It is often said that the Bible defines marriage as “a lifelong commitment between one man and one woman,” meaning that polygamy is unbiblical.[1] But the Bible offers no such definition and has a very different take on polygamy. Lamech, Jacob, Esau, Gideon, Elkanah (the father of Samuel), David, Solomon, Rehoboam, Abijah, Ahab, Jehoram, Joash, and Jehoiachin were all polygamists. In addition, Nahor, Abraham, Jacob, Eliphaz, Manasseh, Caleb, Gideon, Saul, David, Solomon, and Rehoboam all had concubines. We do not know how many others in Scripture had multiple wives; these are just the ones whose wives come into the story. Moses may have been a polygamist, too, but it is not clear if his Midianite wife Zipporah was still alive when he took his Cushite wife in Numbers 12, less than a year after Zipporah comes to him in Exodus 18.
Polygamy in the Law of Moses
It is not that these men disregarded the law of God. The law itself allowed for and even called for polygamy in certain situations. There were certain restrictions put in place, such as Leviticus 18:18, which says you should not marry both a woman and her sister (as Jacob did). And there were instructions about how to do polygamy well: “If a man takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish the food, clothing, or marital rights of the first wife” (Exodus 21:10). Or consider Deuteronomy 21:15-17:
If a man has two wives, one of them loved and the other disliked, and if both the loved and the disliked have borne him sons, the firstborn being the son of the one who is disliked, then on the day when he wills his possessions to his sons, he is not permitted to treat the son of the loved as the firstborn in preference to the son of the disliked, who is the firstborn. He must acknowledge as firstborn the son of the one who is disliked, giving him a double portion of all that he has; since he is the first issue of his virility, the right of the firstborn is his.
In other words, the Torah does not view polygamy as a bad thing itself; it simply commands husbands to love their wives well, regardless of how many wives they may have.
Another law states that if a man dies, leaving a widow with no sons, his next of kin should marry her, which would often lead to the next of kin having multiple wives (Deuteronomy 25:5-10). But polygamy was necessary in a patriarchal, war-torn society. When woman are largely dependent on men for their sustenance and survival and men are dying in war, multiple women needed to be attached to one man (cf. Isaiah 4:1). And so the law of Moses was written to allow for and even encourage polygamy.
Polygamy: A Blessing or a Curse?
Of course, most men could not afford multiple wives, but the wealthy could, which is why those listed above tend to be kings and prosperous patriarchs. But for those who could have multiple wives, it was not only an acceptable arrangement, but was viewed as a sign of God’s blessing. It was because Jacob had two wives and two concubines that he was able to have twelve sons and become the father of the twelve tribes of Israel. The prophet Nathan tells David that it was God who gave him Saul’s wives when Saul died, and God would have given him more (2 Samuel 12:8)! His multiple marriages were God’s gift to him. In other words, the Old Testament portrays multiple wives as a good and desirable thing. If “he who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains pleasure from the LORD” (Proverbs 18:22), how much more the one who finds two wives? This is why the heroes of the Bible are the men with more wives and concubines. These were a sign that these men were blessed by God. And in turn, having multiple wives allowed these men to have a “quiverful” of sons (cf. Psalm 127).
At the same time, the Bible highlights challenges that come with multiple marriages. Because Jacob favored Rachel over Leah, the two struggled for his attention. Something similar happened with Peninnah and Hannah, the wives of Elkanah. Even Sarah and Hagar had tension that did not end well for Hagar. This is why the Torah has the laws that it does about not marrying a woman and her sister or about not neglecting the first wife when taking a second: polygamy presents challenges not known to a monogamous family. It can become easy for one wife to be neglected when a “better” one comes along, and this neglect is a sin.
The story of Solomon is even more striking. Solomon is criticized for having taken many wives, but the problem is not that he was polygamous (this was expected of a king), but that he married foreign wives who led him to introduce the worship of other gods in Judah. It is here that sin comes into the picture, according to the biblical worldview. Polygamy is not a sin, but it has the potential of tempting one toward sin.
Marriage and Biblical Wisdom
So does the Bible define marriage in monogamous terms? No. The Bible allows for multiple marriages but disallows the mistreatment of a spouse. The Bible also urges wisdom. The king is told that he “must not acquire many wives for himself, or else his heart will turn away; also silver and gold he must not acquire in great quantity for himself” (Deuteronomy 17:17, NRSV). How many wives is “many” and how much silver and gold is a “great quantity” is not specified. Wisdom calls for temperance. Just because someone can have more than one spouse doesn’t mean they should. Greed is one of the seven deadly sins because it turns us in upon ourselves. Jesus points to a better way: “If anyone wants to follow me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” (Mark 8:34). In all things – love, relationships, marriage, life – our goal is not to amass more but to love more.
