There is no record of Jesus (pbuh) opposing polygamy. If he did so, it would have meant that the condemned the practice of the prophets before him. There are a number of examples of polygamous marriages among the prophets recorded in the Torah. Prophet Abraham (pbuh) had two wives, according to Genesis 16:13:** “So after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her maid, and gave her to Abram her husband as a wife.”** So did Prophet David (pbuh), according to the first book of Samuel 27:3, “And David dwelt with Achish at Gat, he and his men, every man with his household, and David with his two wives, Ahin’o-am of Jezreel, and Abigail of Carmel, Nabal’s widow.”
In 1st Kings 11:3, Solomon (pbuh) is said to have “…had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines.” Solomon’s son, Rehobo’am, also had a number of wives, according to 2nd Chronicles 11:21,** “Rehobo’am loved Ma’acah the daughter of Absalom above all his wives and concubines (he took eighteen wives and sixty concubines, and had twenty-eight sons and sixty daughters).”**
In fact, the Torah even specified laws regarding the division of inheritance in polygamous circumstances. In Deuteronomy 21:15-16, the law states: “ If a man has two wives, the one loved and the other disliked, and they have borne him children, both the loved and the disliked, and if the first-born son is hers that is disliked, then on the day when he assigns his possessions as an inheritance to his sons, he may not treat the son of the loved as the first-born in preference to the son of the disliked, who is the first-born.”
The only restriction on polygamy was the ban on taking a wife’s sister as a rival wife in Leviticus 18:18, “And you shall not take a woman as a rival wife to her sister, uncovering her nakedness while her sister is yet alive.” The Talmud advises a maximum of four wives as was the practice of Prophet Jacob.
According to Father Eugene Hillman, “Nowhere in the New Testament is there any explicit commandment that marriage should be monogamous or any explicit commandment forbidding polygamy.” He further stressed the fact that the Church in Rome banned polygamy in order to conform to Graeco-Roman culture which prescribed only one legal wife while tolerating concubinage and prostitution.
Those who are claiming that Jesus (pbuh) denounced polygamy rely on either Matthew 19:9 or the parallel passages of Mark 10:11 or Luke 16:18 as support:
And I [Jesus] say to you, "Whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery"
This verse says nothing about polygamy. It’s talking about divorce. Jesus (pbuh) according to the Bible is denouncing the practice of men divorcing their wives for lame reasons so they could trade her in for a newer model. If Jesus were referring to polygamy, that would mean that every man who is divorced and remarried is a polygamist. Absurd! It’s mind-boggling the lengths to which polygamy’s opponents will go to support their biased position. Taken in context, Jesus was responding to a question posed in Matthew 10:3:
The Pharisees also came to Him, testing Him, and saying to Him, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?"
Jesus (pbuh) was not saying, “Whoever marries a second wife commits adultery,” as some claim. He said, “Whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery”. The issue was divorce and remarriage, not polygamy. Jesus (pbuh) was not overturning the Law of Moses, which allowed for polygamy.
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