Was Keturah Abraham's Wife?
Analysis of the marriage and ascendancy structure of Abraham's Horite people reveals that the rulers had two wives. The first was a half-sister, as was Sarah to Abraham. The second wife was usually a patrilineal cousin, as was Keturah to Abraham. The wives maintained households in separate settlements on a north-south axis. Sarah resided in Hebron, at the northern edge of Abraham's territory in Edom. Keturah, of the royal line of Sheba, resided at Beersheba to the south. Both Hebron and Beersheba were in the territory that the Greeks called Idumea, which is Edom, the land of red people.
Alice C. Linsley
According to Genesis 25:1, Keturah is described as Abraham’s wife. The word here in Hebrew is ishshah, which means woman or wife. However, according to I Chronicles 1:32, Keturah was Abraham’s concubine. The Hebrew here is piylegesh or piyegesh meaning concubine. Keturah can’t be both a wife and concubine, so which is she? I Chronicles reflects a time long after the events described and is not consistent with the overwhelming evidence that Keturah was a wife. The confusion may be due to the Chronicles' post-exilic reading of Genesis 25:6: "To the sons of his concubines Abraham made grants during his lifetime, sending them away from his son Isaac..." It was the custom to sent away sons who would rule. Abraham was himself one of these sent-away sons. So were Moses and Jacob.
Keturah was Abraham's second wife which means that she was his patrilineal cousin who he married at a later age. Analysis of the marriage and ascendency pattern of Abraham’s people makes it clear that Keturah was a wife. Rulers among Abraham’s Kushite people had two wives. The first wife was the wife of the man's youth and his half-sister (as was Sarah to Abraham). The second wife was a patrilineal cousin or niece (as was Keturah to Abraham).
The name "Ketu-rah" refers to the Ketu division of the Jebusites. The Jebusites had two main divisions: the Nago-Jebu and the Ketu-Jebu. Of the Ketu-Jebu there is a good deal of information in Genesis. This division resided in Palestine and Arabia. Abraham payed tribute to the Ketu-Jebu priest Melchizedek, who was the ruler of the Jebusite city of Salem (Jerusalem). Ketu-rah was of this division of Jebu, as evidenced by her name. She resided at Beer-Sheba, which took its name from the great patriarch Sheba who controlled the well there. (Beer means well.) Ketu-rah's firstborn son was Joktan, the progentior of the Joktanite clans of Arabia. So the clans of Jebu, Sheba and Joktan are related, but what was their western boundary? It appears fromhistorical records that it was in Nigeria at the confluence of the Niger and Benue rivers which in the time of Abraham's ancestors were very great rivers.
Abraham and Keturah are descendants of Sheba, the great grandson of Ham. They are also descendants of Shem, as the lines of Shem and Ham intermarried. Sheba was a contemporary of Eber, Shem's great grandson. Eber’s son Joktan married a daughter of Sheba. We know this because Joktan’s first-born son was named Sheba, after his cousin bride’s father. This naming prerogative of the cousin bride was already a custom in the time of Lamech (Gen. 4). Lamech’s daughter Naamah married her patrilineal cousin Methuselah and named their firstborn son Lamech after her father. Lamech the Younger would ascend to the throne of his maternal grandfather.
Keturah likewise named her first-born son Joktan, after her father. So Abraham had two first-born sons by his wives: Isaac and Joktan. He also had firstborn sons by his two concubines Masek and Hagar. By Masek he had Eliezar and by Hagar he had Ishmael. Contrary to common belief, Ishmael was not Abraham's firstborn.
The assumption that Keturah was a concubine runs contrary to the biblical information about her relationship to Abraham and her status. Instead, we should recognize that Keturah and Sarah were wives whose firstborns sons would rule over different territories. Hagar and Masek were Abraham's concubines whose subordinate status we can discern from studying Jacob's relationship to Bilhah and Zilpah and the subordinate status of their sons to the firstborn sons of Rachel (Joseph) and Leah (Reu-ben).