Many who followed Jesus decided to forego marriage altogether. Paul warned: “The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord; but the married man is anxious about the affairs of the world, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried woman and the virgin are anxious about the affairs of the Lord, so that they may be holy in body and spirit; but the married woman is anxious about the affairs of the world, how to please her husband. I say this for your own benefit, not to put any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and unhindered devotion to the Lord.” (1 Corinthians 7:32-35). He clearly says in this same chapter that “if you marry, you do not sin, … yet those who marry will experience distress in this life, and I would spare you that” (1 Corinthians 7:28). Perhaps the same can be said of polygamy: it is not a sin issue, but it is a wisdom issue. Is polygamy wise?
The Normalization of Monogamy
It was the Romans who introduced the idea that polygamy is immoral. While there is no biblical warrant for this assessment, there is wisdom to the Roman way. Sociologists have noted how polygamy is often rooted in economic disparity and can further that disparity, giving the wealthy man a larger family which can perpetuate its own power and wealth.[2] In times when a society is not war-torn, polygyny (multiple wives for one husband) can lead to poorer men being unable to find wives and have families. In some cases polygyny can lead to abuse, as is highlighted in the Netflix series “Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey.” Not to mention that tensions are more likely to arise when there are multiple people desiring the attention of one, as we noted above.
This may be why Paul lists being “a one-woman man” as one of the qualifications for being an overseer or a deacon (1 Timothy 3:2, 12; Titus 1:6). This is the only place in the Bible where monogamy is held out as preferable to polygamy, and still here, polygamy is not seen as a sin. Was it because a polygamist would be too occupied with a larger family to be able to oversee the church well? Was it because a polygamist would be viewed less favorably in the wider Roman world? It is hard to know, but Paul does see wisdom in urging Timothy and Titus to appoint monogamist overseers and deacons.
We also see both in the New Testament and in the wider world around the New Testament an increasing status of women. So far we have considered only the concept of polygyny (one man, multiple wives), not the concept of polyandry (one woman, multiple husbands), an arrangement that is unknown in the biblical world. Polygyny is often rooted in a patriarchal society, but the New Testament is pushing toward a society where “there is neither male nor female” (Galatians 3:28), where not only does a husband have authority over a wife but the wife has authority over the husband (1 Corinthians 7:4). This shift from a mentality where men own their wives to a more egalitarian model was perhaps not made fully enough to lead to polyandry in the first century but was made fully enough to make monogamy seem more natural than polygyny.
So the move to normalize monogamy happened naturally as Christianity gained influence in the Roman world and as Christians wrestled with what it meant for a wife to have authority over her husband’s body as well as vice versa. But this does not mean that polygamy is inherently sinful or forbidden. Nowhere is this thought expressed in the Bible. There are different family models, and there were good reasons for monogamy to become normalized, but it is not the only biblical family model.
What This Means for the Church Today
Polygamy is currently illegal in much of the western world, but it is likely only a matter of time before this changes, and already polyamory and other forms of consensual non-monogamy are becoming increasingly common.[3] The Church is not really ready for this. I have friends who are effectively in a polygamous marriage who wouldn’t dare walk into a church for fear of judgment. As the Casting Crowns song says, “The weight of their judgmental glances tells him that his chances are better out on the road.” People trying to manage multiple relationships are in need of biblical wisdom and the grace of God, and sadly they feel unwelcome in the Church. If we want to be the body of Christ, his “hands and feet,” we have to become like Jesus and be friends of those who live unconventional lifestyles. The purpose is not to convert them to conventional lifestyles but to help them fulfill the royal law of Scripture: to love selflessly.
Jesus said that the Torah and the Prophets all hang on two commandments: loving God and loving neighbor (Matthew 22:34-40). Elsewhere he said that the Law and the Prophets are summed up in doing to others “whatever you wish that people would do to you” (Matthew 7:12). Paul taught that “love is the fulfillment of the law” (Romans 13:10). James said that “the royal law of Scripture” is to “love your neighbor as yourself” (James 2:8). Scripture repeatedly emphasizes that our calling is to love others. And when Jesus tells the disciples to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them … and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you,” what he means is not that we should teach them all to be monogamists (something Jesus never taught), but that we should teach them what he said it all boils down to: loving God and loving neighbor.
This is what the world around us needs. How will marriages survive, especially marriages that involve multiple relationships? Through biblical, Christlike, self-sacrificial, unconditional love. The Church needs to model this in the way we love the world. We need to help the world see what it means to deny the self and to love others as we love ourselves.
