Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

MARRIAGE PRESENT

The gift (Heb. mōhar) a husband extended to the father of his bride. Shechem offers to give a “marriage present” to Jacob in exchange for his daughter Dinah (Gen. 34:12). David, unable to give either property or money, is permitted to make a gruesome “settlement” of slain Philistines for Michal, Saul’s younger daughter (1 Sam. 18:25). The compensation to be paid by one who seduced a virgin may have been considered a marriage present (Exod. 22:16-17[MT 15-16]; cf. Deut. 22:29); though treated among the laws concerning property, this does not imply that the bride was to be considered such (she herself could own property; cf. Josh. 15:18-19 = Judg. 1:14-15). Rather than a purchase price intended to compensate the bride’s family for the loss of their daughter and subsequent offspring, the groom’s marriage present was merely reciprocation for the dowry, thus completing the exchange as expected in Israel’s “gift economy.”

Allen C. Myers

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

MARRIAGE PRESENT

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)