What makes a good husband? a good wife? a good spousal relationship?
How does the presence or absence of children affect the relationship of husband and wife?

• Abram and Sarai are childless but want children. Attempt: Hagar becomes second wife. Result: God must intervene.
• Isaac and Rebekah are childless but want children. Attempt: Isaac pleads with God. Result: her womb is opened.
• Jacob and Rachel are childless but want children. Attempt: Rebekah complains. Result: Jacob angry; will not intercede with God.

Adam and Eve
- God tells them both: be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, conquer it, 1.28
- Eve is her husband's sustainer, 2.18
- The husband leaves father and mother and clings to his wife, 2.24 -- cf. when Isaac marries Rebekah, he is finally consoled after the loss of his mother Sarah
- The curse: wife longs for husband, who rules her, 3.16
- Adam's mistake: he listened to his wife over against God, 3.17 -- cf. when Abraham listens to his wife in 16.3, doesn't in 21.10-11, and then God tells him to listen to Sarah at 21.12

Lamech
- Why does he tell his two wives what he has done? 4.23-24
- Divinities and humans mix, 6.2 -- God's response: the Flood, killing the Nephilim. Is marriage for humans alone?

Abraham and Sarah
- Is adultery the problem when Sarai is passed off as Abram's sister, 12:11-20? what about the scheme to lie [granted, they are half-siblings]? Doesn't the deception turn out well anyway (they do survive Egypt)?
- Apparently, Hagar is brought out of Egypt: she becomes A's Egyptian wife.
- Adultery looks like the problem when Hagar sleeps with Abraham, 16:2 ff. The cause, again: A. listened to his wife over against the wishes of God.
--- A. says this situation is Sarai's problem, 16.6
- Sarai is evidently the right wife -- because she was first? not Egyptian? not a slave?
- Joint hospitality, 18:4-8. Compare Lot's hospitality, alone and not with his wife, 19:1-3--she ultimately becomes a pillar of salt, 19:26
--- (note, meanwhile, Lot has assimilated so much into Sodom that he no longer has a tent but a house; after Sodom he wants to go to Zoar, but after seeing what God does to the cities, becomes afraid of cities and moves into a cave)--what is Lot's wife's ethnicity?
- Another deception, 20.2, and more bad results that would attend adultery, 20.3 ff.; S. publicly vindicated, 20.17
- God has singled out S., 21.1-3, she is the right mother as well as the right wife
- More trouble between S. and Hagar, 21.10-11. But A. won't listen to her, until God tells him to, 21.12.
--- The wandering of Hagar and Ishmael enables Ishmael to be a real wilderness man: both Ish. and Esau are wilderness men who take foreign wives.
--- Ishmael's wife is from Egypt (like his mother), 21.21.
- Sarah buried at enormous cost, 23.2-19

Isaac and Rebekah
- Isaac's wife may not be Canaanite but should be from the family, 24.3-4, 24.37-38
- Rebekah's other qualities, 24.14 ff.:

• hospitality
• pretty
• a virgin
• has abundance in her family
• her family agrees to the marriage, 24.41, 24.49
• she has some say in the marriage, 24.8, 24.57
• love
• she finally replaces Isaac's mother, 24.67 (cf. 2.24)

Abraham and Keturah
- She provides more children, but Abraham chooses to be buried with his first wife, Sarah, 25.9-10

Esau and Judith
- His Hittite wives are a provocation to both parents, 26.34-35, 27.46, 28.1
- Esau partially learns his lesson after Jacob leaves, taking on an Ishmaelite as third wife--is this really better? 28.8-9

Jacob and Rachel (and Leah)
- When J. first sees that she is (1) of right family, (2) a shepherdess, (3) has sheep, he valiantly rolls the stone from the well, 29.6-14
--- he is quite forward here: he kisses her and weeps, 29.11
--- he loves her, 29.20
- Leah vs. Rachel, 29.16-32 ff.
--- The two wives bargain over the husband, 30.15-20
--- Leah says: having sons brings love from husband to wife, 29.32; exalts the wife, 30.20
- Note Rachel and Jacob's poor response to barrenness, 30.1-4
--- Having a son with Rachel, finally, motivates J. to return home. His story is coming full circle, 30.25
--- He clearly continues to privilege R., 33.3 etc. --- J. commemorates R. with a pillar after she dies in childbirth on the road, 35.20

Dinah -- ch. 34. Defilement; prospects of intermarriage end in massacre.

Judah
- Marries a Canaanite, 38.2
- Problems regarding the duty of a brother-in-law to the brother's wife, 38.8 ff. through 38.27, framing the bed-trick against Judah

Potiphar's wife and Potiphar
- They are not seen together until he goes to investigate the supposed adultery-attempt
- But Joseph remains pure in this situation, 39.7-20

Chapters 40-50
- No new wives appear.
- Once the sons/brothers work out their problems in Egypt, they can bring their wives back from Canaan, 46.5
- Jacob's four 'wives' referred to, 46.8-23, but Jacob still fully favors Rachel so many years later, 48.7, 49.31-32.