Abraham, Jacob, David, and Solomon were all godly men. They believed in God. They followed the Lord in faith when it didn’t make sense. Christians look up to these men and try to follow in their footsteps.
However, these men all had more than one wife at the same time. They were polygamists.
How can we reconcile the inconsistency of godly men doing ungodly things?
Polygamy is not God’s design for marriage. When God created Adam, He gave Him one wife. Marriage is one man and one woman leaving their mother and father and cleaving to one another.
Polygamy always causes problems. Polygamy never worked out well for families in the Bible. Sarah and Hagar, Abraham’s wives, were at odds with one another. Rachel and Leah fought for Jacob’s love and attention and passed their anger and jealousy to their children which resulted in Joseph being sold as a slave by his brothers. David’s kids were in constant conflict with one another which caused problems for the whole kingdom. Solomon’s many wives (700 plus 300 concubines) turned his heart away from serving the Lord.
Polygamy is not directly addressed. Despite it being against God’s design and always causing problems, God never directly addresses the polygamy. There are some theories as to why God doesn’t address it, but for us today, it is clear that polygamy is not what God wants. In the New Testament, whenever instructions are given to a married couple, marriage is always described as one man with one woman. (1 Corinthians 7:2, Ephesians 5:22, 1 Timothy 3:2, Titus 1:6).
That still leaves us with the job of reconciling strong men of faith who did not live God’s way. How can we put those two together?
The truth is godly men in the Bible were not perfect. Godly men do ungodly things.
The good news for us is God uses imperfect people in His plan. That means He can use you and me, too.
Yes, those are certainly difficult passages to tackle as you mentioned, Rachel. It is so good to remember as you said that polygamy was not in God’s original design and not condoned by Him and that simply having a description of something in the Bible is not a prescription by God. Pinned. 🙂
Thanks so much for reading and pinning.
Interesting read. My daughter and I were discussing this very issue earlier in the week and revisited the topic with your post a few moments ago in our kitchen.
Cool! God’s timing!
This is definitely one of Scripture’s sticky topics! Often I come back to the phrase that OT stories are frequently descriptive but not prescriptive. Some of the saddest interpersonal issues in the Bible seem to arise from polygamous families.
Yes, that’s a great phrase. Descriptive but not prescriptive. Thanks for reading!
[…] While we don’t hear God explicitly commanding them to only have one wife, we can see from the descriptive passages that no good ever came out of polygamist marriages. They were messy and full of jealousy and distractions from the Lord’s plan and worship. Not […]
Solomon was so wise, but 1000 wives and concubines…wow. This puts it into perspective. Thank you! 🙂
I know. You would think someone wise would have seen the problem after the first, oh, I don’t know, couple hundred?