‘Till Death do us Part’ ? or the Continuation of Marriage... 63 can project that such marriages could result in the amalgamation of two families, their territories, and their property. Since all of these texts deal with exogamous marriages of some kind, the reader may be under the impression that when paired up jql and /tn signify intermarriage18. Upon closer inspection, however, the exogamous connotation does not appear to be attached to jql-/tn so much as to the context and other modifiers. In Judg 12,9, for example, the marriages of Ibzan’s children are clearly specified as exogamous via hxwjh and Jwjh-/m, “outside”19. Qualifiers like these suggest that exogamy is not an irreducible element of the locution, but that the same locution would also be serviceable for endogamous family expansion and alliances. b. Jer 29,4-7 More importantly, a particular occasion of this combination—yet to be mentioned— also describes the extension of the family, but so trans- parently that it permits fewer interpretive options, Jer 29,4-7: Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have exiled from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live (in them); plant gardens and eat their fruit. Take wives [