Were All Biblical Polygamous Marriages Disasters? A Response to Taco Talks
Taco Talks claims polygamy is never condoned in Scripture and that men like Solomon, David, and Jacob were committing rampant adultery. This response tests each claim against the text — and shows that getting the definition of adultery wrong is what breaks the whole reading.
Taco Talks opens his “Polygamy in the Bible” video by poisoning the well — framing plural marriage as one of the “evil, twisted” things merely recorded in Scripture — then claims it is forbidden and that Solomon, David, and Jacob were all adulterers. This response works through the video claim by claim and shows the whole case rests on importing a modern definition of adultery the Torah never gives. Get that definition right and the supposed contradictions disappear.
The argument answered
- The framing trick of calling polygyny “heinous and evil” before a single verse is examined, and why that is poisoning the well.
- The standard proof texts — Deuteronomy 17:17, Paul’s “one wife” instruction, and Genesis 2:24 — and why none forbid plural marriage; if “one wife” bars a second, it equally bars celibacy.
- The charge that Solomon committed adultery hundreds of times, refuted by the biblical definition of adultery as taking another man’s wife.
- David and Jacob: God gave David wives and offered more, rebuking him only for Bathsheba; God opened and closed Leah’s and Rachel’s wombs and blessed the unions that became the twelve tribes.
- Solomon’s real sin was foreign, pagan wives who turned his heart, not the number of wives — David had many and his heart stayed devoted.
- Enforced monogamy reframed as its own form of female idolatry — the “one-wife god” — and the marriage picture of one head with many under his covering, mirroring Christ and the church.
Scriptures examined
- Deuteronomy 17:17 — the king and “multiply” wives
- 1 Timothy 3:2, 12; Titus — the “husband of one wife” qualification
- Genesis 2:24; Matthew 19:4–6 — one flesh and the divorce question
- Exodus 21:10 — provision and conjugal rights when a man takes another woman
- Matthew 5:28 — lust, coveting, and the definition of adultery
- 2 Samuel 12 — God giving David wives and rebuking him only for Bathsheba
- Genesis 29–30; Ruth 4:11 — Leah, Rachel, and building the house of Israel
- 2 Chronicles 24:1–3 — Joash given two wives and doing right in the Lord’s sight
- Ezekiel 23; Jeremiah 3 and 31 — God depicting himself as husband to two sisters
Why it matters
When “adultery” is redefined to mean any second wife, Scripture is made to contradict itself and the patriarchs become villains. Restoring the law’s actual definition lets the text stand whole, and the related charge that these unions were doomed is answered in our article on whether polygamy always ended in disaster in the Bible.
