Concubines: Past, Present, and… Eternally?

0:00Happy Sunday, everyone. Hope you're all doing great. Welcome to another Sunday musing. This one I'm talking about concubines. Now I did one some months ago about concubines. I planned to not do anymore on this topic and then I was asked by the folks at the Journal of Mormon Polygamy, Michelle Stone and Cheryl Bruno to speak at their annual conference they put together. So, yesterday I presented a paper that I put together on the topic of concubines. Less on any theological or doctrinal aspect of polygamy and concubines and more trying to elucidate some of the historical context, which I feel like is typically glossed over. What I'm going to do for this particular musing, for this if you're watching the video, rather than just reading from a few bullet point notes and talking off the cuff, I'm going to read verbatim the paper that I wrote

1:03for presentation at yesterday's conference. So, this topic I feel like is important because if we're going to argue that polygamy is of God because section 132 is legitimate and from God, then that raises all kinds of interesting questions including the one that I will be focused on now. So, let's dive in. Polygamy occupies a prominent place among the controversial and contested doctrines in Latter-day Saint history. Yet one of its most foundational criteria has received remarkably little scrutiny. Section 132 of the doctrine of Covenants, which purports to be a revelation from the Lord authorizing the practice, does not describe it as a doctrine of polygamy or plural marriage or spiritual wiffery or celestial plural marriage, it is named in the opening verse the principal and doctrine of having many wives and concubines. The latter term is not incidental, but it's also never defined. It's simply treated without scrutiny as a divinely

2:06sanctioned category of relationship, concubinage from the Latin concubina meaning to lie with someone remains almost entirely unexamined within Latter-day Saint discourse whether ignored, euphemized or implicitly assimilated into more familiar modern notions of marriage. This silence is striking, particularly given the strength of the claims made on concubinages behalf. Section 132 presents the possession of concubines not merely as a tolerated accommodation, but as part of a divine order allegedly practiced by ancient patriarchs and by implication integrated into the highest form of eternal exaltation. Such a claim necessarily presupposes that concubinage as a social institution is compatible with God's moral and relational order, yet that presupposition is rarely tested against the historical reality of what concubinage actually was. In recent years particularly due to the publication of the Joseph Smith papers by

3:08the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, academics and amateurs alike have had more occasion to scrutinize Joseph Smith's polygamous instruction and involvement, as well as the claim of authenticity for section 132 itself. Some of the arguments against the alleged revelation include its internal inconsistency, its questionable provenance, and its conflict both with Joseph Smith's inspired version of the Bible and the Book of Warren. Indeed, to believe section 132 is a real revelation, compels Latter-day Saints to embrace two opposite things, about a person having many wives and concubines, given that the first verse declares it to be a doctrine, whereas each of the four times this phrase appears in the Book of Mormon it is condemned outright. God is not the author of confusion, but this is confusing stuff. My purpose today, however, is not to engage in doctrinal argumentation or to adjudicate the authenticity of section 132 through textural or historical criticism. Instead, I address a more fundamental and prior question.

4:11What did concubinage mean in the societies that practiced it? Before any doctrine that invokes concubinage can be assessed as divinely inspired or morally coherent, the institution itself must be clearly understood on its own terms. This requires a historical and socio-cultural inquiry, rather than a theological one. I will begin by surveying concubinage as a global and trans-historical institution, examining its operation across ancient societies. After establishing this broader pattern, I'll turn to Jewish and biblical experience, situating Israel's embrace of concubinage within the cultural world it inherited. Once this history has been reviewed, we'll return to the question of its unqualified inclusion in a purportedly divine revelation in order to assess its eternal implications. Section 2, concubinage as a global human institution. Concubinage was not an isolated feature of a few ancient societies. Instead, it constituted a

5:14durable social institution that emerged repeatedly across cultures as a means of regulating sexual relationships outside formal marriage. Its persistence across time and geography reflects not theological continuity, but a shared set of human strategies for managing hierarchy, inheritance, reproduction, and male sexual access. The institution of concubinage represents an important aspect of the ancient oriental family, but it is also the source of the same institution in the Western world. This institution typically exhibits several common characteristics which I'll now review. The first, antiquity and universality. The antiquity of concubinage is not a matter of mere conjecture. The Bible records the existence of concubinage before the later Hebrew culture emerged as recorded in Genesis, and the code of homerabi, one of the oldest surviving legal codes created around 1750 BC in ancient Babylon, refers to concubinage as a well-established practice rather than

