kind of aha of oh my goodness,

[00:48:08] maybe this is part of what The founders of our Constitution and the writers that they relied on to help them with the ideas to develop our Constitution, maybe these were some of the things they grappled with. I know that they were godly people who really, really relied on the Bible and looked to the examples of the Old Testament for their ideas on government. So I was kind of going, how does that make sense? And I just was like, oh my gosh, I think they This is my theory, totally my theory. It’s just making sense to me. I think they approached this text critically, kind of like what I’m talking about and how we choose to approach these stories. I think they approached this critically and saw these are the problems of this system, these are the problems of this system. These are why both of these systems are a problem. And we need to use these examples to help us come up with through inspiration and study and faith to help us come up with a better system. Seems like they’ve recognized the potential for corruption and leadership all around and the potential of corruption in each person, and they set up a system of government to. Try to counterbalance power so that there would always be checks of balances and there would always be conflicting interests so that they could use these things that were a problem under both judges and kings to try to create both stability and also checks on power and authority. I I, I hope that makes sense, but it was really cool to me. I see just like the brilliance of our framers grappling with these biblical governments in this way with um, a critical eye to try to see what they could learn from their example for good or bad. So instead of putting these people on pedestals and saying we need to do what they did, they looked at them and said, OK, we don’t want that outcome and we don’t want that outcome. So what can we learn? And I think that that’s actually profound and we can’t. We can’t put both both the systems of government and the Old Testament on a pedestal and our system of government and the framers of that on a pedestal, right, because they were in complete conflict. They’re completely different. So the framers of our government rejected the models and examples of the Old Testament because they came to it with a critical eye. So I think that that’s really telling to us that we I think both can and should have the courage and the um I guess integrity and empowerment to approach these scriptures the same way, to approach these texts the same way, to say. What do these systems do and how can we learn from that so we can try to create better systems, so we can try to have better ideas to guide our systems, if that makes sense. I, I, I actually really liked that it’s because it brought this into better focus then It gave me more peace and appreciation for these texts, texts than I had had before to be able to see them as both good and bad examples to teach us about human nature and to teach us to find better ways. And so, um, I think that there are a million applications for that, but since the subject matter of this podcast is specifically on polygamy, I think that that’s the first lesson we should learn in this first part of David. As is how we can approach these stories of polygamy in the Old Testament and how we should look at them and look at the outcomes to see if we can find better ways, right? So anyway, I, I hope that this was a useful one to you tomorrow. I mean, next week, I think will be more interesting because we are getting into the actual narrative of David. This was just setting the stage. Hope it was worthwhile.

[00:51:42] Thank you so much for joining us, and I will see you next time.