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

[Benjamin McGuire]

44 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

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.

How do I know this? It's pretty straight forward really. But let's work our way backward. Suppose that we distilled all prophecies down to three or four archetypes. Once we have those, every circumstance will fit those three or four archetypes, and we have no more need of any prophecies - we have them all covered, right?

Prophecies are generally given to people who will not only understand them, but will have some way to contextualize them - and for whom it will matter. Here's Isaiah in the 8th century BCE, writing a text. It seems you are willing to accept that it might be meaningful to that original audience, but then you want to make it meaningful to someone else thousands of years later, who cannot really read the language, and who will really only be able to understand the prophecy figuratively. I say that last part because while dying by the sword might make be reasonable thousands of years ago, it's pretty unlikely today. And the fact that it specifically places all of this in the context of Jerusalem means that we would have to imagine a new Jerusalem for this to be meaningful to most of us (or just make Jerusalem symbolic). And if everybody for the thousands of years in between then and now does this with the text - finds something in the text that they relate to, is the text really intended to mean all of that? I really don't think so.

[Calm]

6 hours ago, Stargazer said:

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

You appear to be ignoring the issue for me, which is that zealously reads the text as representing an egalitarian and romantic relationship between the husband and the 7 wives even though there is no indication they are not only saying they need no bride price, but there is no indication they are needing any further provisions or care from him.  The only thing they are requesting from him to take away their reproach is his name.  Nothing else.

Because reproach is used elsewhere to refer to barrenness, I assumed this meant he was to give them children as well, but the commentary I posted above says disgrace (reproach in the KJV) is a word that “appears in the context of rape”.  Their conclusion is the women are seeking protection from the possibility of rape or a “return to status to women who have been already raped and so humiliated”.  

This could be taken to mean victims may have had children seen as  illegitimate by their culture and needed the husband’s name for them as well (commentary does not say this, I am extrapolating).

If it is the Millennium, even the beginning of the Millennium, do you believe the women would be afraid of rape or even the stigma of rape?  The Millennium makes no sense in this context of disgrace imo.

As far as I can tell I am not disagreeing with your comments except where you refer to zealously because you are apparently agreeing with him here defending his reading into the text romance and mutual support….which would be lovely if it was there instead of the tragedy of its complete absence.

Edited April 4, 2024 by Calm

[ZealouslyStriving]

3 minutes ago, Calm said:

You appear to be ignoring the issue for me, which is that zealously reads the text as representing an egalitarian and romantic relationship between the husband and the 7 wives even though there is no indication they are not only saying they need no bride price, but there is no indication they are needing any further provisions or care from him.  The only thing they are requesting from him to take away their reproach is his name.  Nothing else.

Because reproach is used elsewhere to refer to barrenness, I assumed this meant he was to give them children as well, but the commentary I posted above says disgrace (reproach in the KJV) is a word that “appears in the context of rape”.  Their conclusion is the women are seeking protection from the possibility of rape or a “return to status to women who have been already raped and so humiliated”.  The victims may have had children seen as  illegitimate by their culture and needed the husband’s name for them as well.

If it is the Millennium, even the beginning of the Millennium, do you believe the women would be afraid of rape or even the stigma of rape?  The Millennium makes no sense in this context of disgrace imo.

I would be interested in what Avraham Gileadi says about these verses.

Can someone help a brotha out?

[Calm]

4 hours ago, PortalToParis said:

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). 

In those cases as far as we know there were equal numbers of men and women.

If there are very few men, monogamous marriages would leave 6 women childless out of 7 (using the number supplied in the verse).  I don’t think you can extrapolate for such a different scenario that monogamy would still produce more children.

Especially since they may have the science available even post catastrophic war to determine when a woman is fertile and the husband could time his conjugal visits accordingly…or they just go with artificial insemination even….if one chooses to assume this is in the beginning of the Millennium and what technology we know now isn’t lost, though I most definitely don’t assume this is the Millennium in case it isn’t clear.  I am just concerned with accuracy here.

