Note: This sermon was part of a series where I answered questions about the Bible submitted by the congregation.
Question:
Why did God leave polygamy of His people unchallenged? How did wives/concubines differ?
Let me start with the second part of that question, because that is the easier part to answer.
In ancient times, a concubine was a woman living in a lawful marriage arrangement with a man, but whose status was regarded as being less than a wife. Concubines were respected, had legal rights, and their children were regarded as legitimate, although the children of the wife (or wives) were most often given preference in matters of inheritance.
We’ll deal with the issue of whether it was lawful for a man to have one or more concubines in connection with the first part of the question that deals with polygamy, since concubines would be included with other wives for the purpose of our discussion regarding polygamy.
So there is the easy part of the question. Concubines primarily differed from wives because they were considered inferior. Although they had some specific legal rights, generally their offspring were not accorded the same right of inheritance granted to children of man’s wife or wives.
That brings us to the first part of the question, which is much harder to answer: Why did God leave polygamy of His people unchallenged?
A little boy was attending his first wedding. After the service, his cousin asked him, "How many women can a man marry?"
"Sixteen," the boy responded.
His cousin was amazed that he had an answer so quickly. "How do you know that?"
"Easy," the little boy said. "All you have to do is add it up, like the Pastor said: 4 better, 4 worse, 4 richer, 4 poorer"
Before I answer the question about polygamy, there is a larger issue here that we need to discuss first:
There are many places in the Bible where events that take place are just recorded as historical information. In those cases, the Bible neither condones nor condemns the particular actions. In other words, the Bible doesn’t give us a command to follow nor does it prohibit us from a certain behavior because it is a sin.
Let me give you a couple of examples before we turn to the subject of polygamy:
• In Chapter 1 of Job, we read that Job had a habit of making sacrifices on behalf of his children, just in case they had sinned. The Bible is silent about this practice. God never commanded Job, or anyone else to make sacrifices on behalf of their children. On the other hand, God doesn’t specifically prohibit the practice, either.
• In Acts 4, we read that some wealthy people in the church sold land or houses and brought the money to the apostles so that it could be distributed to the needy. Again, there was no specific command in the Bible for the people to do that and there was also nothing to prohibit them from doing that. When Ananias and Sapphira sold a piece of land and brought only part of the money to the apostles, God killed them because of their deceit, not because they were required to sell their property and bring the proceeds to the church.
So how are we to deal with these kinds of situations? We have to look at the totality of Scripture to determine whether a particular action is right or wrong when the Bible doesn’t specifically address the action. That’s what we need to do with the issue of polygamy. The person who wrote the question was essentially correct – when we read the Bible it seems that God never directly challenges those who take multiple wives and concubines. But neither does God specifically condone that practice. So we have to look at the totality of Scripture to understand the issue.
It seems to me that the best place to start is to go back to the very first instance of polygamy in the Bible. Go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Genesis 4. Genesis 4 records the escalation of sin in the world after the fall of man. The world’s first murder takes place when Cain kills Abel. And then in v. 19 we read this:
Lamech married two women, one named Adah and the other Zillah.
Genesis 4:19 (NIV)
Then, a few verses later, Lamech is mentioned again:
Lamech said to his wives, "Adah and Zillah, listen to me; wives of Lamech, hear my words. I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for injuring me. If Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech seventy-seven times."
Genesis 4:23, 24 (NIV)
I’ve gone back and re-read this account and all the surrounding verses several times and the Bible is silent about both of Lamech’s actions – marrying two women and killing a young man. It neither condones nor condemns either action.
We would clearly consider Lamech’s murder of the young man who had injured him to be wrong. His actions far exceeded even the Old Testament concept of “an eye for an eye” and therefore would have been considered murder by God. And why would we say that is wrong? Because elsewhere in Scripture, God give a specific command: “You shall not murder.”
So if we want to know how God views polygamy, we need to see how that issue is addressed in the rest of the Bible. It seems to me that the very best place to start is with the first marriage. So turn in your Bibles to Genesis 2:
Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. The man said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ’woman, ’for she was taken out of man." For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.
Genesis 2:22-24 (NIV)
In this passage, God establishes His model for marriage – One man plus one woman united to become one flesh. All the nouns are clearly singular here. A man [singular] will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife [singular] and they [the one man and one woman] will become one flesh.