6:15a new one. It mentions the custom of a wife who cannot bear children, giving her maid to her husband as a concubin so he can produce heirs. These laws also define the concubin status and protect her and her children from mistreatment, reflecting older Sumerian traditions where secondary wives and child-bearing surrogates already had a recognized place in household law. The earliest attested form of institutionalized concubinage appears in Sumerian administrative texts dating back more than two millennia before Christ, where the term Lucur may have designated women who served as consorts or concubines to the king. Royal inscriptions document the king Shulgi, for example, maintained at least seven Lucurs who bore specific administrative titles and controlled temple properties. While primary-wise managed royal courts and performed diplomatic functions, Lucurs served reproductive and ceremonial roles. The Newsy tablets dated to the 15th century BC

7:16and excavated from Hurrian administrative centers provide striking parallels to biblical patriarchal narratives while also confirming the antiquity of concubinage. Hurrian marriage contracts, for example, excuse me, required barren wives to offer their husbands concubines. These and many other ancient historical evidences demonstrate that concubinage appears not as an emergent moral innovation, or as a spontaneous practice on the part of David and Solomon centuries later, but as an already established social form inherited by later societies. Second, concubinage as submarital sexual union. Across societies, concubinage generally occupied an intermediate position between marriage and prostitution. This status generated profound legal and taxonomic challenges for ancient jurists, theologians, and modern scholars alike. This ambiguity was not merely semantic, but reflected the institution's functional role as a socially recognized, yet legally subordinate

8:21union, that mimicked marriage's stability while lacking its full sacramental and property rights. Medieval canon law, for example, developed sophisticated, if contested, categories to parse sexual relationships. Concubinage became defined as, a man and a woman who were not married to each other, who lived together, whether under one roof or not, and habitually have sexual intercourse with one another, usually, but not invariably, to the exclusion of sexual relationships with other parties. The concubinage relationship then is relatively stable and often is sexually exclusive. This definition's emphasis on habitual and exclusive intercourse, distinguished concubinage from prostitution, which canon law treated as promiscuous and mercenary, yet the same definition's flexibility, not invariably exclusive, acknowledged that concubinage operated along a spectrum of commitment rather than as a binary category. Concubinage was understood as a means to lessen the rigidity of formal marriage

9:24by providing an alternative sexual arrangement outside its bounds. This approach helped distinguish concubinage from prostitution, yet one could still construe concubines as one man harlots. But the mimicry of marital life made it hard for legal institutions to substantively differentiate concubines from wives, leading to the prescription that it was second class marriage. This conflation of terms has also marred most of the research done in this field by modern scholars. Third, status inequality and female subordination. Historical accounts repeatedly emphasized the concubines' inferior status. The subordination was not merely a social custom but was embedded in legal codes, inheritance law, and household governance across Mesopotamia, Greek, Roman, Persian, Chinese, and biblical societies. In ancient Greece, for example, concubines occupied a position only one shade better than the slave. The degradation intensified over time. In a trial against a prostitute, a quote attributed to the famed statesman

10:28Demosthenes in the 4th century BC highlights their subordinate position. Quote, for this is what living with a woman in marriage is, for a man to be get children by her and present his sons to his fellow clansmen and members of his district and to give daughters as his own in marriage to their husbands. Mistresses we have for pleasure, concubines for daily service to our bodies, but wives for the procreation of legitimate children and to be faithful guardians of the household. Concubines clearly ranked below wives in both legal standing and household function. The Persian royal harem maintained a rigid hierarchy where concubines occupied a subordinate tier below the chief consort, who controlled the household and bore the heir to the throne. Any child born to such a concubine was regarded as inferior to the rightful offspring, a status quo so clearly marked that Greeks designated them Nothis or illegitimate. Ancient China replicated this structure. The concubine was inferior to the wife and her children