The Bible gives a lot more freedom in defining marriage than we tend to admit, and the Bible is far more concerned with empowering people to love one another than with defining societal models. There is a reason for this: cultures change, and what it means to love our neighbor changes with the culture. This is why many of the Old Testament laws were no longer applicable in the New Testament. The enduring feature of biblical law is love of neighbor (Matthew 7:12; 22:34-40; cf. Romans 13:8-10). All else is commentary about how the Israelites could best do this in their own cultural setting.
The same can be said of Paul’s letters: He is giving instructions for how to live out the royal law within a particular cultural setting, but we must determine what that looks like in our own cultural context. This is why we read 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 and don’t require women to wear head coverings today. We recognize that Paul’s teaching about head coverings is instruction about how to love one’s neighbor in a different context than our own and that we must discover what it means for us to best love our neighbor in our own cultural context.
All biblical interpretation involves a process of determining the deeper principles that lie behind the context-based instruction, and determining how to best apply those principles in our own setting. Again, cultures change and what it means to love our neighbor changes with the culture. For centuries the Church has attempted to apply biblical wisdom to the traditional marriage, but as society moves away from traditional marriages, the Church should be there to help society see how biblical wisdom can help it navigate these changes.
Sinlessness, Holiness, and Wisdom
The Bible uses different models for thinking about right and wrong actions. The model most people are familiar with today is sin, which involves transgressing against a commandment of God. Having multiple partners is not a sin, but there are other categories to consider.
The Bible also speaks in terms of holiness, which biblically refers to being consecrated or set apart for a specific purpose. Biblically, a person could avoid all sins and yet not be holy. Meanwhile a person could be set apart for a special purpose and yet sin against one of God’s laws. When we speak of “holiness” in the biblical sense, we are not speaking of sin issues but of consecration. A priest or a Levite, for example, was set apart for God in a special way that the common Israelite was not. Israel itself was a “holy nation” (Exodus 19:6), set apart from the nations of the world. This meant that they didn’t just avoid sins, but they lived in a way to set them apart from the other nations. The concept of holiness was continued in the Catholic priesthood, where priests would avoid marriage altogether, not because marriage was sinful, but because the priest was “holy,” set apart for a special purpose.
A third category the Bible uses is wisdom. A person is to avoid laziness not because laziness is sinful (in the biblical sense of the term), but because it is foolish since it leads to poverty (Proverbs 6:6-11). As Christians we should ask not just if polygamy is sinful (it is not), but if it is wise and if it is a proper way to consecrate ourselves to God’s purposes for our lives.
For me it is the category of holiness that inspires me to be “a one-woman man.” A person devoted to one spouse has undivided loyalties. When I consider my call to love my wife “just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25), I see myself as best able to fulfill this calling if I am consecrating myself for my wife alone. My being “a one-woman man” is how I practice holiness both to my wife and to God. Others will be struck more by the wisdom of monogamy, as polygamy is a more challenging marriage structure. Others still will find that for them, polygamy may be both holy and wise, and still others will find that for them singleness is the best path. People do life differently, and the Bible provides model polygamists, model monogamists, and model lifelong singles. Each person must find the best way to honor God with their own lives (Romans 12:1-3; 1 Corinthians 6:18-20).
Conclusion
Most who are reading this will choose the path of monogamy, and that is a good thing. I have found a 20+ year focus on loving one person to be a great blessing. But let us make that choice because it is the holy and wise choice for us, not because we think that polygamy is a sin against God. This will help us to love others for whom it might be holy and wise to love multiple partners. And let us train each other that marriage should be rooted in the command to love others as ourselves. If we cannot learn selfless love, we are not ready to take on one marriage, let alone two. The role of the Church is not to condemn people who do things differently but to love them and to help them learn biblical wisdom and reliance on the Holy Spirit. Only if we admit that the Bible is not so condemning toward people with other marriage models will we be able to love them unconditionally and set for them an example that will help them in their own relationships.
[1] For the quote, see for example, https://www.desiringgod.org/topics/marriage. For a typical argument that the Bible teaches that polygamy is immoral, see Lexham Press, “Polygamy in the Bible (and What Jesus Said about it),” Logos Bible Software Blog, and my response to it, “Polygamy in the Bible: A Response to David Instone-Brewer.”
[2] Walter Scheidel, “Monogamy and Polygyny,” Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics, 5-6.
[3] Jessica Klein, “Ethical non-monogamy: the rise of multi-partner relationships,” BBC, March 25, 2021.