Edited April 4, 2024 by Calm

[Calm]

6 minutes ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

I would be interested in what Avraham Gileadi says about these verses.

Can someone help a brotha out?

I don’t have any of his books.  

[ZealouslyStriving]

3 minutes ago, Calm said:

I don’t have any of his books.  

Me either. 🫤

[ZealouslyStriving]

5 minutes ago, Calm said:

I don’t have any of his books.  

*I found this:

https://www.isaiahexplained.com/chapter/4

[Calm]

6 minutes ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

*I found this:

https://www.isaiahexplained.com/chapter/4

And?

[Benjamin McGuire]

24 minutes ago, Calm said:

I am trying to find out why he did that.  If anyone knows, speak up please.

He has a section in his introduction (xlii to xlv) where he discusses how he is formatting the text into sense lines and paragraphs. He also mentions The Washborn College Bible of a biblical text that uses the same sort of style of sense lines and paragraphing as he does in this text. Skousen's style is very similar to the layout found in that volume - it would not surprise me if it had the same formatting of this passage. I don't have a copy (it would look nice in my collection).

[ZealouslyStriving]

6 minutes ago, Calm said:

And?

It contains his analytical commentary on Isaiah 4

[Stargazer]

29 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

How do I know this? It's pretty straight forward really. But let's work our way backward. Suppose that we distilled all prophecies down to three or four archetypes. Once we have those, every circumstance will fit those three or four archetypes, and we have no more need of any prophecies - we have them all covered, right?

Prophecies are generally given to people who will not only understand them, but will have some way to contextualize them - and for whom it will matter. Here's Isaiah in the 8th century BCE, writing a text. It seems you are willing to accept that it might be meaningful to that original audience, but then you want to make it meaningful to someone else thousands of years later, who cannot really read the language, and who will really only be able to understand the prophecy figuratively. I say that last part because while dying by the sword might make be reasonable thousands of years ago, it's pretty unlikely today. And the fact that it specifically places all of this in the context of Jerusalem means that we would have to imagine a new Jerusalem for this to be meaningful to most of us (or just make Jerusalem symbolic). And if everybody for the thousands of years in between then and now does this with the text - finds something in the text that they relate to, is the text really intended to mean all of that? I really don't think so.

What you're saying makes sense from a theoretical point of view, surely. But "the sword" does not have to refer to a literal sword, does it? What if the person didn't have a sword, but only a club? He's safe then? Prophecies do not necessarily (or even very frequently it seems) refer to literal matters. Take the statue in King Nebuchadnezzar's dream: a giant statue made of four metals with feet of mingled iron and clay, smashed by a stone from heaven. It's figurative.

If you want a one-to-one correspondence between prophecies in the scripture and events in real time, I definitely understand. I even mostly agree. But there may be more to it sometimes.

[Benjamin McGuire]

1 minute ago, Stargazer said:

If you want a one-to-one correspondence between prophecies in the scripture and events in real time, I definitely understand. I even mostly agree. But there may be more to it sometimes.

However, when does it stop being a real connection and become something that is simply contrived? That is, if there may be more to it sometimes, how do we differentiate between the sometimes and the other times when there isn't anything to it?

[longview]

9 minutes ago, Calm said:

16 minutes ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

*I found this:

https://www.isaiahexplained.com/chapter/4

And?

I read the link. It looks to me chapter 4 is describing the situation AFTER the severe tribulations and the Second Coming of Our Lord, the beginning of the Millennium. The wars will have caused a drastic depopulation of male soldiers.  Thus resulting in a ratio of seven women to one man.

AND: those women will uphold the "principle" of plural marriage as espoused by the state of Deseret (i.e. Utah Pioneers). The female survivors will fully embrace the doctrines of the Church of Christ. In the Millennium, there will be NO shortages or economic deprivation.

