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 POLYGAMY : WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY?

                                                           INTRODUCTION

                         Isaiah 4 :1 And seven women shall seize one man in that day, and shall say, We will eat our bread, and put on our garments ; Just let us carry your name ! Remove our shame ! This is a prophecy which is moving towards its fulfillment ; in several countries women are campaigning in favor of polygamy ; Islam is favorable to polygamy, Quran 4 :3 – And if you fear that you will not be fair to orphans,… It is permissible to marry two, three or four, among the women you like, but if you fear that you will not be just with these, then only one, or slaves that you own. This, so as not to do injustice (or so as not to make your family burden worse). 4 :129 – You can never be fair between your wives, no matter how much you care. Don’t lean so completely towards one of them that you leave the other hanging. But if you reconcile and you are pious… then Allah is, indeed, Forgiving and Merciful. The Bible teaches us that every woman has her husband and that every husband is his wife ; 1 Corinthians 7 :2 However, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every wife have her own husband. We see that there is discord between the two books. But some will say : why were there polygamists in the Bible ? It is this question that we will provide some answers to in the development.

                                                     

 

                                              DEVELOPMENT

                    In the beginning, God allowed men to have several wives to quickly populate the earth. He only gave Adam one wife ; so the pattern that God established in Eden with the first marriage was monogamy. Let us know that He is omnipotent and could give Adam several wives. But if he did not do it, it was for one reason : fornication. Jesus recalled this ; Genesis 2 :18 The LORD God said, It is not good for man to be alone ; I will help him like him. Matthew 19 :4-8 1 When Jesus had finished these words, he left Galilee and went to the territory of Judea beyond the Jordan.2 A large crowd followed him, and there he healed the sick.3 The Pharisees approached him, and said, to test him : Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason ? 4 He answered :Have you not read that the Creator in the beginning made man and woman 5 and said, Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh ? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore let not man separate what God has joined together. 7 Why then, they said to him, did Moses command to give the woman a bill of divorce and to put her away ? 8 He answered them, “It is because of the hardness of your heart that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives ; in the beginning it was not so. Didn’t men like Abraham, Jacob, David and Solomon have several wives ? Yes, but how does the Bible present their situation ? It reveals the evils of polygamy within the families of Abraham and Jacob ; Genesis 16 :1-4 1 Sarai, Abram’s wife, had not borne him any children. She had an Egyptian servant named Hagar. 2 And Sarai said to Abram, Behold, the LORD has made me barren ; come, I pray you, to my servant ; perhaps I will have children through her. Abram listened to Sarai’s voice. 3 Then Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her maid, and gave her to Abram her husband to wife, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan. 4 He went to Hagar, and she conceived. When she saw herself pregnant, she looked at her mistress with contempt. The first case of polygamy in the Bible is that of Lamech who officially took two wives in Genesis 4.19. Several important men of the Old Testament were polygamists : Solomon and many others ; Deuteronomy 17 :15-17 15 you shall set over you a king chosen by the LORD your God ; you shall take a king from among your brothers ; you shall not give yourself a stranger who is not your brother. 16 But let him not have many horses ; and let him not bring the people back to Egypt to have many horses ; for the LORD has said to you, You shall not return that way again. 17 Let him not have many wives, lest his heart turn away ; and let him not make great piles of silver and gold. In 2 Samuel 12 :8, God, speaking through the prophet Nathan, told David that if his wives and concubines were not enough for him, he would have given him even more. However, some will wonder why God tolerated polygamy among his people. This era concerned the dispensation of patriarchal rule where the earth had to be filled. Whoever speaks of patriarch speaks of posterity and earth. Men can get several women pregnant at the same time, allowing for much greater population growth than if each man only produced one child every two or three years. Statistics show that today, approximately 50.5% of the world’s population is made up of women, compared to 49.5% of men. Assuming that the percentages had been almost identical at the time and there had been several million people on earth, it would have resulted in a numerical superiority of several tens of thousands of women compared to men. Ancient wars were particularly violent, with an extremely high mortality rate on the male side, which would have further worsened the ratio of women to men. We note that God did not consider incest (marriage between brothers and sisters) to be a problem until a certain period of time ; Leviticus 18 :9-11 9 You shall not uncover the nakedness of your sister, whether your father’s daughter or your mother’s daughter, whether born in the house or born outside the house. 10 You shall not uncover the nakedness of your son’s daughter or of your daughter’s daughter. Because it is your nakedness. 11 You shall not uncover the nakedness of the daughter of your father’s wife, born to your father. It’s your sister. Ezekiel 22 :11 Every man among you commits abominations with his neighbor’s wife ;

In the New Testament, 1 Timothy 3 :2, 12 and Titus 1 :6 say that a church leader must be the husband of one wife. Although these are qualifications for a church leader, they should apply to all Christians. Should we not all be blameless, sober, thoughtful, regular in our conduct, hospitable, able to teach, neither drinkers nor violent ? Besides, we are what 1 Peter 2 :9 says : You, on the contrary, are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, an acquired people, that you may declare the virtues of him who called you darkness to his marvelous light, 10 you who once were not a people, and now are the people of God, you who had not obtained mercy, and now have obtained mercy. 11 Beloved, I exhort you, as strangers and sojourners on earth, to abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul. Why this change ? In fact, God does not forbid what he had authorized, but He comes to restore his original plan for marriage. Polygamy was not what God originally intended. God accepted it as a solution to a problem, but it is not ideal. It’s like a doctoral student who holds the position of assistant while waiting for his real position. In most countries today there is overpopulation, thus making polygamy unnecessary. Additionally, most modern nations prohibit polygamy in view of population growth.

 

 

                                                                                  CONCLUSION

                          At the end of our reflection, it emerges that polygamy was not instituted by God ; it’s more like monogamy. He had tolerated it to allow human growth. Today statistics show us that there is no longer a need for bigamy. The Bible has several places calling on us to follow the perfect model of Adam and Eve.