Isaiah, the Lord's order of marriage, and 45% of women ages 25–44 will be single by 2030 per Morgan Stanley.

[juliann]

I always find it very interesting when polygamy advocates misuse these verses to make them about women rather than a prediction of the sorry state of the men, i.e., themselves. 

[Doctor Steuss]

37 minutes ago, Calm said:

From the current commentary sitting on my shelf:

Hi Calm,

If you don't mind me asking, what's the name of this commentary?  From the little snapshot, I think my Dad would possibly like this for his consternation while wrestling with Isaiah passages in the Book of Mormon.

[Calm]

14 minutes ago, Doctor Steuss said:

Hi Calm,

If you don't mind me asking, what's the name of this commentary?  From the little snapshot, I think my Dad would possibly like this for his consternation while wrestling with Isaiah passages in the Book of Mormon.

https://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Backgrounds-Study-Bible-eBook-ebook/dp/B07DR6WZ6G/ref=sr_1_7?

I can’t remember if it was recommended by Ben Spackman or Dan McClellan.  Think it was Ben though.  He posts on his FB when there are specials iirc.  It was a great price.  I love it.  My husband who doesn’t get into studying commentaries likes it a lot.  For casual students who can’t afford the more thorough treatments….or don’t want to, lol.

It appears to only be available in digital now.

https://zondervanacademic.com/products/nrsv-cultural-backgrounds-study-bible-hardcover-comfort-print

I just discovered I purged my beautiful Isaiah text from college.  I am guessing I was too happy with this one.  I am annoyed with myself.  One item in hundreds, maybe thousands I regret purging is not too bad I guess.   Urgghhhh

Edited April 3 by Calm

[Doctor Steuss]

7 minutes ago, Calm said:

https://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Backgrounds-Study-Bible-eBook-ebook/dp/B07DR6WZ6G/ref=sr_1_7?

I can’t remember if it was recommended by Ben Spackman or Dan McClellan.  Think it was Ben though.  He posts on his FB when there are specials iirc.  It was a great price.  I love it.  My husband who doesn’t get into studying commentaries likes it a lot.  For casual students who can’t afford the more thorough treatments….or don’t want to, lol.

Thank you!  Bummer that the hardcover is only available for NIV.  I think he mainly reads his BoM on tablet though, so maybe this will be perfect.  You are the bee's knees.  True story.  Just the other day, I saw a bee, and then I looked at its knees, and was like, check out the Calm on that there bee... referring, of course, to its knees.

[ZealouslyStriving]

17 minutes ago, juliann said:

I always find it very interesting when polygamy advocates misuse these verses to make them about women rather than a prediction of the sorry state of the men, i.e., themselves. 

If the men involved in this verse are so horrible, why are the women seeking marriage with them?

The wicked men are killed off in the war, and Lord's punishments.

[Teancum]

3 hours ago, The Nehor said:

For every one person who gets seven divorces there are seven people who don’t get a divorce. Statistics like these are skewed by the high numbers. When I hear the average American has a sexual body count of just under 10 people it is worth noting that there are literally people with body counts in the thousands skewing the average.

Also the US divorce rate has fallen every year with only one exception since 2008. Whatever we are doing it is lowering the divorce rate.

Death cult? Planned human obsolescence? Marxist dream of abolishing traditional marriage?

All the real problems in the world and you are making up more?

Support women in the armed forces to equalize gender death counts!

LOL

It is funny seeing the same people who were whining about high divorce rates and teens having sex too young now somehow assume the world is ending because *checks notes* people are waiting longer to have sex and a falling divorce rate. PICK A LANE! There is just no pleasing some people. It is almost as if they are primarily just interested in spreading fear.

I bet ya Teddy wears a red hat that has political meanings and waits in long lines at some person's red hat rally's 😉

[Stargazer]

29 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

“I think the idea beats the sleep with 7 different men, have their babies, and live off child-support and the government, that we have now.”

So very few are doing it but it is the ‘idea that we have now’?

Also the 1980s called and they want their welfare queen strawwoman back.

https://www.npr.org/2023/10/22/1207322878/single-parent-married-good-for-children-inequality

This article is interesting due to the statistic that it mentions in connection with today:

"One fact is undeniable in all this: More women are deciding to have children and also remain single. Almost half of all babies born in the U.S. were born to unmarried women in 2019, a dramatic increase since 1960, when only 5% of births were to unmarried mothers. And it's not because of divorce; today's unpartnered mothers are also more likely to have never been married."

The article seems to imply that the women being cited are supporting themselves, rather than relying upon government. Though that's not stated, and they may be relying upon child support. I was astonished about the "almost half of babies born in the U.S. were born to unmarried women in 2019." I had no idea it was that bad.