The Pattern of Keturah Parallels the Pattern of Naamah
According to Gen. 10:24-30, Keturah’s father had a brother named Peleg. The text makes much of the implications of Peleg’s name which means “division”, “because it was in his time that the earth was divided” (Gen. 10:25). There are different possible explanations for this division, but the most likely is that expressed in the pattern of genealogical information. The daughter of Sheba who married Joktan and named her firstborn son Sheba is the last bride named of Ham’s line. In this respect she parallels Naamah, the last bride named of Cain’s line.
Ketu-rah’s father was Joktan and her paternal uncle was Peleg, who is said to be the “first” son. This means that Joktan, like Abraham, was not to receive the rights of primogeniture by which he would become chief after his father’s death. So Joktan, Abraham’s firstborn by Ketu-rah, would not be chief after his death. That would fall to Isaac, the son of Sarah. Nevertheless the Joktanites would become a powerful presence in the Sinai and by their skills and generosity would enable the Israelites to come out of Egypt and survive in the wilderness.
Genesis 10: 26 tells us that Joktan had 13 sons. Almodad appears to be the first-born, as his name is listed first. If Joktan followed the pattern of his fathers, his two wives would have maintained separate households on a north-south axis. This may be the meaning of the sites mentioned in Gen. 10:30: Mesha and Sephar, although “sephar,’ which means “numbering,” might refer to the cosmology of Abraham’s people rather than to a specific location.
Some of the descendants of Joktan and Sheba hold an annual autumn feast at an oasis in the wilderness to celebrate the date harvest. This is the one time of the year that women and men may dance together. Thedate palm (“tamar”) is a symbol of prosperity and fertility. The ‘Id el-Tamar is a festival when the unmarried check out the pool of available matches. As is the custom from time immemorial, wife selection takes place at a well or an oasis.
The Evidence of the Well
Wells and oases are where boy meets girl in the Bible. There are several incidents of wives being found at wells. Abraham’s servant found Rebecca at a well. Moses met Zipporah, his future wife, at a Midianite well. In none of these stories is the woman a concubine. Keturah could not have been a concubine because Abraham met her at the well of Sheba (Beer-Sheba) according to the pattern of wives.
The Horite priests among Abraham's people established their shrines near rivers and wells. They needed the water to sustain their flocks and it was from these flocks and herds that they selected animals to sacrifice. The evidence of the Bible indicates that the rulers among Abaham's people married the daughters of priests. Moses married Zipporah, the daughter of a priest named Jethro. He was of the clan of Midian. Midian was another son born to Abraham by Ketu-rah.
Abraham had nine sons, according to the Septuagint. Here is a list of sons:
Sarah, daughter of Terah (Gen. 20:12)
Yitzak (Issac)
Hagar the Egyptian (Sarah’s handmaid)
Yismael (Ishmael) was Egyptian, since ethnicity was traced through the mother and Hagar was Egyptian. Tracing ethnicity through the mother rather than the father is still required to establish Jewish identity today. This pattern is recognized in Egypt as well, which is why the Egyptian government has made it illegal for Egyptian men to marry Jewish women.
Ketu-rah, daughter of Joktan (Gen. 25)
Yisbak
Joktan – Keturah’s firstborn son
Midian
Zimran
Medan
Shuah
Masek (Keturah’s handmaid)
Eliezar of Damascus
36 comments:
A wife of Abraham and the mother of six of his sons, Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah, ancestors of various N Arabian peoples dwelling to the S and E of Palestine.—Ge 25:1-4.
Keturah is specifically referred to as “Abraham’s concubine” at 1 Chronicles 1:32, and quite apparently she and Hagar are meant at Genesis 25:6, where reference is made to the sons of Abraham’s “concubines.” Keturah was therefore a secondary wife who never attained the same position as Sarah the mother of Isaac, through whom the promised Seed came. (Ge 17:19-21; 21:2, 3, 12; Heb 11:17, 18) While “Abraham gave everything he had to Isaac,” the patriarch gave gifts to the sons of his concubines and then “sent them away from Isaac his son, while he was still alive, eastward, to the land of the East.”—Ge 25:5, 6.
