The world around Exodus

What did marriage law look like around ancient Israel?

Israel’s neighbors already had laws and marriage contracts for households with more than one wife. They dealt with support, inheritance, status, and what happened when a husband took another wife.

Those documents cannot tell us what Scripture means or whether God approved of the arrangements. They do help us see the legal questions behind Exodus 21. I am using them here for that limited purpose.

How these records are presented

For each record, you will see the source, its setting, the part scholars dispute, and what I think it helps us understand. A citation that still needs to be checked against its standard edition is marked clearly. If you find a material error after the finished launch, I will list it on the corrections page.

  1. c. 1930 BCIsinWorking citation · standard-edition collation pending

    Ordering inheritance between the children of two women

    The Laws of Lipit-Ishtar · Inheritance provisions; exact section pending collation

    What the source says

    Provisions order the division of a father's estate between the children of a first wife and the children of a second woman of the household.

    Documented context

    This is the same legal problem Deuteronomy 21:15 to 17 addresses: a man with children by more than one woman, and an estate that has to be divided without the father's preference deciding it.

    The collection predates Hammurabi by roughly two centuries, so the problem was already old law when the Torah legislated on it.

    What is disputed

    The reconstruction of damaged sections, and how the categories of wife, second wife, and slave woman map onto one another across collections, are disputed.

    What I take from it

    This helps show that Deuteronomy 21:15 to 17 addresses a legal problem people in that world already recognized. The biblical law gives its own answer by protecting the firstborn of the less-loved wife from his father's preference.

  2. 19th century BCKanesh, Old Assyrian merchant colonyWorking citation · standard-edition collation pending

    The question is written into the marriage contract

    Old Assyrian marriage contracts · Including the contract of Laqipum and Hatala; tablet numbers pending collation

    What the source says

    Individual contracts set terms about a second woman. Some bar the husband from taking another wife outright. In one contract, if the wife has not borne a child within a stated period, she herself is to buy a slave woman for the purpose, and the husband may not otherwise take another.

    Documented context

    These are private agreements between families, not state law. Where the parties cared about the question, they negotiated it and wrote it down.

    The clauses suggest that taking another woman was legally possible unless the agreement restricted it. A private contract can restate an existing rule, so the clause should be read with the wider legal record rather than by itself.

    What is disputed

    How representative the surviving merchant archives are of the wider society, and how far colony practice reflected practice in Assur itself.

    What I take from it

    These contracts show families negotiating restrictions on an arrangement their law recognized. They do not tell us what those families considered morally ideal, and they do not interpret the biblical texts for us.

  3. c. 1750 BCBabylonWorking citation · standard-edition collation pending

    A wife's provision decides whether a second wife may enter

    The Laws of Hammurabi · §§ 144 to 147

    What the source says

    If a man has married a nadītum, a priestess who does not bear children, and she has given her husband a slave woman who has borne children, he may not take a junior wife. If she has provided no children, he may. If the slave woman who has borne children then claims equality with her mistress, the mistress may not sell her, because she has borne children; she may be marked and counted among the household slaves. If she has borne no children, the mistress may sell her.

    Documented context

    The provisions sit inside a long marriage section of the collection, alongside rules on dowry, debt, illness, desertion, and divorce settlements. The collection treats them as household law rather than as an exceptional case.

    The arrangement they regulate, a wife giving her own slave to her husband so that the household has children, is the arrangement Genesis 16 and Genesis 30 describe in Abraham's and Jacob's households.

    What is disputed

    How closely Babylonian practice tracked the written collection, and whether the Laws of Hammurabi functioned as enforceable statute, a royal apologia, or a scholarly compilation, are all live scholarly questions.

    What I take from it

    I take these sections as evidence that this kind of household was familiar and legally regulated. They also show that the arrangements in Genesis 16 and 30 resemble a legal pattern found elsewhere in the ancient world.

