Christian Polygyny: Yes, It Is Sanctioned

Comments

67 responses to “Christian Polygyny: Yes, It Is Sanctioned”

1. 

   Jair

   June 30, 2009

   Yep,

   Chris­t­ian Polyg­y­ny has been use­ful to me for its out­reach poten­tial, and is nice for my fam­i­ly and has some per­son­al perks. 

   I have seen many times that the lost can quick­ly and effec­tive­ly iden­ti­fy cul­ture dom­i­nat­ed (because, as you point­ed out else­where, we are all at least a lit­tle coloured) Chris­tians and the dual­i­ties of faith they hold. They often believe that is what a Chris­t­ian is, some­one who says one thing but is essen­tial­ly the same as them. Doing some­thing so out­side the cul­ture rais­es a ques­tion that rais­es a seri­ous con­ver­sa­tion about mar­riage (which is very often deemed point­less or arbi­trary noways) and how it is valu­able in any prop­er form, and that invari­ably leads to a com­ment along the lines of ‘you’re not like those oth­er Chris­tians are you?’ with a bit of awe, and then comes an oppor­tu­ni­ty to tell them about Christ with­out all the bur­dens the church­es would like to add to his cross. 

   This has­n’t been only my expe­ri­ence, but oth­ers who taught about polyg­y­ny or prac­ticed it before me found the same thing, and those Chris­tians I’ve told about it also wind up in these situations. 

   Its pow­er­ful to be in the world but not of it. Doing some­thing like this in our time and cul­ture is a pow­er­ful mark of being dif­fer­ent. Thank you for this entry and for you’re support. 

   Jair

   Error hap­pened.

   Reply
2. 

   Christian MD

   July 5, 2009

   Above you state that the greek word “mias” may be trans­lat­ed as “one” or “first”. Mias is always trans­lat­ed as “one” EXCEPT in the cir­cum­stance of ref­er­ence to the first day of the week “sun­day” which was referred to as “mias sab­ba­ton”. The word “pro­tos” is used to mean “first” in all oth­er sit­u­a­tions in the NT. Please refer to the writ­ings of all of the ear­ly fathers of the church (ie Justin Mar­tyr, Irae­naeus, etc.) who stat­ed that there were Jew­ish mem­bers of the ear­ly church who were polyg­a­mists — they were not per­mit­ted to occu­py posi­tions in the church as the ear­ly church fathers acknowl­edged that lead­ers had to be the hus­band of one wife, because they were not appro­pri­ate role models.
   Can you name any ear­ly Chris­t­ian leader or saint who was a polygamist ?
   You will not be able to — because there weren’t any.

   Error hap­pened.

   Reply
3. 

   Christian MD

   July 5, 2009

   The com­mand for Chris­tians to be monog­a­mous is found in 1 Corinthi­ans 7: 2 :
   “.…each man is to have his own wife, and each wife is to have her own husband.”
   Look at the orig­i­nal Greek of the text :
   The lan­guage of the orig­i­nal text is in the imper­a­tive — as in a COMMAND.
   The word for wife in the Greek text here is “gunai­ka” — SINGULAR — it is ALWAYS trans­lat­ed in the sin­gu­lar, nev­er plural !
   (The plur­al of “gunai­ka” would be “gunaikas”.)
   When it states that each man is to have his own wife, the pos­ses­sive pro­noun “own” used here is “eautou”. It is a SINGULAR , not plur­al, pos­ses­sive pro­noun, which is also trans­lat­ed as the word ALONE.
   More­over, the com­mand for a wife to have her “own” hus­band uses inter­est­ing lan­guage — the Greek word for “own” used here is “idios” which is also trans­lat­ed as “pri­vate” or “prop­er”, imply­ing her hus­band is NOT SHARED with anyone.
   All of the fathers of the ear­ly church con­demned polygamy to the best of my knowl­edge — can you name one who did not? Not one of the ear­ly church fathers was a polyg­a­mist because they had to be the hus­bands of ONE WIFE (in the Greek text = “mias gua­nai­ka” — NOT “pro­tos gua­nai­ka “, which would mean first wife.)
   For fur­ther insight into polygamy and why it is not a prac­tice of the Chris­t­ian faith, I sug­gest that you read David Instone — Brew­er’s text­book on the sub­ject of marriage.

   Error hap­pened.

   Reply
4. 

   Christian MD

   July 5, 2009

   As a physi­cian who has treat­ed women and chil­dren involved in polygamy, I have had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to review the med­ical lit­er­a­ture on the top­ic. Stud­ies have revealed that women in polyg­a­mous unions have a high­er inci­dence of men­tal ill­ness than women involved in monogamy, man­i­fest­ed as stress, depres­sion, anx­i­ety, pho­bias, poor self esteem, high­er inci­dence of admis­sions for seri­ous psy­chi­atric ill­ness, and som­a­ti­za­tion dis­or­der. Chil­dren who result from polyg­a­mous unions have a high­er inci­dence of drug and alco­hol abuse, anti­so­cial behav­ior, and poor aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ment. Keep in mind that nowhere in Scrip­ture are we com­mand­ed to engage in polygamy – but we are com­mand­ed in the Epis­tles to fol­low the Law of Land in which we live – and the law of the land is for­bids us to enter into polyg­a­mous unions.

   Error hap­pened.

   Reply
5. 

   alex

   July 9, 2009

   What about Jesus say­ing that his father’s house has many rooms, in the con­text that the groom pre­pares a room for a bride in his fathers house? And then the para­ble of the ten vir­gins and no talk of a sep­a­rate bride? note the lamps, then the sev­en church­es in rev­e­la­tions, and the sev­en lamp­stands and the proph­e­sey in Isa­iah 4:1 of sev­en women tak­ing one man. If any­thing the jealosy of the dif­fer­ent chris­t­ian denom­i­na­tions is very like women claim­ing a monog­a­mous right over the groom.

   Error hap­pened.

   Reply
6. 

   Armen

   July 16, 2009

   Hey Rick. Just for clar­i­ty, the rea­son I post­ed on this top­ic was­n’t because I thought I could make you recon­sid­er. It was more because I want­ed my audi­ence to be aware that some hold the views you do and they should be aware of it.

   I’ll answer some of your points.

   “With­in Adam’s life time, there was at least one man — Lamech — who had mul­ti­ple wives. No one rebuked him for it. Why?”

   There’s no men­tion of Rahab being rebuked for lying either.

   “If you want to reach into the lives of our first par­ents and apply things to your life that the Scrip­tures do not, then I hope you are con­sis­tent and restrict your work to tend­ing your gar­den and multiplying.”

   The exam­ple is that man should work. Not that he has to be a farmer/gardener. So yes I do fol­low the exam­ple, and believe that unless God pro­hibits it for some rea­son, that a hus­band and wife should aim to have children.

   Adam and Eve are the God-giv­en pro­to­typ­i­cal marriage.

   “The pas­sage in Malachi 2 has in view divorce, not polygamy of any variety.”

   I agree that the pas­sage speaks of divorce. But, that does­n’t detract from the point that’s made. God could have made more, but lim­it­ed it to one man and one woman, that togeth­er they should raise god­ly children.

   “But does the Law sanc­tion polyg­y­nous unions? Yes! Indeed, the Law requires them under cer­tain circumstances!”

   There are many things bind­ing to the Israelite that would be wrong for me to do; i.e. ston­ing my chil­dren for rebellion.

   “Many men live hap­py, ful­filled lives hav­ing nev­er been mar­ried, so would that be an effec­tive argu­ment against monogamy?”

   My point was designed more to strike at the motives which would move a man to have more than one wife. What motives would neces­si­tate him tak­ing more than one? Is not one sufficient?

   “The prin­ci­ples of lead­er­ship sim­ply should not be expect­ed to be required of the populace.”

   The prin­ci­ples giv­en for lead­ers are to be sought after by all. Includ­ing the prin­ci­ple of obe­di­ent chil­dren. Falling short does­n’t make you not a Chris­t­ian, but does show a deficiency.

   “In oth­er words, it’s quite pos­si­ble the verse means that an elder must be still hus­band to his first wife.”

   What if your first wife died? If this ren­der­ing is accu­rate, then you can nev­er be an elder. Do you think that’s likely?

   “I do real­ize that Paul was speak­ing fig­u­ra­tive­ly in that pas­sage, though, and was dis­cussing his evan­ge­liza­tion of the Corinthi­ans in mar­i­tal terms; how­ev­er, if polyg­y­ny was real­ly a sin, why would Paul do this?”

   Paul also referred to Tim­o­thy as his “son,” indi­cat­ing that he was in a sense his spir­i­tu­al father. Does this mean he opposed Christ’s com­mand to “call no man your father?”

   P.S. Love the new look. Real­ly nice work.

   Error hap­pened.

   Reply
7. 

   Rick Beckman

   July 16, 2009

   There’s no men­tion of Rahab being rebuked for lying either.

   There is much Scrip­ture which does present lying as a sin, though… unlike polygyny.

   The exam­ple is that man should work. Not that he has to be a farmer/gardener. So yes I do fol­low the exam­ple, and believe that unless God pro­hibits it for some rea­son, that a hus­band and wife should aim to have children.

   Adam and Eve are the God-giv­en pro­to­typ­i­cal marriage.

   And just as the Scrip­tures present man as hav­ing a vari­ety of occu­pa­tions, so too do the Scrip­tures present man as being ful­ly able to mar­ry more than one woman. Each mar­riage is to be based on Adam and Eve’s exam­ple: they are to become one flesh for as long as they should live. Noth­ing any­where ever says that a man can­not mar­ry more than one wife.

   I agree that the pas­sage speaks of divorce. But, that doesn’t detract from the point that’s made. God could have made more, but lim­it­ed it to one man and one woman, that togeth­er they should raise god­ly children.

   The pas­sage does­n’t say that “God could have made more,” it states that the rea­son He hus­band and wife become one flesh is so that they can pro­duce god­ly off­spring. The pas­sage in no way pre­cludes man from being one flesh with mul­ti­ple wives, as exam­pled through­out Scripture.

   There are many things bind­ing to the Israelite that would be wrong for me to do; i.e. ston­ing my chil­dren for rebellion.

   Well, I would argue that it would be for the civ­il gov­ern­ment to pun­ish those who vio­late God’s Law. And I would also argue that the moral Law is still very much in force today — only the rit­u­al clean­li­ness, sep­a­ra­tion, and sac­ri­fi­cial Laws have been “repealed” (or bet­ter, “ful­filled” in the Lord Jesus). Nev­er are we exempt­ed from the moral Law.

   My point was designed more to strike at the motives which would move a man to have more than one wife. What motives would neces­si­tate him tak­ing more than one? Is not one sufficient?

   For you, per­haps. For me too. But who are we to decide for all men what is right or wrong when there is no Law to appeal to? Also, judg­ing motives is a straw man. Paul gave sex­u­al pas­sion as a per­fect­ly valid rea­son to mar­ry in 1 Corinthi­ans 7. Noth­ing wrong with that — bet­ter to mar­ry than to burn with desire or to com­mit fornication!

   The prin­ci­ples giv­en for lead­ers are to be sought after by all. Includ­ing the prin­ci­ple of obe­di­ent chil­dren. Falling short doesn’t make you not a Chris­t­ian, but does show a deficiency.

   Where does it say that a Chris­t­ian must strive to live in accor­dance with the require­ments for elders or dea­cons? And if that’s the case, why did Paul not say, “A Chris­t­ian must be blame­less, the hus­band of one wife?” What would be the point of sep­a­rate require­ments for elders and dea­cons if these were require­ments for everyone?

   What if your first wife died? If this ren­der­ing is accu­rate, then you can nev­er be an elder. Do you think that’s likely?

   Your rela­tion­ship with your first wife would have end­ed in a non-sin­ful man­ner. You would be free to remar­ry. How this affects an elder’s posi­tion is anoth­er top­ic entire­ly and does noth­ing that I can see to clar­i­fy the issue of polyg­y­ny one way or another.

   Paul also referred to Tim­o­thy as his “son,” indi­cat­ing that he was in a sense his spir­i­tu­al father. Does this mean he opposed Christ’s com­mand to “call no man your father?”

   ‚/blockquote>

   No, it does not. Christ Him­self empha­sized the spir­i­tu­al fam­i­ly even above that of phys­i­cal family.