11:31would be inferior in social status to the wife's children, facing restricted inheritance rights and diminished social standing. Even when concubines bore sons, those children ranked below the wife's offspring in succession disputes, and the concubine herself remains subordinate to the primary wife's authority within the household hierarchy. This pattern reveals that concubines' inferiority was not an accidental feature, but a constitutive element of the institution, a legally enforced hierarchy that preserved the primacy of legitimate marriage while accommodating male sexual and reproductive desires through a formally subordinate class of women. It was, in short, institutionalized in equality. Fourth, concubines and slavery. In many societies, concubines was directly associated with slavery. In pre-Christian Scandinavia, Viking raiders captured slaves from all over Europe providing the men with sexual access to their captives. Slaves who became concubines, clearly were not counted as plural wives, but all evidence points to a lack of distinction between

12:35slave and free concubines. Concubines, as known in Viking age Scandinavia, had at least its conceptual roots, if not its historical origins, in slavery, so too in pre-Islamic Arabia. The longstanding custom of sexual relations with enslaved women was formalized with an early Islamic law through Quranic references permitting sexual intercourse with their spouses or those their right hands possess, a euphemism for slavery. Muhammad himself was gifted a concubine by the governor of Alexandria, Egypt. In Rome, the law distinguished between formal concubine age with free-born women and informal sexual relationships with household slaves. Yet Latin literature frequently collapsed this distinction, describing concubines as slaves used for sexual gratification. While Roman law technically prohibited slaves from achieving the legal status of concubines, many households maintained sexual relationships with slave women who were colloquially called concubines.

13:37One legal reform under the Emperor Justinian acknowledged this reality. If a household slave had lived with her master as his concubine until his death, she could be released from slavery, and any of their children would be regarded the same as a free-born child. This provision reveals both the prevalence of slave concubine age and the legal fiction required to differentiate it from formal concubine age. In several societies, concubine age overlapped with slavery in two senses. First, slaves, whether war captives or purchased chattel, constituted the primary source of concubines. Second, concubines occupied a legal status that mimicked slavery. It could be bought, sold, transferred, and inherited, lacked autonomy over their sexual lives, and could not exit the relationship without the master's consent. Even when concubines were technically free, their functional status as sexually available dependents with restricted legal personhood rendered them structurally equivalent to slaves in household law and practice. Fifth, reproductive utility and

14:42lineage management. Concubine age also served pragmatic reproductive purposes, frequently arising where inheritance structures or property concerns made additional legitimate marriages undesirable. In the code of homerabi, as mentioned earlier, concubine age was explicitly structured to address reproductive failure. It stipulates that if a wife gives birth, then the husband shall not take another wife, nor reduce her to concubine rank. Demonstrating that concubine age functioned as a contingent reproductive strategy activated only when the primary wife failed to produce children. Societies across the ancient Near East created legal mechanisms to regard the offspring of a concubine as legitimate, preserving patrilineal succession without disrupting the primary wife's legal status. In Chinese society, concubine age was structured around the production of male errors for patrilineal succession. The moral justification for concubine age was to allow a

15:42married man without sons to fulfill his most important filial duty of carrying on the patriline by hopefully siring sons with a concubine. The concubine's children were considered by law and custom to belong not only to the man but also to his wife, referred to as the main or principal wife. In this respect, the concubine operated much like a surrogate mother, giving birth to children who would be raised by the main wife as her own. Given the importance of birthing sons to these patriarchal societies, concubine age was not merely sexual license but a legally structured institution addressing specific demographic and property transmission desires that formal polygamy or remarriage could not efficiently or effectively resolve. Numerous historical accounts involved involved concubine age appearing with remarkable consistency. It is characterized by general sexual exclusivity without equality, stability without covenant or contract, and legality without

16:44dignity. Its regulation reflects social desirability rather than moral aspiration, let alone theological justification. Far from representing an ideal order of human relationships, concubine age emerges as a persistent accommodation to inequality and desire. This broader historical pattern provides the essential context for evaluating concubine age wherever it appears, including in Israel's society. Only by first understanding concubine age as a global human institution can its presence in biblical and Jewish contexts be adequately interpreted. Section 3, Israel within the world it inherited. Israel did not encounter concubine age in isolation nor did it develop the institution independently. Instead, Israel inherited concubine age as part of a broader cultural world in which graded sexual and domestic hierarchies were already entrenched. The biblical record reflects this inheritance not through explicit endorsement but through narrative description, legal accommodation,

