Does the hebrew bible have a way to indicate a woman that is a wife rather than a concubine?

Question

Does the hebrew bible have a way to indicate a woman that is of higher status partner(wife) rather than a concubine?

For example, there's the word Pilegesh (concubine)

Nashim, is plural of Isha , so just means women.

The closest I can think of is Aishet(woman of) (Gen 11:29) שֵׁם אֵשֶׁת-אַבְרָם, שָׂרָי (the name of the woman of avram, sarai)

Clearly the verb 'lakach', e.g. Vayikach Isha can refer to a woman that is a concubine or above a concubine. For example Gen 24:4 when Avraham tells his servant "and you shall take a woman for my son, for isaac" "וְלָקַחְתָּ אִשָּׁה" (velakachta isha - and you shall take a woman) (And it will be Rivka/rachel, she's above a concubine). And Vayikach Isha is used in the case of Ketura, who was a concubine. So the term is not reserved for "wives" by which I mean women higher than concubines.

One could perhaps do it via context, the first woman is the high grade wife / wife(woman of higher level than concubine), and latter ones are concubines. But i'm wondering if there's any hebrew that would refer to "higher level than concubine" specifically.

I wonder if maybe Eishet is the closest thing, though that's just "the woman of".

I see here https://biblehub.com/hebrew/802.htm (strongs page for Isha), there is also aras "of one betrothed (ארשׂ) Deuteronomy 20:7; Deuteronomy 28:30; " which seems to be like 'engaged' / 'soon to be taken by the man' ('taken' being, not sex, but a wife/concubine status).

Answer 1

Maybe Kings I, 11, 3 can help:

וַיְהִי לוֹ נָשִׁים שָׂרוֹת שְׁבַע מֵאוֹת וּפִלַגְשִׁים שְׁלֹשׁ מֵאוֹת

KJV translates it as:

And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines

Douay-Rheims translate it as:

And he had seven hundred wives as queens, and three hundred concubines

My personal take on the word שרות (which is translated to queens/princesses) is that it is closely related to 'ladies', or important people. I would say this is exactly to emphasize the difference between a legal wife and a concubine.

I also checked with Luther's translation to German:

Und er hatte siebenhundert Hauptfrauen und dreihundert Nebenfrauen

Hauptfrauen is something like 'main wife' or 'main woman', so this gives me a little more confidence.

So in this case, where the bible specifically had to distinguish between wives and concubines, it states נשים (plural of אישה), as legal wives; and פילגשים, to state concubines.

I hope that helps.