Was Ketu­rah the Wife or the Con­cu­bine of Abraham ?

Accord­ing to Gen­e­sis 25:1, Ketu­rah is described as being Abra­ham’s wife :

Abra­ham mar­ried anoth­er wife named Keturah.”

The word used for wife in the Hebrew is Was Keturah the Wife or the Concubine of Abraham? 1 (ishshah) (Strong’s No. 802)[1] and The Brown-Dri­ver-Brig­gs Hebrew and Eng­lish Lex­i­con (2001) defines the mean­ing of the word as woman, wife, female”[2].

But accord­ing to I Chron­i­cles 1:32, we are told that Ketu­rah was Abra­ham’s con­cu­bine :

Sons of Ketu­rah, Abra­ham’s con­cu­bine : Zim­ran, Jokshan.…”

The Hebrew used here accord­ing to the BDB lex­i­con is either Was Keturah the Wife or the Concubine of Abraham? 2 (piylegesh) or Was Keturah the Wife or the Concubine of Abraham? 3 (piyegesh) (Strong’s No. 6370)[3] and the lex­i­con defines the mean­ing as concubine”[4].

It is not pos­si­ble for Ketu­rah to be both a wife and con­cu­bine. The dif­fer­ence is with­out a doubt tru­ly glar­ing, that one won­ders what the mis­sion­ary excuse will be for the above contradiction.

Ref­er­ences

[1] James Strong, The New Strong’s Exhaus­tive Con­cor­dance of the Bible (Thomas Nel­son, 1996)

[2] F Brown, S. Dri­ver & C. Brig­gs, The Brown-Dri­ver-Brig­gs Hebrew and Eng­lish Lex­i­con (2001), p. 61

[3] James Strong, op. cit. 

[4] F. Brown, S. Dri­ver & C. Brig­gs, 0p. cit., p. 811Endmark


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