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The bride price issue has been contentious in recent time, whether it is about its necessity or quantity. Celebrated yet controversial preacher Pastor T. Mwangi has waded into the issue and his sentiments has left many bewildered.
While on Dr. King’ori’s show, the married pastor noted that dowry is among the things that should be done away with because Africans are currently civilized.
“The concept of dowry is slavery. You buy a person, you pay money in the name of slavery. You go back to our culture a woman would not go back home so when we look back at some of the tenets of Africanism and look at where we are going in our socialism there are things that we automatically look at and say this is backwardness,” Mwangi said.
1. Bride price is the Bible was a penalty for Rape.
Exodus 22:16-17: “If a man seduces a virgin who is not pledged to be married and sleeps with her, he must pay the bride-price, and she shall be his wife. If her father absolutely refuses to give her to him, he must still pay the bride-price for virgins.”
Deuteronomy 22:28-29: “If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay her father fifty shekels[a] of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.”
2. God never tasked the bride’s parent to name the price.
The groom and his kin are responsibility to bring whatever for the lady he wants to marry. For example, in the Bible was Isaac’s marriage to Rebekah. There was no monetary exchange or penalty between the two families. Affordable gifts were given to Rebekah’s family by Abraham (but not demanded by Rebekah’s family). Read Genesis 24:52-54.
3. Bride price, according to the Bible, is all about virgins.
If you have a body count, forget bride price. Genesis 24:15-16: “Before he had finished praying, Rebekah came out with her jar on her shoulder. She was the daughter of Bethuel son of Milkah, who was the wife of Abraham’s brother Nahor. The woman was very beautiful, a virgin; no man had ever slept with her. She went down to the spring, filled her jar and came up again.”
