Polygamy

Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the saints. Before we dig into our topic, we humbly ask you to rate, review, and share the podcast.

Thank you.

I'm Dylan Hamilton, and with me are.

Michael Durham.

Chris Giesler.

David Gasson.

And before we get started today, I am glad to be back from somewhat long hiatus. As many of you know, I've been on Sandy Beach's vacation and I've been relaxing on my own and not really up to much at all.

News to me.

No, yeah, no, it's been a weird schedule for us this year and we're happy to be back amongst you all as much as possible. But we have a question, two questions actually, sent in about polygamy. And the first one reads, the Quran allows men to marry four wives.

If that man becomes a Christian, would you counsel him to be married to his first wife only, effectively divorcing the other three? Would you allow him to bring his four wives to your church? If they also become Christians, would your answer change?

And we also have another one. If a recently converted family started attending Sunnyside and they were previously Mormons who practiced polygamy and the man had several wives with tons of children, how would you counsel them to repent from this polygamous relationship biblically?

That second one sounds a little more emotionally charged though in the tons of children, but Michael, you wanna give it a shot?

Polygamy in the Old Testament as a Negative Pattern

Yeah, so I think that this question is important in more than one way. Of course, obviously in the primary way intended by those who are asking the questions, we really want to think through biblically how it is that when we proclaim the good news of the kingdom, when we herald Christ as King, as Savior, and people repent of their sins and come to Christ, they come with a lot of baggage and consequences of sin already in their life.

These things don't instantly disappear. And what then is necessary according to the scriptures? When we think of a Muslim who is polygamous or a Mormon who is polygamous, we know that such individuals are not beyond the grace of God to save.

Paul was the chief of sinners and he got saved by the power of God and so can these polygamous people as well. And God is pleased to save folks like this. So then what do we say? What do we say about their current sexual immorality?

How do we understand that? What does the Bible have to say about that? I remember tackling this particular subject in seminary and I was tasked with writing a paper which I entitled Polygamy in the Pentateuch, Social Misconduct as a Scriptural Motif, which I tried to be as fancy as I could with the title, which got me a lot of praise from my professor who liked very fancy things.

But I confess, when I wrote that, I wasn't really thinking about the actual impact of folks as in these questions. These are real individuals who need Christ, who need to be saved, and then how are they to follow Christ given the circumstances that they find themselves in?

And so now I wish I had written a paper with that in mind, but I didn't, I was just trying to impress my professor, which was easy to do, unfortunately. So in thinking about this, we do see polygamy talked about in the Old Testament.

Our first example, of course, is Lamech, descendant of Cain, listen to me, Ada and Zillah, listen to my voice. And he brags to them and boasts to them about killing a young man for insulting him and wounding him.

And so we find polygamy very first time in a negative context, in the context of a man who is descended from Cain and who was violent and arrogant about murder. And as we move forward, we do find polygamy again.

We find it, what's the next instance? Let's play a little Bible trivia after Lamech and Cain. I like Bible trivia, mostly because I win. And that's not a good reason to like it.

The next, the next instance.

Yeah.

I'm thinking of who was it that went to work for a wife and then they gave him the wrong one.

All right.

Weak eyes.

Yeah.

So.

I mean, you have, of course, you have the patriarch, you have, you know, Abraham and Jacob, you know, doing that, but I'm trying to think in between Cain and Lamech and then.

We don't really have anything in between. So Abraham's the next one.

Abraham's the next one, all right, guess right.

So we have Abram by, and later on, we have plenty of commentary in the scriptures about this, that this was the, this is the work of the flesh. Rather than waiting on a promise, this was, we're going to do things by the means of the flesh.

So that's a negative context as well. Then we have the issue with Jacob, wherein Laban tricks him and the deceiver got deceived. And when he woke up from his drunken stupor and was trying to fight through a hangover, he looks over and, oh, that's the wrong sister.

And has to work seven more years for the sister he wanted. And so that's another negative context as well. There was lies and deceit going on. So, so far three for three, each one of these instances is a negative context.

