Thursday, April 18, 2024

Clyde L. Pilkington, Jr., on the Polygyny of Corrupt Men in the Bible

  

THE ASSOCIATION OF POLYGNY WITH OTHER EVILS

 

The Polygyny of Corrupt Men

 

Doubtless there are instances where polygyny is associated with men who were morally corrupt. Lamech is the first (Genesis 4:9); Esau is another (Genesis 26:34). Lamech was in Cain’s line, and he probably was evil for his treatment of the fellow who wounded him (Genesis 4:23). Yet the evil of these men was not essentially related to polygyny. Esau’s wives were a concern to Isaac, not because of their number, but because of their character. In the end, these guilt-by-association arguments are unhelpful, because such logic would condemn monogamy was well. For example, Cain killed his brother—and was evil—but the text does not mention more than one wife for him. Should his evil taint his monogamy? Clearly not.

 

There are other undesirable implications of ad hominem argument as well. What about righteous men who had more than one wife—Jacob, Abraham and David, to name three. Would not their general righteousness thereby justify their polygyny? The rejoinder is anticipated that these “righteous” men were unrighteous when they married their second wives. Abraham should not have taken Hegar, because that was against God’s plan, which was to bless him through Sarah only. Jacob was a trickster trying to outsmart another trickster (Laban) and got tricked into plural wives. David sinned greatly in taking Bathsheba to himself.

 

Nevertheless this over-reads the text. Abraham was never said to be wrong in taking Hagar as a concubine or even for having a child by her. What the Scripture condemns in him his seeking to have the child of promise by her. Consider the allusion to the situation in Malachi 2:15. There it is said, “ . . .And what did that one do while he was seeking a godly offspring? Take heed then to your spirit, and let no one deal treacherously against the wife of your youth.” In contrast to men in Malachi’s day who divorced their wives, the prophet tells them that Abraham, even in the effort to gain a child promised to him, did not divorce his wife in the process. This implies that taking Hagar, and thereby becoming a polygamist, was not a problem. He was righteous insofar as he did not put Sarah away in the process.

 

Jacob may have been tricked by Laban, but nowhere in Scripture does it suggest that Jacob was wrong in having two wives, and since Rachel was second and thus Jacob should not have taken her—well, there goes the line of Christ. For their part, Rachel AND Leah certainly thought that God Himself was blessing them by giving them babies (Genesis 29ff)—even those who came through their servant girls. They could, of course, have been wrong in their analysis but who are we to say?

 

The story of David’s wives actually provides a strong argument in favor of polygyny. Bathsheba was not his second wife—he had several before her—but it is in regards to her case that one of the stronger arguments for the propriety of polygyny can be formed. When Nathan the prophet condemned David for taking Bathsheba, Nathan remarked,

 

[God] gave your master’s wives into your care . . . and if that had been too little, [He] would have added to you many more things [women] like these! (II Samuel 12:8).

 

It was not that David had plural wives, but the prior marital status of Bathsheba, that constituted his sin . . . (Clyde L. Pilkington, Jr., The Great Omission: Christendom’s Abandonment of the Biblical Family—A Plea for the Return to Polygamy [Windber, Pa.: Patriarch Publishing House, 2010], 114-15)