   Now that all of that is said, can any­one please give a con­cise rea­son why polyg­y­ny is a sin? For the pur­pos­es of this, let’s assume that one man and five women are strand­ed for the rest of their lives on a spa­cious island apart from any oth­er sov­er­eign nation or laws of man. They have only the Scrip­tures. “It’s ille­gal in Amer­i­ca, so it must be a sin,” isn’t going to cut it for these folks. Why can the man not mar­ry all five women, hav­ing chil­dren with the ones who are fertile?

   Spe­cial empha­sis should be giv­en to the moral Law, for it is trans­gres­sion of the Law which is sin… not “trans­gres­sion of the pro­to­type” — divorce else­where is against the Law, and the basis of that is the pro­to­type, so one should expect any oth­er sins of pro­to­type-vio­la­tion should be based in the Law as well.

   Error hap­pened.

   Reply
8. 

   Andrew

   July 16, 2009

   Where does it say that a Chris­t­ian must strive to live in accor­dance with the require­ments for elders or deacons? 

   If you look at the require­ments men­tioned in First Tim­o­thy 3; blame­less, a hus­band to one wife, sober, vig­i­lant, good behaviour…patient, not cov­etous­ness etc. These are the kind of things we should expect from every pro­fess­ing Chris­t­ian. Not all pro­fess­ing Chris­tians are alike sanc­ti­fied how­ev­er, these require­ments are giv­en because no one with­out these virtues, all of them, should rule in the Church.

   Paul is acknowl­edg­ing the present real­i­ty that sin exists.

   And just as the Scrip­tures present man as hav­ing a vari­ety of occu­pa­tions, so too do the Scrip­tures present man as being ful­ly able to mar­ry more than one woman. Each mar­riage is to be based on Adam and Eve’s exam­ple: they are to become one flesh for as long as they should live. Noth­ing any­where ever says that a man can­not mar­ry more than one wife.

   Gen­e­sis 2 states what mar­riage is, i.e. one man one woman, it is for you to prove otherwise.

   Error hap­pened.

   Reply
9. 

   Rick Beckman

   July 16, 2009

   Yes, a mar­riage is one man and one woman. But that def­i­n­i­tion does not pre­clude a man from hav­ing more than one mar­riage to oth­er women. I’ll say this till I’m blue in the face: Mul­ti­ple men in the Bible proved that they could be tru­ly mar­ried to more than one woman con­cur­rent­ly. If that is not mar­riage, then it is your bur­den to prove oth­er­wise, for the Scrip­tures use all the mar­riage terms (“hus­band,” “wife,” etc.) for such unions.

   The argu­ment isn’t what mar­riage is — one man, one woman — but rather whether mul­ti­ple mar­riages is allowed.

   I argue that because the Bible nowhere demands monogamy, polyg­y­ny is per­mis­si­ble. We are not to add to God’s Law in an attempt to declare what we may find repul­sive as sin.

   Error hap­pened.

   Reply
10. 

    alex

    July 16, 2009

    It is inter­est­ing watch­ing two chris­tians beat­ing out the sub­ject of mar­riage and polygyny.
    First­ly one should note that mar­riage is a union of the flesh not the spirit.
    Jesus notes that only God has the right to divide mar­ried peo­ple, hence the ’till death do us part’.
    It is clear that ser­i­al monogamy is an immoral­i­ty, adul­tery is clear­ly a seri­ous sin because of the break­down of family.
    Good polyg­y­ny is pro fam­i­ly, it is more not less.
    Any­body who says polyg­y­ny is adul­tery is lis­ten­ing to cul­ture not God’s word.
    Obvi­ous­ly, just like monogamy, polyg­y­ny should not be a license for a man to be a tyrant and abuser.
    Polyg­y­ny is an oppor­tu­ni­ty for a hus­band to give more, the hus­bands role is sac­ri­f­i­cal, a ser­vant king.
    It is easy to see that only a small minor­i­ty of men are suit­able as polyg­y­n­ic patri­archs, most men are too lazy, igno­rant and selfish.
    Most women are (because of cul­tur­al influ­ences) too com­peta­tive and too inse­cure to be in a polyg­y­n­ic marriage.
    Those last two fac­tors com­bined with the ratio of the sex­es means that good poly­genic mar­riage in our cur­rent envi­ron­ment would only be in the minority.
    It isn’t hard to see that enforced monogamy, wom­ens ‘rights’, the wel­fare sys­tem, and gen­er­al nar­cis­sism has all con­tributed to the decline of the West.
    Fam­i­ly destruc­tion and social decay is a snow­balling effect of Fatherlessness.
    Look up sta­tis­tics relat­ed to father­less­ness and the demo­graph­ic winter.
    As a sep­a­rate com­ment I will include a ram­bling essay on these matters

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
11. 

    alex

    July 16, 2009

    THE WEST IS LOST
    This is a social com­ment rather than a bib­li­cal­ly based one.

    Our cur­rent sit­u­a­tion in the ‘west­ern’ and ‘devel­oped’ world can only sup­port itself for about four gen­er­a­tions, we are prob­a­bly in that fourth generation.

    What hap­pens next is the issue. Obvi­ous­ly the ’sta­tus quo’ is only a snap­shot in the tur­bu­lence of life. Ulti­mate­ly only those which have a strong nuclear fam­i­ly will trans­mit suc­cess­ful val­ues to the next gen­er­a­tion with­out the sup­port of the wel­fare state. 

    The wel­fare state we have to assume will dis­con­tin­ue, due to;
    the grey­ing of the populations,
    the sub­se­quent decline of the econ­o­my (no need to work, sur­plus cars and housing
    from the gray­ing population)
    the dimin­ish­ing con­sci­en­tious­ness of deca­dent generations

    If look­ing at the long term multi­gen­er­a­tional out­come, the less suit­ed to sur­vival self destruct, then our only hope is to give the few who can pro­duce suc­cess­ful gen­er­a­tions the free­dom to mul­ti­ply to their max­i­mum ability.

    By this I mean whole­some non self­ish patri­archy and polygyny.

    I am not a mormon 

    There is an urban leg­end that goes some­thing like this;

    Once upon a time sev­er­al decades ago the Ford Motor Com­pa­ny toured the coun­try buy­ing bro­ken cars from the car dumps. They then care­ful­ly trans­port­ed these old cars back to their Research and Devel­op­ment facil­i­ties in Dear­born. Care­ful­ly and metic­u­lous­ly these cars were dis­as­sem­bled and all parts giv­en a detailed exam­i­na­tion and appraisal. The ques­tion hard­ly needs to asked “What were they look­ing for? what were they hop­ing to achieve?”.
    Of course they were plan­ning to improve the product.
    The ques­tions to ask how­ev­er are;
    From whose per­spec­tive are these improvements?
    Who ben­e­fits from these improvements?
    Think clear­ly, be ratio­nal, remove emo­tion from your reasoning.
    The Ford Motor Com­pa­ny makes cars to make a prof­it, it is a busi­ness, an improved prod­uct is a more prof­itable product.
    After care­ful­ly check­ing through all the com­po­nent parts of these cars they were able to find all the parts that nev­er or rarely broke, these they re-engi­neered to be lighter, cheap­er, eas­i­er to make. 

    So real­ly they were trying
    (from the car own­ers point of view)
    to make the cars
    worse.

    Bear­ing that in mind

    There is an almost myth­i­cal fam­i­ly called the Jukes, they lived on the edge of civ­i­lized soci­ety, many mem­bers of this fam­i­ly had been through the prison sys­tem. A prison bureau­crat (Dug­dale) in 1870 start­ed to study the fam­i­ly going back through the gen­er­a­tions to 1745, assess­ing that they required more help. In 1915 a fur­ther study was under­tak­en at the behest of the Carnegie insti­tute (Estabrook). The study is detailed and depress­ing, ful­ly one quar­ter of all chil­dren died before adult­hood. Their sub­se­quent adult­hood was bare­ly bet­ter and paints a bleak pic­ture of short mis­er­able lives ruined by self­ish­ness, igno­rance, immoral­i­ty, alco­hol, drugs and vio­lence. Eight gen­er­a­tions and over 150 years with hard­ly a ray of sunshine.

    Now fast for­ward from the 1700s, 1800s and the ear­ly 1900s to our enlight­ened 21^st century.

    Look care­ful­ly at the peo­ple-mold­ing forces in our soci­ety, look at films, TV, books, news­pa­pers, video games, polit­i­cal spin and most impor­tant­ly the state edu­ca­tion of our pre­cious future generation. 

    Think clear­ly, be ratio­nal, remove emo­tion from your reasoning.

    And you will find the mass­es are being con­di­tioned to be Jukes.
    Can­non fod­der, fac­to­ry work­ers and consumers.

    Breed­ing the bet­ter human the fam­i­ly friend­ly way!

    For­get eugen­ics, what about polygamy?

    Breed­ing pro­grams involve selec­tion of breed­ing partners.
    There are some fam­i­lies that for what­ev­er rea­son can be clas­si­fied as more successful.
    There are come fam­i­lies that for what­ev­er rea­son can be clas­si­fied as less successful.
    (As a clas­sic con­trast the Jukes/Edwards fam­i­lies study)

    Eugen­ics sug­gests inter­fer­ing with peo­ples’ free­dom to breed and live as they wish, which is bad, how­ev­er giv­ing a bit more free­dom can’t be bad and yet could have pos­i­tive results.

    Study­ing the Jukes fam­i­ly would sug­gest that Jukes fer­til­i­ty was not lim­it­ed by the social norm of monogamy.

    How­ev­er most Edwards’ fam­i­ly mem­bers would have balked at the idea of mul­ti­ple wives, and yet could have suc­cess­ful­ly raised a larg­er num­ber of chil­dren and instilled their ‘suc­cess­ful’ values.

    What about giv­ing the suc­cess­ful breed­ers the advan­tage and remove this one sided monogamy handicap!

    No more mar­i­tal social­ism, let us bring the free mar­ket econ­o­my to the mar­riage mar­ket place.

    Not ‘he is king who can’ but ‘he is patri­arch who can’, evil flour­ish­es when good men do nothing.

    Com­pul­so­ry monogamy is a false and soci­ety destroy­ing con­cept. It is not that there must be polygamy, but just that there shouldn’t be enforced monogamy on those who could sup­port more than one wife and the rel­e­vant num­ber of extra children. 

    These days there are very few men who would vol­un­teer for this bur­den­some con­tri­bu­tion to soci­ety because the hearts of men have grown cold. We live in a time of soci­etal destruc­tion and yet good patri­ar­chal polygamy is condemned.
    Let us get rid of tax­es, wel­fare and easy cred­it and let the best hus­band win!

    Ulti­mate­ly sure­ly the fam­i­lies that raise more healthy edu­cat­ed work­ing chil­dren should be free to pros­per over the drunk­ard self­ish self-destruc­tive frac­tured fam­i­lies. Just give a good patri­ar­chal polyg­a­mist a dozen gen­er­a­tions, and see what happens.

    The fall of the Per­sians, Greeks and Romans can be linked with woman’s rights, monogamy and the decline of the family.

    Last year a music video out of Québec became the most-down­loaded video in Canada—although it was in French (one ver­sion with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles). The sec­ond stan­za said:

    “Your great-great grand­moth­er had 15 children;
    your great-grand­moth­er had about the same.
    Your grand­moth­er had three, that was enough;
    your moth­er didn’t want any—you were an accident.
    And you, lit­tle lady, you go from boyfriend to boyfriend;
    and when you mess up, you get an abortion.
    And at night you dream of a big table, sur­round­ed by children
    And you wake up crying.”

    The two para­bles of; the wise and fool­ish vir­gins and the talents.

    The wise vir­gins wait­ed stead­fast­ly and were pre­pared, when the oppor­tu­ni­ty for mar­riage came they took it. The fool­ish vir­gins missed the oppor­tu­ni­ty and were left on the shelf.

    In the para­ble of the tal­ents three men were giv­en an oppor­tu­ni­ty two were faith­ful and were fruit­ful with what they were giv­en. One was pas­sive and fear­ful and there was no fruit, thus what had been giv­en to him was tak­en away and giv­en to the faith­ful man.

    So many women these days miss good mar­riage oppor­tu­ni­ties because they are not pre­pared (too imma­ture) or selfish.

    We have men who take a woman and yet out of pas­siv­i­ty, self­ish­ness and fear will not make her a wife or moth­er. We have oth­er men who take a woman make her a wife and moth­er, but do not tend or keep her. They then care­less­ly loose her or worse aban­don her. Sure­ly it must be cor­rect that he that cares for a wife, tends her and makes her blos­som should be giv­en those that are abandoned?

