bridewealth: the payment a groom or his family gives the bride's family to bring about a marriage.
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintySettled
In the world of the Hebrew Bible, a marriage was sealed by a payment from the groom or his family to the family of the bride. That payment is the mohar. It was not a mere token, and it was not the price of a person: it was a real transfer of wealth that made the marriage legal, compensated the bride's family for her leaving, and often came back to the bride herself as security for her future.
The word appears only three times, and each time in a very different scene:
In Genesis, a suitor named Shechem offers to pay any mohar the family names, however large, to marry Dinah.
In the law of Exodus, a man who has slept with an unmarried woman must pay the customary mohar and take her as his wife.
In 1 Samuel, King Saul cynically sets David's mohar for his daughter Michal at a hundred Philistine foreskins, a demand meant to get David killed in battle.
Across all three the technical meaning holds steady even as the tone shifts from eager negotiation to sober law to deadly trickery. The mohar often traveled alongside a separate voluntary gift (מַתָּן) offered on top of it, and Hebrew even had a matching verb (מָהַר) for the act of paying it.
Gen 34:12Exo 22:17(16)1Sa 18:25
Disputed
How to characterize the mohar as an institution: an outright purchase of the bride, or a bridewealth payment that transferred marital authority without buying a person.
majorityA bridewealth payment (sometimes called an indirect dowry): a customary groom-to-family transfer that effected the marriage and secured marital rights, while the wife remained a legal person and the payment often reverted to her as future security.; Raymond Westbrook, Property and the Family in Biblical Law (JSOTSup 113, 1991), 142-48; Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions (1961), 26-29; T. M. Lemos, Marriage Gifts and Social Change in Ancient Palestine: 1200 BCE to 200 CE (2010)
minorityAn earlier reconstruction held that the mohar was a purchase price by which a woman was bought, making marriage a form of sale; this Kaufehe thesis has been largely abandoned.; W. Robertson Smith, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia (1885); Paul Koschaker, Rechtsvergleichende Studien zur Gesetzgebung Hammurapis (1917), 130-49
the mohar moves from the groom's side to the bride's family; it is a payment the man owes, not property the woman brings with her.Gen 34:121Sa 18:25
Both
both name property that changes hands as part of the legal arrangements for a marriage.Exo 22:17
Only dowry
in ordinary English a dowry is wealth the bride carries into the marriage from her own family, which is the reverse of what this word describes, so "dowry" can leave readers picturing exactly the wrong transaction.
the payment could be a fixed, customary sum and often reverted to the bride herself, marking a family alliance and a change of status rather than a simple purchase.Exo 22:17
Both
both name a payment the groom's side owes to the bride's family in order to bring the marriage about.Gen 34:121Sa 18:25
Only bride-price
"bride-price" makes it sound as though a woman was bought like a commodity; the wife remained a legal person with rights, and what was acquired was the marriage bond, not ownership of her.
How mohar differs from similar Hebrew words
מַתָּןthe extra, voluntary present a suitor could offer on top of the required bridewealth. In Genesis 34:12 Shechem offers "mohar and gift" together: the mohar is the payment that seals the marriage, the gift is a bonus meant to sweeten the deal.
Names the specific brideprice a man pays the woman's father to secure her as his wife, the fixed price for a virgin.Exo 22:17
So bound to marriage that the payment can be set in place of money, as when Saul demands a hundred Philistine foreskins instead of the usual brideprice for his daughter.1Sa 18:25
Both
Both name something handed over to secure a marriage, and Shechem heaps up both together when he offers whatever price will let him have Dinah.Gen 34:12
A general gift given to win favor or open a door for the giver, not tied to marriage at all.Pro 18:16Pro 19:6
Can be the quiet present slipped to someone to calm anger, working on the recipient's disposition.Pro 21:14
Reaches into sacred giving as well, naming the priestly portions handed over to Aaron and his sons as their due.Num 18:11
מָהַרthe matching verb, meaning to pay the bridewealth and so obtain a wife. Where the noun names the payment itself, this word names the act of handing it over ("he shall surely pay the bridewealth for her") in the seduction law of Exodus.
What scholars say about mohar
מֹהַר is the West Semitic marriage payment, the direct lexical cognate of Ugaritic mhr (KTU 1.24) and Aramaic mhr (the Elephantine marriage contracts) and Arabic mahr, and the functional counterpart of Akkadian terḫatu. A debate running roughly 140 years has moved from the older marriage-by-purchase (Kaufehe) thesis of W. Robertson Smith and Paul Koschaker, through the mediating compensation model of Millar Burrows and Roland de Vaux, to the present consensus. Raymond Westbrook's study of Old Babylonian marriage law reframed the payment as the acquisition of marital rights rather than of the woman, and imported the anthropological category of indirect dowry (groom to father-in-trust to bride); T. M. Lemos and others now standardly describe the biblical מֹהַר as bridewealth. The standard lexica (BDB, HALOT, DCH) treat the denominative verb in Exodus 22:16 (MT) as belonging to a distinct root מהר II formed from the noun, not to the common מהר I, the ordinary verb meaning "to hasten." Feminist scholarship (Carolyn Pressler, Cheryl Anderson, Tikva Frymer-Kensky) accepts the bridewealth model while stressing that the transaction still encodes male control of female sexuality, since the payment moves between men.
In-depth research
This is a research paper, so it may be hard to read without scholarly background. It is useful if you want to dig even deeper into this word.
Sources
HALOT (Koehler-Baumgartner), s.v. מֹהַרlexicon
BDB (Brown-Driver-Briggs), s.v. מֹהַרlexicon
DCH (Clines, ed.), s.v. מֹהַרlexicon
Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions (1961), 26-29monograph
Raymond Westbrook, Old Babylonian Marriage Law (AfO Beiheft 23, 1988)monograph
Raymond Westbrook, Property and the Family in Biblical Law (JSOTSup 113, 1991), 142-48monograph
T. M. Lemos, Marriage Gifts and Social Change in Ancient Palestine: 1200 BCE to 200 CE (2010)monograph
Millar Burrows, The Basis of Israelite Marriage (American Oriental Series 15, 1938)monograph