17:47and at times moral tension. This context is essential without it, later readers risk misinterpreting the mere presence of concubine age in Israelite society as evidence of divine sanction. With it, concubine age appears instead as one of many apostate cultural practices Israel absorbed from surrounding societies much like slavery, kingship, and forms of idolatry. Concubine age in ancient Israel appears with characteristics common to surrounding societies, a lower social rank with status inferior to a primary wife but distinct from mere slavery. Children born to concubines recognized as legitimate though often excluded from full inheritance rates unless serving as surrogates for barren wives, ongoing household membership, sexual exclusivity to one man with unfaithfulness being subject to legal punishment, and a lack of authority in household governance and decision making. At the royal level, concubine age in Israel shifted from domestic

18:49survival to political statecraft. In the transition from tribal confederacy to monarchy, the royal harem in Israel became a standard tool of diplomacy and dynasty building, modeled on Egyptian and Mesopotamian courts, for example, among King Solomon's wives were 700 princesses and 300 concubines demonstrating that these women often represented a strategic alliance with a foreign power. This political function created a dangerous symbolic language regarding the throne itself because the royal harem was the physical embodiment of the king's virility, virility, and power, sexual access to a king's concubines became a recognized political act of usurpation. In the broader ancient Near Eastern context, taking over the former king's harem was understood as a public claim to his royal authority. The biblical narrative employs this framework to explain key succession crises. Abner's taking of Saul's concubine, Absalom's public claim to

19:50David's concubines, and Adonaiha's request for Abishag. In each instance, the text relies on the audience's understanding that the pilgrimage or concubine was not just a partner but a political asset by claiming the asset one effectively claimed the crown. The Bible contains numerous references to concubine, but they're descriptive rather than prescriptive. That is, the text records the existence of concubine as a social fact without framing it as a religious ideal or divine command. One of the most disturbing biblical narratives involving concubine appears in Judges 19 through 21. According to the record, a Levite took a concubine from Bethlehem and after a strain in their relationship she returned home to her father's house. The Levite went to retrieve her and on the return journey they lodged in Givia in territory claimed by the tribe of Benjamin. A mob appeared at the home they were staying in and demanded to rape the Levite, but the master of the house resisted

20:54and offered his daughter and the concubine instead. The concubine was raped throughout the night and collapsed to her death at the doorway. The Levite then took a knife and grasping his concubine, he cut her into 12 pieces, limb by limb, and sent her throughout all the territory of Israel. This triggered national outrage, civil war against Benjamin, and near extermination of the tribe. Nowhere in this narrative does it suggest that concubine itself is virtuous or that the underlying relationship between this man and woman was favored by God. Instead, it exposes the extreme vulnerability of a woman whose inferior status leaves her unprotected by kinship and law. The master of the house doggedly resisted sending out the Levite, but had no problem substituting the lowly concubine to satisfy the lustful demands of the mob. Her body is treated as disposable, her death instrumentalized for political ends. The episode is one of the most morally chaotic passages in the Bible, and concubine is central to that chaos. There are many other examples in

21:59Scripture. None of them, theologically prescriptive, Abraham as a useful illustration, especially because section 132 treats his household arrangements as if they were divinely validated. In Genesis, however, the introduction of Hagar, Sarai's Egyptian slave is not presented as a commandment from God, but as a domestic strategy initiated by Sarai in response to Baroness. The arrangement immediately produces conflict. Hagar's pregnancy alters household power dynamics, Sarai reacts with harshness, and Hagar is cast out into the wilderness. Even when God later promises blessings to Ishmael, the text does not portray the original arrangement as a model of familial relationships. It is narrated as a fraught episode of human improvisation. Both major elements in this story, the recourse to a handmaid as a surrogate when the primary wife is Baron, and the resulting child's recognition within the father's household, even as the woman herself remains socially subordinate, align closely with patterns attested across

22:59ancient Near East. In that sense, Abraham's situation reads, less like a paradigmatic exception grounded in revealed marital order, than as one instance of a broader, already normalized social logic within the world he inhabited. Across these and other episodes, the biblical narrative does not pause to commend, institute, or attach a divine ideal to concubinage. Instead, concubinage consistently shows up where the social order is already strained by Baroness, rivalry, monarchy, conquest, or exploitation, and its presence tends to intensify rather than resolve those strains. These examples are representative rather than exceptional. Biblical narratives involving concubines repeatedly correlate with conflict, exploitation, and disorder, not family, harmony, or marital fidelity. Ancient Israel's laws, like other ancient legal systems, provided limited safeguards for women in concubinage-like arrangements. If a father sells his daughter as a concubine, she cannot be treated

