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Find the answers to all those questions you were too embarrassed to ask in Sunday School. Welcome to Weird Stuff in the Bible, where we explore scripture passages that are bizarre, perplexing or just plain weird. Hosted by Luke Taylor.
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Was God OK with polygamy in the Old Testament? Here are 4 proofs that He was not.
Genesis 2
Introduction
King Solomon had to be crazy. 300 wives. That’s 300 anniversaries to keep track of, 600 in-laws, and being told to pick your underwear up off the floor 900 times every day. I’ve never met anyone who thought that 300 wives sounded like a good idea. Doesn’t seem very wise. If any of us wanted advice for anything, we probably aren’t asking the guy who got married 300 times.
And yet, we do, because this is the guy who wrote the quintessential book of the bible on wisdom- Proverbs. And then he also wrote the sexual manual- Song of Solomon. That one isn’t so surprising. And then later he wrote the most depressing book of the Bible- Ecclesiastes. But that’s a lot more understandable when you remember- the guy had 300 wives.
If you go to the New Testament, one of the qualifications for a pastor is that he must be “the husband of but one wife.” Fair enough. Yet turn back to the Old Testament and it’s full of godly men who would have failed this test for spiritual leadership.
It wasn’t just Solomon. Abraham, Jacob, Esau, Gideon. Even David. David who wrote most of the psalms. David who was called “a man after God’s own heart.” David who was the king- not of Utah- but God’s nation of Israel.
Why did so many ancient figures- even what we would call biblical heroes- have multiple wives?
And more importantly to us- why does it seem like God was OK with it?
I find this to be weird, and I’d like to explore why it’s in the Bible.
Turn to Genesis 2, and let’s get weird.
[theme music]
The origin of Marriage
Welcome to Weird Stuff in the Bible, where we explore scripture passages that are bizarre, perplexing or just plain weird. This is Luke Taylor, and today we’re going to be talking about polygamy.
By the way, this is the third in a series of episodes I’m doing on strange things in the Old Testament law. But I have something special planned for next week. An interview with Beatty Carmichael, author of the book The Prayer of Freedom. Beatty is an experienced deliverance minister and has helped more than a thousand people get rid of demonic influences in their life personally, and who knows how many he’s helped with his book and online teachings. So I hope you will join in next week to hear that interview, and then we’ll explore some new subjects after that. But this week is actually the two-year anniversary of this podcast, and I thought we could celebrate with an interview with someone who has a lot to say on some of the subjects we’ve been studying this year. Now, on to today’s teaching.
God establishes this institution of marriage in the opening chapters of the Bible. It- marriage- is the fundamental building block of all society. And it’s been that way since the creation of the world.
Genesis 2:21-25
21 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said,
“This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman,
because [woe is man…jk] she was taken out of Man.”
24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. 25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
So we see marriage established very clearly as between one man and one woman.
And yet, very early on in the Bible, you start to see people break that pattern. In Genesis 4, right after the story of Cain and Abel, Cain gets banished for killing Abel. He eventually has a descendant named Lamech.
Genesis 4:19
And Lamech took two wives. The name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other Zillah.
And Lamech was far from the last to try this. As we said in the opening, there are numerous Biblical characters who have multiple wives at the same time. And some of them are what we might call the heroes or great men of the Bible. And the Bible doesn’t really directly comment on the fact that many of these men seemed to break with what God set up as the marital norm.
So, was it a sin for them? And would it be a sin today?
I want to give you four arguments today for why polygamy is wrong and was always wrong, even though some of our biblical heroes engaged in it.
How to Read the Bible
So for the first one, let’s talk about how we read the Bible and how we pull lessons from the Bible.
Robert Alter wrote a book called The Art of Biblical Narrative. This man is a Jewish scholar. He says that part of the purpose of biblical narrative is that it teaches us how the world works- and, how the world doesn’t work. If someone keeps trying something and it never works out, the Bible is recording this for us to teach us that it’s a bad idea.
