So you can be married in a family and then if a spouse die essentially you are still part of the linage and can redeemed by another family member. I’m trying to see the similarities with Mary and Joseph’s case. Can what they have been called a partnership?

GSW: In Israel, you don’t marry an individual. You marry into a family. Essentially all the men younger than your husband in a family are also potential husbands to the bride. That is their culture. On the woman’s side she can buy slaves and give them to her husband to have children by but she will claim the children as her own. So the culture goes both ways. In the case of Joseph, He was betrothed to a virgin. God then came and took the right of husbandship from him. He then became Mary’s second husband. God being the first. God even gave her a new name or title ” Blessed one”

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