Pastor Rich Tidwell – What Scripture Actually Says

When Pastor Rich Tidwell openly announced he had taken a second wife, Protestia ran a hit piece and the conversation became the number-one trending topic on X. In this long-form roundtable, BibleMarriages joins Abrie Kilian and Ryan Ridgely of Maxima Potentia and theologian Pete Rambo to ask one question: what does Scripture actually say about plural marriage? Their thesis is blunt — the Bible never bans polygyny; Rome did, and Protestantism inherited that tradition without re-examining the text.

What they discuss

• Why Tidwell’s disclosure ignited a firestorm across Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant lines, and what that unity over tradition reveals about biblical illiteracy on marriage and headship.
• The historical trail of monogamy-only doctrine — from Babylon’s Code of Hammurabi and Numa’s law in Rome, through Augustine and the church fathers, to the Council of Trent (1563) that finally declared polygyny anathema after roughly 1,560 years.
• The legal case that polygyny is not sin: God regulates it rather than prohibiting it, and no clear, unambiguous law with a stated penalty forbids covenant with more than one woman (the legality and two-or-three-witnesses principles).
• Why the men argue that forced monogamy is the actual sin — adding to God’s law, producing mistress culture, prostitution, no-fault divorce, and discarded women.
• How adultery is biblically defined as a man taking another man’s wife (David and Bathsheba), not a man covenanting with an additional unmarried woman.
• Suppressed voices the church blackballed — Ochino, Martin Madan (Thelyphthora), James Campbell, and even Luther’s counsel to Philip of Hesse — and Rushdoony’s admission that Scripture does not forbid plural marriage.
• The patriarchs God built Israel through — Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Gideon, David — and an economic argument for opening the marriage market to competent household heads.

Scriptures examined

• Genesis 2:24 and Matthew 19 (the “one flesh” passage and its alleged prescriptiveness)
• Jacob, Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah (Genesis 29–30)
• Exodus 21:10 (food, clothing, and conjugal rights of a second wife)
• Deuteronomy 21:15–17 (inheritance of the firstborn under two wives)
• Deuteronomy 25:5–10 (levirate marriage)
• Leviticus 18:17 (a woman and her daughter)
• Deuteronomy 4:2 and 12:32 (do not add to or take from the law)
• Matthew 5:17–19 (Yeshua on fulfilling, not abolishing, the law)
• Matthew 15 (nullifying God’s commandments for the traditions of men)
• 1 Timothy 4:1–3 (forbidding marriage as a doctrine of demons)
• Isaiah 3–4 (seven women taking hold of one man)
• Deuteronomy 19:15, Matthew 18:16, 2 Corinthians 13:1, 1 Timothy 5:19 (witness rule)
• Joshua 24:15 and Matthew 6:33

Why it matters

The discussion frames marriage, headship, and family structure as central to YAH’s relationship with His people — and calls listeners to be Bereans who test every popular objection against the whole counsel of Scripture rather than inherited tradition.