And he says when it comes to polygamy, you can tell it’s a bad idea because everybody who tries it is having an absolutely horrible time with it. Socially, culturally, spiritually, emotionally, psychologically, and relationally.
Guys, it’s true. Without fail, every single one of these so-called heroes of the Bible who has multiple wives ends up getting severe family problems because of it. It either leads to problems between the wives, or disaster between the children. Abraham. David. Gideon. And as we’ll see later, especially Solomon. These guys screw up their families and personal lives.
So Robert Alter says if you read the Bible and think that it’s teaching you that polygamy is a great idea, then you don’t know how to read. Because it’s obvious that polygamy is a bad idea.
Look at Elkanah who married two women in I Samuel 1. Their names were Hannah and Penninah. And if you’re gonna marry two women, that’s already bad enough, but why would you marry two women whose names basically rhyme? That’s just dumb.
I Samuel 1:4-6
4 On the day when Elkanah sacrificed, he would give portions to Peninnah his wife and to all her sons and daughters. 5 But to Hannah he gave a double portion, because he loved her, though the Lord had closed her womb. 6 And her rival used to provoke her grievously to irritate her, because the Lord had closed her womb.
And we see that Peninnah is miserable because she she’s not as loved as the other wife and Hannah is miserable because she can’t have kids like the other wife and Elkahah is miserable because he can’t keep either of them happy. And Elkanah is too thick-headed to learn the lesson here but I hope we aren’t: polygamy is demonstrably a bad idea.
Another example: read the story of Jacob getting all his wives pregnant and how they wheel and deal for his attention in Genesis 29 and 30. There’s a line where Rachel says to Leah, “Then he may lie with you tonight in exchange for your son's mandrakes.” And I’m like, that’s just creepy. I don’t even know what mandrakes are but it just sounds creepy that women are trading mandrakes for time with the husband.
And, of course, Jacob’s wives get all jealous and start competing to see who can have the most kids and bring in their servants to sleep with Jacob to rack up the score. And it’s just kinda gross.
So one of the ways we should read the Biblical narratives is by trying to find the moral of the story. And oftentimes, it’s pretty obvious.
Like, I’ve been studying the story of Gideon the past few weeks with my son. As you read it, it’s quite obvious that Gideon is a fearful man. When you first meet him, he’s threshing wheat in a winepress. Next, he doesn’t want to tear down the idols in his hometown, so he does it in the middle of the night. Then he tries to get out of his mission twice by the fleece thing with the dew. So God takes his army of 32,000 soldiers and whittles it down to 300 men. And then, of course, Gideon runs off the Midianites with 300 men. The moral of the story is never stated. An angel never says something like, “See Gideon, if you won’t give in to fear and will lean on the Lord in your weakness, He can strengthen you and use you to accomplish mighty things.” Nobody pops their head in to say that, but it’s obvious what the lesson is when you read the story. You don’t need it spelled out to you.
Polygamy could be looked at the same way. The Bible shows us- through narrative- again and again- that polygamy is just a plain bad idea. Even if it doesn’t spell it out specifically. So that’s reason #1 why polygamy is wrong.
God’s Institution of Marriage
Reason #2- it contradicts God’s original design for marriage. And we read those verses in Genesis 2.
Now, perhaps you say, “Luke, times change. Just because God did something a certain way in Genesis, does that mean that’s how we should always do it?” Jesus was confronted with a question like this.
Matthew 19:3-6
3 And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?” 4 He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
If that sounds familiar, it’s because we quoted it back at the start of the episode. Jesus was asked whether it was OK to get divorced. Jesus’ reply was that marriage was meant to be one man and one woman for life, going all the way back to Genesis 2. Now by this point, it had been approximately 4,000 years since Adam and Eve were created. It has only been another 2,000 years since then.
So going back to our question from a moment ago: “Just because God did something a certain way in Genesis, does that mean that’s how we should always do it?” Well the answer in Jesus’ day was: yes.