That one passage addresses a whole lot of issues related to marriage and sexuality. It is the basis for two of the Ten Commandments God will later give – “Do not commit adultery” and “Do not covet your neighbor’s wife.” It is also the basis for the Biblical teaching on subjects like premarital sex and homosexuality. Passages like 1 Corinthians 7 make it clear that sexual relations are only to take place within marriage and since God’s ideal for marriage is one man plus one woman, any sexual relations other than those between a man and his wife in a marriage relationship are clearly sin.
And for those who would claim that Jesus never explicitly spoke about such issues, let’s turn to Mark 10. In fact, I think that this passage will give us even deeper insight into the subject of polygamy.
Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?" "What did Moses command you?" he replied. They said, "Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away." "It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law," Jesus replied. "But at the beginning of creation God ’made them male and female.’ ’For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."
Mark 10:2-9 (NIV)
Not only does Jesus do what we would expect Him to do and confirm God’s teaching about marriage, but He takes it one step further. Although the Pharisees ask Jesus about divorce rather than polygamy, I think we can take Jesus’ teaching here and apply it to that issue, too.
Jesus made it clear that divorce was never God’s idea. However, because of the hardening of the hearts of His people, God had allowed Moses to write a law to permit the granting of a certificate of divorce. The idea here was not to promote divorce, but rather to protect the legal rights of women who had married a man and then who had been sent away so their husbands could marry another woman. Jesus makes it clear that divorce violates God’s pattern for marriage of one man plus one woman for a lifetime.
Let me just add one comment here before we go on. I know that there are some of you here this morning whose lives have been greatly impacted by a divorce – either yours or someone else’s. Primarily in 1 Corinthians 7, the Bible does provide a few, strictly defined situations where divorce is permitted – primarily related to the unfaithfulness of ones’ spouse. But even if you have divorced for another reason, divorce is not the unpardonable sin. It certainly grieves God when that happens and it is sin, but it is a sin that can be forgiven, just like any other. God wants you to grieve over that sin, confess it, repent and then move on with your lives.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable at all to take Jesus’ teaching here and apply it to polygamy. Although it was never part of his pattern for marriage, it seems that in Old Testament times, God had permitted men to take on multiple wives and concubines due to the hardening of their hearts. That doesn’t mean that it didn’t grieve God or that it wasn’t sin. In fact, God had made it quite clear that His people were not to take on multiple wives:
He [the king] must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray…
Deuteronomy 17:17 (NIV)
The primary problem with polygamy seems to be quite obvious. It’s just not possible for one man to become one flesh with more that one woman. There is no way a man can be fully committed to multiple wives.
A Mormon acquaintance once pushed Mark Twain into an argument on the issue of polygamy. After long and tedious expositions justifying the practice, the Mormon demanded that Twain cite any passage of scripture expressly forbidding polygamy.
"Nothing easier," Twain replied. "No man can serve two masters."
But here in this verse God also gives us another reason that marrying multiple lives is wrong – it will lead to a man’s heart being led astray.
The most well-known Biblical example of polygamy has to be Solomon. The Bible tells us that he had 700 wives and 300 concubines. There must have been some interesting conversation around that dinner table!
Most of Solomon’s marriages were merely for political purposes. Unlike his father David, Solomon wasn’t really into fighting battles, so it was just easier to marry the daughters or sisters of his adversaries in order to make or keep the peace. But that practice brought its own problems:
King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh’s daughter-- Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians and Hittites. They were from nations about which the LORD had told the Israelites, "You must not intermarry with them, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods." Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love. He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray. As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the LORD his God, as the heart of David his father had been.
1 Kings 11:1-4 (NIV)
This week, I went back and looked at as many of the examples of polygamy I could find in the Old Testament. And I don’t think you’ll be surprised at what I found. There was not one example of where marriage to multiple wives resulted in God’s blessings. There were major problems in every one of those instances. Let me share with you just a couple:
• When Abraham and Sarah are unable to conceive, Abraham lies with Sarah’s Egyptian maidservant and has a child. Hagar becomes Abraham’s concubine. And as a result of that union, the child Ishmael becomes the father of the Arab nations and his battle with Isaac, the son eventually born to Abraham and Sarah, continues even today in the Middle East.
• As we’ve looked at the life of David the past few months we noted that David took on multiple wives. And as a result, his family was a mess. His own sons killed each other and battled for control of his throne.
The consequences of those examples of polygamy were quite far-reaching. In fact, we’re still dealing with those consequences today, thousands of years later.
So even though God didn’t challenge the practice of polygamy, especially in the Old Testament, that practice clearly violates God’s pattern or model for marriage and it is therefore wrong – it is a sin.