    To say that all men must at the most only have one wife, is like say­ing that all women at the most must only have three chil­dren. Obvi­ous­ly some women are very good moth­ers and if they had more chil­dren then that is only a greater good. Some women are very bad moth­ers and their chil­dren are tak­en from them and giv­en to those who can look after them. Some hus­bands are good, some are not. Should we pre­vent respon­si­ble hus­bands from tak­ing care of more than one wife? Why should they have the same lim­it as the bad hus­band? Of course bad hus­bands don’t play by the mat­ri­mo­ni­al laws any­way, only the good ones.

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
12. 

    alex

    July 16, 2009

    Just yet anoth­er com­ment on elders etc being “hus­band of one wife” .

    Some peo­ple sug­gest it means at least one wife, as in a a sin­gle per­son gen­er­al­ly has less rela­tion­ship matu­ri­ty and expe­ri­ence, and is also more like­ly to be sex­u­al­ly vuner­a­ble (Look at Catholic priests).

    Anoth­er take on this, is that at that time there was a Roman law that Fathers of more than 3 chil­dren were exempt from nor­mal com­pul­sary civic duties, the assump­tion being that a man with more than one wife has numer­ous and seri­ous fam­i­ly responsibilities.

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
13. 

    Andrew

    July 17, 2009

    I under­stand what you are say­ing, each mar­riage is an indi­vid­ual mar­riage and so ful­fils the def­i­n­i­tion. I can­not agree with this. Mar­riage is one man one woman per­pet­u­al­ly, to be mar­ried to anoth­er woman is to be mar­ried to more than one woman and so not mar­ried. Mar­riage is the union of one man one woman into one flesh. The union per­sists at all times whilst the con­di­tions of the covenant are kept.
    A man can­not mar­ry anoth­er because the union to his wife is real, he has been made one with her and can­not be made one with anoth­er whilst the con­di­tions of the covenant are kept. 

    If you want to argue that each mar­riage is indi­vid­ual ‚to try and meet the def­i­n­i­tion, then you must explain how one man can be in union with more than one woman at the same time and in the same relationship. 

    You need to explain what you mean by tru­ly married. 

    Stat­ing that cer­tain men took more than one wife is well and good but that does not advance your argu­ment. No one is dis­put­ing that polygamy exists or that those that have entered into polyg­a­mist mar­riages be referred to as husbands/wives. The fact the Bible refers to such rela­tion­ships with mar­riage nouns does­n’t make any dif­fer­ence to the argu­ment I have made, you are assum­ing that the Bible is always pre­cise with it’s lan­guage and we know this is not always the case. In these vers­es polyg­y­ny is a present real­i­ty and I would say that is why such lan­guage is used. For your argu­ment to work you need to demon­strate that the exis­tence of polyg­y­ny and the use of mar­riage nouns is the same thing as accep­tance of polygyny.

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
14. 

    alex

    July 17, 2009

    In reply to Andrews last post;

    Is the “Bride of Christ” a col­lec­tive term?
    In oth­er­words a col­lec­tion of indi­vid­u­als mar­ried to Christ?
    For of course hus­bands are to love their wives as Christ loves the Church.

    I do won­der if pre Con­stan­tine New Tes­ta­ment writ­ings might trans­late dif­fer­ent­ly, it is so easy to see a celebacy/serial monogamy influ­ence drift­ing through from Baby­lon­ian cul­ture via the Greek Empire into the Roman social struc­ture and each time this influ­ence became ingrained in the val­ues of the soci­ety that soci­ety decayed.

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
15. 

    Andrew

    July 17, 2009

    Alex,

    If you are mak­ing an argu­ment I wish you would make it rather than leav­ing me to fill in the blanks. 

    I could guess, of course, what you are get­ting at, and I’m sure you think you’re being clever, but before I respond I would like you to spell it out for me.

    I would be inter­est­ed to read your case from Baby­lon­ian and Clas­si­cal literature.

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
16. 

    Rick Beckman

    July 17, 2009

    In response to Andrew:

    I under­stand what you are say­ing, each mar­riage is an indi­vid­ual mar­riage and so ful­fils the def­i­n­i­tion. I can­not agree with this. Mar­riage is one man one woman per­pet­u­al­ly, to be mar­ried to anoth­er woman is to be mar­ried to more than one woman and so not mar­ried. Mar­riage is the union of one man one woman into one flesh. The union per­sists at all times whilst the con­di­tions of the covenant are kept.

    What “con­di­tions of the covenant”? In my mar­riage, I am covenant­ed with my wife to “for­sake all oth­ers.” I rec­og­nize that that is not a bib­li­cal require­ment but is a vow I made to Alicia.

    If you can show me the Scrip­tures which teach that if a man has more than one mar­riage, then he is real­ly not mar­ried, I’d like to hear ’em. If you can show me the Scrip­tures which teach that monogamy is a require­ment for mar­riage, I’d like to hear ’em. As it is, no such Scrip­tures have been pre­sent­ed, and thus no bib­li­cal argu­ment has been pre­sent­ed to which to reply.

    A man can­not mar­ry anoth­er because the union to his wife is real, he has been made one with her and can­not be made one with anoth­er whilst the con­di­tions of the covenant are kept.

    Agreed that the union is real. Abra­ham’s union to Sarah was just as real as his union to Hagar. A wife is a wife is a wife. The Scrip­tures say “wife,” and I’m not bold enough to tell God that He was wrong for describ­ing those women that way.

    If you want to argue that each mar­riage is indi­vid­ual ‚to try and meet the def­i­n­i­tion, then you must explain how one man can be in union with more than one woman at the same time and in the same relationship.

    I don’t have to explain that any more than I have to describe how I can be “one” with my wife for my mar­riage to her to be valid. I can’t describe how I’m unit­ed with God through Christ oth­er than stat­ing that it is so; the inabil­i­ty to describe it does­n’t make the real­i­ty any less real. The Scrip­tures affirm that polyg­y­ny is made up of valid mar­riages. You affirm that they are not. The bur­den is not upon the Scrip­tures to prove them­selves to you.

    You need to explain what you mean by tru­ly married.

    To be tru­ly mar­ried is to unite with some­one of the oppo­site gen­der for life. The rea­son behind the mar­riage is irrel­e­vant (it can be to avoid for­ni­ca­tion, for mat­ters of prac­ti­cal­i­ty, arranged mar­riages, etc.). No cer­e­mo­ny is required. No civ­il or reli­gious recog­ni­tion is required. To be mar­ried in the eyes of God is remark­ably, beau­ti­ful­ly sim­ple. And the Word of God repeat­ed­ly affirms that a man may be mar­ried to wives, plur­al, if such is his desire.

    Stat­ing that cer­tain men took more than one wife is well and good but that does not advance your argu­ment. No one is dis­put­ing that polygamy exists or that those that have entered into polyg­a­mist mar­riages be referred to as husbands/wives. The fact the Bible refers to such rela­tion­ships with mar­riage nouns doesn’t make any dif­fer­ence to the argu­ment I have made, you are assum­ing that the Bible is always pre­cise with it’s lan­guage and we know this is not always the case. In these vers­es polyg­y­ny is a present real­i­ty and I would say that is why such lan­guage is used. For your argu­ment to work you need to demon­strate that the exis­tence of polyg­y­ny and the use of mar­riage nouns is the same thing as accep­tance of polygyny.

    That God does not con­demn polyg­y­ny in the Law is evi­dence that polyg­y­ny is accept­ed. Your argu­ment that polyg­y­ny is a sin or oth­er­wise moral­ly wrong is that which is whol­ly lack­ing in bib­li­cal sup­port, but you’re doing very lit­tle to rec­ti­fy that here.

    I also dis­agree that the Scrip­tures use less-than-pre­cise lan­guage. If God does not mean “wife” when He says “wife” (there are plen­ty of Hebrew/Greek words to refer to non-wife women), then how can we be sure of any­thing that He says? You can­not dis­re­gard a por­tion of what God has said as impre­cise because you dis­agree with it, for such is a dan­ger­ous mis­han­dling of the Word.

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
17. 

    Hugh McBryde

    July 17, 2009

    Rick, not the least of which was CHRIST stat­ing that the woman at the well was not with a man who was her hus­band at the moment, essen­tial­ly say­ing, “you’re not his wife.” He did say she’d been mar­ried many times before (sequen­tial­ly) and that they WERE her husbands.

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
18. 

    Andrew

    July 18, 2009

    I have pre­sent­ed the only Scrip­tur­al argu­ment nec­es­sary to my posi­tion. Mar­riage is the union of one man and one woman into one flesh (Gen­e­sis 2 & Matthew 19.5).

    The mar­ried par­ties, with respect to this rela­tion­ship, are at all times and places one flesh. It is per­pet­u­al and indis­sol­u­ble except through death or infidelity.

    A man mar­ries a sec­ond wife. Who becomes one flesh? The hus­band and first wife are one already, who is unit­ed in this sec­ond mar­riage? What­ev­er your answer, how does this fit into the def­i­n­i­tion of marriage?

    I am not say­ing I know or under­stand all the impli­ca­tions of union in one flesh but it is quite easy to affirm that such a union can exist one at a time but when you add in wife after wife it is not pos­si­ble to main­tain that mar­riage is the union of one man and one woman into one flesh. This is the dif­fi­cul­ty you must address. 

    A crude anal­o­gy; a bicy­cle has two wheels, if anoth­er wheel is added, so there are three wheels, it is no longer a bicy­cle, if a wheel is tak­en away from the first bicy­cle and joined with anoth­er wheel to a frame to form a new bicy­cle then the first bicy­cle has only one wheel and so is no longer a bicy­cle. The whole thing is a tau­tol­ogy, a bicy­cle by def­i­n­i­tion has two wheels and any­thing that pur­ports to be a bicy­cle but does not have two wheels can­not be a bicy­cle. Mar­riage is the union of one man and one woman into one flesh.

    Union with Christ is an inter­est­ing aside from this ques­tion, the dif­fer­ence, one of them, between it and mar­riage is that believ­ers are unit­ed in the Church, so you have three rela­tions; Christ, the believ­er and the Church. With mar­riage there are two, hus­band and wife.

    That polygamy is men­tioned with­out con­dem­na­tion in the Bible does not prove that polygamy is accept­ed to be true. I would say it was tol­er­at­ed but I am bound to say this because of my under­stand­ing of mar­riage in Gen­e­sis 2 and Matthew 19. This gets us no further.

    Per­haps impre­cise is not the right word; I am refer­ring to cul­tur­al accom­mo­da­tion and lit­er­ary forms. I am not dis­put­ing that Israel engaged in polyg­y­ny or that they thought it was okay or even possible. 

    This whole debate cen­tres upon what mar­riage is, I have argued that polygamy, by def­i­n­i­tion, can­not be mar­riage and you have said noth­ing to dis­suade me from this posi­tion. God affirms monogamy in creation.

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
    1. 

       Matthew

       February 17, 2017

       Okay so let’s evaluate…the scrip­ture says the two will become one right? And that is the basis of your argu­ment cor­rect? So then my ques­tion to you is by who’s hand did God chose to write the book of geni­sis and how many wives did that per­son have? The answer is Moses and the num­ber is 3

       Error hap­pened.

       Reply
19. 

    Hugh McBryde

    July 18, 2009

    Andrew, where is it stat­ed that a man can­not have many sep­a­rate mar­riages and many sep­a­rate “one flesh” rela­tion­ships? Even if you class them all as one “one flesh” rela­tion­ship, envi­sion­ing mar­riage like a blob of mer­cury, why is it that you can­not draw oth­ers into that state? You fer­vent­ly believe that this can­not hap­pen but we can­not be asked to sub­scribe to that which you and many oth­er sim­ply believe. You have to show your work.

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
20. 

    Rick Beckman

    July 18, 2009

    Part of the def­i­n­i­tion of sal­va­tion is that when a per­son is saved, they become “one with” and unit­ed to Christ. If a sec­ond per­son gets saved, how does that fit into the def­i­n­i­tion of salvation?

    Being “one flesh” with some­one does not in any way pre­clude being “one flesh” with some­one else. The Bible does­n’t define it that way, and your assump­tion that it does needs a bit more of an argu­ment than the sim­ple state­ment of the con­clu­sion. In mul­ti­ple cas­es through­out the Scrip­tures, mul­ti­ple women are said to be the wives — not the pre­tenders or any­thing else — of just one man.

