Why is there polygamy in the Bible?

Many men in the Bible have more than one wife, why did God allow this?

If you start reading your Bible from the front of the book it won't take very long for you to come across scripture that records a man taking more than one woman, or wife, to himself. Today we call this polygamy, or specficially, polygyny. It happens within the first four chapters of Genesis.

The first marriage we are told of prior to that was Adam, and the one woman God gave to him, Eve. She was created from the man, for the man, as a helper fit for him because God said it was "not good" for the man to be alone.

Prior to the sin of Adam disobeying God and harkening to the voice of his wife (Genesis 3:17), the marriage we know of, in the state of perfection, was one man, and one woman.

What does it mean that only a couple of chapters later, in the fallen world, we see a man, Lamech, taking two wives to himself, and what does the scripture say about this?

If you search Google for "why did God allow polygamy in the Bible" you'll find many articles saying basically the same thing...

• Note: polygamy is a catch-all phrase, polygyny is the proper phrase describing one man, multiple women and as such I will use that term for the remainder of this article.

... that God simply "winked" at this "sin" and allowed it for a time, but it is no longer allowed. These articles will proceed to infer all manner of things to create this argument, but the articles and writings are void of any actual scripture where God says that He "allowed it for a reason" or "allowed it for a time".

Nowhere in all the pages of scripture does God ever say this or anything like it. I have looked, diligently, please look for yourself and do not take my word for it, email me if you find it.

But that is the most common Christian answer to this issue. It is not an answer I could accept when I asked this question. Speaking for God is not something to do lightly.

Marriage is important, it's incredibly important. It's a central theme in scripture from Genesis to Revelation. Marriage is not something God simply left to us to "figure out" by reading between the lines. He was explicit in His commands as to what is right, what is wrong, and how to go about what we are doing. Marriage has a few purposes, one of them is to convey Heavenly concepts to us and the people around us. God doesn't wink at sin or perversions of His order, or His morality, and God does not change.

He does not change.

His Law is perfect.

So God doesn't change, and His Law is perfect, what does that mean for marriage?

God did not forget to include anything in His Law. He did not give us a "starter program" to get us going until we could really obey Him as we need to because we were so barbaric that we just couldn't handle His commands. His Law is perfect, perfect means there aren't vast swaths of it missing waiting for Christ to come and add to it, adding to it would be a sin, Christ did not sin, so He did not add to or take from the Law. He taught the Law, and walked it out, perfectly.

When He gave us His Law, He was very specific in that we must obey them and not do these things. Pay careful attention to the words here.

Put simply: Don't do what they did in the land I am taking you from, and don't do what they do in the land I am bringing you to, be set apart.

Then He goes on and lists a long list of sexual sins including a list of close-relative relationships, homosexual relations, and animal related sexual sins that are forbidden in His Law, His ways in which we are to obey and observe and build our society from.

I encourage you to go through Leviticus 18, which is the foundation of what scripture defines as sexual immorality, and thoroughly observe what is forbidden, and ask yourself, what is not?

When you get to the end of it you'll see this:

Remember prior to these Laws being given to Moses, many men, great men of faith including Abraham and Jacob, had more than one wife or concubine. Polygyny was not a new practice or custom.

If having more than one wife is a perversion, if it defiled a man or woman, or was a violation of the order that God has ordained for marriage, why did He not include that in these laws He was giving His people to keep them pure and undefiled?

Keep in mind, God's Law already existed in some capacity prior to being given to Moses, Abimelech was prevented from committing adultery and sinning against God because Sarah was a married woman that he took believing she was available to marry. He was about to commit adultery not because he took another woman, in addition to his current women, but because he took another man's woman.

Abimelech had more than one woman, he had a wife, and other women, concubines, in his house. Abraham, had more than one woman. Adultery existed as a sin against God at this time well before Moses, but Abraham, and Abilmech were never accused of sinning against God by having more than one woman, only when taking another man's woman. In my article What is Adultery, Biblically? I explain that adultery requires a married woman.

This is what happened when Sarah was returned.

If taking a man's wife was a sin against God, and God blessed the man after returning her untouched by blessing him with children through his multiple women, having multiple women bear your children isn't a sin against God, how could it be?

No man in all of scripture who had more than one woman was accused of or called an adulterer or called to repentance as long as the women they took were marriageable women.

So polygyny is not forbidden in God's Law, but does that mean it's "good"?

So it's not a sin. But is it good for us?

There are a few objections from Christendom in regards to polygyny. Most will just call it sinful and degenerate without any scripture to backup that assertion. These people in my experience have never studied the issue and are parroting what they've heard from their teachers on the matter, or just assuming it based on the culture they were raised in teaching it is a perversion or cult practice.

