Hagar, Bilhah, Zilpah, Keturah, Rizpah, and a woman in Judges who is never given a name. Scripture tells their stories plainly, and the stories themselves show why this was never God's design.
Concubines in the Bible were women joined to a man as secondary wives, usually of lower status, often servants, with fewer protections than a full wife and weaker inheritance rights for their children.
Scripture describes the practice without endorsing it. Nearly every story with a concubine in it also shows the damage: rivalry, exile, powerlessness and grief. Jesus settles the question by going back to the beginning, where a man and his wife become one flesh.
That is where Sound of Heaven lands. Here is how we get there, without skipping the hard parts.
The Hebrew word is pilegesh. In the ancient Near East a pilegesh was not a mistress kept on the side. She lived in the household, and her children were counted in the family line. She was a wife of a lower grade.
The Bible's own language shows the overlap. Keturah is Abraham's wife in Genesis 25:1 and his concubine in 1 Chronicles 1:32. What separated the two was rank, not affection.
A woman in a recognized union with a man, ranked below a primary wife. Often a servant or a captive.
Nobody is sure. It sits close to the Greek pallakis, and scholars still argue over who borrowed from whom. Sermons that say the word proves concubinage was a foreign import stretch the evidence too far.
Counted as the man's sons, usually ranked below the sons of the primary wife. Genesis 25:5 and 6 shows it: Isaac inherits everything, while the sons of the concubines get gifts and are sent away east.
Israel did not invent any of this. The Babylonian world Abraham came out of already had laws for Sarai's exact situation. Law 146 of the Code of Hammurabi, in L. W. King's translation, reads: “If a man take a wife, and she give this man a maid-servant as wife and she bear him children, and then this maid assume equality with the wife: because she has borne him children her master shall not sell her for money, but he may keep her as a slave, reckoning her among the maid-servants.”
Put Genesis 16 next to that and it is nearly the same plot: a childless wife, a servant given as a wife, a pregnancy, then friction. Abraham's household ran on the customs of its day.
A concubine was a real member of the household with a lower rank and fewer protections, and the Bible reports the practice inside the world that produced it.
Most readers never notice this: the Bible almost never tells a concubine story that turns out well.
Given to Abram to solve Sarai's barrenness, then treated harshly until she runs into the desert. God meets her there, and she names Him: “You are a God of seeing.” Later she and Ishmael are sent away.
Rachel and Leah hand their servants to Jacob in a contest over sons. Neither woman is asked what she wants.
Wife in one text, concubine in another. Her sons get gifts and are sent east so nothing competes with Isaac.
Saul's concubine. After her two sons are executed, she guards their bodies on a rock from harvest until the rain, and her vigil moves David to bury Saul's family.
Unnamed, and handed over by the man who should have protected her. She did not survive the night.
Left behind by David, taken by Absalom as a claim to the throne, then shut away “living as if in widowhood.” They chose none of it.
Judges 19 opens, “In those days, when there was no king in Israel,” and it is written to horrify. We place it in our summary of the book of Judges, and our study of what the Bible says about rape shows the text never blames her. Those who hear of it say, “consider it, take counsel, and speak.” Do not look away.
Some of these women were used or hurt by the people who should have protected them. If that is close to your story, you are allowed to read slowly, or to stop.
The woman in Judges 19 was given no name by the men around her, and God still saw her. What happened to you was not your fault, and no one who harmed you was acting for God. If you are in danger, call 911. You can reach RAINN, the National Sexual Assault Hotline, at 800-656-4673. And if you want someone to pray with you, our team is here through our prayer page.
The Law of Moses did not abolish concubinage. It put a floor under the women with the least power in the house.
“If he takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, or her marital rights. And if he does not do these three things for her, she shall go out for nothing, without payment of money.”
Exodus 21:10 to 11The setting is a young woman sold by a poor father and designated as a wife for the master or his son. If another wife arrives, her food, clothing and marital rights cannot be cut. If he fails her, she walks out free. Next to Babylon, that is a real limit on a man's power.
Deuteronomy 21:10 to 14 gives a woman taken in war a full month to mourn her parents, and if she is let go, she cannot be sold as a slave.
Deuteronomy 17:17 says the king “shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away.” Solomon is the proof.
Jesus hands us the key. Asked about divorce, He said Moses allowed it “because of your hardness of heart.” He said it about divorce, and we are applying His logic here, but it fits. These laws are guardrails around a broken practice, not a floor plan for a godly home.
Regulation is not endorsement. The law protected the woman at the bottom because the house was not what God intended.
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Manage My Giving"Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver."2 Corinthians 9:7
Royal concubines were about politics as much as desire, and they produced the wreckage Deuteronomy warned about. We count David's household in how many wives King David had.
After taking Jerusalem, David adds concubines and wives. The text records it without applause.
The king who could take whomever he wanted took Bathsheba. We walk through it in the sin of David and Bathsheba.
Fleeing Absalom, David leaves ten concubines to keep the house.
Absalom takes them in the sight of all Israel as a statement against his father, as Nathan had warned in 2 Samuel 12:11.
David puts them in a house under guard, provided for and shut away until they die.
The largest household in Israel's story, and the most destructive.
“He had 700 wives, who were princesses, and 300 concubines. And his wives turned away his heart.”