    What you must do, Andrew, is decide whether these women were tru­ly wives, or if the Holy Spir­it was mis­tak­en when He inspired the word “wife” or “wives.” There were, after all, oth­er words that could have been used.

    Next, if those were tru­ly mar­riages (hus­band to mul­ti­ple wives) as the Scrip­tures teach, then the ques­tion becomes, was it sin­ful? So the next thing you would need to do is to appeal to the Law, for sin is trans­gres­sion of the Law. I can show you mul­ti­ple points in the Law where polyg­y­ny was account­ed for — once where it was man­dat­ed(!); can you show even one where it was con­demned? If not, why not? Sure­ly God is not forgetful.

    And yes, I can accept that you might say “God sim­ply allowed it.” After all, we have a pas­sage about divorce in which Jesus says God per­mit­ted it “because of the hard­ness of their hearts.” Fair enough, so far as divorce is con­cerned. Polyg­y­ny was­n’t man­dat­ed in the Law because of the hard­ness of any­one’s hearts; it was per­mit­ted because it was not a sin, and it was man­dat­ed (Levi­rate mar­riage) to pre­serve fam­i­lies. The Scrip­tures nev­er ascribe hard­ness of hearts or any oth­er such thing as the rea­son why so many peo­ple were polygynists.

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
21. 

    Andrew

    July 19, 2009

    Believ­ers are unit­ed, or joined, to Christ and each oth­er. Your crit­i­cism, for this rea­son, does not apply. Union with Christ includes my per­son­al union with him but also my union to the elect. Robert Dab­ney says there are three ways in which we are unit­ed to Christ, legal, spir­i­tu­al and the com­mu­nion of the saints. Writes Dab­ney ‘Every soul that is unit­ed tru­ly to Christ is unit­ed to his brethren. Hence, fol­lows an iden­ti­ty of spir­it and prin­ci­ple, a com­mu­ni­ty of aims, and a one­ness of affec­tion and sym­pa­thy’ pg 614 Sys­tem­at­ic The­ol­o­gy.

    This union exists per­pet­u­al­ly and indis­sol­ubly and believ­ers are brought into it. All believ­ers par­tic­i­pate in the same union and so are unit­ed to each other. 

    (A) Mar­riage, how­ev­er, is a union where two are made one (Gen­e­sis 2.24, Matthew 19.4−5, Eph­esians 5.31). This is to say that the union must include two peo­ple only and these two peo­ple are made one in a par­tic­u­lar sense. I think you agree with this, if not cor­rect me. 

    (B) You have also said that this does not exclude mul­ti­ple mar­riages but that each mar­riage or union makes the hus­band and wife into one in a par­tic­u­lar sense. At each mar­riage a sep­a­rate union is created. 

    I have argued that this is impos­si­ble because you can­not have two unions of the same rela­tion­ship that exist sep­a­rate­ly and one per­son par­tic­i­pates in both. I have also argued that because mar­riage is the union of one man and one woman into one in a par­tic­u­lar sense the sec­ond wife can­not par­tic­i­pate in this rela­tion­ship by def­i­n­i­tion. I tried to show both of these with the bike anal­o­gy, lim­it­ed though it is. 

    (A) negates (B) and (B) negates (A). You can­not believe both to be true. If I am wrong, show it. 

    I know you have made oth­er argu­ments for the accept­abil­i­ty of polygamy, for­give me for not address­ing these more ful­ly. There seems lit­tle point since we dis­agree at the beginning.

    I am also mak­ing this my last post on the sub­ject as I do not intend to repeat myself. I have enjoyed the exchange, it has made me think about some­thing I pre­vi­ous­ly would have sum­mar­i­ly dismissed/ignored.

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
22. 

    LMT

    July 19, 2009

    Very inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion indeed.

    I have also inves­ti­gat­ed polyg­y­ny recent­ly in an attempt to defend what I had been taught my entire life by soci­ety and the church. I lost the bat­tle. There is not much to add to what has already been stat­ed oth­er than there is scrip­ture to defend the posi­tion that a man may become one flesh with more than one woman, and it comes from the Apos­tle Paul:

    1 Corinthi­ans 6:16 Or do you not know that he who is joined to a pros­ti­tute becomes one body with her? For, as it is writ­ten, “The two will become one flesh.”

    Paul was telling men “he” (regard­less of their mar­i­tal sta­tus) that hav­ing sex with a pros­ti­tute con­sti­tut­ed becom­ing one flesh with the pros­ti­tute. I also find it inter­est­ing that the scrip­tures always refer to becom­ing one flesh from a sex­u­al union, and nev­er state that we con­tin­ue as one flesh because of the union. It is abun­dant­ly clear that dur­ing a sex­u­al union you become one flesh, but you do not remain in that state otherwise.

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
23. 

    Hugh McBryde

    July 19, 2009

    Andrew Said:

    (A) Mar­riage, how­ev­er, is a union where two are made one (Gen­e­sis 2.24, Matthew 19.4−5, Eph­esians 5.31). This is to say that the union must include two peo­ple only and these two peo­ple are made one in a par­tic­u­lar sense. I think you agree with this, if not cor­rect me.

    I can go along with this def­i­n­i­tion, and I’m not entire­ly sure it’s not the cor­rect one, but how is it that you elim­i­nate oth­er mar­riages that are con­cur­rent with an exist­ing one? Romans 7 does it for the woman, but no such pas­sage exists for a man. Scrip­ture clear­ly teach­es man/woman role dif­fer­ences, so claim­ing it’s not egal­i­tar­i­an, here, in this life is unper­sua­sive and no one, no one at all in the Old Tes­ta­ment “got it” that sup­pos­ed­ly mar­riage was only to be one man one woman to the exclu­sion of all oth­ers or that mar­riages could not be mul­ti­plied. You’re mak­ing a loop of rea­son­ing you still don’t see, and that is that “one flesh” = mar­riage = exclu­sive monogamy.

    You then go on to cite the union of all believ­ers, and then turn to cite the impos­si­bil­i­ty of mul­ti­ple unions. Do you read what you write? You say it’s not the “same kind” it would seem from read­ing your post, but you acknowl­edge the union of many into one is cer­tain­ly pos­si­ble on some lev­el, and then claim with­out scrip­ture sup­port by human action, con­dem­na­tion or exam­ple that this applies to marriages.

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
24. 

    Philip

    July 19, 2009

    Mr. McBryde,
    If polyg­y­ny is such a desir­able con­di­tion for men, why is it that you are monogamous?
    You report that you are cur­rent­ly in your third mar­riage — what hap­pened to the oth­er two wives?
    Why is it that you report that when you mar­ried your cur­rent (third) Catholic wife, that you took a vow to refrain from tak­ing a sec­ond wife dur­ing your cur­rent marriage?

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
25. 

    Hugh McBryde

    July 19, 2009

    Philip, well, you’ve got that wrong, I have been mar­ried twice, once con­cur­rent­ly with both, and the first one left me and com­mit­ted adul­tery. In that order. I am not in the process of active­ly seek­ing a third wife. My cur­rent wife entered into a polyg­y­nous rela­tion­ship with her eyes wide open, she has set cer­tain con­di­tions for a third wife, which would be a total of two at the same time, which I am at this point, unable to meet. They con­sist of mate­r­i­al needs. In addi­tion I believe in parental per­mis­sion, some­thing most men are not like­ly to give me and there is the mat­ter that I must do sas those in the seat of Moses tell me to do, even if they are wrong. 

    I’m not like­ly to become a hus­band of more than one wife at the same time, any­time in the near future, and I grow old, so prob­a­bly not ever. Who­ev­er you are, you need to get your facts straight. In addi­tion, please do not sup­pose that you are “expos­ing” some­thing about me. Rick for instance knows all these things. The source of any infor­ma­tion about me avail­able on the inter­net has prob­a­bly come direct­ly from me. You clear­ly count­ed wrong in arriv­ing at “three wives.” I’ve been mar­ried only twice.

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
26. 

    kristarella

    July 21, 2009

    It’s been inter­est­ing to read the dis­cus­sion and think about this top­ic. I don’t have much inter­est in talk­ing about the rights and wrongs of the top­ic, this has been done to some length. How­ev­er, two slight­ly tan­gen­tial ques­tions have come to mind while read­ing these com­ments: if any­one cares to share their thoughts on them feel free.

    1/ LMT said

    1 Corinthi­ans 6:16 Or do you not know that he who is joined to a pros­ti­tute becomes one body with her? For, as it is writ­ten, “The two will become one flesh.”Paul was telling men “he” (regard­less of their mar­i­tal sta­tus) that hav­ing sex with a pros­ti­tute con­sti­tut­ed becom­ing one flesh with the prostitute.

    In light of the descrip­tion of Isaac’s mar­riage… what is it that con­sti­tutes a mar­riage in God’s eyes? It seems like Isaac had sex with Rebekah and she there­fore became his wife, and yet a man can have sex with a pros­ti­tute, be one flesh with her, but it does­n’t seem to be con­sid­ered a mar­riage. What’s up with that?

    2/ Hugh said

    how is it that you elim­i­nate oth­er mar­riages that are con­cur­rent with an exist­ing one? Romans 7 does it for the woman, but no such pas­sage exists for a man.

    So, it’s okay for a man to have more than one wife, but not a woman to have more than one hus­band? I think this main­ly springs to mind because the words polygamy and polyg­y­ny have been used (seem­ing­ly) inter­change­ably, but not all polygamy is polygyny.

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
27. 

    Hugh McBryde

    July 21, 2009

    Yes, it is per­fect­ly okay for a man to have more than one wife, but a woman may not have more than one hus­band. Out of def­er­ence to those who can­not under­stand the dif­fer­ence, I occa­sion­al­ly use the less pre­cise word “polygamy” to describe what is prac­ticed in the Bible but in all cas­es I only advo­cate polyg­y­ny and only claim that the Bible endors­es polyg­y­ny. Some make the argu­ment that “polygamy” means “many mar­riages” and in that a “polyandry” is not a mar­riage and nei­ther is a “clan mar­riage” real­ly a mar­riage that “polygamy” is still apt.

    Not all “one flesh” rela­tion­ships are mar­riage, but all mar­riages make “one flesh.” For­ni­ca­tion makes “one flesh” where no such rela­tion­ship should exist. Con­cu­bi­nage makes a “one flesh” rela­tion­ship but there is no mar­riage. Mar­riage is a for­mal con­trac­tu­al rela­tion­ship between fam­i­lies or capa­ble par­ties. A man who has left his home in mar­riage is a capa­ble par­ty, a wid­ow or divorced woman of whom it is said in law has all her oaths bind her, is a capa­ble par­ty. The wid­ow or divorced woman would be the excep­tions to the need for parental per­mis­sion. The divorced woman rep­re­sents eli­gi­bil­i­ty prob­lems as quite often she has caused the divorce and thus may well rep­re­sent an adul­tery in mar­ry­ing again.

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
28. 

    LMT

    July 21, 2009

    Krista.…there are three ways to take a wife…first it is impor­tant to under­stand that we as Chris­tians are all Jews…yes Jews, graft­ed in by the grace of God. Jesus stat­ed that God could make descen­dants of Abra­ham from rocks if He want­ed to.

    Romans 2:28–29 For no one is a Jew who is mere­ly one out­ward­ly, nor is cir­cum­ci­sion out­ward and phys­i­cal. But a Jew is one inward­ly, and cir­cum­ci­sion is a mat­ter of the heart, by the Spir­it, not by the let­ter. His praise is not from man but from God.

    Romans 11:17–24 But if some of the branch­es were bro­ken off, and you, although a wild olive shoot, were graft­ed in among the oth­ers and now share in the nour­ish­ing root of the olive tree, do not be arro­gant toward the branch­es. If you are, remem­ber it is not you who sup­port the root, but the root that sup­ports you. Then you will say, “Branch­es were bro­ken off so that I might be graft­ed in.” That is true. They were bro­ken off because of their unbe­lief, but you stand fast through faith. So do not become proud, but fear. For if God did not spare the nat­ur­al branch­es, nei­ther will he spare you. Note then the kind­ness and the sever­i­ty of God: sever­i­ty toward those who have fall­en, but God’s kind­ness to you, pro­vid­ed you con­tin­ue in his kind­ness. Oth­er­wise you too will be cut off. And even they, if they do not con­tin­ue in their unbe­lief, will be graft­ed in, for God has the pow­er to graft them in again. For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and graft­ed, con­trary to nature, into a cul­ti­vat­ed olive tree, how much more will these, the nat­ur­al branch­es, be graft­ed back into their own olive tree.