24:03like a male slave who's simply released after six years. Instead, she has specific marital rights, the master must provide her with food, clothing, and sexual intimacy. If he fails in any of these, she's free to go without paying for her freedom. Of note, she is still purchased property initially and does not have the same freedom to initiate divorce or leave as a free woman would in a modern context. Her security depends on her master's adherence to these basic provisions. War captives were treated differently. An Israelite man who desires a female captive cannot simply rape her or treat her as a slave immediately. He must bring her home, allow her a month to mourn her family, and then legally marry her. If he later ceases to delight in her, he must let her go free. He's forbidden from selling her for money or treating her as a slave because he had sexual relations with her. Put simply the law permitted the forced marriage of a war captive, not mere concubinage, and only prohibited re-inslavement or commercial sale after sexual use, the forced marriage itself

25:06was authorized. The separate status of concubines was also reinforced in how punishments were applied. If a man slept with a slave woman betrothed to another, they were not put to death. In contrast, adultery with a free betrothed woman was a capital offense. Violating a concubine was treated as a property issue, requiring a guilt offering, rather than a capital moral crime against a free individual. Israelite law thus aligned fairly neatly with the practices of broader ancient Near Eastern societies, where legal codes regulated concubinage as a recognized social institution with tiered protections. Taken together, the evidence demonstrates that concubinage in Israel was neither unique nor exalted. It mirrored practices found throughout the ancient Near East and beyond, functioning as a socially normalized deviation from monogamous marriage rather than a divinely revealed order. The biblical text records concubinage because it existed, not because it was ideal. Indeed, where concubinage appears most prominently in narratives of violence,

26:12royal ambition, and household strife, it often serves to expose the moral fractures of Israelite society rather than to model any degree of righteousness. Understanding Israel within the world it inherited is therefore indispensable. Concubinage entered Israel as part of a broader cultural package already laden with inequality and exploitation. Its presence in the biblical record testifies to Israel's historical embeddedness in that world, not to God's endorsement of its social arrangements. Section 4 Christianity in the Decline of concubinage When Christianity emerged within the Roman Empire, concubinage was already widespread and legally recognized as an extra marital union between a man and a woman distinguished to varying degrees from lawful marriage. By the early 4th century, concubinage existed in almost every social group and throughout the territory of the whole empire, making immediate abolition impracticable.

27:12As a result, early Christian rulers adopted a gradual approach that sought to limit concubinage's legal privileges rather than eliminate the practice outright. This effort accelerated with the Council of Nicaea, which in 325 AD, forbade clergy from living with women unless they were close relatives such as a mother or sister. This canon was aimed at suppressing the apparent practice of clerics maintaining so-called spiritual sisters who in practice would function as concubines. The First Council of Toledo in 400 AD addressed concubinage among the laity, it pronounced excommunication against any man, who, in addition to a wife, kept a concubine, but allowed unmarried men to live with a concubines so long as it was no more than one. Over time, these restrictions hardened, Constantine the first Christian emperor prohibited men from maintaining a concubine alongside a legitimate wife, and restricted inheritance and gifts to concubines and their children. Later emperors oscillated between partial concessions and renewed

28:15restrictions, but the overall trajectory narrowed the legal standing and incentives for concubinage. By the 6th century, Justinian's reforms sought to contain concubinage by subordinating it to more strictly to marriage and by encouraging its transformation into lawful matrimony. And yet, these efforts often struggle to achieve their aim. One notable example comes from 742 AD, when Saint Boniface complained to the Pope about so-called deacons who have spent their lives since boyhood in debauchery, adultery, and every kind of filthiness, and who, despite their church positions, had four or five concubines in their beds. The passage demonstrates both the persistence of concubinage in Christian society and the Catholic Church's clear moral opposition to it. The Council of Trent in the 16th century added to the efforts to eradicate concubinage by also rendering null and void all clandestine unions, thereby eliminating even the appearance of legitimate

