D21-17: If We Allowed Polygamy Instead Of Prohibiting It, Would It Decrease The Current 50% Divorce Rate?

“If a man has two wives, the one loved and the other unloved, and both the loved and unloved wives have borne him children, and if the firstborn son is the child of the unloved wife; then, when it comes time for him to pass his inheritance on to his sons, he may not give the inheritance due the firstborn to the son of the loved wife in place of the son of the unloved one, who is in fact the firstborn.”-Deuteronomy 21:15-16

If there is any one verse that supports the validity of polygamous families, Deuteronomy 21:15 would be it.

Here we have it straight from the mouth of HASHEM issuing an instruction saying “If a man has two wives,  the one loved and the other unloved…”.

Folks, can we be for goodness sakes be honest here?

If God really prohibited polygamy (or to be more accurate “polygyny”), this verse would not exist in Torah.

Now other Bible translations will express an extreme contrast by saying “when one wife is loved and the other is hated“.

However, this isn’t a situation of the extreme contrast between “love” and “hate”.

This has nothing to do with complete devotion to one wife while having utter disgust for the other.

All this is talking about is the situation of one wife being favored over another.

In such a situation, we’re told that in matters of inheritance, the father is not to pass over giving the inheritance due his firstborn son born from one wife and…

…instead give it to a second born son just because this second born son comes from the womb of another wife who he favors more.  

Now a common argument often used to promote the idea that God does not really want polygamy is the idea that it is impossible for a man to have two wives and not have some preference for one over the other.

The argument goes…

…what wife is not going to try to become the more favored wife?

Adding to this argument is the idea that if a man has multiple wives, things get even more complicated when it comes time to pass on the family inheritance to the next generation.

Well, the only two responses I can offer up is as follows.

FIRST, this is what God’s Word says.

Period.

In plain black-and-white, there is no command prohibiting a man from having more than one wife (and a couple of concubines as well).

Possibly it could be argued that polygamy was not God’s ideal for human marriage relationships but was rather just a concession the Lord made for fallen human beings just as he made a provision for divorce for those marriages that ended up going south.

While this may be the case, this leads me to my next response.

SECOND, can we really say we as a modern society have done better?

Let’s face it.

In an era where the divorce rate has skyrocketed to I think at this point in time being over 50%, can we really say that the current sexually repressive laws that would handcuff a man to having only one wife is better?

I’m going to make a suggestion here and please don’t start losing your minds.

I’m just sharing honestly and thinking out loud on the computer screen.

I am NOT vigorously promoting anything and I could be very wrong.

Heck, in fact I want to be wrong.

So here’s the suggestion.

If our society (speaking as an American) had a provision that would NOT forbid polygamy (really “polygyny”) as it is allowed in God’s Word instead of prohibiting it, would that not possibly contribute to the decrease of the current ridiculous divorce rate instead of make it worse?

Because one thing that is clearly evident is…

…the way things are going in our society now are clearly NOT working.

I close with this sad comment I just received from a reader yesterday.

“If you were to take a feminist American woman as a wife you would be stopped by the feminist originated laws and she would take everything you have. Been there, done that. It does not work in this screwed up society.”

Again, this is just food for thought.

Please don’t send me your hate messages.

I’m just trying to have an honest and open dialogue here.