    Open the source

  4. c. 1750 BCBabylonWorking citation · standard-edition collation pending

    He may marry again, and she keeps her place or leaves with her dowry

    The Laws of Hammurabi · §§ 148 to 149

    What the source says

    If a man has married a wife and she is seized by a disease, and he decides to marry another, he may marry the second; he shall not divorce the wife whom the disease seized. She shall live in the house he has built and he shall support her as long as she lives. If that woman does not choose to remain in her husband's house, he shall restore the dowry she brought from her father's house, and she may leave.

    Documented context

    This is a close legal parallel outside Israel to the structure of Exodus 21:10 to 11: another wife may be taken, the first wife's maintenance is guaranteed, and if the arrangement fails she leaves with what is hers.

    The second provision gives the woman the choice. The law does not require her to stay, and it does not make her departure a penalty against her.

    What is disputed

    Whether the maintenance obligation was enforced in practice, and how the dowry return was calculated, are matters of scholarly reconstruction rather than record.

    What I take from it

    This comparison helps me identify the kind of question Exodus 21:10 to 11 is answering: what an existing wife may not lose when her husband marries another woman. The two laws are not identical.

  5. 15th century BCNuziWorking citation · standard-edition collation pending

    If she bears no child, she provides the woman who will

    Nuzi tablets, the marriage contract of Shennima and Gilimninu · HSS 5 67; collation pending

    What the source says

    The contract provides that if Gilimninu bears children, Shennima shall take no other wife; if she does not bear, she shall herself acquire a slave woman for the purpose, and she retains authority over the children born.

    Documented context

    This is a close surviving parallel to the arrangement between Sarai, Abram and Hagar: the wife supplies the woman, and the wife's standing over the resulting children is written into the agreement.

    What is disputed

    There is an important caution here. E. A. Speiser built a mid-twentieth-century case that patriarchal customs mirror Nuzi law, and later scholarship, including Thompson, Van Seters, and Eichler's re-evaluations, substantially rolled that case back. The parallel is real; the inference that Genesis depends on Nuzi practice is not established.

    What I take from it

    I use this record only to show that the arrangement Genesis narrates had a documented legal parallel in the wider world. It does not date Genesis, establish that the patriarchs followed Hurrian law, or interpret any biblical sentence.

  6. 5th century BCElephantine, a Jewish garrison community in EgyptWorking citation · standard-edition collation pending

    A Jewish community writes the restriction into its own contracts

    Aramaic marriage contracts from Elephantine · TAD B2.6, B3.3, B3.8 (Porten and Yardeni)

    What the source says

    Marriage documents from this Jewish community include clauses restricting the husband from taking another wife, with penalties attached. In at least one contract the restriction is drawn very broadly.

    Documented context

    These are Jewish documents, written by Jewish scribes for Jewish families, roughly a thousand years after the Torah's laws and centuries before the rabbinic material.

    The clauses are consistent with the arrangement being legally available unless an agreement restricted it. A contract can also restate an existing rule or custom, so the clauses have to be read with the wider legal record rather than treated as proof by themselves.

    What is disputed

    The exact force of individual clauses, the reading of damaged lines, and how far one community's practice can be generalized to Jews elsewhere.

    What I take from it

    These contracts matter in both directions. Jewish families deliberately restricted the arrangement in writing, which weighs against calling it universally acceptable. The fact that they wrote the restriction into a contract also weighs against assuming that everyone already understood a universal prohibition.

  7. late Second Temple periodQumran / the Dead Sea ScrollsOpen scholarly sources linked below

    A pre-Christian Jewish argument for one wife during her lifetime

    Damascus Document CD 4:20–5:2 and Temple Scroll 11Q19 57:17–19 · CD-A 4:20–5:2; 11Q19 57:17–19

    What the source says

    The Damascus Document condemns taking two wives “in their lifetimes” and appeals to creation, the animals entering the ark in pairs, and the king's command not to multiply wives. The Temple Scroll says that its king must not take another wife in addition to the first while she lives, though he may marry again after her death.

    Documented context

    This is Jewish interpretation from before or around the emergence of Christianity. It shows that a Scripture-based restrictive reading did not begin with Roman emperors or later church councils.

    Other Jewish evidence from the same broad era, including Josephus and marriage documents, points to continuing legal possibility or practice. The evidence is therefore divided rather than uniform.