It has been contended that Abraham took Keturah as a concubine prior to Sarah’s death, some thinking it improbable that he would have six sons by one woman after he was about 140 years old and that he would then survive to see them attain an age at which he might send them away. However, Abraham lived for more than 35 years after Sarah’s death, dying at the age of 175 years. (Ge 25:7, 8) So he could well have taken Keturah as a wife, had six sons by her, and seen them grow up before he died. Also, it seems proper to consider Abraham’s general regard for Sarah’s feelings, which makes it unlikely that he would risk the possibility of further discord in the household (comparable to that involving Hagar and Ishmael) by taking another concubine during Sarah’s lifetime. The order of events as set forth in the book of Genesis is quite conclusive in indicating that it was after Sarah’s death that Abraham took Keturah as his wife.—Compare Ge 23:1, 2; 24:67; 25:1.
It was only because their reproductive powers were miraculously revived that Abraham and Sarah were able to have a son, Isaac, in their old age. (Heb 11:11, 12) Evidently, such restored powers enabled Abraham to become father to six more sons by Keturah when he was even more advanced in age.
I doubt that Keturah was a concubine, but agree that she was a second wife. This is the pattern of the chiefs among Abraham's people. One wife was a half-sister and the other was a patrilineal cousin. Terah, his father, had 2 wives, and Nahor his grandfather also had 2 wives. Moses had 2 wives, as did Jacob.
1 Chronicles 1:32 was written long after and apparently seeks to reinforce the promise through Sarah's seed exclusively.
All counted, Abraham had 8 sons, 9 sons if you count Eliezar of Damascus.
Keturah was most likely the daughter of Joktan, Joktan the son of Eber. Considered, as Qahtan, to be the ancestor of the "Pure Arabs". According to the Bible Jokshan was the second son of Abraham and his concubine Keturah, whom he wed after the death of Sarah.Jokshan had five other brothers: Zimran, Medan, Midian, Ishbak and Shuah; as well as two half brothers: Ishmael and Isaac.
Midian was the line of Jethro, who's daughter married Moses.
If you look at the line of the Nasrid Dynasty that was persecuted in 1492 Granada Spain,I know this well and have researched it greatly, the line went through Sheba instead of Is'mail, this is the lineage, the lineage of the Nasrid Dynasty:
Arabs trace their ancestry through their nasab, i.e. patrilineal descent. The Nasrid dynasty claimed direct male-line descent from Sa'd ibn Ubadah, chief of the Banu Khazraj tribe and one of the companions of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.The Banu Khazraj were themselves part of the Qahtanite group of tribes, which originate in the southern regions of the Arabian Peninsula.
The nasab of Yusuf (nicknamed "al-Ahmar", meaning "the Red"), the common ancestor of all Nasrid sultans, is shown below. The name of Nasr, from whom the dynasty derives its name,
Yusuf al-Ahmar ibn Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn (Khamees ibn)[2] Nasr ibn Muhammad ibn Nusair ibn Ali ibn Yahya ibn Sa'd ibn Qais ibn Sa'd ibn Ubadah[3] ibn Dulaym ibn Harithah ibn Abi Hazima ibn Tha'labah ibn Tarif ibn al-Khazraj ibn Sa'ida ibn Ka'b ibn al-Khazraj[4] ibn Harithah ibn Tha'labah ibn Amr ibn Amir ibn Harithah ibn Imri' al-Qays ibn Tha'labah ibn Mazin ibn al-Azd ibn al-Ghawth ibn Nabt ibn Malik ibn Zayd ibn Kahlan ibn Saba' ibn Yashjub ibn Ya'rub ibn Qahtan/Joktan b. Aybar b. Shalikh b. Arfakhshad b. Sam b. Nuh.
One indication that this should be the correct identification of Qahtan comes from the fact that this Qahtan’s great-grand-daughter Rala bint Mudad was the second and chief wife of Isma‘il, and the matriarch of his line. Her line is Rala bint Mudad b. Amr b. Jurhum/Jerah b. Qahtan/Joktan b. Aybar b. Shalikh b. Arfakhshad b. Sam b. Nuh.
So much prejudice,for something so very biblical. Though the Moors tried to protect the Jews as the Moors were Hebrew themselves, the Crusades and the Teutonic knights, and the current Suart Monarchy's have kept this history hidden and misunderstood for over 500 years now.