    As such, we are to hold fast to the laws as Jesus taught us we should do:

    Matthew 5:17–19 “Do not think that I have come to abol­ish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abol­ish them but to ful­fill them. For tru­ly, I say to you, until heav­en and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accom­plished. There­fore who­ev­er relax­es one of the least of these com­mand­ments and teach­es oth­ers to do the same will be called least in the king­dom of heav­en, but who­ev­er does them and teach­es them will be called great in the king­dom of heaven.

    * who ever does them and teach­es them…

    To those that under­stand they are bound by Jew­ish law betrothal is the way a man takes a wife. There are three meth­ods used. First a man can sim­ply ask a woman to be his wife and if she excepts they become betrothed which is the same as being mar­ried with­out the abil­i­ty to join sex­u­al­ly. Sec­ond a man may pay the “Bride Price” to the fam­i­ly of the woman who grants him the right to mar­ry (usu­al­ly the wom­an’s con­sent is sought as well but it is not required) this is what you are speak­ing of — Isaac received his bride by a mes­sen­ger pay­ing a bride price for her and her con­sent was asked by her fam­i­ly. Third when a man and woman join as one flesh dur­ing a sex­u­al union the man or woman can request that they become mar­ried. Once a sim­ple cer­e­mo­ny is per­formed they are ful­ly hus­band and wife, and yes…there is a con­tract involved with the ceremony.

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
29. 

    LMT

    July 21, 2009

    Oops…meant to leave you this link…

    http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=995&letter=B&search=betrothal

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
30. 

    LMT

    July 21, 2009

    Anoth­er inter­est­ing point…

    Deuteron­o­my 23:2 “No one born of a for­bid­den union may enter the assem­bly of the LORD. Even to the tenth gen­er­a­tion, none of his descen­dants may enter the assem­bly of the LORD.
    Leah was Jacob’s first wife even though it may have been by decep­tion on the part of Laban. Jacob nev­er at any time claimed that Leah was not his wife. With this in mind, if hav­ing anoth­er wife is either for­ni­ca­tion or adul­tery half of the tribes of Israel would have been for­bid­den from enter­ing the “assem­bly of the LORD” (being part of the con­gre­ga­tion) since they were by Jacobs oth­er wives — Gen­e­sis Chap­ter 30.
    Notice that Deuteron­o­my 23:2 states “none of his descen­dants may enter the assem­bly of the LORD.” None means none…ever.
    Most cer­tain­ly the six tribes of Israel were not pro­hib­it­ed in any way from being part of the “assem­bly of the LORD” which makes it quite sim­ple to ascer­tain that hav­ing more than one wife is nei­ther for­ni­ca­tion or Adul­tery, much less a “for­bid­den union” of any type.

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
31. 

    Hugh McBryde

    July 22, 2009

    Rachel-Ben­jamin-Saul-Saul/­Paul…

    Leah-Judah-David-Jesus.….

    Hmmm, this appears not to be an issue of “For­bid­den Unions.” Thanks for that.

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
32. 

    Rick Beckman

    July 22, 2009

    Does “for­bid­den union” refer to any­thing oth­er than a Jew mar­ry­ing a non-Jew? The Hebrew word in use in that verse means “mon­grel” accord­ing to Strong and is trans­lat­ed such as “bas­tard” in the likes of the King James Version.

    The argu­ment as stat­ed is pret­ty force­ful, but I won­der how well it stands up to under scruti­ny.

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
33. 

    LMT

    July 22, 2009

    It can mean that, how­ev­er, it is typ­i­cal­ly tak­en to mean chil­dren born out of wed­lock. There are numer­ous com­men­taries on this, which yield numer­ous opin­ions. Gen­er­al­ly it is thought of to be chil­dren pro­duced out­side of mar­riage in rela­tion­ships such as adul­tery, for­ni­ca­tion, or incest. In any case the Bible is clear that adul­tery, for­ni­ca­tion, and incest are sin­ful and for­bid­den. (Just a side note: This may give us an answer as to why the child from the adul­ter­ous rela­tion­ship with David and Bathshe­ba was tak­en by the Lord. 2 Samuel 12:14 Nev­er­the­less, because by this deed you have utter­ly scorned the LORD, the child who is born to you shall die.” Can’t help but won­der if that was because of Deuteron­o­my 23:2)

    Barnes:
    Deu 23:2
    A bas­tard — Prob­a­bly, a child born of incest or adultery.
    Even to his tenth gen­er­a­tion — i. e. (see the next verse and Neh_13:1), for­ev­er. Ten is the num­ber of per­fec­tion and completeness.

    ממזר
    mamzêr
    mam-zare’
    From an unused root mian. to alien­ate; a mon­grel, that is, born of a Jew­ish father and a hea­then moth­er: — bastard.

    “born of a Jew­ish father and a hea­then moth­er” is sim­ply giv­ing an exam­ple of a mon­grel and is not the entire def­i­n­i­tion giv­en. The word also means to alien­ate, and bas­tard — which sim­ply means ille­git­i­mate. Any child born out­side of mar­riage would be con­sid­ered illegitimate. 

    “A bas­tard is an ille­git­i­mate child, and the word is also used as a deroga­to­ry term for an unpleas­ant per­son. The term can also mean a mon­grel.” Wikipedia

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
34. 

    Andrew

    July 23, 2009

    Hugh said:

    Andrew, where is it stat­ed that a man can­not have many sep­a­rate mar­riages and many sep­a­rate “one flesh” rela­tion­ships? Even if you class them all as one “one flesh” rela­tion­ship, envi­sion­ing mar­riage like a blob of mer­cury, why is it that you can­not draw oth­ers into that state?

    Do you mean by this there is the first mar­riage, one man one woman into one flesh, then a sec­ond mar­riage, one flesh (pre­dom­i­nat­ed as one man) one woman into one flesh?

    For clar­i­fi­ca­tion, is the above what you mean here? I had inter­pret­ed this dif­fer­ent­ly when I first read it and it occurred to me ear­li­er that I had misunderstood.

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
35. 

    alex

    July 23, 2009

    On the sub­ject of “for­bid­den union”, Samuel was the son of Han­nah who was a wife in a polyg­y­nous union, I am sure he was in the pres­ence of the Lord.

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
36. 

    alex

    July 23, 2009

    For a Chris­t­ian the only ulti­mate ques­tion about polyg­y­ny is; “Is polyg­y­ny moral before the eyes of God?”
    By study­ing the Old Tes­ta­ment the resound­ing answer is that a polyg­y­nous mar­riage can be sanc­tioned and blessed by God and because there is no con­dem­na­tion for nor­mal polyg­y­ny we know that it is not in itself immoral.

    The next ques­tion is; “Is it desirable?”
    The his­toric major pur­pose of mar­riage is to pro­vide a secure envi­ron­ment for weak­er mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty, that is women and chil­dren. Dur­ing our mod­ern era the wel­fare and jus­tice sys­tem (a prod­uct of a chris­tianised cul­ture) have filled these needs. We are now enter­ing a post mod­ern (neo hea­then) era where I believe Chris­t­ian mar­riage and fam­i­ly again will be the only safe haven for the weak­er mem­bers of society.
    Even where the wel­fare and jus­tice sys­tem have phys­i­cal­ly pro­vid­ed for the weak I believe that there are obvi­ous short­com­ings in the areas of emo­tion­al and spir­i­tu­al sup­port (pos­si­bly at one time par­tial­ly ful­filled by the denom­i­na­tion­al church­es, but not now). As a broad gen­er­al­i­sa­tion it is obvi­ous that the ris­ing gen­er­a­tions are dys­func­tion­al and I believe that this is a result of dys­func­tion­al marriages.
    I believe that polyg­y­ny must be hard­er to do right than monogamy, if all spous­es involved were humbly obe­di­ent to God and served each oth­er self­less­ly I am sure that greater bless­ing can be the result.
    It is clear that there is some­thing wrong with our cur­rent west­ern cul­ture the decline of the fam­i­ly being the strongest indi­ca­tor (demo­graph­ic win­ter, out of wed­lock births, adults liv­ing alone, nar­cis­sism, etc).

    The last ques­tion is; “Is it achiev­able?” And if not, should it be attempted?
    When you com­bine, self­ish­ness, inse­cu­ri­ty, pride, weak­ness, lazi­ness, deceit­ful­ness, etc your get a degen­er­ate human being. If you square the prod­uct of these you get a monog­a­mous mar­riage (hence all the divorce). If you cube the prod­uct of these you get a mar­riage of one hus­band and two wives. Of course it is only by God’s super­nat­ur­al help that we can do any­thing good so that does­n’t make it impossible.
    Monog­a­mous mar­riage and espe­cial­ly inten­tion­al­ly child­less mar­riage is an insti­tu­tion where the spous­es are only in it large­ly to take rather than give (mutu­al ben­e­fit). Good polyg­a­mous mar­riages are a greater oppor­tu­ni­ty for all involved to give more, which ulti­mate­ly is a greater exam­ple to the result­ing children.

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
37. 

    Hugh McBryde

    July 23, 2009

    Andrew, quite sim­ply what I mean is that these debates resem­ble close­ly the “These Go to ELEVEN!” dis­cus­sions in “This is Spinal Tap.” The num­ber of hash marks or num­bers beside them hav­ing NOTHING what­so­ev­er to do with the pow­er of the ampli­fi­er of the range of the poten­tiome­ter around which those num­bers are arranged.

    Our hap­less band mem­ber end­less­ly declares that his ampli­fi­er is more pow­er­ful, because it “Goes to ELEVEN!”

    Sim­i­lar­ly anti polygyny/pro monogamy only advo­cates con­tin­ue to declare “But they are ONE FLESH” as if that MEANT something. 

    Let me be BRUTALLY clear. NOTHING WHATSOEVER IS CONTAINED IN THE CONCEPT OF “ONE FLESH” that means it can­not be shared infi­nite­ly. 1+1=1, the rea­son­ing goes. What pre­vents the result­ing “one” to join again in the same 1+1 math? That’s the blog of mer­cury. Join two blobs and get one blob. Can you join that result­ing blob with anoth­er blob and get one? YES.

    The oth­er error per­pet­u­al­ly made by the Monogamy only advo­cate is based on set the­o­ry. You pro­pose that once two sets are uni­fied, there can­not be anoth­er inter­sec­tion with anoth­er set that is sep­a­rate. False. Just draw three cir­cles, two beside each oth­er, and then a big­ger one around both. Both inte­ri­or cir­cles are one with the big­ger cir­cle, but not one with one another.

    Or, draw two cir­cles, and draw one in between both that bare­ly over­laps each of the oth­er ones. Again, the mid­dle cir­cle shares a kind of one­ness with the oth­er two, and they are not even con­tained by the mid­dle one.

    Final­ly, envi­sion a pro­peller and tell me if the blades are one with one anoth­er? They are not. They are all one with the shaft, sep­a­rate from each oth­er and they form one propeller.

    In fact there are many many many ways to see “one­ness” that is not exclu­sive and closed but your west­ern­ized sen­si­bil­i­ties have been pro­grammed to hear “one flesh” and imme­di­ate­ly react with “One invi­o­late union that is closed to all oth­er additions.”

    When you can show me where that is declared as a def­i­n­i­tion of “one flesh” using scrip­ture, then it’s rel­e­vant to dis­cuss as a proof of monogamy. Oth­er­wise, we all agree that monog­a­mous mar­ried peo­ple are “one flesh.” What we dis­agree on is whether or not the man can go on to form oth­er “one flesh” rela­tion­ships while main­tain­ing oth­er “one flesh” rela­tion­ships. There is in fact NOTHING what­so­ev­er in scrip­ture that sug­gests you can’t. There are in fact many proofs that force the accep­tance of the idea that you can, not the least of which is this proof:

    God DOES say you CAN have two wives.

    You ARE one flesh with your wife (in scrip­ture wife and wives are exact­ly the same word)

    Since you are (not might be but ARE) one flesh with your wife/wives, the whole CONCEPT of “One Flesh” can­not pos­si­bly be used in a proof of monogamy, since it is clear­ly a rela­tion­ship with the poten­tial of shar­ing or unlim­it­ed con­cur­rent repetition.

    1

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
38. 

