What Does Concubine Mean in the Bible Read through 2 lenses

The lesser loyalties a mind has kept on the side are not condemned or destroyed. They are given something and gently released, sent off with a gift rather than a curse. Letting go need not be an act of hatred toward what is set aside.

So the mind that means to keep only the truth does not war against its old substitutes. It blesses them, loosens its grip, and sends them away in peace, so that the one true inheritance can stand clear and undivided.

• Sons of the concubines: the mind's divided loyalties and substitute loves, the half-claims that cannot share the true inheritance
• Abraham: the mind that gives even to what it releases, blessing rather than cursing what it sets aside
• The east country: the elsewhere to which lesser attachments are sent, the distance that clears the way for the one heir

The wives and concubines are the feelings and desires a person takes to himself, the many attractions and states the mind marries over a life. Even the wise king, the ordered rational self, is turned when his attention is scattered across 700 and 300 of them, for the heart follows wherever desire is joined. The numbers together make 1000, the full sum of a completed thing gone entirely into multiplicity.

What pulls the heart from its center is not one great sin but the endless spread of small couplings, each desire a marriage that divides the attention a little more. A mind wedded to that many cravings loses the single devotion that held it upright.

• Wives and concubines: the feelings and desires a person marries to himself, the attractions the mind keeps taking on
• The heart: the center of devotion and attention in a person, pulled wherever its desires are joined
• 700 and 300: together the sum of 1000, a completed nature spent entirely into scattered craving