(Note: this is the topic of a recent video on the Age of the Kingdom Series YouTube Channel, which you can watch here.)
A thorny question many believers have is, why did God allow Bible characters to have multiple wives? Why did God allow polygamy in the Old Testament? You may be surprised by the answers. We are about to wade into deep water here, so if you’re up for it, join me.
I made a video recently about the challenges of writing fiction based on 3,000 year-old Bible stories, and I found I was spending a lot of time on marriage customs in that culture and I realized I need to address a question a lot of people have: Why did God allow polygamy in the Old Testament?
Or did He allow it? Did He really condemn it and they did it anyway? I’m going to go through this topic I promise if you stick around to the end, I’ll answer the question about what we are to do with this difficult topic today. If you don’t think it’s difficult, then you haven’t studied it enough.
Today our automatic reaction is that polygamy is bad. In fact, in Western countries, it’s illegal because of bigamy laws. It’s easy for us to find reasons to say, “See they had all this trouble because they practiced polygamy, so polygamy is immortal.”
But monogamous marriages often have trouble, too,. What is the divorce rate in the US? I don’t know but it’s too high. And that has caused some people to swear off marriage altogether. In fact, 85% of Gen Z says, marriage is not necessary to have a fulfilled life.
So, was polygamy condemned in the Old Testament? The short answer is, “No.”
Why Is Polygamy Not Condemned in the OT?
Why is polygamy never condemned in the Old Testament? There are chapters in Leviticus (18 & 20) and Deuteronomy (21 & 22) that harshly condemn sexual immorality and even prescribe the death penalty for these activities, but they do not mention polygamy.
Here are some stark examples from Leviticus 18:
10 If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife—with the wife of his neighbor—both the adulterer and the adulteress are to be put to death.
11 If a man has sexual relations with his father’s wife, he has dishonored his father. Both the man and the woman are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.
12 If a man has sexual relations with his daughter-in-law, both of them are to be put to death. What they have done is a perversion; their blood will be on their own heads.
13 If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.
And it keeps going, condemning various forms of incest and bestiality, but it never mentions polygamy.
There is a verse in Deuteronomy that talks about polygamy, and in one sentence brings out the major differences between our culture and theirs and from it we can draw some surprising conclusions.
Deuteronomy 21:15 says, “If a man has two wives and he loves one and not the other, and both bear him sons but the firstborn is the son of the wife he does not love, when he wills his property to his sons, he must not give the rights of the firstborn to the son of the wife he loves in preference to his actual firstborn, the son of the wife he does not love.”
So this one sentence points out several differences between their culture and ours.
- Notice that this text does not condemn polygamy but says “If a man has two wives.” The passage goes on to explain how to treat everyone fairly in a polygamous marriage.
- Women could not own or inherit property or work outside the home, much like many Muslim countries today. If a woman had no husband, prostitution or slavery might be the only options open to her. Polygamy was a better option than prostitution or slavery.
- Having sons was VERY important. If a wife couldn’t give her husband a son he would marry another wife until he got the sons he needed to run the family farm, defend the clan against enemies, etc. Without sons the family property couldn’t pass from one generation to another.
Today if a family consists of Mom, Dad and four daughters, it’s no big deal, but back then it was catastrophic. The daughters couldn’t earn a living after their father died. Plus, they had to be married in order to be provided for.
- The firstborn son got a double portion of the inheritance, and this verse in Deuteronomy tells men to honor the firstborn, whether the firstborn was the child of his favored wife or not.
Not everyone in the Old Testament had multiple wives, but there’s a long list of prominent Bible characters who had more than one wife.
Bible Heroes Who Had More Than One Wife
Abraham had a wife and a concubine at the same time. His grandson, Jacob, later named Israel, had four wives, which allowed him to have 12 sons that became the 12 tribes of Israel and those 12 tribes will be enshrined in the architecture of the New Jerusalem, according to Revelation.
Moses had two wives during the Exodus and wilderness wandering.
In Judges, we learn that Gideon had 60 sons. We aren’t told how many wives he had, but he didn’t have 60 sons by one wife, I can guarantee that. With having that many sons, there must have been daughters in there too, so he could well have had over 100 children.
In First and Second Samuel, which are the basis of my Age of the Kingdom series, we learn that King David had eight wives and at least 20 concubines.
All of the Patriarchs and kings I have mentioned are in Hebrews 11’s list of faithful heroes except Solomon. They were all documented to have more than one wife and/or concubine.
King David’s son, King Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines. Solomon was said to be the wisest man who ever lived, but having 1,000 wives and concubines might call that into question!
We have to remember that there are categories of prohibitions: legal, moral and culturally inappropriate.