[Stargazer]

35 minutes ago, Calm said:

You appear to be ignoring the issue for me, which is that zealously reads the text as representing an egalitarian and romantic relationship between the husband and the 7 wives even though there is no indication they are not only saying they need no bride price, but there is no indication they are needing any further provisions or care from him.  The only thing they are requesting from him to take away their reproach is his name.  Nothing else.

Because reproach is used elsewhere to refer to barrenness, I assumed this meant he was to give them children as well, but the commentary I posted above says disgrace (reproach in the KJV) is a word that “appears in the context of rape”.  Their conclusion is the women are seeking protection from the possibility of rape or a “return to status to women who have been already raped and so humiliated”.  The victims may have had children seen as  illegitimate by their culture and needed the husband’s name for them as well.

If it is the Millennium, even the beginning of the Millennium, do you believe the women would be afraid of rape or even the stigma of rape?  The Millennium makes no sense in this context of disgrace imo.

As far as I can tell I am not disagreeing with your comments except where you refer to zealously because you are apparently agreeing with him here defending his reading into the text romance and mutual support….which would be lovely if it was there instead of the tragedy of its complete absence.

Did he read into the text romance and mutual support?  I'll have to go back and re-read what he wrote. But I would like to point out that stories in the Bible sometimes leave out things which might be seen by the writers as being unnecessary to mention because of a common understanding which prevailed at the time, but no longer does. So it may be that romance is included by cultural inference. But what do I know?

But besides all that, @Benjamin McGuire has rather thoroughly disconnected that prophecy from our times, saying that it applied only to events that took place long ago, and since the prophecy has been fulfilled, it no longer pertains to anything that might happen in the future. So @ZealouslyStriving's question as it pertains to our day and days to come is answered by "No, it doesn't pertain."

Of course, as unlikely as it might seem, Ben could be wrong. 

[Stargazer]

10 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

However, when does it stop being a real connection and become something that is simply contrived? That is, if there may be more to it sometimes, how do we differentiate between the sometimes and the other times when there isn't anything to it?

Good question. One would have to get a more sure word of prophecy on that.

[Nofear]

22 hours ago, The Nehor said:

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.

Can't divorce if one doesn't marry in the first place. Apparently that is the strategy society is employing with its declining marriage rate.


Yet marriage remains the one of the highest predictors of happiness, fiscal security, and general well being.
https://archive.is/pD7FM

[Stargazer]

3 minutes ago, longview said:

In the Millennium, there will be NO shortages or economic deprivation.

There might be a bit of it in the very beginning, immediately after the Tribulation. The cleanup could be rather labor intensive.

[ZealouslyStriving]

2 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

There might be a bit of it in the very beginning, immediately after the Tribulation. The cleanup could be rather labor intensive.

Not everything will be sunshine and lollipops at the beginning. According to Zechariah 14 people groups will be punished for failing to properly observe Tabernacles.

[Benjamin McGuire]

3 minutes ago, Nofear said:

Yet marriage remains the one of the highest predictors of happiness, fiscal security, and general well being.
https://archive.is/pD7FM

This is true - but - we have to be careful about assuming correlation is causation. Strong predictors of marriage include wealth, education, and a number of other factors that are also connected to happiness, fiscal security, and general well being. Marriage isn't necessarily the cause of these other things - but rather it could be one of the anticipated outcomes of being happy, having fiscal security, and so on.

9 minutes ago, Nofear said:

Can't divorce if one doesn't marry in the first place. Apparently that is the strategy society is employing with its declining marriage rate.

They are related, but a decline in marriages doesn't seem to be the reason for the decline in marriage. Most demographic groups are seeing lower marriage rates - but some groups are doing quite well. Like, for example, people with college degrees. This study is a decade old, but you can see here the super high marriage rates and the super low divorce rates for college educated couples. They get married at an older age, they get into more stable relationships, and they have better tools to deal with problems that come up - both within the relationship and as part of their life experience. This is one group that continues to get married in high percentages - and that continue to stay married. The sort of stability we see in this group is absent in other demographic groups - and this points to the fact that other challenges (poverty, lack of education, and so on) provide barriers both to getting married and to staying married. And, naturally, those who experience these other issues are likely to describe themselves as less happy than their married, educated, and financially successful counterparts.