    Philip P

    July 24, 2009

    Mr. McBryde:
    I fail to see why any­one would view you as a legit­i­mate author­i­ty on mat­ters of Scrip­ture. What degrees do you hold ? What schol­ar­ly arti­cles have you pub­lished in the literature ?
    What text­books have you writ­ten ? Are you a min­is­ter ? What are your qual­i­fi­ca­tions in ancient Hebrew and Greek ?
    You describe your occu­pa­tion as ” auto­mo­tive ” and else­where ” financ­ing “. Are we to under­stand that you are a used car sales­man? It cer­tain­ly seems like that.
    You can’t even suc­cess­ful­ly con­duct a polyg­y­nous rela­tion­ship (your first wife ditched you) and by your own admis­sion, your chil­dren from your first mar­riage are an embarass­ment — like your drug addict­ed, crim­i­nal son who recent­ly robbed someone.
    You are not exact­ly the best adver­tise­ment for polyg­y­ny, you know.
    Care to com­ment on why you were banned from The­ol­o­gy on Line Website ?
    It seems that advo­cat­ed for under­age girls to be giv­en in mar­riage by their par­ents to old­er men -
    No sur­pris­es here.

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
39. 

    Rick Beckman

    July 24, 2009

    Phillip P: If you wish to make an issue of Hugh’s per­son­al life, please con­tact him pri­vate­ly. If you wish to con­tin­ue the dis­cus­sion of polyg­y­ny in light of the Scrip­tures, you are wel­come to con­tin­ue here. Hon­est­ly, I don’t care what attacks might be lev­eled against me here, but the moment you start attack­ing my guests, you your­self become unwel­come. Thanks.

    LMT: I’m not dis­put­ing what you said, but please leave the mod­er­at­ing to me. Thanks.

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
40. 

    Hugh McBryde

    July 24, 2009

    Here Philip, allow me to appeal to scrip­ture on that count:

    Mem, from Psalm 119

    “Oh how I love your law!
    It is my med­i­ta­tion all the day.
    Your com­mand­ment makes me wis­er than my enemies,
    for it is ever with me.
    I have more under­stand­ing than all my teachers,
    for your tes­ti­monies are my meditation.
    I under­stand more than the aged,
    for I keep your precepts.
    I hold back my feet from every evil way,
    in order to keep your word.
    I do not turn aside from your rules,
    for you have taught me.
    How sweet are your words to my taste,
    sweet­er than hon­ey to my mouth!
    Through your pre­cepts I get understanding;
    there­fore I hate every false way.”

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
41. 

    LMT

    July 24, 2009

    Philip, might I inquire as to where I could obtain a degree in “How to inerrant­ly fol­low the lead­ing of the Holy Spir­it”? Thus enabling me to pro­vide infor­ma­tion that might pos­si­bly be con­sid­ered by those requir­ing a slip of parch­ment to judge my opin­ion worth read­ing? Have you thor­ough­ly exam­ined all of the degrees earned by Abra­ham? If not why would you trust any­thing he had to say? Maybe you’ve seen David’s sheep skin and there­fore trust what he has writ­ten. I find your atti­tude and post to be extreme­ly igno­rant and offen­sive. In fact it is vulgar.

    Hugh…well done…
    Proverbs 15:1 A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.

    Maybe Philip will con­sid­er fur­ther study of the scrip­tures and get his nose out of text books that tell him how to think…we can only hope and pray…

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
42. 

    Rick Beckman

    July 24, 2009

    Oh obvi­ous­ly. Such is the case with quite a few dis­cus­sions I’ve been a part of and/or have wit­nessed. When one side runs out of argu­ments or coun­ter­points, the only recourse, short of con­ced­ing any­thing, the ever pop­u­lar and far-too-eas­i­ly-abused ad hominem attacks are fell upon.

    Per­haps they are used as distractions.

    Or per­haps peo­ple are con­vinced that char­ac­ter assas­si­na­tion is a valid method of debate. At the very least, there are no doubt read­ers who, unfa­mil­iar with debate and fal­la­cy, will find noth­ing wrong with Phillip’s attempts at defamation.

    What­ev­er the case may be, I do want to make clear that any­one who wish­es to dis­cuss the mat­ter bib­li­cal­ly and on a bib­li­cal basis may do so here.

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
43. 

    Hugh McBryde

    July 24, 2009

    I think it’s impor­tant to note that the log­ic was not respond­ed to but instead a dis­trac­tion was employed.

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
44. 

    LMT

    July 27, 2009

    A few more thoughts on “One Flesh”. I decid­ed to dig into it a lit­tle deep­er and thought I would share what I found…

    The orig­i­nal Hebrew used is “sarx”

    G4561 σάρξ sarx sarx

    Prob­a­bly from the base of G4563; flesh (as stripped of the skin), that is, (strict­ly) the meat of an ani­mal (as food), or (by exten­sion) the body (as opposed to the soul (or spir­it), or as the sym­bol of what is exter­nal, or as the means of kin­dred, or (by impli­ca­tion) human nature (with its frail­ties (phys­i­cal­ly or moral­ly) and pas­sions), or (specif­i­cal­ly) a human being (as such): — car­nal (-ly, + ‑ly mind­ed), flesh ([-ly]).

    Since it is sim­ple to deduce that when two peo­ple come togeth­er sex­u­al­ly they do not absorb one anoth­er and become one phys­i­cal and insep­a­ra­ble body, much less remain in that form, we can log­i­cal­ly con­clude that in this case (accord­ing to the def­i­n­i­tion) to become one flesh sim­ply means to become kin­dred — fam­i­ly — hus­band and wife.

    In the event that a man takes an addi­tion­al wife, she also becomes “sarx” with him; she becomes part of his fam­i­ly, kin­dred to him. Scrip­tures bear wit­ness to this in that the chil­dren from addi­tion­al wives were called sons and daugh­ters. None of these sons or daugh­ters were ever con­sid­ered to be ille­git­i­mate or referred to as bas­tards. Wives and chil­dren were all one fam­i­ly with him, as it is to this very day. David nev­er refers to his chil­dren as being from dif­fer­ent fam­i­lies; rather they are just con­sid­ered his chil­dren, part of his family.

    There are six vers­es that specif­i­cal­ly say “one flesh”. Gen­e­sis 2:24, and it is quot­ed two oth­er times, 1 Corinthi­ans 6:16, Matthew 9:5–6, and the echo of Matthew 9:56 – Mark 10:8.

    Gen­e­sis 2:24 There­fore a man shall leave his father and his moth­er and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

    Stat­ing that they shall become one flesh in one sense indi­cates that they will join sex­u­al­ly (phys­i­cal­ly), a require­ment to con­sum­mate their mar­riage contract.

    The Bible has numer­ous ways of describ­ing the sex­u­al union, he took her to him­self, he lay with her, he went into her, “Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she con­ceived”, and others…stating that they shall become one flesh is sim­ply an indi­ca­tion of the pend­ing sex­u­al union at which time she becomes his kin­dred, part of his family.

    1 Corinthi­ans 6:16 Or do you not know that he who is joined to a pros­ti­tute becomes one body with her? For, as it is writ­ten, “The two will become one flesh.”

    “becomes one body” indi­cates strict­ly a phys­i­cal union of the flesh, not a spir­i­tu­al union. Phys­i­cal unions start and fin­ish, they do not con­tin­ue per­pet­u­al­ly, yet the ref­er­ence to “The two will become one flesh.” It is dif­fi­cult to believe that when a man joins with a pros­ti­tute he has the inten­tion of her becom­ing kin­dred, there­fore it is like­ly that in this pas­sage it is refer­ring only to the union of the flesh and the for­ni­ca­tion it represents.

    Matthew 19:5–6 … ‘There­fore a man shall leave his father and his moth­er and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What there­fore God has joined togeth­er, let not man separate.”

    “hold fast to his wife” (do not divorce/put away as in Matthew 5:32, and 19:9)

    “wife” (see below for the orig­i­nal Hebrew and Greek words and their actu­al usage)

    “two shall become one flesh” (there shall be a sex­u­al union result­ing in the con­sum­ma­tion of their betrothal imple­ment­ing their mar­riage contract)

    “So they are no longer two but one flesh” (“as the means of kin­dred” — she is now part of his fam­i­ly. She is no longer of a sep­a­rate fam­i­ly but is now part of his fam­i­ly – kindred.)

    “God has joined togeth­er” (is to be per­ma­nent. Con­sid­er 1 Corinthi­ans 7:39:

    A wife is bound to her hus­band as long as he lives. But if her hus­band dies, she is free to be mar­ried to whom she wish­es, only in the Lord.)

    “let not man sep­a­rate”( which is indica­tive of divorce…possibly not sanc­tioned under any cir­cum­stance – still research­ing Erasmus.)

    Mark 10:8 and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh.

    (Again… “as the means of kin­dred” — she is now part of his fam­i­ly. She is no longer of a sep­a­rate fam­i­ly but is now part of his fam­i­ly – kindred.)

    When doing a search for the words trans­lat­ed into wife or wives you will find that the Old Tes­ta­ment pre­dom­i­nant­ly uses H802 for wife and wives, while the New Tes­ta­ment pre­dom­i­nant­ly uses G1135 for wife and wives.

    In the Old Tes­ta­ment Hebrew “‘ishshâh” and “nâshîym“ are used inter­change­ably for wife and wives.

    H802 נשׁים אשּׁה ‘ishshâh nâshîym — ish-shaw’, naw-sheem’

    The first form is the fem­i­nine of H376 or H582; the sec­ond form is an irreg­u­lar plur­al; a woman (used in the same wide sense as H582).: — [adulter]ess, each, every, female, X many, + none, one, + togeth­er, wife, woman. Often unex­pressed in English.

    In the New Tes­ta­ment Greek “gunē” is used inter­change­ably for wife and wives.

    G1135 γυνή gunē goo-nay’

    Prob­a­bly from the base of G1096; a woman; specif­i­cal­ly a wife: — wife, woman.

    When the trans­la­tion states “wife” it is not indi­cat­ing a sin­gu­lar­i­ty, but rather a species, or group. When the scrip­tures are trans­lat­ed into “wife” it is sim­ply a gener­ic term for a mar­ried woman and does not actu­al­ly result in a numer­i­cal assign­ment or lim­it such as the num­ber 1.

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
45. 

    Jair

    July 30, 2009

    It looks like this sure came alive while I was on vaca­tion. Hi Hugh, how goes it? 

    I think it has­n’t been said (but occa­sion­al­ly I read too fast) but I’ve found the most cohe­sive ren­der­ing of 1 Tim 3:2 and Tit 1:6 regards mia as an expres­sion of uni­ty rather than quan­ti­ty. Appar­ent­ly the ear­ly Hebrew trans­la­tion of Tim­o­thy uses Echad here, (Mind I need more study time to flesh out that ref­er­ence) which is the same word as in Duet when ‘the Lord your God is One God’. The Sep­tu­agint shows that Mia is the trans­la­tion of Echad in that Mia is the word used for Echad in the Sept in all but one place. 

    That said, no sound Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy says God is quan­ti­ta­tive­ly one, I don’t know of any that say he is specif­i­cal­ly two either, but that this pas­sage is an expres­sion of uni­ty in God. 

    That said then this pas­sage is ren­dered “A bish­op must be blame­less, in prop­er uni­ty with his wife, vig­i­lant, sober, of good behav­ior, giv­en to hos­pi­tal­i­ty, apt to teach, not giv­en to wine, no strik­er, not greedy of filthy lucre; but patient, not a brawler, not cov­etous. One that ruleth well his own house, hav­ing his chil­dren in sub­jec­tion with all grav­i­ty. For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God? ect..

    Read like that every­thing in that pas­sage relates to per­son­al and fam­i­ly char­ac­ter. You can, after all, tell when some­one is not in har­mo­ny with his wife, and such a con­di­tion of fam­i­ly makes it hard for such a man to lead any­where else. Its valid ren­der­ing of the pas­sage based on word usage, and it makes more sense than say­ing this pas­sage deals with polygamy. It would be a weird place to cre­ate a new law about polygamy, espe­cial­ly with no fur­ther com­ment on it. 