Then there are the Christians who will acknowledge that it is not a sin at least, knowing that it is not a transgression of God's Law (not forbidden by God) and they will follow that up by saying something like this:

"But it's not the ideal ..."

Let's explore that idea. Does Genesis 2:24 outline an "ideal" for all mankind across all time? Is that what the scripture is doing here?

When Jesus was asked about divorcing (putting away) a woman for any reason at all He used this scripture as the basis to explain that divorcing or separation was never part of the original intent for marriage, but that marriage was meant to be permanent, and what God has joined together, man should not separate, but there are cases (the woman's sexual immorality) that it is justified to put her away. (Matt 19, 5, Mark 10)

So what can we know from Genesis 2, and Jesus' teachings in Matthew and Mark? Is it that a marriage is only between one and one woman? Yes.

Is it that a marriage is supposed to be permanent, God ordained and joined, and should not be separated by man? Yes (with few exceptions).

Many people will then try to infer that polygyny was also "not part of the original plan" but Jesus never said anything of the sort in regards to polygyny. We cannot speak for God where God did not speak. If polygyny was a violation, God would have said something, at some point, and if polygyny is a violation of that ideal, celibacy is also a violation of it. There were no celibate men or women in the garden.

God never said that monogamy was the "ideal", God never said that monogamy was prescribed for all men, across all time. If you hear this, it is being inferred, or read into the text, this is called eisegesis. The one who is claiming this is speaking for God.

Monogamy, and polygyny are not terms or concepts found in the Bible. I use them for the sake of explanation and understanding these concepts.

So how does polygyny fit into that?

What Gen 2:24 teaches us is that a one flesh union is only between a man and a woman. A man and a man cannot be one flesh, a woman and a woman cannot, a man and an animal cannot, you get the idea.

What Gen 2:24 does not tell us is how many one flesh unions a man can have, in fact, it also doesn't tell us how many a woman can have. We need further scripture to teach us that.

Ask yourself, if Gen 2:24 forbids a man from taking another woman to himself, does it also forbid a man from taking no woman to himself? Certainly it cannot, as we know scripture says celibacy is a gift from God for some men.

A man is allowed to take another woman to himself (Exodus 21:10), while a woman is bound to one man while he lives (Rom 7:2).

You will not find a Law that says that a man is bound to one woman while she lives, or that he is an adulterer for taking another woman to himself. Please look for yourself, never take my word for it.

If a man takes on another woman, he must continue to provide for the first woman. That's it, the man is allowed to have more than one, the woman is bound to one.

I know this is shocking, and hard to swallow truth for many people, myself included when the Father revealed these things to me. Take your time, go to these passages yourself and ask the Father to walk you through it.

We know that some men are gifted with celibacy for the Kingdom because scripture tells us (Matt 19:12).

We also know that faithful men of God covered more than one woman in marriages, and those men were blessed in those marriages, in some cases God played a direct role in the men ending up with more than one woman, Jacob and David being two examples.

The "ideal", it would seem, is the man obeying what God has gifted him with and called him to. That is an individual gift and calling, that is not up to us to judge. Monogamy, or having one woman only, is only the ideal for the men God has called to it, trying to make a man who is called to polygyny only lead one woman is as evil as trying to make a man called to celibacy, marry a woman.

Why did God "allow" polygamy for men, but not women?

Man was created in the image of God and portrays the role of Christ in his house. God is faithful to many while the only way we are faithful to Him is if we are exclusive to Him and only Him.

• We are monogamous to God, He is not monogamous to us.

• The woman is monogamous to the man, the man does not have to be monogamous to the woman.

Woman is created to be in subjection to the man. They are the picture of the body of Christ in subjection to Him. There are many members of the body, subject to one head.

When a woman tries to have more than one man, she is serving more than one master, it's adultery and she is defiling the body that she belongs to (the man). When a man tries to serve more than one God, it's idolatry, he is defiling the body that he belongs to (Christ).

When Paul warns us not to join to a prostitute because we become one flesh with her, and we are defiling the "one spirit" union we have with Christ, there is another layer to that. It is that the prostitute or harlot is an inversion of the order. She is the head of many men who worship and join to her. It's more than just a sexual sin, it's participating in the flipping of the order of man as the head and the woman in subjection joining to him. There is almost always a deeper meaning to these commands than we often give thought to.

Marriage on earth, is the picture and shadow of the Kingdom of Heaven.

There is absolutely nothing about a man with multiple women in subjection to him that is a perversion of the order or design of marriage. To say there is is to say Christ having as many as are called to join His body, is a perversion. The man is the picture of Christ, the woman, or women under him are the picture of the assembly, or "church" which make up the body of Christ. Remember that in everything.