29:16concubinage. With this move, Western Christianity sought to close the door on concubinage as a recognized or tolerated institution. In sum, early Christianity did not preserve concubinage as any sort of divinely sanctioned institution, nor did it treat it as a moral good awaiting restoration. It inherited concubinage as a social reality, tolerated it where eradication proved difficult, and worked, slowly and imperfectly, to purge it from Christian moral and legal life. Once subjected to sustained moral reflection, particularly in view of Christ's teachings and those of his apostles, concubinage was widely judged incompatible with God's marital standard and the dignity of women. That judgment, as we'll now explore, stands in sharp tension with any later claim that concubinage constitutes a divinely ordained principle rather than a relic of fallen social orders. Conclusion, concubinage cannot survive scrutiny. Once the question of what concubinage

30:21was in practice is answered with even modest historical seriousness, the theological problem becomes unavoidable. Concubinage was not a benign synonym for additional wives, nor a quaint ancient marital variation. Across civilizations, concubinage historically functioned as a sexual arrangement that legalized inequality. It made room for male desire, household labor, reproduction and political power, while withholding from women the full dignity and security of recognized marriage. Even where concubinage was regulated, the point of regulation was rarely to enoblate. Regulation existed because concubinage produced persistent problems. Rivalry, instability contested inheritance, abuse and a normalization of female subordination. No society solved concubinage by refining it into a moral ideal. Instead, societies that moved towards coherent monogamous norms did so by constricting it, morally repudiating it and ultimately attempting to eliminate it. That trajectory is visible not only in the record of Christian

31:23emperors and church councils, but in the internal logic of the institution itself. Concubinage is defined by inequality. Remove the inequality, remove the subordinate status, the diminished rights, the legal asymmetry, and the relationship becomes either marriage with full recognition, or it dissolves into fornication. Concubinage lets men have their cake and eat it too, preserving marital hierarchy while securing additional sexual and reproductive access. Its introductory reference in section 132 is therefore not a peripheral matter of unfamiliar terminology. The alleged revelation does not merely mention concubinage as an incidental ancient footnote. It names many wives and concubinage as part of a purported doctrine, and it presents that doctrine as compatible with God's marital and familial order. That is an extraordinary claim. Once the historical meaning of and experience with concubinage is made plain, the claim fails basic moral and scriptural scrutiny. The historical and sociological problems

32:27presented by concubinage are augmented by theological ones. All scriptural teachings save section 132. Present marriage not as a flexible arrangement subject to cultural experimentation, but as a divinely ordered monogamous union defined by exclusivity, permanence, and unity. From the beginning, marriages framed as a divinely designed joining of two individuals alone, a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh. Jesus Christ affirmed this design and intensified its moral force. When questioned about marital arrangements he did not appeal to cultural precedent or patriarchal exception. Instead he returned to the creation order itself, declaring, therefore, they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God have joined together let not man put a sunder. This is both a commentary on divorce, and the fact that marital union is meant to resist fragmentation of any kind, what God joins man is not at liberty to subdivide, replicate,

33:30or dilute. Concubinage contradicts this order. Like polygamy more broadly, it does not preserve the one flesh union, it multiplies it. By introducing an additional woman into the marital sphere, concubinage necessarily creates separation rather than unity, distance rather than cleaving. A man cannot be one flesh with multiple women simultaneously without redefining the phrase into incoherence, or believing in a changing God who considers the phrase flexible or fleeting. Concubinage therefore accomplishes an institutional form precisely what Christ prohibits, where God joins together two in one flesh union, concubinage introduces an additional woman into the marital sphere and necessarily fractures the exclusivity on which that union depends. It separates husband and wife by diffusing affection, loyalty, sexual access, and household authority across multiple relationships. At the same time, it separates the concubin from full

34:32marital dignity by design, assigning her a subordinate status that is not meant to culminate inequality. In other words, concubinage is a deliberate alternative constructed to permit sexual access while withholding the very joining that marriage entails. Jacob's famous sermon on sexual righteousness rejects the very pattern concubinage embodies. There shall not any man among you have save it be one wife and concubines he shall have none. That statement is explicit, categorical, and unqualified. His sermon supplies no loophole for the institution itself. It condemns many wives and concubines as part of a broader denunciation of sexual exploitation, pride, and inequality, describing the consequences as the breaking of women's hearts and the loss of children's confidence. Whatever else one thinks about Jacob's sermon, it directly challenges any claim that concubinage can be smuggled into divine order as an acceptable or exalted social arrangement. This language closely mirrors Christ's concern with hardness of heart and the damage