    Fur­ther, since gune (wife) is like the Eng­lish word sheep (in that you cant tell if its sin­gu­lar or plur­al when it is stand­alone) the fact that in Eng­lish this pas­sage says wife not wives is irrel­e­vant. Unless of course you’re a KJV onlyist :)

    The Tres Pas Lib­er­alum inter­pre­ta­tion of this pas­sage is a good one too, but it seems less sym­met­ri­cal too me. Of course, say­ing these few vers­es where a ban on polygamy is non­sense, what do they think Paul was try­ing to sneak in new laws in pass­ing with­out explain­ing why or mak­ing any for­mal dis­cus­sion of them?

    Thanks to every­one who worked hard on this debate, Sor­ry I did­n’t real­ly con­tribute anything.

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
46. 

    Rick Beckman

    July 30, 2009

    Did­n’t con­tribute any­thing? On the con­trary, there’s quite a bit of food for thought in your com­ment there. Thanks for it. :)

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
47. 

    Jair

    July 31, 2009

    Thank you very much, I appre­ci­ate that. And thank you for mak­ing this point that needs to be made.

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
48. 

    LMT

    November 5, 2009

    “On the 36^th anniver­sary of Roe v. Wade, we are remind­ed that this deci­sion .….….. stands for a broad­er prin­ci­ple: that gov­ern­ment should not intrude on our most pri­vate fam­i­ly matters……”

    Barak Oba­ma
    Roe v. Wade 36^th anniver­sary speech
    Jan­u­ary 22, 2009

    Mr. Oba­ma:

    What could pos­si­bly be more pri­vate between a man and a woman then their mar­riage covenant? The rela­tion­ship between a man and woman is sec­ond only to the rela­tion­ship between an indi­vid­ual and God. Yet we are required to obtain a license for our wives as if they were pets, and legal­ly per­mit­ted to have only one. Why Mr. Oba­ma is it a pri­vate fam­i­ly mat­ter to have an abor­tion (which many con­sid­er mur­der) yet the gov­ern­ment feels it is nec­es­sary to intrude into mar­riage to the point of even licens­ing (tax­ing) and lim­it­ing it? Why can a man, out­side of mar­riage, father as many chil­dren as he desires with impuni­ty, yet when a man desires to legal­ly take respon­si­bil­i­ty for the women he loves and their chil­dren our gov­ern­ment has laws in place to pre­vent him from doing just that?

    Mar­tin Luther had this to say:
    “I con­fess that I can­not for­bid a per­son to mar­ry sev­er­al wives, for it does not con­tra­dict the Scrip­ture. If a man wish­es to mar­ry more than one wife he should be asked whether he is sat­is­fied in his con­science that he may do so in accor­dance with the word of God. In such a case the civ­il author­i­ty has noth­ing to do in the matter.”

    (Mar­tin Luther 10 Novem­ber 1483 — 18 Feb­ru­ary 1546 changed the course of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion by ini­ti­at­ing the Protes­tant Ref­or­ma­tion. As a priest and the­ol­o­gy pro­fes­sor, he con­front­ed indul­gence sales­men with his 95 The­ses in 1517. Luther strong­ly dis­put­ed their claim that free­dom from God’s pun­ish­ment of sin could be pur­chased with mon­ey. His refusal to retract all of his writ­ings at the demand of Pope Leo X in 1520 and the Holy Roman Emper­or Charles V at the Diet of Worms meet­ing in 1521 result­ed in his excom­mu­ni­ca­tion by the pope and con­dem­na­tion as an out­law by the emperor.)

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
49. 

    torrant

    November 9, 2009

    LMT,
    Can you ref­er­ence that quote from Mar­tin Luther. I would like to read it in it’s larg­er con­text in his writings.
    Thanks,

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
50. 

    LMT

    November 9, 2009

    De Wette II, 459, ibid., pp. 329–330

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
51. 

    LMT

    November 10, 2009

    I am not sure what type of “larg­er con­text” you are seeking.

    Mar­tin Luther made a very sim­ple yet very com­plete statement.

    The Bible does not for­bid a man from tak­ing more than one wife; in fact there are numer­ous instruc­tions in the Bible as to how the sit­u­a­tion should be handled.

    Each man should be “sat­is­fied in his con­science” that it is the right thing for him to do. It does not mean that every man should take addi­tion­al wives. My per­son­al view is that a man should have only one wife until he has proven that he can man­age that house­hold; then if he has the resources and desire take addi­tion­al wives as he sees fit.

    I find it appalling that our gov­ern­ment forces us to license our wives as if they were pets or vehi­cles or some type of pos­ses­sion. I could­n’t agree more that “the civ­il author­i­ty has noth­ing to do in the mat­ter”, and recent­ly heard that the first mar­riage licens­es were issued to slave own­ers that want­ed to mar­ry a slave girl…proving her free­dom and mar­riage to that indi­vid­ual. (I need to research that fur­ther though)

    Show me one place in the scrip­tures where a man was required to obtain a license from the gov­ern­ment in order to take a wife. It is noth­ing short of the gov­ern­ment inter­fer­ing with accept­ed reli­gious prac­tices straight out of the scrip­tures. If the “Pagan Chris­t­ian” cul­ture that is pre­dom­i­nant in our soci­ety feels the need to define mar­riage let them, but don’t force me to legal­ly fol­low their incor­rect the­ol­o­gy nor impose restric­tions upon me based on their twist­ed inter­pre­ta­tions of the scrip­tures. What gives the gov­ern­ment the right or respon­si­bil­i­ty to inter­fere with the prac­tice of mar­riage as defined in the Bible? Does our gov­ern­ment not even under­stand the words of our own Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence espous­ing the God giv­en right for the pur­suit of happiness?

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
52. 

    DaPastor

    November 10, 2009

    I am in agree­ment with the arti­cle that Chris­t­ian Polyg­y­ny is a lov­ing Bib­li­cal Option. I would love to con­tend with some of those who have post­ed against it, but sim­ply do not have the time. Mean­while, if you would like to vis­it a forum that sup­ports those of us who believe in, and/or prac­tice Chris­t­ian Polyg­y­ny, you are invit­ed to join us at BiblicalFamilies.org

    Any­way, bless­ings to you! May God restore this truth to the entire church!

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
53. 

    DaPastor

    November 10, 2009

    “Con­trary to pop­u­lar belief, most women ben­e­fit from polyg­y­nous soci­ety, and most men ben­e­fit from monog­a­mous soci­ety” — http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/200802/the-paradox-polygamy-i-why-most-americans-are-polygamous

    Just some­thing to think about. Blessings!

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
54. 

    Christian MD

    November 11, 2009

    Pas­tor,
    If I may point out as a physi­cian and pub­lished med­ical researcher (17 peer reviewed pub­li­ca­tions to date) -
    The arti­cles you cite are opin­ion pieces, not sci­en­tif­ic research stud­ies. No objec­tive sci­en­tif­ic proof is offered or pre­sent­ed in these arti­cles to prove that polyg­y­ny ben­e­fits women. Sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies are based upon a hypoth­e­sis, an inter­ven­tion (could be an anony­mous sur­vey), con­trol group, exper­i­men­tal group, pre­sen­ta­tion of data, and analy­sis of data from the con­trol group vs. exper­i­men­tal group. These arti­cles which you cite there­fore do not qual­i­fy as objec­tive med­ical or sci­en­tif­ic data.
    When out­comes such as mar­i­tal sat­is­fac­tion of polyg­y­nous­ly mar­ried women are stud­ied vs. mar­i­tal sat­is­fac­tion of monog­a­mous­ly mar­ried women by means of anony­mous stan­dard­ized sur­veys, monog­a­mous­ly mar­ried women con­sis­tent­ly have high­er scores in terms of mar­i­tal sat­is­fac­tion. This find­ing has been repli­cat­ed in mul­ti­ple stud­ies, in sev­er­al dif­fer­ent cul­tures. So there is no evi­dence, con­trary to the claim of the arti­cle you cite, that “most women ben­e­fit from polyg­y­nous society.”
    Please excuse me, I have clin­i­cal respon­si­bil­i­ties which require my atten­tion at this time.

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
55. 

    Rick Beckman

    November 12, 2009

    Still cling­ing to anonymi­ty, eh?

    I won­der… Do those “high­er scores in mar­i­tal sat­is­fac­tion” explain the gross amount of divorces among the monog­a­mous? I guess they’re so hap­py in the monogamy, they just can’t wait to try it again. And again. And prob­a­bly again too.

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
56. 

    DaPastor

    November 13, 2009

    Hel­lo Mr. MD

    MD: If I may point out as a physi­cian and pub­lished med­ical researcher (17 peer reviewed pub­li­ca­tions to date) –

    ME: This is noble, but does not relate to the top­ic at hand. In log­ic we call this the “sim­plis­tic appeal to author­i­ty”. Being an expert in one field, does not auto­mat­i­cal­ly make one an expert in anoth­er field.

    MD: The arti­cles you cite are opin­ion pieces, not sci­en­tif­ic research stud­ies. No objec­tive sci­en­tif­ic proof is offered or pre­sent­ed in these arti­cles to prove that polyg­y­ny ben­e­fits women.Scientific stud­ies are based upon a hypoth­e­sis, an inter­ven­tion (could be an anony­mous sur­vey), con­trol group, exper­i­men­tal group, pre­sen­ta­tion of data, and analy­sis of data from the con­trol group vs. exper­i­men­tal group. These arti­cles which you cite there­fore do not qual­i­fy as objec­tive med­ical or sci­en­tif­ic data.

    ME: I under­stand that, but thanks for the reminder: I did not cite it as proof of sci­en­tif­ic data, but as proof that oth­ers do not see polygamy as negative.

    MD: When out­comes such as mar­i­tal sat­is­fac­tion of polyg­y­nous­ly mar­ried women are stud­ied vs. mar­i­tal sat­is­fac­tion of monog­a­mous­ly mar­ried women by means of anony­mous stan­dard­ized sur­veys, monog­a­mous­ly mar­ried women con­sis­tent­ly have high­er scores in terms of mar­i­tal sat­is­fac­tion. This find­ing has been repli­cat­ed in mul­ti­ple stud­ies, in sev­er­al dif­fer­ent cul­tures. So there is no evi­dence, con­trary to the claim of the arti­cle you cite, that “most women ben­e­fit from polyg­y­nous society.”

    ME: I did­n’t real­ize that the Scrip­tures tell believ­ers that we are to get mar­ried in order to be “sat­is­fied”! Hmm­m­mm… Could you sup­port this idea since this seems to be the main the­sis of your last few sentences?

    The fact of the mat­ter is that the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty has always crit­i­cized prac­tices by believ­ers, and then jus­ti­fied them by “stud­ies”. There are Psy­chi­a­trists, Psy­chol­o­gists and Physcians who claim that peo­ple who are claim to be born again are men­tal­ly ill; and God for­bid if you tell them that the Holy Spir­it spoke to you!

    Thanks MD for your sec­u­lar posi­tion state­ment. From my per­spec­tive, let God be true, and every man a liar. Bless­ings to you, Sir. I am sure you have some clin­cial respon­si­bil­i­ties that need your attention.

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
57. 

    Christian MD

    November 19, 2009

    Pas­tor,
    I’m not “Mis­ter” nor am I “Sir” .…
    You assumed I am a man because I am a physician.
    You cit­ed an opin­ion piece that states that polyg­y­ny ben­e­fits women.
    There is no objec­tive med­ical or sci­en­tif­ic data which sup­ports this claim.
    The arti­cle you cite is the opin­ion of a social anthro­pol­o­gist who has no patient contact.
    One could just as well cite Car­olyn Jes­sop’s book “Escape” or cite Mary Mack­ert’s book on her expe­ri­ences as the wife of a polyg­y­nous Mor­mon patri­arch (pri­or to her con­ver­sion to Chris­tian­i­ty) regard­ing the “ben­e­fits” of polyg­y­ny. These are opin­ions or feel­ings of the writ­ers, not sci­en­tif­ic or med­ical facts.
    Women liv­ing in polyg­y­nous rela­tion­ships have high­er rates of mar­i­tal dis­sat­is­fac­tion, high­er rates of treat­ment for depres­sion, anx­i­ety, som­a­ti­za­tion disorder,fibromyalgia, post par­tum depres­sion, sui­ci­dal ideation, and they suf­fer more domes­tic vio­lence than women in monog­a­mous rela­tion­ships do.Women in polyg­y­nous rela­tion­ships have high­er rates of cer­vi­cal can­cer than women in monog­a­mous rela­tion­ships do. (2X high­er) Chil­dren of polyg­y­nous fam­i­lies have high­er rates of arrest, sub­stance abuse, depres­sion, tru­an­cy and poor­er aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance than chil­dren of monog­a­mous rela­tion­ships do.
    There­fore, there is no sci­en­tif­ic or med­ical evi­dence that polyg­y­ny ben­e­fits women, nor is there evi­dence that polyg­y­ny ben­e­fits children.
    This is not an appeal to author­i­ty. It is a state­ment of the med­ical and sci­en­tif­ic facts regard­ing the mat­ter, as doc­u­ment­ed in mul­ti­ple peer reviewed research stud­ies. Both sci­ence and med­i­cine were cre­at­ed and revealed by God, just as Scrip­ture was. BTW, I have had expe­ri­ence clin­i­cal­ly work­ing with many women in polyg­y­nous rela­tion­ships, hence my knowl­edge of the research lit­er­a­ture on the topic.
    Your state­ment “…being an expert in one field, does not auto­mat­i­cal­ly make one an expert in anoth­er field…” holds lit­tle mer­it in my case.
    Broth­er Rick,
    In coun­tries where polyg­y­ny is prac­ticed, and women have the right to file a divorce action, (for exam­ple, Indone­sia) the rate of divorce is high­er in polyg­y­nous­ly mar­ried cou­ples is high­er than it is in monog­a­mous­ly mar­ried cou­ples. Only in coun­tries where polyg­y­ny is prac­ticed and women do not have the right to file a divorce action is the divorce rate low­er than observed in West­ern coun­tries. (ie Sau­di Ara­bia, UAE)

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
58. 

