Ezra's Foreign Women Divorce

So the story goes (Ezra 9, 10) ...  Ezra returns to Jerusalem from exile in Babylon and finds that many of Jewish people including officials and priests in the neighboring countries had inter-married with foreign women in violation of one of God's commandments. Ezra weeps, tears his clothes, bows and prays at an altar until Shecaniah makes the suggestion to send these women and their children away. So it was done eventually, all the men that had foreign wives divorced them and sent them and their children away.

How did this really go down?  Just imagine, the Jewish husband calling out as he enters his home; "Oh Honey, I've got to divorce you and send you and the kids away to please God."

How do you send a foreign women away from the country where she was not the foreigner, but rather the Jewish men were?  The neighboring countries were Ammon, Moab, and Egypt.  The people were the Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, and Amorites. How would the Jewish man be treated in the foreign country after he divorced his wife and sent her away with the children?  Wouldn't his foreign neighbors think this was a strange way to act?

And the Jewish men agreed to divorce their foreign wives and abandon their children without argument or controversy.

David's Foreskin Bride Payment

So the story goes (1 Samuel 1 17-39) ...  King Saul once more promised a daughter, this time Michal, to be David's as a wife with a condition that in the performance thereof would get David killed. The bride price was 100 foreskins of the enemy - the Philistines.  Before the day set for the wedding, David and his men (essentially a gang cartel) set off and killed two hundred Philistine men, cut off and kept their foreskins. Upon their return, David counted them all out to King Saul and the wedding took place as planned the next day.

The logistics seem improbable.  Granted that David's bachelor party the day before his wedding was a raid on the enemy.  Where did they so conveniently find two hundred Philistine men to kill and cut off their foreskins - down the block at the local town square?  Didn't the Philistines live in the territory of King Achish? Some distance and time would be involved in traveling to and from the land of King Achish in order to hunt down two hundred Philistines to kill. Following each kill, David and his men surgically excised only their foreskins?  Was there no intervention from other nearby Philistines?

A sword could be used to easily chop off the entire gentile region of a dead body but removing only the foreskin would take additional precision and time.

Okay, David goes the extra mile and gets two hundred, one hundred more than the one hundred asked for.  Nothing odd about having a little extra flesh here, perhaps foreskins is just a simile.

The count off with King Saul must have been interesting. How long would it take to count out two hundred foreskins amid a bloody hairy pile of cocks and balls? Foreskin one, Foreskin two, ... Foreskin 99, ...

All this is a day...

David and Abishag

When David was old (about 70), he had a hard time keeping warm at night no matter how many blankets were piled on.  His advisers came up with a great solution.  Find the prettiest hottest virgin woman in the kingdom to sleep with him and hold him in her arms in order to keep him warm him at night! This was done and Abishag was selected to serve the king thusly and she loved him deeply and served him loyally.  However, they did not have sexual contact/intercourse, or as KJV states ...the King knew her not.

This all seems rather improbable.  Consider the plight of Abishag as she was taken from her family and surroundings.  Did she not have any other prospects for her future?  How could she be so willing? A similar situation happens in the book of Esther.  Apparently this is a Jewish tradition, the prettiest virgins of the land serve the King willingly.

They did not have sexual contact - what is the definition of sexual contact if sleeping in ones arms - perhaps naked for better heat transfer - is not sexual contact?  Intercourse?  How does the writer know this as a fact? (Okay, the answer is God directed the writer.) Then what is the point of including this information? To show that David was so saintly at this point that he abstained from deflowering a virgin? That was definitely not his history with women. Or that he was so old that he was indeed incapable of intercourse and totally oblivious of what was happening?

Furthermore, why didn't Bathsheba serve as the bed warmer? How did she feel about this arrangement? Apparently the David the King didn't sleep with his wife (wives).

Are we to believe that David was just an innocent bystander in this? Arranged without his input?

Perhaps the story is included to set the stage for Solomon later killing his rival older brother and thereby eliminating him from contention for the kingship when the rival brother merely asked for Abishag to be his wife.

Or to make it appear more plausible that the profit Nathan and wife Bathsheba could trick David into believing that he had promised and sworn by God that Solomon would be the next king. Another common theme, the wife helps trick the old man into making the younger son the preferred heir over the more rightful older son.