    What is disputed

    Scholars debate whether the Damascus phrase prohibits concurrent wives, remarriage after divorce, or both. The Temple Scroll's express rule applies to the king, and Qumran was a sectarian community whose rulings cannot be treated as the view of every Second Temple Jew.

    What I take from it

    I take these texts as one of the earliest surviving Jewish arguments in the restrictive direction. You cannot tell this history as though one-wife reasoning began only after Christianity met Roman law. The evidence still does not tell us how widely Qumran's reading was shared.

    Open the source

  8. Archive AD 94–132 · marriage contract mid-to-late AD 120sMaoza and En-Gedi, Roman province of ArabiaOpen scholarly sources linked below

    A Jewish household in surviving legal paperwork

    The Babatha archive, Cave of Letters · P.Yadin 10 (Babatha's marriage contract); P.Yadin 26 (AD 131 litigation with Miriam)

    What the source says

    P.Yadin 10 is Babatha's marriage contract with Judah son of Eleazar Khthousion; its date line is lost, and scholars generally place it in the mid-to-late 120s. P.Yadin 26 records litigation in 131 between Babatha and Miriam, another wife of Judah, after his death.

    Documented context

    The documents are marriage settlements, property registrations, loans, guardianship petitions, and summonses. The surviving paperwork handles the family through the same property and court processes used for other households.

    The archive is one of the richest sources for the daily legal life of a Jewish woman in antiquity, and Babatha appears in it as a person who used the courts assertively on her own behalf.

    What is disputed

    Whether Judah was married to both women at the same time is genuinely disputed. Several scholars read the archive that way; others point out that no document states he was still married to Miriam when he married Babatha. What is not disputed is that Jewish law of the period permitted the arrangement.

    What I take from it

    The archive shows us a household through property, dowry, guardianship, and litigation, just as other households appear in legal records. I do not use it as proof that both marriages overlapped because the surviving documents do not establish that.

    Open the source

  9. c. 1000 ADMainz, Ashkenazi JewryWorking citation · standard-edition collation pending

    The practice ends by decree while the text stands unchanged

    The ban attributed to Rabbenu Gershom ben Judah · Attribution, dating and original wording pending collation

    What the source says

    A ban attributed to Rabbenu Gershom prohibited taking more than one wife among Ashkenazi Jews. Sephardi and Mizrahi communities did not adopt it, and the practice continued among them for centuries afterward.

    Documented context

    Nothing in the Hebrew text changed between the biblical laws and this ban. What changed was communal legislation, and the change was recorded as communal legislation rather than as a discovery about the text.

    Communities that shared the Hebrew Scriptures nevertheless adopted different communal rules. That difference is evidence about later practice, not an explanation by itself of why either community reached its rule.

    What is disputed

    The exact date, the original wording, the scope of the ban, and how much of it goes back to Gershom himself rather than to later attribution are all debated.

    What I take from it

    This is a useful parallel from a different tradition. A community restricted the practice through a recorded decree while the wording of Scripture remained the same. It shows how practice can change without a textual change, but it proves nothing about Christian history or the meaning of the biblical passages.

What these records can tell us

  • The household arrangement addressed by the Torah also appears in ancient statute collections and private contracts.
  • The surrounding collections address legal problems closely related to those in Exodus and Deuteronomy, including what an existing wife may keep and how children of different women inherit.
  • Some surviving contracts and later communal decrees restrict the arrangement in writing, which lets us distinguish those restrictions from the biblical wording itself.

What they cannot tell us

  • That any biblical text means what a Babylonian or Hurrian document means. Comparative material sets a context; it does not interpret a sentence of Scripture.
  • That Israel borrowed its laws, or that the patriarchal narratives depend on any particular foreign legal practice.
  • That the arrangement was good, advisable, or common in Israel. Frequency, approval, and legality are separate questions. These records only help us understand the surrounding legal world.

These records give us context, not an answer to the biblical question. Exodus 21:10 takes about a minute to read and shows us what Israel’s own law recognizes. You can also read what later Christian teachers said about the same subject.

Read Exodus 21:10 →Read the later history →