Polygamy in Old Testament... why was it permitted then?

[PinkClouds]

Hi there!

Kind of a random question: Why was polygamy commom and accepted in old biblical times but is now not? I’m not asking this because I want to be in a polygamous relationship or anything, no, NO. I was just watching Sister Wives and I thought about this…Did God change his mind about marriage? I thought God’s Law is constant and never changing?..So why would He allow polygamy then and not now?

 

[tafan]

Pope John Paul II covered this in his exegesis on Mathew 5:27 ‘You have heard that it was said to them of old: You shall not commit adultery. But I say to you, that whosoever shall look on a woman to lust after her, has already committed adultery with her in his heart’ in his Theology of the Body talks. Referencing back to the beginning, before the fall, we certainly know that God did not intend polygamy: 'Wherefore a man shall leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they shall be two in one flesh." (Genesis 2:24), it is obvious there was no polygamy in that system. But the law of the Old Testament did allow it (or rather did not forbid it), why? It is because man, in his fallen nature lost the meaning of this natural law, which Christ brought back to us.

 

[ccmnxc]

The reason I heard was due to the fact that Israel was almost constantly at war, there was a rather high ratio of women to men. Men were depended upon to provide for and protect their families, and since so many men were dying in war, there were too few men to go around for each woman to have a husband.

 

[deltapi]

Keep it simple.

The of time of Abraham was roughly 4000 years ago, a time of semi-nomadic wandering tribespeople. We should be careful when using our own cultural norms to judge that which lies outside our time and experience. Opinions are only as good as the evidence that backs them up.

More wives = more children = more hands for work with family, farms, and flocks.

 

[Skye_Ariel]

Hi there!

Kind of a random question: Why was polygamy commom and accepted in old biblical times but is now not? I’m not asking this because I want to be in a polygamous relationship or anything, no, NO. I was just watching Sister Wives and I thought about this…Did God change his mind about marriage? I thought God’s Law is constant and never changing?..So why would He allow polygamy then and not now?

I’ve thought about that question too, and I think it had more to do with the fact that polygamy was so ingrained in society and how people lived back then, the whole culture and how the system was ran back then was centered around polygamy to the point where even though it was not God’s will He understood that that was how the word functioned back then and those born into that way of life didn’t know it was wrong. It’s kind of like if using money was a sin, how would you function in this world without money? Or like if hundreds of years in the future people found out that having or using manufactured things was a sin or using electricity was a sin, or using computers was a sin (like the Amish think), but those of us born in a world the revolves around TV, and electricity and computers etc would not know how to live or function in a world without those things. I think it was kind of like that. Our whole society operates around money, credit cards, electricity, computers, social security numbers etc. How could a person go to work or function in a world where electricity, is everywhere, and computers are necessary without using those things? How could a person get a job and take care of himself without a social security number? In mass today we were discussing how women were thought of back then and how back then a woman was nothing in society if she didn’t have a husband, she had no kind of legal stand etc. I think that’s why God tolerated it, He didn’t like it but He tolerated it because at least they were not fornicating, they were married and all young men back then were raised with that mindset that that’s how the world was. That’s the type of thing that God would have to wipe out of society as a whole (which He did) not individual people. Same thing with how women were thought of back then and the men who were raised and brainwashed from childhood to think that way. He had to wipe that out of society as a whole, not the individual person. Now that that has been wiped out of society as a whole and people know it’s wrong, now God will not tolerate it, and people have no excuse. But there were always things that society as a whole did not know was wrong and God has eventually changed those wrong beliefs in society as a whole. Same thing with slavery in the Bible. It’s like how you may tolerate temper tantrums in a 2yr old but expect more of adults, humanity was young back then and society was more primitive in how it functioned, but now today we are more wise in these generations and we know these things are wrong, so they are not tolerated today. Just like back then how people had different ideas and thoughts about thunder and storms etc but we are more scientific today humanity as a whole, so we are more mature or wise than people were in the past. God works with people individually and He also works with humanity as a whole.