It's not a positive context, okay. So we move forward from that. And what else do we find in the scriptures concerning Pulumi?

Well, you see regulations in the Mosaic law, regarding it, or it was never prescribed.

Correct.

It was never, you know, lifted up. It's like, hey, by the way, we need a lot of kids. So I need you guys to marry a lot of wives so you can really populate. It's no, you see, if you're gonna do these things, here's some, these are restrictions.

One, don't marry a wife and then marry a sister while the first one's still living. So definitely don't do that, because that would be bad. And kings don't multiply wives because of the negative influences there as well.

So if you're gonna have multiple wives within a family, here are some restrictions because this is inherently gonna cause some problems. Look at Jacob, look at the baby-making competition, the baby-having competition they started to have as they were rivals.

And then you can see the horror show that came with Sarah and Hagar, and then, you know, and how horribly she was treated. And then, you know, it's just, it's never really spoken of well, even though the next instances of it seems to be permitted and regulated in the Mosaic covenant.

Right, so we do have language in the scriptures where it says, before the law was given, we have the covenant that God made with Abraham. So 430 years before the law was given, we have these stories of Abraham, his polygamous situation.

We see with Jacob marrying two sisters and then marrying their handmaidens in a sense that we could probably classify as concubines, as kind of a second-class wife, because they were bearing children in the name of their mistresses.

And of course, there was chaos in the home because of that, lots of chaos. And it's all a very negative context. And yet we see time and again that God continues to work his will and achieve his goals through the failures of the people that he has determined to be for.

And we get to see in the, by the time we get to the book of Judges, we have a horror story of a Levite going after his concubine, meaning not his main wife, but his concubine, and the horror story that happens there.

Again, negative context. We do have the instruction, which you pointed out very astutely about the instructions to kings. Like long before God gave a king to Israel, he gave instructions about how kings were to act in the Torah.

And they were not to multiply for themselves horses and chariots and gold and wives. Why not? That's how the kings and the nations around them did things. Of course, when Israel asked for the king, they said, we want to be like the nations around us.

Well, they ended up with kings who had multiple wives. David, King David had multiple wives. Was that a positive thing in the scripture or was there some negative things attached to that in the scripture?

Not negative.

Yeah, there's a lot of negative things about that.

Absalom and all this, yeah.

Yes, the house was in chaos. And then what does the Bible have to say about Solomon and his wives?

Pulled his heart away.

So we cannot find a positive example of polygamy in all of the scriptures. We really can't. It's not something where we can point at it and say, ooh, what a wonderful example. It's obviously something that is looked down upon and we do have the command for kings not to multiply wives.

And let's give this some thought. How do kings function in the Old Testament? How do the kings of Israel function in the Old Testament as corporate Israel? So that how they obey God or disobey God determines blessings and cursings for the whole nation.

And if the king wasn't supposed to have multiple wives, what was it for the rest of everybody else? They weren't supposed to have multiple wives either. Now, how do we know that? Someone might say, well, this is just all circumstantial evidence.

It's just like communism. It hasn't worked well yet, right? Well, how do we know that polygamy doesn't work well and is not the will of God?

Doesn't this go to hermeneutic? All of the instances are descriptive. None of them are prescriptive. Nowhere is anyone told to do that, but you have the created order where God provides one for Adam.

And that's what Jesus references too.

That's exactly right.

Yeah.

Think of what divorce is. Think of what divorce is. Divorce was a man-made modification on a divinely ordained structure called marriage, right? Well, guess what polygamy is? A man-made modification on a divinely ordained structure called marriage.

And that just continues on and on. Now, some people would like to point out, well, Jesus never said anything against homosexuality. Well, actually, he did, especially when you read the Bible and the Bible says that it was the spirit of Christ in the mouth of the prophets writing down all these things.

So Christ, by his spirit, through his servants, the holy prophets, did write a lot of stuff in the Bible against homosexuality. But when he deals with aberrations to God's design, he's dealing with all of it.

