All right, I'll accept some of your comments. However, there are a couple points still worthy of discussing further.

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Pariah said:
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When Sarah herself is speaking, she says nothing about Abraham marrying Hagar. She just says "Have kids with her so you can build a lineage." When the Bible uses third-person narrative relating events as they happened, that's when we get the word "wife" being used. So based on that, it seems like Abraham really did marry Hagar. After all, the Bible says "to be his wife," instead of using something along the lines of "to be the mother of his kids." If Abraham hadn't really married her, the Bible wouldn't have used the term "to be his wife."



The narrative is interpreting the actions of Sarah, "and gave her to Abram her husband to be his wife". It says she gave her to him so she could be his wife, it didn't say he took her as his wife.



I'd expect the Bible to tell it exactly how it was, and not interpret someone's actions.

Even if you're right about Abraham not marrying Hagar, that still doesn't address Jacob and Elkanah, both of whom had more than one wife. God never seemed to have an issue with them for having more than one wife. Jacob may be a special case because he never intended to marry Leah, but then again, he chose to marry Rachel anyway.

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Methos said:
If I recall correctly, God never spoke to Saul. He spoke to the propher Samuel, who would pass the message onto Saul. That was the role of prophets in those days.



No. On his way to.....I think it was Jersulam, God knocked him off his horse and spoke to him, himself. After that he converted to Christianity and re-named himself "Paul".



Oh, THAT Saul.

Heh...the guy probably changed his name so that nobody else would make that same mistake.

"Just because I don't like to fight doesn't mean that I can't."