 

[Julia_Mae]

Keep it simple.

The of time of Abraham was roughly 4000 years ago, a time of semi-nomadic wandering tribespeople. We should be careful when using our own cultural norms to judge that which lies outside our time and experience. Opinions are only as good as the evidence that backs them up.

More wives = more children = more hands for work with family, farms, and flocks.

I agree. Additionally, infant mortality was very high. What we need to remember is that the polygamous system pre-dates the advent of the Hebrew nation. In fact, it was built into the cultural system, so that if your brother died, you took his wife in as your own and gave her children. Polygamy was still quite common amongst the Jews in the 1st century.

In these long-standing traditional cultures, young girls were married and bore children that were essentially raised by the older women, so there was a great stability in families and communities. As the young girls grew, they became the elder wives. Men can father children far into old age. Women often died in childbirth or by the time they were 35-40.

These older women were some of the women a man would divorce and take in a new young woman to have more children with. This is what Jesus was objecting to.

 

[Nan_S]

Keep in mind that Abraham was called from another culture where polygamous marriages and brother-sister marriages were common (Sarah was his half-sister). It took a few generations for God to reveal His full plan, and for them to transition to the new way of life.

Then even after the common people embraced mogoamous marriages, the kings were still balancing international politics with God’s laws.

[Oversimplified history of the kingdoms:] King Saul married several wives and did other things his own way instead of God’s way too often, so he lost his throne. King David had wife of his own, inherited Saul’s widows, then rationalized his way through the Bathsheba incident. King Solomon created political alliances with the surrounding kingdoms by marrying their princesses. (If Solomon ever married a Hebrew girl I missed finding a reference to her.) The kingdom split after Solomon and things went completely downhill in the north (Israel) for 200 years until the Assyrians wiped them out. The south (Judah) lasted longer, 430 years, because they had some kings obedient to God, but eventually the corruption was severe enough that God let the Babylonians burn the place down.

 

[PinkClouds]

Keep it simple.

The of time of Abraham was roughly 4000 years ago, a time of semi-nomadic wandering tribespeople. We should be careful when using our own cultural norms to judge that which lies outside our time and experience. Opinions are only as good as the evidence that backs them up.

More wives = more children = more hands for work with family, farms, and flocks.

Wait, so what exactly does “adultery” entail, you know like “Thou shalt not commit adultery.”? I thought it was any sexual thing outside of a marriage between a man and a woman? So are you saying as long as you get “married” you can have as many wives as you want? That doesn’t really make sense…seems contrary to the commandment.

Are you saying the need for more children justifies the breaking of God’s Commandment?

Doesn’t seem right to me…

 

[manualman]

Everybody here on CAF is just speculating, including me. So don’t go setting your views in stone purely on what you read here. Fair disclosure.

As I understand it, the OT is the story of how God created man, man fell and lost communion with God and became depraved. Man demonstrated how low he would go without Grace by all the foul deeds he did. God demonstrated how great was His love, by slowly revealing Himself to fallen man and gradually preparing man to receive the Messiah - Jesus. The OT stories frequently display shockingly immoral behaviors precisely because they illustrate man’s sin. Polygamy is one of these things. Go ahead, just try and find an ENDORSEMENT by God for polygamy in the OT. You won’t. You’ll find plenty of examples of it being practiced and what happens in EVERY SINGLE CASE? Disaster. Jealousy, murder, backstabbing, rivalries the host of human vice. Polygamy eggs it all on, monogamy doesn’t. Jesus brings that teaching to its fruition in his discourse on marriage where he clearly defines the union of ONE man and one woman as being God’s plan.

It’s not that God “tolerated” it before that, it’s just that God knew the hearts of man and knew better than us the pace at which to reveal Himself to us.

And, as usual, God’s plan is viewable in the design of creation. If God had intended for polygamous marriage to be permissible, wouldn’t He have created human fertility such that 2-4 women were born for every man? (Unless, of course, you want to argue that polygamy might take both forms: one woman might have 3 husbands, while another man might have 3 wives. Gee, that gets pretty tangled up pretty fast when you think about it! )

Rational arguments aside, the best argument against having multiple wives is having ONE wife. Take that how you WANT to take it!