Now maybe you’re thinking: but that was a question about divorce, not polygamy. And man, I wish Jesus had been asked a question about polygamy. But even though He wasn’t, here’s something we can probably extrapolate from His answer on divorce: polygamy wasn’t part of the original design of marriage either.
‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’
He didn’t say hold fast to his wives. He didn’t say “the two” and then “two more” and then “two more” shall become one flesh. God’s original design for marriage was one man and one woman.
And the New Testament also brings in the fact that part of the purpose for marriage is to teach us about Christ and the church.
Ephesians 5:22-24, 31-32
22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. [oh, this is off to a great start] 23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
[Jumping down to verse 31] “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. 33 However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
So if you are a Christian, then you are part of this worldwide body of Christ known as the church, and this means you are married to Jesus. Just as Jesus loves us, husbands are to love our wives. If you’ve ever witnessed a husband who was just a spectacular man to his wife, a very admirable and devoted husband, then that gives you a picture here on earth of how Jesus is devoted and caring toward us.
By the way, my friend Daniel Moore just released a book called Marriage as a Mission: Living out God Design for Marriage. I would recommend this book, even though I’m only about halfway through right now but it just keeps getting better and better as I go along. It contains a lot of both theology and practical application about marriage. And it says this in chapter 5:
“Just as Christ leads with love and the Church responds with trust and devotion, husbands and wives reflect that divine relationship through their unity and distinct roles. When marriage works the way God intended, it’s not only a blessing to the couple- it’s a powerful display of God’s truth and grace to a watching world.”
Again, that’s from Marriage as a Mission, available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and probably lots of other places, too.
The church is all Christians everywhere, no matter what denomination you are, if you don’t even know what a denomination is, even if you’re like the thief on the cross and don’t know the first thing about theology- but as long as you’re saved, you’re part of the capital-C Church. And this is the bride of Christ. And marriage teaches us how Christ relates to us, His bride.
Jesus doesn’t have multiple wives. There are not multiple ways to Christ. And so this is the second reason polygamy is wrong: because it contradicts God’s original design for marriage and His stated purpose for marriage.
Forbidden for Kings and Pastors
A third reason that I would say polygamy is wrong is based on some specific commands given in each of the Testaments. For Kings specifically, we see this command in
Deuteronomy 18:17
17 And he shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away…
So one of the laws for Israel’s kings was not to multiply his wives. And it even gives a specific reason for that: because it will cause him to turn his heart away from God. Too many wives would cause a king to forget about God. It also gives an admonition in that section for the king not to collect too many horses because then he would trust in his own military might, and not to make himself too rich because then presumably he would trust in his money over God.
We see a case study in this from King Solomon himself.
I kings 11:1-2
Now King Solomon loved many foreign women, along with the daughter of Pharaoh: Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women, 2 from the nations concerning which the Lord had said to the people of Israel, “You shall not enter into marriage with them, neither shall they with you, for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods.” Solomon clung to these in love.
Guys, it was in love. God is love, right? Shouldn’t God be OK with more love? Love is love, as people say nowadays when they trample on God’s commands about marriage.
No, love is not a legitimate reason to reject God’s standards. You cannot sin and say it’s OK if you’re doing it in the name of love. Here’s what happened to Solomon:
I Kings 11:3
He had 700 wives, who were princesses, and 300 concubines. And his wives turned away his heart.
If you keep reading that chapter, Solomon’s life ends in a very poor way, very far from God. Some question whether Solomon even made it to heaven or if he apostatized- fell away from God. I don’t know the answer. But I do appreciate that he wrote Song of Solomon first.
So we see this prohibition in Deuteronomy against Kings multiplying their wives in the Old Testament, and a very clear lesson provided in Solomon’s life. Again, narrative teaches us that polygamy is a bad idea.