He also didn't say anything against pedophilia. He didn't say anything against bestiality. You just add to the list. So what? Look what he did say. He shut everything down. Every single man-made modification, he shut down.

So that's Matthew 19. Now, it came to pass when Jesus had finished these sayings that he departed from Galilee and came to the region of Judea beyond the Jordan. And great multitudes followed him and he healed them there.

The Pharisees also came to him testing him and saying, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason? And that was one side of the debate. That was side A of the debate. Divorce your wife for just any reason.

Side B was, well, it has to be a really strong reason. It can't be that she burnt your hummus once. It's gotta be she burnt your hummus for a solid year. And at that point, you're justified in divorcing her.

Okay, so that was the debate that was going on. And so Jesus looked at side A and side B and he said no to both. It's like, no, you're all wrong, okay? So he answered and said to them, have you not read that he who made them at the beginning made them male and female and said, for this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh?

Have you not read that? I mean, this is Genesis chapter two. So then they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let not man separate. And so that's his answer. He's done.

And then they wanna talk about Moses, which they misinterpret. He tells them they misinterpreted it. But notice that Jesus doesn't start with Moses, right?

He goes back further.

Right, the Pharisees are debating the law.

Yeah.

And he doesn't even go to the law. He goes to Genesis two.

He goes Creation itself.

Yeah, he goes way back before at all to point out the basic principles of God's design. What God has joined together, let not man separate. Well, that the principle applies. Just make application to everything.

What God has set apart, let no man defile, right? The marriage bed is to be undefiled and held in honor, so on and so forth. There's plenty of scriptures to tell us that polygamy is wrong. And that's something that a converted Muslim who has been polygamous, or a converted Mormon who has been polygamous needs to reckon with, right?

And in fact, don't you know that someone who was polygamous in hearing the gospel preached to them, and they truly are born again, they're gonna be convicted by the Holy Spirit that something is just not right here, right?

Here's the word of God. Here's my life. I wanna be right with the Lord. But man, things aren't right. Now the question is, how do you disciple? How do you shepherd? How do you encourage? How do you help?

What now? These are huge issues.

Aren't the base issues for Muslims and Mormons, a lot of the times, the understanding of the purpose of marriage? Like Jesus' answer, it's coming right out of the purpose of marriage. For this reason, that's what he begins with.

And when we think about the way Islam looks at marriage and the way Mormonism looks at marriage, they're two completely different teleologies from the one that we get from the scriptures as well. So would you say the starting point for counseling might be, hey, God's purpose for marriage is this rather than what you've been indoctrinated to know your entire life in that cult?

And I think it's helpful as well to, so you're not only showing them the purpose and the reason for marriage so that they know what marriage is really all about, but in that, are we not also pointing to the fact that God is the one who gets to define marriage and nobody else?

Meaning that even if somebody says, as someone has been known to say, they married their aluminum coffee table, or somebody says, I got married to myself, or Bob says, I got married to Steve, that even though they are saying that and using the term that God has given to us, this is actually a witchcraft in that they have enchanted it with new meanings that never belonged there in the first place.

And so when they say, I got married to my coffee table, God says, no, you didn't, right? In fact, somebody who's married to their coffee table, they say they get born again, praise God. And all of a sudden, they wanna follow Christ.

Am I gonna counsel them and say, you really need to get divorced from your coffee table? No, because that never actually happened in the first place.

Right. Right. And this would be how it differs from homosexuality because there's not a marriage in that instance. There's nothing to dissolve.

As many have observed, it's a mirage, not a marriage.

However, in this case, when you have, because you have some examples in scripture, you have some regulation, it's not the created order. Just because there's regulation doesn't mean that there's approval.

Regulation doesn't mean approval. Even the regulations on divorce, why do we have it? Because of hardness of heart. Why was there regulations on polygamy? Because of hardness of heart. It was false, short of the standard.

But these are legitimate legal marriages. So how do we, and so what do we do with them? Do we call these marriages holy? Do we call them and say, yes, I mean, this is false, short of the standard, but do we tell them, look, the standard is one man, one wife, so get rid of those three.

