View source for Question: Why would Joseph be sealed to the wife of someone who was not only married to someone else, but pregnant with her husband's child?

{{FME-Source
|title=Question: Why would Joseph be sealed to the wife of someone who was not only married to someone else, but pregnant with her husband's child?
|category=Polygamy/Polyandry
}}
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==Question: Why would Joseph be sealed to the wife of someone who was not only married to someone else, but pregnant with her husband's child?==
===Joseph asked Zina three times to marry him before she married Henry===
[[File:Zina huntington jacobs 2.jpg|frame|right]]
In 1839, at age 18, Zina arrived with her parents in Nauvoo after being driven out of Missouri.  Faithful LDS missionary Henry Jacobs courted her during 1840–41.  At the same time, Joseph Smith had taught Zina the doctrine of plural marriage, and thrice asked her to marry him.  She declined each time, and she and Henry were wed 7 March 1841. <ref>{{Book:Compton:ISL/Short|pages=263–264}}</ref> Zina and Henry were married by John C. Bennett, then mayor of Nauvoo.  They had invited Joseph to perform the ceremony, but Bennett stepped in when Joseph did not arrive:
<blockquote>
…Zina asked the Prophet to perform the marriage. They went to the Clerk’s office and the Prophet did not arrive, so they were married by John C. Bennett. When they saw Joseph they asked him why he didn’t come, and he told them the Lord had made it known to him that she was to be his Celestial wife. <ref>Allen L. Wyatt, "Zina and Her Men: An Examination of the Changing Marital State of Zina Diantha Huntington Jacobs Smith Young," in FAIR Conference (Salt Lake City, Utah: FAIR, 1st draft, 2006).</ref>
</blockquote>

===Zina and Henry were aware of Joseph's plural marriage teachings and his proposal to Zina===

Family tradition holds, then, that Zina and Henry were aware of Joseph's plural marriage teachings and his proposal to Zina.  While this perspective is late and after-the-fact, it is consistent with the Jacobs' behaviour thereafter.  Zina's family also wrote that Henry believed that "whatever the Prophet did was right, without making the wisdom of God's authorities bend to the reasoning of any man." <ref>Oa J. Cannon, "History of Henry Bailey Jacobs,"  (L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Brigham Young University, n.d.), 1; cited by Wyatt, "Zina and Her Men: An Examination of the Changing Marital State of Zina Diantha Huntington Jacobs Smith Young,"   (emphasis added). See also Van Wagoner, ''Mormon Polygamy'', 44; Van Wagoner, "Mormon Polyandry in Nauvoo," 78; {{Book:Compton:ISL/Short|pages=80}}</ref>

On 27 October 1841, Zina was sealed to Joseph Smith by her brother, Dimick Huntington.  She was six months pregnant by Henry, and continued to live with him.
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{{endnotes sources}}
[[Category:Becoming Gods]]
[[Category:Letter to a CES Director]]
[[Category:The Changing World of Mormonism]]


[[en:Question: Why would Joseph be sealed to the wife of someone who was not only married to someone else, but pregnant with her husband's child?]]
[[es:Pregunta: ¿Por qué José sellarse a la esposa de alguien que no sólo estaba casado con otra persona, pero embarazada de su marido?]]