[Short Shots are brief audio presentations, with accompanying text, on subjects that people ask me about or that hit me as I live from day to day. Got a question for me to answer on Short Shots. Let me know.]
Does the Bible condemn polygamy?
Hi, I’m Mark Daniels, and this is another Short Shot.
Polygamy is a compound word meaning multiple spouses. Through the centuries, there have been two major forms of polygamy practiced. The first is polygyny. That’s a man having more than one wife. The second is polyandry, in which a woman has more than one husband. In recent years, polyamory, the practice of multiple participants in what its members call a marriage has been promoted by some.
The reason the question about polygamy usually gets asked is because in the Old Testament, several important men had more than one wife at the same time. King David, a man described in the New Testament, as a man after God’s heart had eight wives. His son, Solomon, had hundreds of wives. Did this practice displease God?
Well, the first thing to note is that nowhere in the Bible is polygamy given God’s approval. Of course, neither are a lot of other things that are clearly condemned by God as sinful or contrary to His will. But that’s not the end of the subject.
According to the Bible, the first man to have more than one wife was Lamech, a descendant of Cain. (Cain, you’ll recall, was the son of Adam and Eve who murdered his brother Abel.) The fact that it took a little while for anyone to think of marrying multiple spouses is a good hint that polygamy wasn’t part of the original plan of God. If you read the book of Genesis, one of the things you notice is that after Adam and Eve fall into sin, the condition of separation from God, the number of sins in which their descendants fall grows and grows. Polygamy appears to be an outgrowth of increasing human sinfulness.
But all of this begs the question: Did God ever express His original intention for marriage?
Yes, He did. After describing the creation of the first woman, Eve, and her marriage relationship with the first man, Adam, Genesis tells us: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” (Genesis 2:24) Notice the use of singular terms in describing marriage: one man and one woman who become one flesh.
Later in history, God made provisions for the extenuating circumstances under which this life-long covenant between a wife and a husband could be ended by divorce. But, Jesus, God in the flesh, and passages in the New Testament, later reveal that God only allowed divorce because of that human hardness of heart–an apt description of sin–that leads people to things like adultery, abuse, and spiritual abandonment. “Because of your hardness of heart,” Jesus says in Matthew 19:8, “Moses [God’s Law-giver in the Old Testament] allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.”
Everywhere God’s will for marriage is described in the Bible, it involves one man and one woman becoming one flesh, a wife and a husband engaged in a lifelong relationship of mutual submission and commitment. (Ephesians 5 provides a good description of this.)
There’s more to be said. But this is a SHORT shot. So, let me close with this. Our question probably shouldn’t be, “Does the Bible condemn polygamy?” Instead, it should be, “Does God have a design for marriage?” The answer is, “Yes, emphatically so. God does have a design for marriage, this lifelong journey of man and woman joined together by God.”
Even with God’s favor, marriage isn’t always easy. But it remains ever blessed. And when husband and wife follow Jesus, the two become an encouragement to one another, pronouncing by their presence and their commitment to each other, “In Jesus Christ, all your sins are forgiven. Take my hand and know that God is with you always, even to the close of the age.” (Matthew 28:20) This is what God gives to us in marriage according to His plan.
God bless you. See you next time.
[For more, you might want to listen to this episode of my podcast.]
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