[Calm]

1 hour ago, Stargazer said:

Did he read into the text romance and mutual support?  I'll have to go back and re-read what he wrote.

It certainly appears to me that he did….

https://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/75844-isaiah-the-lords-order-of-marriage-and-45-of-women-ages-25–44-will-be-single-by-2030-per-morgan-stanley /?do=findComment&comment=1210181883

“Sharing the workload” and “romantic relationships” seems pretty clear to me.

Edited April 4, 2024 by Calm

[Calm]

1 hour ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

He has a section in his introduction (xlii to xlv) where he discusses how he is formatting the text into sense lines and paragraphs. He also mentions The Washborn College Bible of a biblical text that uses the same sort of style of sense lines and paragraphing as he does in this text. Skousen's style is very similar to the layout found in that volume - it would not surprise me if it had the same formatting of this passage. I don't have a copy (it would look nice in my collection).

Thanks, Ben.

Even looking at the Printer’s manuscript, it makes more sense to me it fits better with the previous verse with the &….but that is probably due to my already reading it that way.  I don’t think the first edition went that route, but stuck with the KJV.

It is just if you remove all the versification, the tone sounds more doom and gloom, matching the prior verses rather than the later ones.

Edited April 4, 2024 by Calm

[Calm]

1 hour ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

It contains his analytical commentary on Isaiah 4

So not contributing to the conversation here if you leave it there.   

[Nofear]

1 hour ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

This is true - but - we have to be careful about assuming correlation is causation. Strong predictors of marriage include wealth, education, and a number of other factors that are also connected to happiness, fiscal security, and general well being. Marriage isn't necessarily the cause of these other things - but rather it could be one of the anticipated outcomes of being happy, having fiscal security, and so on.

Agreed. Social dynamics are notoriously difficult to isolate and pin down as "this one thing" is the "cause". Nonetheless, it remains that married marital status seems to correlate with quite a few different positive things. Sure, the positive things could be achieved without marriage but at a societal level they are more likely to be found among the married. Same thing with membership in the Church. The Church excels in quite few positive things for people. Sure, the positive things could be achieved without being a faithful, practicing member of the Church, it seems to up the probability of the positive outcomes by non-trivial amounts.

But, I don't want to derail or change the current topic of discussion in this thread. The societal and individual benefits of marriage or church membership could easily be its own thread.

Edited April 4, 2024 by Nofear

[Benjamin McGuire]

6 minutes ago, Nofear said:

Agreed. Social dynamics are notoriously difficult to isolate and pin down as "this one thing" is the "cause". Nonetheless, it remains that married marital status seems to correlate with quite a few different positive things. Sure, the positive things could be achieved without marriage but at a societal level they are more likely to be found among the married. Same thing with membership in the Church. The Church excels in quite few positive things for people. Sure, the positive things could be achieved without being a faithful, practicing member of the Church, it seems to up the probability of the positive outcomes by non-trivial amounts.

Yeah - I am not trying to downplay the benefits of marriage - or the fact that marriage is generally a very positive thing for people. I just want to say that it seems to me (and others) that if we look at these factors that seem connected to successful marriage, and we promote them, we are likely to see an increase in marriages. If a strong correlation exists between being a college graduate and having a successful marriage, we could encourage that outcome as a way of encouraging successful marriages.

Likewise, if we encourage those that are young and under-educated to get married, we are putting them in a position where they have a high risk of divorce. Marriage on its own hasn't (and won't) bring people out of poverty, or help them get an education, and so on.

[Calm]

 

 

1 hour ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

Not everything will be sunshine and lollipops at the beginning. According to Zechariah 14 people groups will be punished for failing to properly observe Tabernacles.

Perhaps.  But if the wicked have been burned, no rapists wandering around surely, so need for the women to fear the possibility of it happening to them and therefore want to get married for the protection of the name.

Edited April 4, 2024 by Calm