Why prophet married aisha.

[EGross]

@A_Nony_Mouse : Actually, the entry that you are highlighing as "women children" is the Hebrew word na'arah, the male form being na'ar. Na'arah always is assigned to a never-has-been-married female of an age when she can be married, and does not necessarily mean a child. Granted, this is always over the age of three, but it also has no upper limit. For example, Isaac, when Abraham was going to sacrifice him, was called a na'ar, the male form of the adjective, and he was at least 30 years old in the story.

Keep in mind that the form of marriage back then was handled different. A woman were treated like a booding mare. First, she was purchased, in a process called erusin, which denotes ownership, and sometimes is translated as "betrothed". The original owner (father, eldest brother, or other male relative), collects the fee and hangs onto the purchased item, typically for a year if she is of breeding age, or longer if she is pre-menstrual. Once she is old enough and the purchaser (the ba'al or owner, but often translated as "husband"), will then do nisuin, which is the acceptance of the goods and the physical transfer of the item.

As to how old the youngest female would be for breeding, it's hard to say. But as noted, the morality of 3500 years ago is not what it is today to most 1st World countries. But a child bride was also probably considered the norm.

As for the other terms you highlighted, the Hebrew word "katanim" would be little ones if it were used in that sentence. But the text that you noted uses הטף (hataf), which means infants and newborns. (l'hatif, which is the hiphil form means "to drip", and relates to seedlings in the human sense.) That sentence is about taking the woman and her infants as property. Finally, young virgins as you use it isn't a bad translation. But it uses na'arah as I noted above.

One thing to keep in mind was that it was of the highest priority of the men, according to the texts that you cite, to have male children. Because of the tribal setup, the males would acquire a portion of the community tribal land property, which was distributed based on the affiliation. Converts and those with non-Jewish fathers got nothing. Daughters were property, owned, and transferred across tribal boundaries, and so could not take any community property with them, which would have messed up the land allocation setup. So if you were a man, you wanted more sons, since that was how you increased your family wealth. You wanted as many breeding wives as you could. In a pre-breeding stage she was of little value. Acquiring and selling slaves also accomplished much more, as well as buying and selling daughters.

In many 3rd world countries, this attitude still prevails.