 

[deltapi]

Wait, so what exactly does “adultery” entail, you know like “Thou shalt not commit adultery.”? I thought it was any sexual thing outside of a marriage between a man and a woman? So are you saying as long as you get “married” you can have as many wives as you want? That doesn’t really make sense…seems contrary to the commandment.

Are you saying the need for more children justifies the breaking of God’s Commandment?

Doesn’t seem right to me…

The time of Abraham predates the Exodus story by roughly 700 years. How can the patriarchs be breaking Commandments before they’ve even been iterated by God?

Furthermore, the Sinai event includes more than just the 10 Commandments; it outlines an entire holiness code (see the books of Exodus and Leviticus). In short, God formed a special relationship (a covenant) with Abraham, which was passed to Isaac and then Jacob, and then the Hebrew people were enslaved for 400 years in Egypt.

God eventually liberated the Hebrews, and set a code in place to regulate the relationship between God and the people. That is, the promise of the covenant was not just a one-way street; the people were going to have obligations as well.

What the Sinai event does in general is it separates the Hebrew people from all of the other nations of the time by making them unique. So many of the laws that are given by God are laws that specifically mark the Hebrew people as unique in their culture. These are the origins of our faith story as completed by Jesus Christ – “do not think I have come to abolish the Law and the Prophets; I have not come to abolish, but to fulfill.”

Look at Leviticus 20:22-24 – “Be careful to observe all my statutes and all my decrees; otherwise the land where I am bringing you to dwell will vomit you out. Do not conform, therefore, to the customs of the nations whom I am driving out of your way, because all these things that they have done have filled me with disgust for them. But to you I have said: Their land shall be your possession, a land flowing with milk and honey. I am giving it to you as your own, I, the LORD, your God, who have set you apart from the other nations."

It is not until this time at Sinai (ca. 1300 BC) that God sets these moral standards for the people. To retroactively apply these laws to the patriarchs and cast moral judgments upon them is unfounded and bad scholarship.

Looking forward, it would be fair to judge King David (as God does) for his adulterous affair with Bathsheba, or to judge King Solomon as his heart was turned to other gods and many wives. In fact, the entire fall of the Kingdom can be traced back to when the people tell Samuel “We want a king; we want to be like other nations,” which is unfortunate on two fronts. First, it is a rejection of God as King. Second, it rejects the uniqueness of the nation of Israel as they want to be like the other nations from which they have been set apart …

 

[VeritasLuxMea]

The time of Abraham predates the Exodus story by roughly 700 years. How can the patriarchs be breaking Commandments before they’ve even been iterated by God?

Why did any time go by before the laws were passed down? What, was God busy?

Wasn’t Sodom destroyed before Exodus? Didn’t the flood happen before Exodus?

 

[deltapi]

Why did any time go by before the laws were passed down? What, was God busy?

Wasn’t Sodom destroyed before Exodus? Didn’t the flood happen before Exodus?

This is a non sequitur.

When God created in the beginning, humans were created and given dominion over creation. It was also noted that it was not good for them to be alone. Here we have the scriptural roots of human dignity, along with our responsibility to be stewards.

Following the Fall of Adam and Eve we have the story of Cain and Abel. From the outset, God’s desire that we work as partners in the world is disrupted by the emergence of sin. This is why God destroys the earth – like a reset button – but then promises never to do that again.

The town of Sodom was destroyed for “a sin so grave” that the outcry to the Lord required him to go investigate. It is interesting to note that the town had been condemned to be destroyed before the events of the story even take place. It is further interesting to note that the reason for which Sodom is destroyed is never specifically identified, and it would be exegetically incorrect to argue it is because of the popular interpretation, although it would be fair to speculate it was some kind of sin against charity that required the destruction of an entire town (men and women both young and old).