The enemy wants us to believe that polygyny is a perversion because he hates God, he hates order, patriarchy, and he hates family. The picture of a man with more than one woman in subjection to him is the picture of Christ as King, it points to God. Patriarchal headship does not allow for feminist "equality" doctrine to thrive, polygyny is just a natural function of patriarchy, and the Bible is patriarchal.

If the enemy can convince believers that monogamy is the only righteous option for men and women, and he's been very successful in that, he succeeds in elevating the woman out of subjection to the man, he can make the man subject to or obedient to the woman far easier this way.

The idolatry involved in all of this will be addressed in a coming article.

When we teach that a man can only have one woman, we make the woman a god or an idol to him. The man is only allowed one God to serve with all his heart, soul and might, the woman shall not be that for the man, that is what got us into the mess in the first place.

But doesn't Paul say a Church leader must be the "husband of one wife"?

One of the most common objections you will hear outside of what we have already discussed, if you don't hear it first, is that Paul made qualifications for elders in the church and one of those is to be the "husband of one wife".

A few things to consider, does Paul have the authority to make what was never a matter of reproach, or sin, now a matter of reproach, and sin? Where does Paul derive this authority to say that what God allows, is now forbidden, if you believe he has it?

If Paul is saying that a man is not blameless who has more than one wife, Paul must be able to root that in scripture somewhere. As I have shown, there is nowhere that Paul can appeal to, to make that kind of a statement without contradicting scripture. So either you believe Paul wrote scripture that contradicted prior scripture, or your interpretation of these verses is wrong. What is more likely?

To keep this article from getting too long I’ll simply link to my objections page where I’ve broken down this objection specifically here.

In short, my position is that Paul was describing a man who is

• 1. Married
• 2. Married to his first wife, or having not unlawfully put away or divorced his woman

This is something that would be above reproach, having more than one wife, who the man has faithfully kept and provided for, has always been above reproach. Paul cannot change that.

Isaiah 4:1 says days are coming where seven women will be begging one man to take them will take away their reproach. How could something sinful or perverse remove their reproach?

God also told us through the prophet Isaiah to be very care of what we call evil.

We should be very cautious about calling anything sin or a violation of God’s design, will or purposes, unless we truly know that it is evil, especially when it affects families, and the generations that come, or don’t come through them as a result of the doctrines that we teach, or don’t teach, on biblical marriage. In a future article I’ll illustrate how the false teaching of what we call “monogamy only” actually increases sexual immorality in the body of Christ, under the banner of “purity” and God’s “will” for marriage.

Conclusion

We have lost touch with many of God’s truths, His ways, His culture, and His commands for us. As a result we interpret His scriptures through modern, western, pagan influenced eyes. We have been primarily raised in cultures that appeal to the Roman custom of one legal wife at a time only, which has been the custom of Rome since well before Christ.

As a result, polygyny is foreign to us, our churches and our doctrines and has been for quite some time. That does not mean it’s foreign to God, and it is our job to allow scripture to transform us, not transform scripture to fit into the box we put it in from the culture we take to it.

I was raised to believe monogamy was the only righteous option for a man, in searching the scriptures to see if that was so, I found that position could not be defended using scripture, and in fact it caused an abundance of conflicts and contradictions that I could not reconcile, as such the doctrine is demonstrably false, and should be thrown aside for what it is, a doctrine of demons, that forbids marriage.

One of the most important things that I realized is just how blasphemous it is to God the Father to claim polygyny is sinful, wicked, perverted or otherwise. As God on numerous occasions describes Himself as a “Husband to them”, plural. See Ezekiel 23 where He describes the two “sisters from one mother” He took to be His and bore Him sons and daughters, allegorically of course.

Does God even allegorically describe Himself in sinful ways? No.

See Jeremiah 31 where He describes Himself this way as well, while describing the New Covenant.

For a “New” Testament reference, see Matthew 25 where Christ compares Himself to a polygynous bridegroom when telling a parable about the Kingdom of Heaven.

In the coming weeks I will write a separate article to outline how this one false doctrine (monogamy only) affects so many areas of our faith and so negatively affects the body of Christ.

As for now, I pray that this article has been edifying for you, I pray that you take everything that I have shared and go to the scriptures to see if it is so. Please pray that the Father gives you discernment with and through that journey and take your time.

Once these truths start to be revealed, there are many other layers that start to peel away, it can be jarring, complicated, and hard to swallow at times. Brothers, be especially discerning with how you bring this to the women in your life, and be prepared for consequences of standing on this truth, it is sharp, and it reveals many things most of us would prefer stay hidden.

May He grant you favor, wisdom, and knowledge. God Bless. Shalom.