35:36done when divine marital order is treated as negotiable. Taken together, these scriptures articulate a consistent marital ethic. Marriage is exclusive, unitive, and resistant to human rearrangement. Concubinage cannot be reconciled with this ethic without emptying the one flesh principle of meaning. It does not extend God's joining, it undoes it. Any system that depends on inserting additional sexual partners into a family, whether labeled polygamy or concubinage, operates by separating what God has joined not by honoring it. In that light, concubinage fails at the most basic level of reasoning. It is neither a higher form of marriage nor a temporary divine concession that points toward exaltation. It is a structural violation of the very order Christ restored and reaffirmed, an order that admits of no secondary unions because it is built on becoming irreduciably one. God does not merely prefer monogamy, he and his prophets repeatedly condemn sexual arrangements

36:37rooted in male appetite and domination. Jacob frames the practice as hordoms and abominations, and the Book of Mormon uses wives and concubines not as the highest order of heaven, but rather as a stock marker of corrupt kingship and priestcraft. King Noah, for example, did not keep the commandments of God, but he did walk after the desires of his own heart, and he had many wives and concubines. Replikish did not do that which was right in the sight of the Lord, for he did have many wives and concubines. In each case, concubinage is cited as evidence of moral failure and wicked, self-indulgence. This matters because concubinage historically is precisely what these texts describe, a system that permits powerful men to gratify themselves at the expense of women's dignity and social equality, even in cultures that dressed it up with legal vocabulary, concubinage function as a status hierarchy, enabling sexual access without full reciprocal obligation. When scripture condemns walking after the desires of one's own heart in connection with collecting

37:40concubines, it is condemning the social logic that undergirds the entire institution. If the Book of Mormon is taken seriously as restored scripture, it becomes exceedingly difficult to maintain that concubinage is or ever can be a divine ideal. One cannot coherently affirm both that concubinage is abominable in God's eyes and that it is simultaneously a righteous, commanded or exalted institution. These are opposing moral claims. At this point, Latter-day Saints confront a collusion, a collision. At this point, Latter-day Saints confront a collision that cannot be resolved by reinterpretation, euphemism or selective emphasis. Section 132 of the Doctrine Connist does not merely describe plural marriage and abstract terms. It presents many wives and concubines as part of a single, doctrinal package. The text does not treat concubinage as a peripheral accommodation or an incidental artifact of ancient culture. It is named, affirmed, and placed alongside plural wives

38:46as something God Himself has said to have authorized. Yet, in contemporary church discourse, concubinage is functionally invisible. References to concubines are treated much as other culturally inconvenient passages of scripture are treated, such as the eating of meat or consecration, secret combinations, etc. acknowledged in theory, ignored in practice, and rarely examined. The interpretive energy is directed almost entirely toward defending, qualifying, or recontextualizing plural marriage, while concubinage is quietly passed over as though its inclusion were an embarrassment best left unaddressed. This selective silence is likely intentional. Concubinage is far more difficult to rehabilitate than plural marriage because its historical meaning is more apparent, its moral deficiencies more stark, and its incompatibility with God's law on marriage more obvious. But this strategy cannot succeed indefinitely. The logic of section 132 does not permit concubinage to be exized, exized, while plural marriage is retained. The revelation

39:52does not authorize many wives but no concubines. It authorizes both. They either rise or fall together. Any argument that concubinage is inherently immoral as an institution rooted in hierarchy, exploitation, and legalized sexual and property inequality cannot stop short at concubinage alone. If God would not authorize concubinage because it represents the kernel attempt of men to legitimize unequal sexual access, then it strains credibility to claim that God simultaneously authorized plural marriage as a holy institution operating alongside it. This is especially so given how revealed scripture treats the language of wives and concubines. As previously described, the book of Mormon, described by Joseph Smith as the most correct of any book on earth and a keystone of our religion, through whose precepts a person may get nearer to God than by any other book, includes the phrase as a unified moral category, category, and is consistently condemned as a

40:55hordam and an abomination. These are not contextual or temporary rebukes, they are categorical moral judgments. The text does not suggest that the practice may become righteous if and when God later approves it, rather the condemnation is framed in terms of intrinsic harm, broken hearts, wounded children, and the corrosion of trust in relationships between men and women. To argue that such a practice becomes holy by decree is to suggest that moral categories like hordam and abomination are not descriptions of what the practice is but merely labels that can be toggled on or off by command. Concubinage also exposes a deeper problem with the claim that plural marriage represents multiple parallel cleavings rather than a fragmentation of the marital bond. Concubinage is not cleaving at all, it is the intentional withholding of cleaving. It exists precisely to permit sexual access without uniting man and woman and a marital covenant.