In both cases (the flood and Sodom), punishments are meted out because of specific sins against dignity, stewardship, or solidarity.

The question here is about polygamy – a social custom in the ancient near east. It not a question of sin in that context. It is important to understand that history and scripture and morality have to be understood in context of the whole picture.

 

[VeritasLuxMea]

This is a non sequitur.

I don’t think so, and I’ll try to explain…

In both cases (the flood and Sodom), punishments are meted out because of specific sins against dignity, stewardship, or solidarity.

Where in the Bible does God lay out specific commandments before the flood and the destruction of Sodom, and WHY would those commandments not have included adultery, since we know for a fact that adultery is always and everywhere a sin?

The question here is about polygamy – a social custom in the ancient near east. It not a question of sin in that context. It is important to understand that history and scripture and morality have to be understood in context of the whole picture.

It sounds like you are saying that adultery is not always a sin, that at some point in history, God makes it a sin. Forgive me for being skeptical, but that’s really a problem for me… it would mean that God can make and unmake sins. Murder, for example, might be a sin at one place and time but not in another… no… I don’t think this jives with Catholic teaching.

 

[deltapi]

Sure adultery is a sin. That’s never been in question. Adultery is an affront to the dignity of marriage and violates the covenant between spouses.

But the question here is about the practice of polygamy in the Old Testament, which I suppose begs the question about whether the patriarchs were adulterers.

Abraham was married to Sarah, who gave him her maidservant Hagar and instructed him to have a child with her. Then Abraham had a child with Sarah.

Jacob worked 14 for Laban and ended up married to both of his daughters, Leah and Rachel – who each had maidservants (Zilpah and Bilhah) with whom Jacob also had children.

God kills Onan for not fulfilling his duty to have children with his brother’s wife.

Adultery is a sin for sure, but I think we’d have a difficult time arguing that our patriarchs were sinful adulterers because they were polygamous. That line of reasoning is anachronistic.

 

[stevekehl]

Why did any time go by before the laws were passed down? What, was God busy?

Wasn’t Sodom destroyed before Exodus? Didn’t the flood happen before Exodus?

At the time of the flood the population was only a few generations away from Adam. Adam had 900 years to teach his decendants about God, then his sons had hundreds of years more. Thus, oral teaching passed God’s law down, the people just chose to reject it. Abrahams time was not long after Noah, since Noah lived 350 years after the flood.So he, his son’s, and grandsons were eyewitnesses to the flood or taught by eyewitnesses (similar to the way the early church began), and kept God’s teaching going for many centuries after the flood. Abraham’s grandson, Jacob took his family to Egypt, where, during the course of enslavement, the nation of Israel was built. Israel was kept separate from the Egyptians and developed their own culture. Then they were freed and Moses given the Law. I am only speculating here but God timed the Law to be given after people stopped living for centuries and needed a record of God’s laws to study.
Getting back to the OP. Men who took multiple wives in the OT were always rewarded with heartache. Abraham had to drive his son into the wilderness, David’s son rebelled against him and Bathsheba’s first son died in infancy, Solomon fell away from the Lord, Jacob’s family was divided as was Joseph’s. I love my wife, we’ve been through thick and thin and overall have had a great marriage. But there’s no way I want another one.

 

[manualman]

Sure adultery is a sin. That’s never been in question. Adultery is an affront to the dignity of marriage and violates the covenant between spouses.

But the question here is about the practice of polygamy in the Old Testament, which I suppose begs the question about whether the patriarchs were adulterers.

Abraham was married to Sarah, who gave him her maidservant Hagar and instructed him to have a child with her. Then Abraham had a child with Sarah.

Jacob worked 14 for Laban and ended up married to both of his daughters, Leah and Rachel – who each had maidservants (Zilpah and Bilhah) with whom Jacob also had children.

God kills Onan for not fulfilling his duty to have children with his brother’s wife.

Adultery is a sin for sure, but I think we’d have a difficult time arguing that our patriarchs were sinful adulterers because they were polygamous. That line of reasoning is anachronistic.