Intriguing that you mention the 1980 welfare queens, in that when I was in US Army Basic Training in 1975, one of my platoon mates liked to boast that he had seven children with seven different women, and he wasn't supporting a single one of them. I don't know if he was boasting because of his presumed sexual prowess, or boasting about getting away with it. Maybe both. 

[The Nehor]

5 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

https://www.npr.org/2023/10/22/1207322878/single-parent-married-good-for-children-inequality

This article is interesting due to the statistic that it mentions in connection with today:

"One fact is undeniable in all this: More women are deciding to have children and also remain single. Almost half of all babies born in the U.S. were born to unmarried women in 2019, a dramatic increase since 1960, when only 5% of births were to unmarried mothers. And it's not because of divorce; today's unpartnered mothers are also more likely to have never been married."

The article seems to imply that the women being cited are supporting themselves, rather than relying upon government. Though that's not stated, and they may be relying upon child support. I was astonished about the "almost half of babies born in the U.S. were born to unmarried women in 2019." I had no idea it was that bad.

Intriguing that you mention the 1980 welfare queens, in that when I was in US Army Basic Training in 1975, one of my platoon mates liked to boast that he had seven children with seven different women, and he wasn't supporting a single one of them. I don't know if he was boasting because of his presumed sexual prowess, or boasting about getting away with it. Maybe both. 

Your platoon mate was an idiot. It is ridiculously easy to get child support withheld from a service member’s paycheck. If I remember right it was even easy back then. More likely he was just lying.

[The Nehor]

16 minutes ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

If the men involved in this verse are so horrible, why are the women seeking marriage with them?

The wicked men are killed off in the war, and Lord's punishments.

The righteous all dodged the draft?

[Stargazer]

27 minutes ago, juliann said:

I always find it very interesting when polygamy advocates misuse these verses to make them about women rather than a prediction of the sorry state of the men, i.e., themselves. 

I know where you're coming from on this, but I don't get that that is where he was going with it. I.e. to advocate for polygamy. I get that he (or at least the OP) was looking forward to a future time that has not yet arrived.

The "sorry state of the men" in connection with these verses is that they are mostly dead. I've mentioned it twice before in this thread that there was a real-world instance of the problem with a similar result in the aftermath of the Paraguayan War of the 1860s. In that war most of the male population was killed off, and this resulted in the few leftover men having children with multiple women, who largely supported themselves. Perhaps "in that day" in the scripture was referring to this particular historical event -- although the women were not plurally marrying the men in this case.

And just to forestall an intemperate reaction, no, I am not advocating anything, just reporting history.

[Stargazer]

2 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

Your platoon mate was an idiot. It is ridiculously easy to get child support withheld from a service member’s paycheck. If I remember right it was even easy back then. More likely he was just lying.

Yes, he was an idiot. And a great annoyance, for many reasons. And you are correct that he may very well have been lying. 

But it is only ridiculously easy to get child support withheld from a service member's paycheck if someone was advising the mother to take the necessary steps. But do you understand that proving paternity back in the day was hardly a slam-dunk? No DNA testing back then. It was also likely that the mothers of his children had other children from other fathers. 

How much paycheck would he have had left over after seven women successfully sued him for child support? Privates in the Army are not paid very generously. But most likely, the Army would have discharged him under less-than-honorable conditions with that kind of thing going on. Basic Training was considered to be a good place to weed out misfits.

[Smiley McGee]

2 hours ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

You seem determined to put the worst possible interpretation on anything I write. It's mildly entertaining.

 

1 hour ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

Because that is totally what I said...

May be some opportunity for a little self reflection here…

[CV75]

2 hours ago, Calm said:

Are you assuming the writer of Isaiah had this concept in mind or are you likening the scriptures (which I approve of, btw as long as we don’t confuse it with some original intent).

I do think Isaiah had 2 or 3 concepts in mind. One was literal, addressing the pending literal, practical issues facing his people in his immediate world. One was symbolic, where the corrupt nation would become so desperate as to seek relief by obliging itself to other, non-covenant groups or nations. Another was a metaphor for men and women who forsake their covenants, and in relation to this, the literal warning of a repeat in the times before the Second Coming (the Book of Mormon addresses this theme in terms of what will happen if the Gentiles in the nation/land of the Restoration do not repent, or the Gentiles who bring forth the Restoration do not live up to their calling and blessings).

In each of these, I believe he was speaking through his cultural lens and so shared the reactions of desperation common for that place and time (feelings of reproach over not being taken care of -- whether women by husbands, or men and women individually or the community as a whole, by the Lord), and used he cultural reference as both fact and imagery for this prophecy.

[ZealouslyStriving]

32 minutes ago, Smiley McGee said:

 

May be some opportunity for a little self reflection here…

Or, maybe, perhaps, possibly folks could read what I actually write. I'm not really given to riddles and innuendos. I'm pretty straight forward.