- Legal
Legal prohibitions are things against which there are secular laws that have been passed by legislatures or councils. Some things that are illegal are not immoral or culturally inappropriate. For example: in the Untied States, it’s illegal to drive a car on the left side of a two-way road. Doing so will get you stopped, ticketed and fined. Is it immoral to drive on the left side of the road? NO, because in the UK and a few other countries, it’s illegal to drive on the RIGHT side of the road. So which side of the road you drive on can’t be a moral issue, but it is definitely a legal and safety issue. - Moral
There are things that are immoral that are not illegal. Example: The 10 Commandments says it’s a sin to tell a lie. Lying is not illegal; you won’t be given a ticket and fined if you tell a lie in your daily life. That is, unless you are in court and have sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. - Cultural
There are things that are cultural taboos that are neither immoral or illegal. Example: In the US you can ask what someone does for a living – that’s fine; you’re just making conversation – but you better not ask them how much money they make! There’s no law against it, nor is it morally wrong, but it’s tasteless and won’t be appreciated!
So we have to distinguish between things that are illegal, immoral or culturally inappropriate. They may not always be the same.
As we saw in Leviticus, adultery was punishable by death, but polygamy was not considered adultery. How do we know? We know that King David committed adultery with Bathsheba.
But David already had six wives and 20 or more concubines when he committed the indiscretion with Bathsheba and the prophet did not accuse him of adultery because of those. He was guilty of adultery was because Bathsheba was not his wife, but the wife of another man. So polygamy was not adultery.
Today a man can go to prison for being married to more than one woman at once. It’s the crime of bigamy. But 3,000 years ago, there were structural issues in the culture which we don’t have to deal with today.
But what about the New Testament? Doesn’t it condemn polygamy?
It’s true that there is a statement in the NT, specifically in First Timothy the third chapter, saying that elders and deacons should be the husband of one wife, which I guess can be taken a couple of ways: either they MUST be married and not single OR if they marry, they can only be married to one woman.
But this is for Elders and Deacons. It doesn’t say anything about people in the pew. There are good, practical reasons for that. Paul was writing to Timothy at least a thousand years after King David and the culture had changed greatly. Greek culture had transformed the then-known world, and the Greeks were largely monogamous. So, Paul’s concern was that having multiple wives, which was common in the East, would bring criticism on the church from those who came from Greek culture in the West.
In fact, Paul twice mentions the word “reproach” in 1st Timothy 3, once at the beginning of his statement about elders or bishops and again at the end before talking about deacons. He doesn’t say having more than one wife is a sin, but that it might bring reproach on the church. It’s apparent that he was concerned that polygamy as still practiced in Asia would be a stumbling block for those in Europe, who were monogamous.
How to Understand These Things
In Acts 17:30, the Apostle Paul says: “In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now He commands all people everywhere to repent.” Paul was talking about idol worship here, but maybe this also applies to things like polygamy.
While there are no direct condemnations of polygamy in the Old Testament, there are passages that discourage it.
In the beginning we see God creating humankind in Genesis 2, he gave Adam one wife. This is not stated as a command, it just is. Perhaps we are to see this as an ideal principle, but it is not stated as such.
Gen. 2:24 says “A man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife and they shall become one flesh.” Of course Adam didn’t have a father and mother, so the text is drawing a conclusion for later generations.
It’s interesting that when Jesus quotes this text in Matt. 19:5, he says, “they TWO shall become one flesh.” The word “two” isn’t in the original Hebrew of Genesis 2, but it is in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, so that must have been what Jesus was quoting.
Deut. 17:17 says kings shouldn’t take many wives. It also says kings should have a lot of horses or a lot of silver and gold, so these admonitions appear to be concerned with something other than morality.
Today women have a very different status in our culture than they did 3,000 years ago. In fact, women have a much different status in the United States than they did 100 years ago and we could also point to the very different status of women in Muslim countries today.
The change in status of women in our culture started with Jesus Christ. He treated women better than his culture did. In the sermon on the mount, He said, “You’ve heard it said you shall not commit adultery, but I say, if you look at a woman with lust in your heart you have already committed adultery.” That was revolutionary to them at that time.
Jesus also showed mercy to the woman caught in adultery. The men who accused her to Jesus were going to execute her by stoning according to the Mosaic law, but Jesus told them whoever was without sin should cast the first stone. They got the point.
Of course the law of Moses says to execute the man in the adulterous relationship too, and they somehow forgot that.
There were also many women who had prominent roles in the formation of the Christian church. In fact, one of the proofs that Jesus rose from the dead is that the women were the first to testify that he had risen. It’s a proof of Jesus’ resurrection because if they had made up the story of Jesus rising from the dead, they never would have cited the testimony of women, because women were not allowed to testify in court; they were not considered reliable witnesses. So that means the apostles really believed He rose from the dead.