Well, you got these sister wives. We don't really like that. How do we deal with this? Do we treat them as these are legal? These are holy? Or do we treat them as this is the standard, this is, and now that we've gone through some of these scriptures and we know what the Bible says about this particular institution, and we know what Jesus said about marriage, and he defines it.

He's God, he wrote those scriptures, and he is master interpreter of his own scriptures. And he says this is what marriage is, one man and one woman for life. How do we deal with these people that are, or at least this man who's born again?

Obviously, we would appeal to Christ's definition and say, who was it that you got married to, right? We'd say, well, all of them. Well, who was your first wife? Who was your first wife? Who'd you get married to?

And whoever that is, everything that came after that was an aberration. Everything that came after that was disobedience. Everything that came after that was inappropriate and wrong based on the scriptures, based on Jesus' definition.

So then the question becomes, having been shown by the scriptures that what you have done is sin, what are we called to do? But to confess, to agree with God, to say the same thing about it that he says, to identify it for what it is, and then what are we supposed to do after confessing our sins?

Are we then to make them holy and say, well, I'm just a polygamous Christian, right? I'm just a gay Christian, right? I'm just a coffee table loving Christian.

Yeah.

What are we supposed to say? We're supposed to confess our sins, and rather than elevate those things to the right hand, we repent of our sins before the authority of Jesus Christ.

Right.

So what would that look like in the life of a polygamous Mormon, a polygamous Muslim now converted, is one in which at some point by God's grace, this man says, I should have never married number two, three, and four.

I should have never married them. My creator said that I shouldn't have done that, but I did. And now a man filled with the Holy Spirit, recognizing that he has taken on responsibility for these women and their children, that he has obligations, how will he act in Christian love?

What will he do? There's a lot of wisdom that we can glean from the scriptures on this, a lot. And anything from levirate marriages to situations wherein a woman who is compromised be retained in her husband's home, but he never goes into her again, questions of case laws in the Old Testament where they talk about not disfavoring the children of a second wife against a first wife, but giving equal shares of inheritance and so on.

There's a lot of case law that is laid out there where it's dealing with sometimes the corruption of man and sometimes just the loss of life because of the curse of sin. And so there's a lot of case law there which we can glean from and see wisdom there.

And ultimately we can see that we ought to be encouraging such a man to act in love and good faithfulness and good stead towards these women and these children. And again, is there some need to draw up papers of divorce?

I think there'd be flexibility in that.

I would say at some point it's, I wanna maintain legal responsibility in these case. I'm accountable. I'm not gonna go into these other women anymore. I'm gonna keep myself chased with my own wife, penting from my previous immorality, praying that God will reconcile our marriage to be honoring unto the Lord.

But because I have committed myself and they are dependent upon me in these situations, then I need to supply for their needs.

Well, it seems like in marriages between a man and a woman, the father gives his daughter away and she leaves his authority and goes underneath the authority of her husband. In the case of polygamy, those women are underneath his authority.

He's taken authority, responsibility. And so he may see the sin that it is and be repentant and there still be consequences, a responsibility that he has to take on to himself.

Also given Jesus' statement about divorce and the possibility of remarriage and the dynamic of adultery. He says in verse nine, I say to you, whoever divorces his wife except for sexual immorality and marries another commits adultery.

And whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery. Point being taken is if there is some sort of divorce in which adultery was not already present, in addition to the sin of divorce, there's also the sin of adultery.

But in the case where adultery has taken place and there's a divorce, there's no adultery for that woman to get remarried. Like so let's say a man commits adultery and then there's a divorce. If that woman remarries, she's not committing adultery.

That's what Jesus says, right? The adultery was on his part, not her part.

The marriage covenant has been dissolved. She's no longer married.

Right, so in this case, also looking at Jesus' words, is there a case in which this woman who her husband is converted, and let's say for whatever reason, he's like, I've got to go down to one wife. I'm gonna issue writs of divorce.