1 Kings 11:3Notice where the writer puts the weight: Solomon's heart, drawn to other gods, and a king who ignored the law written for kings. His son Rehoboam carried on with eighteen wives and sixty concubines (2 Chronicles 11:21), and the kingdom split in his reign. We look at the reasons behind it in why Solomon had so many wives.
God never condemned it. Abraham, Jacob and David had concubines and God still blessed them, so the Bible must be fine with it.
It tells the truth about what happened, and then shows the rivalry, exile and grief that followed, story after story.
This is the Sound of Heaven position. Concubinage was never God's design. The Bible records it because it happened in the families God was working through, and the stories expose what it did to people. God worked through Abraham, Jacob and David in spite of their households.
The other view at its strongest: no Old Testament verse says do not take a concubine, Exodus 21 regulates it instead of banning it, God blesses Ishmael, and David is called a man after God's own heart. That is a real argument. It is also an argument from silence, and silence is not approval. Look at what the stories show: Sarai and Hagar at war, servants used as weapons, Reuben with Bilhah in Genesis 35:22, ten women shut away, Solomon's heart turned. Nobody is better off for it.
And name who the easy defense gets used on: wives and daughters told that their mistreatment is holy. It is not.
The opposite mistake is just as real: deciding the Bible approves of using women, so the whole book can go. That reads narrative as commandment. The same Scripture lets Hagar name the God who saw her, keeps Rizpah's vigil on the record, and calls readers of Judges to speak. A book that approved of this would not tell it this way.
In Genesis 16:3, how does the text say Sarai gave Hagar to Abram?
The ESV reads that Sarai “gave her to Abram her husband as a wife.” Genesis 30:4 and 30:9 say the same of Bilhah and Zilpah. A concubine was a wife of lower rank, which is why these stories turn into rivalry so fast.
Jesus is the final and full revelation of God, so the real question is what He says God meant all along.
“Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
Matthew 19:4 to 6Jesus is answering a question about divorce, not concubines, and we should be honest about that. But look at how He answers. He goes past Moses, back to Genesis 2:24. His standard is not what the law tolerated but what God made in the beginning. Then in verse 8 He explains the gap: “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.”
That sentence opens every concubine story in the Old Testament. The law made allowances for hard hearts. Jesus changes hearts. His picture of marriage has two people, not a ranked household: his wife, singular, and the two become one. There is no second tier in it. We unpack that design in the purpose of marriage, and the practical side in how to get married according to the Bible.
Watch how Jesus treats the women His culture ranked lowest. He talks theology with a Samaritan woman married five times. He stops everything for a woman who touched His robe and calls her daughter. He is the God Hagar met in the desert, the God who sees.
Most people who look this up are trying to square a hard part of the Bible with the God they believe in, or they have heard these chapters used to excuse treating people as less.
Here is where it lands. The stories are true to what happened, and what happened was harm. The law put a floor under the women at the bottom. And Jesus, who shows us exactly who the Father is, took marriage back to the beginning, where no wife is ranked beneath another.
That same Jesus meets people where Hagar was: used, pushed out, alone. He sees them. In His kingdom, here now, nobody is a secondary person.
For related reading, see Abraham in the Bible, Jacob and his household, the descendants of Hagar's son Ishmael, and what we believe.
A concubine was a secondary wife with fewer rights, the Bible reports it without approving it, its stories show the harm, the law protected the woman with the least power, and Jesus takes marriage back to the beginning where two become one.
Bring your questions, or your own story, and someone at Sound of Heaven will pray with you and walk through it.
Concubines in the Bible were women joined to a man as secondary wives. The Hebrew word is pilegesh. A concubine lived in the household and her children were counted in the family, but she had lower status than a primary wife, fewer protections, and her sons usually inherited less. Scripture records the practice as part of Israel's ancient world, and its stories show the rivalry and harm it caused rather than holding it up as a model.
Status and security. Both were recognized unions, and the Bible sometimes calls a woman a wife in one place and a concubine in another, as with Keturah in Genesis 25:1 and 1 Chronicles 1:32. A primary wife's sons were the main heirs. A concubine often came as a servant or a captive, had less standing in the house, and her sons could be given gifts and sent away, as Abraham did in Genesis 25:6.
No. The Old Testament never directly bans the practice, and Exodus 21 regulates it, so it is fair to say it was tolerated within Israel's culture. Toleration is not approval. The stories show jealousy, exile and grief nearly every time. Jesus gives the key in Matthew 19:8: Moses made allowances because of hard hearts, but from the beginning it was not so. God's design, as Jesus restates it from Genesis 2:24, is a man and his wife becoming one flesh.
First Kings 11:3 says Solomon had 700 wives, who were princesses, and 300 concubines, and that his wives turned away his heart. The writer presents it as a failure, not an achievement. Deuteronomy 17:17 had already warned that a king must not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away, and that is what happened when Solomon turned to other gods in his old age.
She was a woman from Bethlehem in Judah, joined to a Levite from the hill country of Ephraim, and the Bible never gives her name. While traveling, they stopped for the night in Gibeah, where men of the town surrounded the house and the Levite handed her over to them. She was abused and did not survive. The narrator tells it to show how far Israel had fallen, and the text never blames her.