Do you believe the innocent party in a situation

[Pressing-On]

Originally Posted by MissBrattified

You're right. I didn't take those into account who had multiple wives, but that wasn't the custom for everyone. For husbands of one wife, they missed 12-14 days per month of sex, while their wife was niddah, and for 7 days afterward.

Look, I don't know if you've noticed, but no one is really saying that women and men shouldn't grant each other "due benevolence." I just don't believe if a person sins they have the right to blame any other party than themselves.

The question here is not in the details of the matter, but in the matter of a broken covenant, in this case the marriage contract. Tell me, PO, is the marriage covenant broken in God's eyes if a woman (or a man) denies their spouse sex?

If not, then I think we can assume that some matters are more important than others. And that while no one may escape blame for some contribution to marital turmoil, there can be one party that sins and breaks the covenant, and one who does not.

Well, would Romans 14:13 apply here? - "Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother's way."

If I defrauded my husband, I can honestly say that I would have to take a portion of the blame if Satan tempted him and he fell into adultery.

I think, somehow, we keep centering ourselves on the violated and neglected women we know and the bad boy that committed adultery. I'm just focusing on "defraud" and the implications.

But, I did read something very interesting on this subject and the history behind the questions put to Paul.

The Corinthian Church had sent Paul a letter in which they had requested his opinion on a number of matter. Chapter 7 is a reply to some such question as, "Should believers marry in view of the imminence of the end of the age?"

Paul's answer is a classical example of what has been termed an "interim" ethic - an ethic for the interim between the end of one age and the advent of another and conditioned by such historical presuppositions. Marriage is a desirable state only to those who cannot sublimate the sex instinct. It has no value in itself, and since the end of this age is at hand, it is not even necessary as a means of procreation. In principle marriage is religiously and ethically indifferent, but in practice it can easily interfere with an individual's dedication of himself to God.

Although Paul believed in celibacy as the ethical ideal, he disagreed with some in Corinth who apparently held that married people ought to practice rigorous continence. Continence in the married relationship was impossible except by mutual consent and for limited periods, and then only for cultic ends.

By appealing to a command of the Lord (possibly the tradition preserved in Mark 10:2-9), the apostle repudiated divorce but acknowledged that, in extending the prohibition to include the divorce of an unbelieving partner, he spoke on his own authority. His advice to unmarried persons to remain as they were was given likewise on his own initiative and "in view of the impending distress."

The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, page 690.

And my point here is that, IMO, after further research, I Cor 7:6 is not speaking of verse 5 being a permissive suggestion as opposed to a command, but rather, is focusing on the whole of chapter 7 on the issue of - marriage vs. remaining single as he was.