If it was a Mormon, it wouldn't even be recognized. You know, it's like a Mormon from Missouri, one of the hard cases, you know.

Level DS.

Yes, and it wouldn't even be recognized legally anyway. So, but what is she to do? Well, maybe there's a man that God has prepared to love this woman and to raise her children in mercy, like the story of Hosea and Gomer, right?

Whereas instead of saying, not mine, not mine, he marries her and says, I will love you like Christ loves the church, and your children are mine. Yes, they are mine, right? Space for that?

Yeah, sure. The second question that was asked regarding the Mormon family, that emotional aspect with all the kids. I mean, you say, well, hey, I need to have one wife, so I'm gonna divorce all the rest of these, and hey, I have my own family I need to take care of, and that, in your own words, that would be eschewing his responsibility to those women and to those kids, which are his.

So he's gotta take care of them. So, I mean, it's messy. This is what happens when you violate God's design. It creates a mess. We saw that all through Israel. We saw that all through Genesis. Over and over, nothing good comes of this, and this is just one more not good thing, but we're dealing with real people, real problems.

There's a lot of case law there, and we can work through some of those things, and it's nice that these second, third, fourth wives, they're not bound to this. They're not imprisoned. There's ways out, and they can be fully restored, and they can have a more biblical marriage in the sense that it's more God's design.

One man, one woman for life, committed to each other, raising their families.

But let's make it more messy.

Sure. Sure, let's do that.

Okay, so the man becomes a believer, born-again believer, and none of his wives do, right? And he says to wife number one, I have just learned that it was in the Creator's will that I marry you, but not these other women.

I am confessing my sin to you. I did you wrong. I wronged you terribly, and I'm seeking your forgiveness, and I want to be a good husband to you. Meanwhile, wife B, C, and D, right? They're like, what is going on?

My whole world is shattering, falling apart, and so on. Let's just take a wife B, and she has three kids, and this was not supposed to happen, okay? And my husband converted, and she's angry about all of this.

Okay, what happens if she wants to leave? Okay, 1 Corinthians 7.

It addresses it.

It addresses it.

So verse 10, now to the married I command, yet not I but the Lord, a wife is not to depart from her husband. A wife is not to depart from her husband, but even if she does depart, let her remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband, and a husband is not to divorce his wife, okay?

But to the rest, I not the Lord say, if any brother has a wife who does not believe, and she is willing to live with him, let him not divorce her. Ooh, well, that's interesting. Okay, so we have some guidance there for this question, don't we?

And a woman who has a husband who does not believe if he is willing to live with her, let her not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband.

Otherwise, your children would be unclean, but now they are holy, meaning marriage and children are good and holy in the sight of God.

Yeah.

So don't

Those are not bastard children. Those are, that is a good, that is a legal good marriage.

Don't give up on it. Now it says, but if the unbeliever departs, let him depart. A brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases, but God has called us to peace, okay? So if she wants to leave, then you're called to peace in that matter, and not to try to force her to stay.

For how do you know, O wife, whether you will save your husband, or how do you know, O husband, whether you will save your wife? So again, I think there is plenty of scriptural resources to answer even as messy as a question as polygamy.

Well, and that goes back to your question of, well, with the LDS that's coming in, it's not legal. And what. That's not even talking about legality.

Right.

That's talking about in the eyes of God, believer, unbeliever.

Exactly.

Things like that. Would you say there's a moral responsibility on the man's part to provide for the other women and children?

Yes.

Even as much as we would see an equitable, wise approach to providing. Like if you, as a man, married to your wife, let's say something happens, and her sister and her kids are bereaved, right? Her husband dies, okay?

What might be the Christian thing to do here?

Help out.

Yeah, help out. Help provide what you can do. But there's things you can't do. Right. There's things you can't do and shouldn't do because you're to be the husband of one wife. But there's a whole lot you could do to be a blessing to this bereaved widow and her children, correct?

Now, there's a lot there to reflect on in the case of a converted polygamist.