    DaPastor

    November 19, 2009

    Hel­lo Ms or Mrs MD:

    MD: You assumed I am a man because I am a physician.

    Me: Yes, I did.

    MD: You cit­ed an opin­ion piece that states that polyg­y­ny ben­e­fits women.
    There is no objec­tive med­ical or sci­en­tif­ic data which sup­ports this claim.
    The arti­cle you cite is the opin­ion of a social anthro­pol­o­gist who has no patient contact.
    One could just as well cite Car­olyn Jessop’s book “Escape” or cite Mary Mackert’s book on her expe­ri­ences as the wife of a polyg­y­nous Mor­mon patri­arch (pri­or to her con­ver­sion to Chris­tian­i­ty) regard­ing the “ben­e­fits” of polyg­y­ny. These are opin­ions or feel­ings of the writ­ers, not sci­en­tif­ic or med­ical facts.

    Me: Yes, you are right. I nev­er claimed it was any­thing else. You made a major assump­tion about my post!

    MD: Women liv­ing in polyg­y­nous rela­tion­ships have high­er rates of mar­i­tal dis­sat­is­fac­tion, high­er rates of treat­ment for depres­sion, anx­i­ety, som­a­ti­za­tion disorder,fibromyalgia, post par­tum depres­sion, sui­ci­dal ideation, and they suf­fer more domes­tic vio­lence than women in monog­a­mous rela­tion­ships do.Women in polyg­y­nous rela­tion­ships have high­er rates of cer­vi­cal can­cer than women in monog­a­mous rela­tion­ships do. (2X high­er) Chil­dren of polyg­y­nous fam­i­lies have high­er rates of arrest, sub­stance abuse, depres­sion, tru­an­cy and poor­er aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance than chil­dren of monog­a­mous rela­tion­ships do.

    Me: 1. I have read the research, which has­n’t been ver­i­fied inde­pen­dant­ly, btw.
    2. I do not believe that it has been proven that women who are polyg­y­nous have a high­er rate of cer­vi­cal cancer.
    3. These stud­ies have not includ­ed Chris­t­ian Polyg­y­ny, for that matter.
    4. There are oth­er ben­e­fits to con­sid­er oth­er than med­ical and sci­en­tif­ic; com­pan­ion­ship; finan­cial (in some cas­es); sta­bil­i­ty for chil­dren; more free­dom for women; as well as the Lord using it to devel­op God­ly char­ac­ter (my sec­ond wife helped me with this one).
    5. So, what!? I just read some sta­tis­tics on monog­a­mous mar­riage. I would have had to insert­ed an entire PDF book­let file to share what the research (and lots of it) has shown researchers in about 20 cat­e­gories. Does this mean that peo­ple should not get mar­ried? No! If Chris­tians are to base their deci­sions upon sci­en­tif­ic research, this would make Sci­ence their God! The fact of the mat­ter is this: Where there are peo­ple, there are prob­lems, but with Christ, these prob­lems have solu­tions in the form of His promis­es. Since God allows mar­riage, to include polyg­y­ny, then it is up to man/woman to appro­pri­ate His promis­es from His Word to live in the abun­dant life that is pos­si­ble by doing so. If fam­i­lies learn to walk in the Spir­it, they will not ful­fill the lusts of the flesh (which do not include polyg­y­ny, btw), but will man­i­fest the fruit of the Spir­it — this is the abun­dant life!

    MD: There­fore, there is no sci­en­tif­ic or med­ical evi­dence that polyg­y­ny ben­e­fits women, nor is there evi­dence that polyg­y­ny ben­e­fits children.

    Me: There isn’t any con­clu­sive evi­dence on the oth­er side either!

    MD: Both sci­ence and med­i­cine were cre­at­ed and revealed by God, just as Scrip­ture was. 

    Me: This is true to some degree, but you and I both know that there is a great deal of uneth­i­cal manip­u­la­tions that go on in the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty as well — espe­cial­ly in the social and anthro­po­log­i­cal are­nas! The bot­tom line is this for all true believ­ers: where sci­ence dis­agrees with the clear Word of God, true believ­ers will always end up on the side of Scrip­ture — or they may be guilty of call­ing God a liar!

    “let God be true, but every man a liar” — Romans 3:4

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
59. 

    Rick Beckman

    November 20, 2009

    Chris­t­ian MD: If the first word of the han­dle you are using (“Chris­t­ian”) is true, then the only thing that should mat­ter is God’s opin­ion on the mat­ter, yet you choose to cite med­ical research which was, I have lit­tle doubt, done by researchers who reject the Scrip­tures. When one rejects the source of truth, of course your con­clu­sions will be off. So when God’s Word teach­es that polyg­y­ny is just fine, then one either needs to fess up, admit­ting that they deny God’s per­fect Word OR bury their head in the sand regard­ing the mat­ter, hop­ing that it’ll just go away with­out their involve­ment (or come up with some ridicu­lous the­o­log­i­cal argu­ments to the contrary).

    In any event, the only Chris­t­ian thing to do is to sub­mit to God’s Word, regard­less of where that may lead us, for God is true and His Word is faithful.

    So yes, I don’t care what the med­ical research might say. I don’t care what experts in soci­ol­o­gy, psy­chol­o­gy, or what­ev­er else might say. All I care about is what God’s Word says, and to it I am bound because He died for me.

    You call your­self a Chris­t­ian, and so I must encour­age you to repent of your unbe­lief, plac­ing your trust not in man but in the God whose Word we have in the Scriptures.

    Sci­ence and med­i­cine are not cre­at­ed by God. Those are fields of study done by man, and such study is not based upon the per­fect Scrip­tures but upon the fall­en realm of nature. The results of the fall have led sci­en­tists to reject Gen­e­sis 1, and the results of the fall have led you to reject what God has said regard­ing mar­riage. Trust the Scriptures.

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
60. 

    Patrick

    August 27, 2010

    Oh my word! I haven’t read all that is here yet as there is much to take in but I have to say that this hits the nail on the head!!!
    “Sure­ly it must be cor­rect that he that cares for a wife, tends her and makes her blos­som should be giv­en those that are abandoned?”
    As this is exact­ly how I feel. I am mar­ried and I see good women that are aban­doned all the time but because of the view on Polygamy and because of the way my wife was raised I have to leave them aban­doned and uncar­ed for. Had my wife been OK with hav­ing anoth­er wife around I would have tak­en anoth­er and cared for her like my own.
    It is sad that peo­ple view Polyg­y­ny so poor­ly but view abor­tion bet­ter than Polyg­y­ny and that peo­ple don’t real­ize that if Polyg­y­ny was­n’t ok don’t you think that it would have been labeled as sin, “PERIOD”???

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
61. 

    kelley spencer

    October 1, 2010

    It is clear that to me that there are no pro­hi­bi­tions, explic­it or implic­it, in the old or new tes­ta­ments against polyg­y­ny. The ques­tion comes back to “shall we obey God or man?” Far be it from me to ever con­demn those who see polyg­y­ny as valid in their chris­t­ian world­view. It seems to me that for those who accept and prac­tice polyg­y­ny, there are many famil­ial advan­tages to plur­al mar­riage. Polyg­y­ny is con­demned by many chris­tians not due to any valid bib­li­cal argu­ments, but due to the bib­li­cal mis­un­der­stand­ings and prej­u­dices they car­ry. It is sad that polyg­y­nist chris­tians and seek­ers are dri­ven under­ground by those who oth­er­wise present the gospel in a grace filled, sen­si­tive fash­ion, except for their prej­u­dice against a legit­i­mate and won­der­ful form of marriage.

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
62. 

    Christian MD

    October 8, 2010

    2. I do not believe that it has been proven that women who are polyg­y­nous have a high­er rate of cer­vi­cal cancer.
    3. These stud­ies have not includ­ed Chris­t­ian Polyg­y­ny, for that matter.

    Yes, it has been demon­strat­ed that polyg­y­nous women have a high­er rate of cer­vi­cal cancer.
    Yes, there are stud­ies in the US and Africa of Chris­t­ian polygynists.
    The data also indi­cates that these women have high­er rates of depres­sion, anx­i­ety and low­er rates of mar­i­tal sat­is­fac­tion than monog­a­mous­ly mar­ried women do.
    I sug­gest you read Med­line abstracts rather than insert­ing your own opin­ions as sci­en­tif­ic fact.

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
63. 

    Christian MD

    October 8, 2010

    hris­t­ian MD: If the first word of the han­dle you are using (“Chris­t­ian”) is true…

    Pret­ty amus­ing com­ing from some­one who now calls him­self a Pagan.

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
64. 

    Rick Beckman

    October 9, 2010

    That does­n’t make what I said any less valid: If you are a Chris­t­ian, then the only thing that mat­ters regard­ing doc­trine is what the Scrip­tures say. Your cita­tions of med­ical research and so on are pret­ty irrel­e­vant to the dis­cus­sion. Sim­i­lar­ly, a tru­ly Chris­t­ian view of the earth has God mirac­u­lous­ly cre­at­ing it. Cit­ing research, how­ev­er, will show otherwise.

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
65. 

    jay

    May 7, 2016

    I will leave this here:
    http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/07/polygamy-national-security-putin-120234

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply
66. 

    Kevin Watts

    May 27, 2016

    If you believe the whole coun­sel of God, then Polygamy/Polygny is a part of God’s plan for marriage:

    A) 2 Samuel 5:13 And David took more con­cu­bines and wives from Jerusalem, after he had come from Hebron. Also more sons and daugh­ters were born to David.
    2 Samuel 12:8 ‘I gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your keep­ing, and gave you the house of Israel and Judah. And if that had been too lit­tle, I also would have giv­en you much more!
    1 Kings 15:5 because David did what was right in the eyes of the LORD, and had not turned aside from any­thing that He com­mand­ed him all the days of his life, EXCEPT in the mat­ter of Uri­ah the Hittite. 

    B) 2 Chron­i­cles 24:2 And Joash did that which was right in the sight of the LORD all the days of Jehoia­da THE PRIEST. 3 And Jehoia­da took for him TWO WIVES; and he begat sons and daughters.

    C) It is well to remem­ber that every Jew and every Arab that has ever lived, includ­ing the Lord Jesus Christ him­self, comes from polyg­a­mist parents:
    Abra­ham, Ish­mael, Isaac, Jacob, Solomon, David — 8 named wives and about 10 con­cu­bines and an ances­tor of Mary the moth­er of Jesus and the twelve tribes of Israel . [Luke 3:31 the son of Melea, the son of Menan, the son of Mat­tathah, the son of Nathan, the son of David]

    D) Note: Song of Songs or Song of Solomon 6:8 The Shu­lamite is praised by the ‘three­score queens [3 x 20 = 60], fourscore con­cu­bines [4 x 20 = 80] and vir­gins with­out num­ber’. This shows that this Bible poem about mar­i­tal love is about Solomon’s rela­tion­ship with his 141^st wife out of 700 wives and 300 concubines.

    Error hap­pened.

    Reply