How close is too close?

I was reading the book of Genesis (just reading the Bible all over again!) and am up to the part where Abraham wants to find a wife for his heir, Isaac. He tells his servant Eliziar to go find him one and stipulates she cannot be a Canaanite girl, she HAS to be someone from their family. So Eliziar comes across Rebekah watering his camels, and chooses her as Isaac's bride (Isaac doesnt really have any say in this!)

Anyway it works out in the end and Rebekah agrees after shes somewhat bribed into being Isaacs wife with lots of gold jewellery etc. She is related to Abraham, as shes Abrahams brother Nahor's grand daughter....

I am wondering, does this make Isaac and Rebekah first cousins (once removed?) and ok...but isnt this a bit too CLOSE? I mean I like my cousins but I wouldnt dream of marrying them! How about your families...is there anyone in your extended family who have married each other? Is this weird, or normal?

What about the opposite, have your parents ever said YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED to marry someone from this particular group? And if you did or someone else in your family did, were they shunned?

Careful with that. It can make your head hurt.

apparently

I would not marry any family member, even remotely related. There have been a (very) few first cousin marriages in my family in the past. In some ancient Indian and Arab literature/folklore, people married their cousins and it was not considered wrong. That is one reason. Another reason is to keep everything in the family. Sometimes there is rivalry between siblings and cousin marriage could mend bad relations.

In Iceland, where the population is small and the risk of accidentally dating a relative is very real, they have a phone app to prevent it. Bump phones with the person you want to date, and if you're too closely related the app will alert you.

Because nobody wants to go to a family reunion and meet the girl you once had a one night stand with, and find out she's your second cousin.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/ki...pp-warns-if-your-date-is-a-relative-1.1390256

I would surmise Eve being taken from Adam was 100% his genetic makeup. Of course this is before the fall and shortly after we see close relations marrying. Reckon although to me being a westerner the mere thought is like, oh yucky. God actually created mankind to marry and procreate with close relations at least for the ones out of the gate.

This is all prefall though, have never found a reason to be glad for sin but just the thought of marrying one of my sisters has me glad sin came in....LOL I jest sorta of course...LOL

The fall of course brought sin into the world and the degradation of us genetically. So by the law you see God spends time telling them the Hebrews you can marry so and so or not so and so because they are to close relation.

From what I have read scientifically speaking first cousins can marry. The avg distance between relations marriage wise is in America is 7th cousins which gives you a chance of 3-4 percent to have children with birth defects. First cousins have a 4-7 percent chance of children with birth defects. 2nd cousins share a 6.25 percent same genetic make up and 3rd cousins just over 3 percent. By your 7th cousin you have no meaningful genetic material in common.

My theory would be as time has moved along we have increased in our genetic degradation so while today even first cousins only have a chance of 4-7 percent of having children with birth defects. In the biblical times is was even lower as sin had degraded them less genetically as it has us today. So first cousins genetically speaking was not problematic.

The mere thought of marrying a cousin of mine makes me wanna go wash myself. I came from a town of a population of like 500 folks so I have made jokes in the past that I left my town to find a wife cause I got tired of our phone book only having one last name in it....LOL

My source for the numbers I have quoted......................

https://www.popsci.com/marrying-cousins-genetics/

Hmm...reasons
To keep everything in the family...and there is much less paperwork to do if you marry someone with the same last name....

I dont think God ever said you SHOULDNT marry your cousin because of genetic reasons. Also, the fall happened after adam and eve, Isaac and Rebekah were much later and after the flood so...everyone had fallen by that stage.

Incest happens quite a bit in the Bible, Both Lots daughters slept with him (ew!) Though they reasoned there was nobody else left to have children with .... what happened to their fiances that Lot was talking about?! Burned to smithereens?

Isaac tries to cover himself by saying Rebekah is his sister, just as Abraham did to Sarah.
He reckons if he says Rebekah is his wife, the Philistines will try and kill him so they can have her.

so marriage isnt any protection at all but being a brother is? lol

The other thing is Rebekah isnt too fond of her Hittite daughter-in-laws (Esau married TWO) and even says she wants to die if son Jacob marries one.

So Jacob gets directed to HER brother Labans family and goes and marries his first cousin Rachel AND Leah.

And nobody bats an eye at that?