We also see a ban on polygamy in the New Testament in the restrictions on who can be a pastor or an elder or a deacon in the church:
I Timothy 3
Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife
The very first guideline there. And it’s the second guideline mentioned in:
Titus 1:6
if anyone is above reproach, the husband of one wife
Now, you have probably heard these pointed out before and used to say that people who are divorced cannot be pastors. I understand that interpretation of this passage and I’m not saying it’s wrong or that your church or denomination must change its rules. I think my own denomination says this. But I don’t think this was about divorce. I think it sounds like it’s about polygamy. And regardless of where you stand on the divorce thing, I’m sure we’d all agree that being a polygamist would disqualify you from leadership in the New Testament church.
And how interesting it is, and how weird it is, that we have books of the Bible written by people who would be disqualified from leadership in our own churches today.
But regardless, reason #3 that I’d say polygamy is wrong is that we have commands forbidding it for kings and pastors.
Forbidden for Everyone Else!
And reason #4 today: polygamy is wrong because we have a command against it for everybody else.
Let me start by bringing up a letter we received from a listener named Isaias a while back. I hope you’re still listening, Isaias. He writes:
Who was the Cushite woman that Moses married?
Numbers 12:1
Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married, for he had married a Cushite woman.
Isaias asks where this Cushite woman came from, since we only know about Moses’ wife Zipporah. For the record, Zipporah was a Midianite woman. A Cushite would’ve been a descendant of Ham, so it would have been an African woman with dark skin. Miriam and Aaron apparently had a problem with that in Numbers 12, probably racially motivated. So the question is: did Moses have two wives? Was he a polygamist, like many of the other biblical heroes.
So I want to provide three possibilities. One, it’s possible that the Zipporah WAS the Cushite woman. Midianites were probably darker-skinned people, as they lived nearer to darker-skinned people in Africa. So perhaps Miriam and Aaron had a problem with Zipporah herself, and the Bible is referring to her as a Cushite because she had enough African ancestry to have darker skin. That’s one possibility. This is actually where I lean because I think that’s more likely than the other two options.
The second option is that Moses’ first wife died and that this is his second marriage. This would not be polygamy, as it’s not having two wives simultaneously. We have no idea when Zipporah died or what ever happened to her, so if she wasn’t the Cushite, it’s entirely possible that the Cushite wife came along after Zipporah.
The reason I don’t subscribe to this view myself is that Moses often admonished the Israelites not to take foreign wives because they generally worshipped foreign gods. God doesn’t have a problem with interracial marriage, but God doesn’t endorse unequally yoked marriages where one person believes in God and the other doesn’t. Now, I’m sure Moses wouldn’t have married the Cushite if she wasn’t a believer as well, but it would have set a really bad example if Israel’s leader married a foreign woman while also constantly telling the Israelites not to marry foreign women. So it just doesn’t seem likely to me that the Cushite came along later. It makes more sense to me to say that Zipporah- daughter of the Midianite Jethro- also had some Cushite blood- perhaps on her mom’s side.
And a third possibility to explain this IS that Moses had multiple wives and took a second wife during the wilderness wanderings. But I don’t think this is likely either. A, because of what I just said above about setting a good example. And B, because of what Moses wrote 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 still alive.
So this is a rule against taking two sisters as wives, right? What does that have to do with polygamy in general? There is a really interesting note I found in Paul Copan’s book, Is God a Moral Monster? Making Sense of the Old Testament God. I’ll read here what it says on page 113:
“The wording of 18:18 (literally, “a woman to her sister”) itself indicates that this is not a literal sister. This phrase ‘a woman to her sister’ and its counterpart, ‘a man to his brother,’ are used twenty times in the Hebrew Scriptures, and never do they refer to a literal sister or brother. Rather, they are idioms for ‘one in addition to another.’ So this verse doesn’t refer to incest; rather, it refers to the addition of another wife to the first.”
So there you have it guys. The phrase “a woman to her sister” doesn’t refer to literal siblings. It means “another woman.” So under that understanding, Leviticus 18:18 is the clearest condemnation of polygamy in the entire Bible.