[MustardSeed]

1 hour ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

If the men involved in this verse are so horrible, why are the women seeking marriage with them?

The wicked men are killed off in the war, and Lord's punishments.

Personally I see this scripture as a commentary of mankind, using the pejorative reference to women (considering the time) to illustrate a point.

[Calm]

4 hours ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

If the men involved in this verse are so horrible, why are the women seeking marriage with them?

The wicked men are killed off in the war, and Lord's punishments.

Did you read the previous chapter?  The women were not in the best of shape by then.

Edited April 4 by Calm

[ZealouslyStriving]

3 minutes ago, Calm said:

Did you read the previous chapter.  The women were not in the best of shape by then.

I know... but to not be accused of "putting women on a pedestal"- I'll refrain from comment.

A🌹for you.

[Calm]

59 minutes ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

I know... but to not be accused of "putting women on a pedestal"- I'll refrain from comment.

A🌹for you.

Zealously and @Stargazer, neither of you have explained how this egalitarian relationship with the husband is different from the previous time period given how at the time this was written polygyny was allowed and husband and wife typically worked together to provide for the family, though in different ways.

[ZealouslyStriving]

7 minutes ago, Calm said:

Zealously and @Stargazer, neither of you have explained how this egalitarian relationship with the husband is different from the previous time period given how at the time this was written polygyny was allowed and husband and wife typically worked together to provide for the family, though in different ways.

I'm not exactly sure if I'm tracking with your question, but I'll give it a shot...

This is a prophecy about the last of the latter-days, a time when plural marriage will be prohibited and be the last type of relationship to gain general acceptance. Thus, I believe its permissibility at the time of Isaiah prophecy is not relevant.

[Stargazer]

7 hours ago, Calm said:

Zealously and @Stargazer, neither of you have explained how this egalitarian relationship with the husband is different from the previous time period given how at the time this was written polygyny was allowed and husband and wife typically worked together to provide for the family, though in different ways.

Calm, we're talking past one another. You're trying to address what I haven't written. 

The verses in question are talking about a future, possibly theoretical time when there are so few men left that a man may find himself being asked by more than one woman to take them on, offering as an incentive that he need not even support them economically, because they will support themselves. Which would be a time of desperation for all, and not just for the women. I provided a real-world example when something like this did happen after a horrible war.

There's no claim here that this is a desirable situation. There's no claim that men and women aren't supposed to work together to provide for the family. It's a prophecy about something that will (or may) happen in the future. I think that Zealously was suggesting it might happen at the beginning of the Millennium, when the situation may be similar to how it was in Paraguay in 1870 due to war, when at that time Paraguay faced the threat of population collapse. Whether it will be the case or not, I have no idea, but it is something that could occur. 

[Benjamin McGuire]

31 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

he verses in question are talking about a future, possibly theoretical time when there are so few men left that a man may find himself being asked by more than one woman to take them on, offering as an incentive that he need not even support them economically, because they will support themselves. Which would be a time of desperation for all, and not just for the women. I provided a real-world example when something like this did happen after a horrible war.

Yes, they were talking about a future when it was written. That future is now long past. Consider this from Sweeney:

Quote

The 2nd-person feminine address form of 3:25-4:1 indicates that these verses were originally addressed to a city, most probably Jerusalem, and that they were originally composed for a context other than 3:16-4:1. Their presupposition that the city will be devastated indicates that they were composed in relation to Hezekiah's revolt, when such an event was a distinct possibility. Furthermore, the incomplete nature of v. 24b indicates that 3:25-4:1 was deliberately worked into the structure of 3:16-4:1. The material in 3:16-24 could have been composed at any time, but the emphasis on fine clothing indicates a time of prosperity, such as during the reign of Hezekiah. Again, the association of this material with 3:1-15 indicates an interest in confirming earlier statements by the prophet in the aftermath of Hezekiah's revolt.

This is about the Assyrian destruction of Jerusalem in 701 BCE. While this text gets repurposed with Christian (and LDS) interpretations, it wasn't originally intended to refer to some point in our future time (or even in our present).

The Morgan Stanley study cited in the OP was produced back in 2019. This is old news. The trend has been going on for decades, and the shift from 41% in 2018 to 45% in 2030 isn't all the startling or significant. There are lots of things that we could do that would increase marriage rates - one set of things we could do is to look at the things that are working to create strong marriages today (divorce is in real decline right now because those marriages that do happen are stronger). The sorts of things that would help are:

1: Provide free college education for everyone (expand K-12 education to include 4 years of college).

2: Help families get adequate child care.

3: Standardize work benefits across the workforce - retirement benefits, healthcare benefits, paid time off.

4: Rebuild the tax structure in the United States so that being married becomes a benefit instead of a penalty.

5: Reduce the unequal burden between genders created by divorce.