There were also women in the early church who were prominent. It didn’t happen overnight, and Greek culture had a part to play in democratizing relationships between the genders, but the message of the Gospel bore fruit in raising of status of women as well as righting other wrongs, like the eventual abolition of slavery in the West after thousands of years of that practice.
So, what can we conclude? Polygamy is both illegal and a cultural taboo today, but is it immoral?
As we have seen, you will look in vain for a blanket condemnation of polygamy in the Bible, even in the New Testament, much less the Old, which seems to be more concerned about making sure polygamy was conducted with charity toward all parties.
Noting that there were problems in polygamous marriages is not an argument against it because we shouldn’t use problems in monogamous marriages as an argument for ending marriage in general.
In our culture today, polygamy is not an option because it’s illegal and culturally outrageous, but for more guidance, we can quote the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 5:25: “Husbands love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.”
Today women have agency they didn’t have in Bible times. They can get an education, they can vote, they can get jobs and start businesses. If a man abandons his wife, it isn’t good, but she won’t have to choose between starving and entering prostitution like she would have in Bible times.
For men to truly love and honor their wives, they shouldn’t disrespect them by bringing other women into the relationship. This should be our position today, even though the culture in Bible times was different.
In Acts 17:30, the Apostle Paul says: “In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now He commands all people everywhere to repent.” Paul was talking about idol worship here, but maybe this also applies to things like polygamy.
While there are no direct condemnations of polygamy in the Old Testament, there are passages that discourage it.
In the beginning we see God creating humankind in Genesis 2, he gave Adam one wife. This is not stated as a command, it just is. Perhaps we are to see this as an ideal principle, but it is not stated as such.
Gen. 2:24 says “A man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife and they shall become one flesh.” Of course Adam didn’t have a father and mother, so the text is drawing a conclusion for later generations.
It’s interesting that when Jesus quotes this text in Matt. 19:5, he says, “they TWO shall become one flesh.” The word “two” isn’t in the original Hebrew of Genesis 2, but it is in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, so that must have been what Jesus was quoting.
Deut. 17:17 says kings shouldn’t take many wives. It also says kings should have a lot of horses or a lot of silver and gold, so these admonitions appear to be concerned with something other than morality.
Today women have a very different status in our culture than they did 3,000 years ago. In fact, women have a much different status in the United States than they did 100 years ago and we could also point to the very different status of women in Muslim countries today.
The change in status of women in our culture started with Jesus Christ. He treated women better than his culture did. In the sermon on the mount, He said, “You’ve heard it said you shall not commit adultery, but I say, if you look at a woman with lust in your heart you have already committed adultery.” That was revolutionary to them at that time.
Jesus also showed mercy to the woman caught in adultery. The men who accused her to Jesus were going to execute her by stoning according to the Mosaic law, but Jesus told them whoever was without sin should cast the first stone. They got the point.
Of course the law of Moses says to execute the man in the adulterous relationship too, and they somehow forgot that.
There were also many women who had prominent roles in the formation of the Christian church. In fact, one of the proofs that Jesus rose from the dead is that the women were the first to testify that he had risen. It’s a proof of Jesus’ resurrection because if they had made up the story of Jesus rising from the dead, they never would have cited the testimony of women, because women were not allowed to testify in court; they were not considered reliable witnesses. So that means the apostles really believed He rose from the dead.
There were also women in the early church who were prominent. It didn’t happen overnight, and Greek culture had a part to play in democratizing relationships between the genders, but the message of the Gospel bore fruit in raising of status of women as well as righting other wrongs, like the eventual abolition of slavery in the West after thousands of years of that practice.
So, what can we conclude? Polygamy is both illegal and a cultural taboo today, but is it immoral?
As we have seen, you will look in vain for a blanket condemnation of polygamy in the Bible, even in the New Testament, much less the Old, which seems to be more concerned about making sure polygamy was conducted with charity toward all parties.
Noting that there were problems in polygamous marriages is not an argument against it because we shouldn’t use problems in monogamous marriages as an argument for ending marriage in general.
In our culture today, polygamy is not an option because it’s illegal and culturally outrageous, but for more guidance, we can quote the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 5:25: “Husbands love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.”
Today women have agency they didn’t have in Bible times. They can get an education, they can vote, they can get jobs and start businesses. If a man abandons his wife, it isn’t good, but she won’t have to choose between starving and entering prostitution like she would have in Bible times.
For men to truly love and honor their wives, they shouldn’t disrespect them by bringing other women into the relationship. This should be our position today, even though the culture in Bible times was different.
