When our family were reading Saturday's second Bible reading (Jeremiah 16 - see our full Bible reading planner), there was an interesting point at the started; in the second verse, God told Jeremiah, "You shall not take a wife, nor shall you have sons or daughters in this place." This got us thinking about various prophets in the Bible, and whether they had wives, what happened to them, and that sort of thing. So now I've done a bit more investigation, and here are some of the things I found.

• Abraham: Genesis 20 (note especially verse 7). Abraham was in Abimelech the Philistine king's land, and to save his life, he said that his wife Sarah was actually his sister, because otherwise he thought that Abimelech might have him killed so that he could have her. (She was beautiful, even if she was quite old - about 90 years old!) God showed himself to Abimelech in a dream, and told him that Abraham was a prophet, and that Sarah was actually his wife. When told this, Abimelech let her go, and gave presents to Abraham.
• Ezekiel: Ezekiel 24:15-27. Ezekiel was married, but was told by God that his wife was going to die, as a sign for the people. He was not to mourn for her, but to continue on with his work. In verse 18, "I spoke to the people in the morning, and at evening my wife died." It seems to me to be a pretty striking way of going about giving an example, but thta was what God needed to do to get across to that stubborn people.

I think that I'll add more here as I find more to put here.