Actually YOUR arguments suggest that you are arguing that sin is just a list of things arbitrarily put on a list of “thou shalt nots”. You seem to be arguing that since God hadn’t written the list yet, the actions couldn’t be sins. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what sin IS. Sins are things that damage one’s ability to give and receive love (properly defined). If polygamy is sinful, then it has ALWAYS been sinful. You can argue that the OT patriarchs had reduced culpability for their sin of polygamy because their consciences had been warped by the culture they grew up in that endorsed polygamy. But you can’t argue that a sin isn’t a sin in another era. To do so demonstrates a faulty definition of sin in the first place.

And btw, Onan wouldn’t have died if he had “failed to do his duty” but kept his pants ON. He died because he tried to have it both ways: all the pleasure perks of ‘giving his dead brother children’ without actually going through with it.

 

[deltapi]

Actually YOUR arguments suggest that you are arguing that sin is just a list of things arbitrarily put on a list of “thou shalt nots”. You seem to be arguing that since God hadn’t written the list yet, the actions couldn’t be sins. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what sin IS. Sins are things that damage one’s ability to give and receive love (properly defined). If polygamy is sinful, then it has ALWAYS been sinful. You can argue that the OT patriarchs had reduced culpability for their sin of polygamy because their consciences had been warped by the culture they grew up in that endorsed polygamy. But you can’t argue that a sin isn’t a sin in another era. To do so demonstrates a faulty definition of sin in the first place.

And btw, Onan wouldn’t have died if he had “failed to do his duty” but kept his pants ON. He died because he tried to have it both ways: all the pleasure perks of ‘giving his dead brother children’ without actually going through with it.

I don’t think there’s anything arbitrary about the commandments at all. That’s not a fair summary.

My question would be how does polygamy at 2000BC rightly damage one’s ability to give and receive love? You say I can’t argue that sin isn’t a sin in another era, but I did. Whether sinful or not, I do not think they were at all culpable. I can take the heat for that. (Although I like the earlier point by another poster about how there were several hurtful outcomes; for example, the fates of Hagar and Ishmael and their banishment to the desert).

And concerning Onan, his specific duty at the request of Judah was to continue his brother’s offspring in order to preserve his brother’s line. I agree he tried to have it both ways, but there’s no way he could have fulfilled that duty with his pants on.

 

[Skye_Ariel]

Having more than one wife is not adultery, it’s wrong, but not adultery, adultery is sleeping with someone else’s wife or husband. They were married to all of those women so no adultery was committed. No one said that polygamy wasn’t a sin back then, it was always a sin, it was just tolerated the same way God blesses every one of us all the time even though we are not perfect and there are things in our behavior that displeases God. Everyone has some kind of sin or imperfection that is not pleasing to God, yet God still blesses us and works with us. So it was the same thing with polygamy just on a larger scale. It takes time to work the imperfections out of us individually, and it takes time to work imperfections out of a people as a whole. It’s like there’s so much to fix which one do you address first? God was busy fixing other things in people while tolerating the polygamy till He could get around to fixing that. It’s like someone being an alcoholic, smoking cigarettes, doing drugs, lying and stealing. You work on getting them to stop being an alcoholic, and stop doing drugs and stop stealing but may tolerate smoking cigarettes and lying so as not to overwhelm them trying to fix too much at once, then once the other bad habits are kicked you can get around to the cigarettes and lying.

 

[VeritasLuxMea]

Having more than one wife is not adultery, it’s wrong, but not adultery, adultery is sleeping with someone else’s wife or husband. They were married to all of those women so no adultery was committed.

If people started lobbying to legalize polygamy in the West, I’m pretty sure the Church would skip the “wrong” part and head straight to “sin.” Don’t you think?

 

[Skye_Ariel]

If people started lobbying to legalize polygamy in the West, I’m pretty sure the Church would skip the “wrong” part and head straight to “sin.” Don’t you think?

Yes of course, it’s wrong and it’s a sin.