Nearly 4000 years ago in a culture quite different. I don't think it was weird to them at that time. In Early American History when the colonies spread west through Kentucky and beyond this was very common. Deep in the wilderness carving out a living, people soon found limited options. An uncles daughter might be the only one around. It happened a lot more than people realize.

I think that is part of why it happened 4000 years ago. Population in areas were not what they are today and tribes had to make do with the way things were.

If you are working on your Ancestory.com tree and you discover the same Grandparents of two different couples...you might have found some kissing cousins. It happens. Or maybe you just made a mistake accepting one of those leaf hints and need to rework some things.

Uh... Yeah He did. He didn't use the word "genetic" because that word wasn't invented yet, but He did say a lot about the subject. Leviticus chapter 18:6-18 is very thorough about this topic.

Which of those that God says you can't marry or uncover is your cousin? I see Aunt, Ma, your dad's wife, your uncles wife, and others. Do not see marrying your cousin prohibited. I may have missed it but so far don't see it.

Verse 6 covers it.

If you don't think a first cousin is covered by near relatives, go ahead and try it. See what you get.

so, why are there laws against marrying your cousin now? Apparently, in nz, there are none!

Just wondering. If anything, God approved of it.... is it only if you have the same last name? haha

In NZ, anyone that lives in Australia is considered a 'cousin' Of course nz is a small country so its probably inbred as anything, but then when immigrants came over it was like dont intermarry you dont know where they came from lol

double standard? but actally, most people desire to marry someone from another country if they dont like their own.

Dinah wanted to go with Sechem, but since he wasnt circumcised or 'family' her brothers just decided inexplicably to kill him, and all his family. Did God expect her to marry one of her half brothers or something?

God went on to define what near relatives was, which he did not include cousin. If you look at Numbers 36:5-13, Moses had to make a ruling for the daughters of Zelophehad. They all married their cousins. Verse 10 reads, Even as the LORD commanded Moses, so did the daughters of Zelophehad: As well verse 13 reads, These are the commandments and the judgments, which the LORD commanded by the hand of Moses unto the children of Israel in the plains of Moab by Jordan near Jericho.

I would think seeing how God gave the law to Moses, he understood just what God meant by to close relation in Leviticus 18. If their first cousin would have been to close don't think Moses would have made the ruling also don't find that the text says different.

Numbers 36:10-13 reads,
Even as the LORD commanded Moses, so did the daughters of Zelophehad: 11For Mahlah, Tirzah, and Hoglah, and Milcah, and Noah, the daughters of Zelophehad, were married unto their father's brothers' sons: 12And they were married into the families of the sons of Manasseh the son of Joseph, and their inheritance remained in the tribe of the family of their father.

13These are the commandments and the judgments, which the LORD commanded by the hand of Moses unto the children of Israel in the plains of Moab by Jordan near Jericho.

Shechem raped her and her brothers killed him and every male.

Apart from "what you get" - which may have its own reason (genetically, today) - that passage does not seem to indicate that a cousin is near kin.

Near kin seems to be defined (in this passage) as everyone in the direct line from grandparents to grandchildren and all of their siblings.

There is no up-over-down in the 'kin' relation tree - only up-over is included.

Interestingly, it does not say anything [directly] about the children of siblings (over-down); only, verse 17 may address that...

also it said Sechem loved Dinah (after he raped her?!) I can understand maybe they would kill Sechem, but then they killed his family AS WELL, even after they talked to them and got circumcised, and then took all their stuff AND their wives. How is that payback?

After being so high and mighty over Dinah, they then treated Joseph very badly.

huh. I have lots of cousins....

In Numbers, the reason for cousin marriage given isnt focused on birth defects. (I dont know exactly how much it figures anyway) The reason given is they want the land to stay in that tribe. Because Zelohopad didnt have any sons, and their daughters had inherited the land.

In the end though, it didnt matter who they married as the Israelites eventually lost all their land anyway until it was sort of returned in 1948.

Bilhah and Zilpahs children (Jacobs concubines) didnt seem to have any genetic advantage over Rachel and Leahs children (Jacobs wives who were also his cousins)

Though Joseph and Benjamin were actually favoured because they were from Rachel.

In China, close relatives cannot get married, and they cannot get married for at least three generations