And if Moses himself wrote that, I find it hard to believe he himself took a second wife simultaneously with the first. I could be wrong- Moses wasn’t perfect- it wouldn’t necessarily mess up any of our theology if he did- but I doubt he did.
God’s silence
But as we’ve stated, there were plenty of other Old Testament figureheads who did take multiple wives. And that bothers me. And if I’m being honest, it bothers me that God never directly called them out on it.
The only positive thing we might say about polygamy is that, in that culture, women had a lot fewer options than men when it came to supporting themselves- especially if their husband died. Because if your husband died, you were no longer a virgin, and- like it or not- that made you less valuable to the men in that society. It reduced your chances of getting another husband.
The women usually outnumbered the men because men get killed in war and conflict, or due to risky behavior, more often. So for some women who found themselves single and alone, their choices may have looked like either get another man or starve to death. There were more women in need of a spouse than men, and women were significant more at risk if they couldn’t get one.
So I’m not saying that excuses all cases of polygamy, but it perhaps makes it more understandable just from a logical point of view, and therefore, perhaps why God didn’t get so upset about it.
We see an example of this when David takes his second wife, the wise Abigail, in I Samuel 25. Because of David’s interference in her life in that chapter, her very stupid husband ends up dead.
It says in I Samuel 25:39
39 When David heard that Nabal was dead, he said, “Blessed be the Lord who has avenged the insult I received at the hand of Nabal, and has kept back his servant from wrongdoing. The Lord has returned the evil of Nabal on his own head.” Then David sent and spoke to Abigail, to take her as his wife.
So Abigail is kind of the hero of that story, but if David just rode off and left her in the dust after her husband died, things would’ve looked pretty bleak for her, and we’d be saying, “poor Abigail, she does everything right but she would have been better off if David had never even stopped by.” But since he takes her as his wife- I’m not saying it was all sunshine and roses being one of David’s multiple wives- but at least she didn’t die in destitution.
Again, wouldn’t say that excuses polygamy. But perhaps it’s why God seemed to tolerate it.
In fact, if it came back today, I would be outraged and disgusted. But it would still not be as much of an abomination as same-sex marriage already is.
In fact, we see stronger biblical condemnations of divorce than we do of polygamy. I don’t say this to shame anyone who has had a divorce, but it’s just an observation about the Bible. We see stronger condemnations of divorce in the Bible, such as in Malachi 2, than we do of polygamy. So you could make the argument that leaving your first wife is an even bigger sin than marrying two women at once.
But on the other side of that coin, there are also situations where divorce and even remarriage is permitted within the Scripture. But there is nowhere Scripture has an endorsement of polygamy. There are only negative things said about polygamy in the Scripture. And there are only negative depictions of polygamy. They might make propaganda on Netflix with shows like Sister Wives that make it look like a functional atmosphere, but there are no polygamous families in Scripture where everyone is getting along and the kids are doing great. It typically ends with the wives at each others’ throats and the kids trying to kill each other.
We’ll leave it there for today. Guys, thanks for being with me for two years now on this podcast. Again, I have a special treat for next week: an interview with Beatty Carmichael. He’s the author of the book The Prayer of Freedom. He’s an expert in the area of spiritual legal rights which a lot of you have been interested in learning more about, and how to prevent demons and spiritual attacks from disrupting your life.
Beatty has some amazing stories of God’s supernatural provision, so I hope you’ll come back next week. Shout-out to Caleb who wrote in this week and said he found the podcast just a few weeks ago and has already listened to over half the episodes. Blows my mind. Glad to have a new official weirdo on the team.
And we’re nearing episode 100, and I have another special surprise lined up for that episode, too.
So if you think polygamy is weird, that’s a good thing, I hope we’re all in agreement on that today, too. Thanks for listening, God bless you for sticking around until the end, and we’ll see you next time on Weird Stuff in the Bible.