Or we could make a bunch of bad decisions that will continue to create problems -

1: Restrict or eliminate women's ability to make their own decisions about reproductive rights and health (in an attempt to force women to get married under less than ideal circumstances - and to create barriers to divorce).

2: Make it more difficult for single parents to find economic success.

3: Continue to incarcerate minority men at very high rates.

4: Emphasizing the capstone marriage in practice (while de-emphasizing the capstone marriage in rhetoric). Making the ideal wedding perfect, beautiful, and horribly expensive.

5: Emphasize the role of women in society. Reducing their ability to have significant earnings, so that their economic value returns to the home.

6: Maintain a tax structure that burdens young married people.

There is a pattern here. The failure to recognize the historical trends and the reasons behind them leads to some really differing views on what marriage is and what it should be. Rather than trying to return marriage to some imaginary past, and to claim that somehow the drop in marriage is some form of social corruption, we need to take a much closer look at how to rebuild our social contract of marriage so that it is meaningful for equal partners, so that it creates economic stability (instead of following that economic stability), and how to value in concrete terms the family work that is done within the household. Until we do that, the decline isn't going to change. The way to fix this isn't to return to some idealized inequality of the past, but to create a working equality in the present.

[PortalToParis]

21 hours ago, teddyaware said:

polygyny will become a practical necessity just to be able to get the the human race up and running again. 

Women in monogamous marriages give birth to more children than women in polygamous marriages: 

"Studies have shown that monogamous women bore more children per wife than did polygamous wives..."

L. L. Bean and G. P. Mineau, “The Polygyny-Fertility Hypothesis: A Re-evaluation,” Population Studies 40 (1986): 67–81; 
Miriam Koktvedgaard Zeitzen, Polygamy: A Cross Cultural Analysis (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2008), 62–63.

"In the study of Mormon families, published in the US journal Evolution and Human Behaviour, the researchers surveyed birth, marriage and death records from the Utah population database, which covers nearly 186,000 adults and 630,000 children who lived or died between 1830 and 1894....The results were clear: the more women partnered with a man, the fewer children each of those women had."

Robin McKie, "Mormon polygamists shared the flaws of the fruit fly," The Guardian, 27 Feb 2011. 
Jacob A. Moorad, et al. Evolution and Human Behavior, Volume 32, Issue 2, 2011, Pages 147-155

Women are only fertile for a short, irregular period of time each month. That means that if your husband has other wives, he won't be as likely to be with you during your most fertile time of the month. 

Edited April 4 by PortalToParis

[PortalToParis]

21 hours ago, teddyaware said:

it’s not hard to imagine that polygyny will become a practical necessity just to be able to get the the human race up and running again. 

Our scriptures have only ever reported God using monogamy to "get the human race up and running": Adam and Eve, (and their children dividing two by two), Noah and his sons (all monogamous), Lehi and his sons with Ishmael and his family (all monogamous). 

[Stargazer]

1 hour ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

it wasn't originally intended to refer to some point in our future time (or even in our present).

How do you know this? Do you have a more sure word of prophecy on that? Or is it your position that prophecies have virtual checkboxes, and once fulfilled, that's it? I mean, you might be correct. I'm not committed to this as a yet future event and am happy to count this prophecy as fulfilled and done with. Who needs it to repeat? I certainly don't.

But in this thread I've mentioned a historical event from our time (within the last 160 years) where something like that occurred: in the aftermath of the Paraguayan War. I suppose it isn't necessary to consider that a fulfillment of that prophecy, but the scenario actually seems to be a reasonably likely outcome of any conflict that results in a severe imbalance between the numbers of men and women -- along with the concomitant risk of population collapse.

 

[Calm]

This is from Kent Jackson (through a friend who asked him about it in the past) as to why the CoC text has Isaiah 4:1 with the previous chapter in their Inspired Version.  I find it very interesting the change goes back to 1867.

Quote

The chapter break in the KJV is in the wrong place. The break belongs after Isaiah 4:1, not before it. Isaiah 4:1 concludes the text that precedes it in chapter 3 and should be separated from the text that follows it beginning in 4:2. Most modern translations recognize this by connecting 4:1 with chapter 3 instead of connecting it with the rest of chapter 4. The editors of the RLDS Inspired Version in 1867 did this as well.

BUT, Isaiah 4:1 isn't even in the JST at all. Joseph Smith didn't revise every verse, and Isaiah 4:1 is a verse he didn't do anything at all with. It's not on the manuscript (see below). So no, Joseph Smith didn't move 4:1 to the end of chapter 3.

I hope this is helpful.

Kent

 

Kent P. Jackson

Skousen in The Earliest Text also places 2 Nephi 14:1 with the last verse in 2 Nephi 13.  I am trying to find out why he did that.  If anyone knows, speak up please.

https://bookofmormoncentral.org/content/book-mormon-earliest-text

Edited April 4 by Calm