41:58Its presence alongside plural wives reveals that the system being described is not simply expanded marriage but graded marriage, primary and secondary, equal and unequal, fully joined and deliberately unjoined. That structure is incompatible with the one flesh order Christ reaffirmed and with the Book of Mormon's explicit prohibition of concubinage altogether. For this reason, concubinage functions as the canary in the coal mine of section 132. It is the element that resists spiritualization, the term that cannot be safely redefined without losing all historical meaning. If concubinage is acknowledged honestly for what it was and what it always has been, then its authorization immediately undermines the claim that the system described in section 132 reflects a divine marital order rather than a human accommodation to lust, power and hierarchy. In short, concubinage forces the issue. One cannot affirm the moral coherence of section 132

42:59while repudiating concubinage because the alleged revelation binds them together. And once concubinage is seen clearly as an institution that legalizes inequality and fractures marital unity, the claim that God would authorize it let alone enshrine it within a doctrine of exaltation begins to fall apart. A typical apologetic move is to sidestep these critiques by appealing to the doctrine of continuing revelation. Latter-day Saints generally affirm that God may reveal new commandments suited to new circumstances and that later revelation can clarify, refine or even supersede earlier instructions. On this view, whatever Jacob, Mormon or earlier prophets said about wives and concubines, could in principle be set aside if God later commanded otherwise. If concubinage was once condemned, the argument goes, it may have been temporarily forbidden, but later restored as part of a higher law. This appeal deserves to be taken seriously, yet when applied to concubinage, it collapses under

44:00its own weight. This issue is not whether God can command difficult or counterintuitive things, scriptures full of such examples. The issues whether God would ever legitimize, sanctify or require as a relational order, an institution that is by its very structure rooted in inequality, sexual hierarchy, and the deliberate withholding of dignity from some of his children. The question is not merely chronological, earlier versus later revelation, but moral and ontological. What kind of thing is concubinage? Concubinage is not a neutral practice whose moral status depends entirely on command. It is an institution defined by permanent subordination. Historically and legally, it exists only to allow sexual access without marital rights and responsibilities. It creates a subclass of women and grades human worth within the household. This is not an incidental corruption layered atop in otherwise sound form, it is the essence of the institution. Prophetic condemnation of concubinage is not framed as a temporary disciplinary

45:05measure akin to dietary restrictions or ritual observances. It is framed as a moral indictment. Jacob does not say that the practice has forbidden for now. He anchors his judgment against the abomination in the harm it does to women and children. They're not contingent harms that disappear if God later changes his mind. They are intrinsic to the practice's structure. To suggest that God later commanded concubinage, therefore, is not merely to posit new revelation, but to assert that God would reverse a moral judgment grounded in the protection of human dignity, particularly the dignity of women. It requires believing that what was once an abomination because it exploited, stratified, and wounded could later become holy without ceasing to exploit, stratify, or wound, that is a much stronger claim than continuing revelation ordinarily bears. Tackling the question of divine concubinage requires us to do more than simply affirm the possibility of later revelation in the abstract. We must also ask whether acclaimed revelation

46:08coheres with God's revealed moral character and with the consistent scriptural witness on marriage, sexual ethics, and human dignity. When that question is honestly asked about concubinage, the answer appears unavoidable and unmistakable. Concubinage is not merely a challenge to harmonize with other revealed texts. It is incompatible with the marital ethic that scripture overwhelmingly and repeatedly affirms. That is the decisive point. Concubinage is not merely historically ugly. It is canonically indefensible as a component of God's highest social order. The burden therefore shifts. Those who would claim concubinage as divinely authorized must explain why scripture so explicitly forbids it and why its historical practice so consistently degrades women. Until that burden is met, the simplest conclusion remains the most coherent. Concubinage is a relic of fallen societies, a legal mechanism for unequal sexual access, and a deviation from the divine order of

47:10monogamous marital union. Its inclusion in a purported doctrine should not be received as revelation without scrutiny, but as an immediate red flag, one that invites a candid reassessment of any text that dares to call such a system holy. That's it. Let me know in the comments what you think about all of that and I'll see you next Sunday.