Upend­ing tra­di­tion­al schol­ar­ship on patri­lin­eal geneal­o­gy, Cyn­thia Chap­man draws on twen­ty years of research to uncov­er an under­ap­pre­ci­at­ed yet social­ly sig­nif­i­cant kin­ship unit in the Bible: ​“the house of the moth­er.” In house­holds where a man had two or more wives, sib­lings born to the same moth­er worked to pro­mote and pro­tect one another’s inter­ests. Reveal­ing the hier­ar­chies of the mater­nal hous­es and polit­i­cal divi­sions with­in the nation­al house of Israel, this book pro­vides us with a nuanced under­stand­ing of domes­tic and polit­i­cal life in ancient Israel.