Today we'll see that a firstborn son cannot be disinherited due to being the son of a less-favored wife. Of course it is not the Lord's best plan for men to have more than one wife, but the law of Moses did not forbid a man having more than one wife. In yesterday's passage we learned that a man could take as his wife a foreign woman from among the captives of a conquered city, and there was no mention made of him being prohibited from doing this if he already had a wife. But it was never the Lord's best plan for marriage for a man to have multiple wives. In the Bible we'll find a number of men who had more than one wife and we'll usually find mention of trouble and strife in those households. A man cannot be a good husband to more than one wife. It's doubtful a man can be a good father under these circumstances either. In households of the Bible where men had children by more than one wife we tend to see jealousy among the children and we find the children harboring bitterness toward their father.
The patriarch Jacob is an example of a man who had difficulty being a good husband and a good father due to having more than one wife. While it's true he was deceived at his first wedding when Rachel's father substituted Leah for Rachel, it was not Leah's fault and yet Jacob never treated her as well as he should have. Leah was used as a pawn in her father's game. She was a victim of the times in which she lived, when women had very few rights in most cultures and could be married off to anyone of their father's choosing. But she was never loved by her husband or given all the honor and respect that was due a first wife.
Jacob's family situation may be what's in mind in today's passage. He didn't love his first wife Leah and didn't make any real attempt to hide that fact. He preferred Leah's sister Rachel, whom he also married. (He ended up married to Leah's maid and Rachel's maid too, but we won't go into detail about that today.) He would have preferred his firstborn had come from Rachel because he cared about her the most but the Lord took pity on Leah and blessed her with the firstborn son and five more sons, plus a daughter. Rachel eventually bore Joseph and Benjamin to Jacob, and the Bible makes it very clear that Joseph was Jacob's favorite son, but this doesn't mean it would have been okay for Jacob to take the rights of the firstborn away from his true firstborn and give them to Joseph. Reuben lost his birthright due to his own sinful actions but Jacob didn't take it away from him due to favoring a different son. That would have been wrong and Moses makes sure the congregation knows it would have been wrong. For all the generations to come they are to abide by the principle that the firstborn gets a double portion of his father's estate. Unless the firstborn son does something to disinherit himself, there's no getting around this law.
"If a man has two wives, and he loves one but not the other, and both bear him sons but the firstborn is the son of the wife he does not love, when he wills his property to his sons, he must not give the rights of the firstborn to the son of the wife he loves in preference to his actual firstborn, the son of the wife he does not love. He must acknowledge the son of his unloved wife as the firstborn by giving him a double share of all he has. That son is the first sign of the father's strength. The right of the firstborn belongs to him." (Deuteronomy 21:15-17)
Why might a man have a wife he doesn't love and a wife he does love? It could be that his first marriage was an arranged marriage. He may have married her out of duty but later married a second woman out of love. It could be he and his first wife have grown to despise each other over the years and, having no legal grounds to divorce her, he takes a second wife instead of asking the Lord to help him fix his unhappy marriage. It could be that his first wife was unable to bear children for the first several years of marriage and, believing her to be barren, he took a second wife hoping to continue his family line through her, yet his first wife ended up having a child by him before his second wife did. Another example might simply be that, since he can afford multiple wives, he indulges his carnal desires by having multiple wives. Or he is a high official who makes political alliances by marrying the daughters of several influential men. Or he wants to flaunt his wealth by having everyone see he is able to support several wives and many children. There are a lot of reasons why men of ancient times had more than one wife, and none of them were good reasons in my opinion, but men weren't forbidden by the law to have more than one wife.
In order to secure the inheritance rights of firstborn sons and to keep the genealogical records clear and to keep the proper territories within the proper tribes, the Lord had to make a rule that the firstborn son was to be the father's primary heir. If the Lord had not made this rule then all sorts of sinful actions would have taken place. It's bad enough for a man to take a second wife while his first wife is still living; it compounds his mistake if he treats the children of a later wife better than the children of the first wife.
A firstborn son can disinherit himself but a father can't disinherit a firstborn son on the basis of not loving the son's mother. Jacob's first three sons (all by Leah) committed sins which kept them from receiving the rights of the firstborn. But this didn't mean Jacob could give the rights of the firstborn to Rachel's oldest son Joseph, for Judah (born to Leah) was next in line. It is through the tribe of Judah that the Lord's own firstborn Son came, so we see that the Lord chose the family line of Jacob and Leah over the family line of Jacob and Rachel. I believe the Lord would have chosen Leah to be Jacob's one and only wife if Jacob had consulted Him when he began thinking about marriage. Instead Jacob was captivated by the beauty and sexual allure of Rachel, disregarding her character flaws which we studied earlier in the Bible, and he preferred her over the less beautiful but more godly Leah.
Before the Israelites go into the promised land to receive the territories the Lord plans to give them, Moses feels it's important to remind them that they can't disinherit a firstborn son even though they don't love the son's mother. Disinheritance is a serious matter that can only be undertaken in serious circumstances.
Join us tomorrow as we'll study a passage regarding a son who is so rebellious that his father can not only disinherit him but can also have him put to death.
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