Can we make this messier by involving, say the wife B wants to involve the state in the legal proceedings with the children. If she wants to leave and she wants to hurt somebody, we can make it even messier that way, right?

Because most of what we're dealing with here is within a church context, a church body context, counseling. And how are we to handle this between brother and sister? Well, when she leaves and she tries to put the knife in the back and take all the cars of the sister wives, how are we to counsel there?

Yeah, so we would always take the side of truth. And we would say, given the conditions of what had been promised and intended, what does she have a right to? And to try to be as honest and forthright about it as we possibly can.

And to try to counsel and equip him with whatever he needs to make sure. And again, if we find ourselves as a church, if we end up having widows as a part of our church, who used to be a part of a polygamist marriage, but they're no longer because of the mess and the fallout, the role of the church is clear.

Right.

So this just goes back to God's design. And when you depart from that, you create a mess. You just do. And we could probably talk about these hypothetical scenarios. Oh, now, these kind of things do happen.

They're hypothetical in the United States, for the most part. But these sort of things do happen. Sub-Saharan Africa, the Anabas cultures, big polygamous groups, we talked about Islam and others. So this sort of things do happen.

And frankly, this sort of thing is coming in the United States as marriage and the definition of it just falls apart. We're gonna see multiple marriage. We're gonna see polyamory and everything else. So it's important to focus on what Christ said about marriage itself.

But we cannot get away from the examples in the scripture and the scenarios we just talked about that departing from God's design creates chaos. How many times have we said it's Christ or chaos? And that is just what happens.

One of the things that God bring up when he was condemning Israel for their sin comes out of Malachi. They were talking about, they were departing from God's definition. I'm gonna go ahead and read it.

This is out of Malachi 2, 14. But you say, why does he not? Because the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant.

Did he not make them one with a portion of the spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking? God the offspring. So guard yourselves in your spirit. Let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth to the man who does not love his wife but divorces her, says the Lord, the God of Israel, covers his garment with violence, says the Lord of hosts.

So guard yourselves in your spirit. Do not be faithless. It's just one aspect of marriage. And what God was doing, he was condemning, he was damning Israel for their actions. And one of the things that he pulled out was that men were being faithless to their wives.

They were not raising their families. And he calls it just violence.

So it's one man for one woman for life. Otherwise, it's violence against women. Thus sayeth the Lord.

Wow.

Well, I think that about wraps up the polygamy discussion there. Michael, do you have any content suggestions that you'd like to throw out this week?

I've got one.

Okay.

I brought it with me. It's called Exegetical Fallacies by D .A. Carson. And you don't have to have a degree in Greek or anything. It's a wonderful book to talk about really interesting ways to read the Bible wrong.

And this is helpful for anybody who really is getting into the, you've got the study bug, right? And you're really getting into the text and you've got several translations open. You've got your strongest concordance on one side, your Bible dictionary on the other, maybe even a Bible atlas somewhere in the general area.

And you are hot on the trail of some amazing stuff in the Bible. Well, this book is for you because it's going to talk about ways in which you can get off track by committing word study, fallacies, grammatical fallacies, logical fallacies, and other kinds of fallacies.

Now, what he'll do is he'll give you a few examples and you can read it and they're not hard to understand. Like, ooh, wow, I could see how I might end up there too. So very, very helpful book for people who are really interested in studying the Bible for themselves.

Chris, what about you?

I'm not sure if I mentioned this one before, but it's come up several times in our family. There's one, a book called the, I think it's the Huguenot Garden, talking about the French Huguenots. And it's focused on these twin girls that are younger and they are a Protestant Huguenot family.

And they're being persecuted by the Catholic church. And so it talks about their experience, their father taking them to church and their church is set on fire and they have to flee out outside of the city and hide.

And the pastor guides his church in that and they have to escape in different ways. And it was very good for me to read with my family of little ones and just things going on in the world and persecution.

And just to read stories, this is a fictional story, but it's really well written and it's particularly geared towards children. The two main characters are twin girls and there's, I think they've got a baby and a dog and just a bunch of different stuff.

But that one's a really good book.