What is adultery? As defined in the Bible?

[Joe Knapp]

Gregory has posted an article title Clergy Sexual Abuse, about  "Philip Yancey sent a message to Christianity Today,"....confessed that he had engaged in an eight-year-long adulterous affair with a woman not his wife.

I have studied this topic in the Bible at great length. 

What Yancey has admitted to, is that he had a concubine. 

Now perhaps this is too hot of a topic to discuss here. 

Can someone show me where in the Bible, does it say, men cannot have concubines? 

Chapter and verse please. 

If you want an interesting Sabbath study, put concubine in a concordance and follow where it goes. 

[Kevin H]

This is a topic that grows in the scriptures. Absalom did not see sleeping with David's concubines' as adultery, but as a statement that his father had apostasied and that God rejected him as he rejected Saul and that God raised up Absalom to replace David and to return Israel/Judah to the prophetic blueprint. (What he did not recognize is that while his father had his faults and shortcomings, that God will not give up on the weakest of us as long as we are reaching out for a relationship with God.)

What we do find in the Bible, Joe, is that the stories of more than one wife or having concubines does not end with "and they all lived happily ever after."  There is always pain, sadness or worst.  It is through all these sad endings, or sad effects on the lives of the people involved in this that is the chapter and verse against this practice. 

[Joe Knapp]

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What we do find in the Bible, Joe, is that the stories of more than one wife or having concubines does not end with "and they all lived happily ever after."  

Well, there are so many instances in the Old Testament of this, I honestly don't know how they all worked out. 

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  Ahithophel said to Absalom, “Go into your father’s concubines, whom he has left to keep the house; then all Israel will hear that you have made yourself odious to your father. The hands of all who are with you will also be strengthened.”

   
• 2 Samuel 16:22
  So they pitched a tent for Absalom on the roof, and Absalom went into his father’s concubines in the sight of all Israel.

Interesting example you have chosen. 

It is the only example I know of where someone is committing Adultery with concubines. 

 

[Kevin H]

10 hours ago, Joe Knapp said:

Well, there are so many instances in the Old Testament of this, I honestly don't know how they all worked out. 

Interesting example you have chosen. 

It is the only example I know of where someone is committing Adultery with concubines. 

 

We also find Rubin with Bilhah. There is the debated possibility of David taking Saul's wife as one of his wives. At the time it was understood that the one person failed and that God choose the other person to replace the other person by giving them the other person's possessions. For Rubin it was probably a way of trying to make sure he got the birthright. For Absalom, it was that his father was rejected for going too far from the prophetic blueprint and that thus his father had turned against God and therefore God has turned David's kingdom over to Absalom who was going to reform the country and return to the prophetic blueprint. In both cases it proved to be a wrong choice and only went against the person. The Holy Spirit works with us, not forcing the will. God did  not give up on Jacob nor David and Rubin and Absalom were wrong in doing this act to say that God rejected their father and choose them to replace their father. This lead to eventually giving up this practice and seeing it as included in the command against adultery. 

[Joe Knapp]

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Then Israel journeyed and pitched his tent beyond the tower of Eder. ²² And it happened, when Israel dwelt in that land, that Reuben went and lay with Bilhah his father’s concubine; and Israel heard about it.

Gen 35:22

Interesting. You have indeed studied this topic.