Polygamy in the Old Testament: The Long Road Home

Have you ever taken a road trip with a small child in the back seat? About twenty minutes in, the questions begin. Are we there yet? How much longer? Why are we going this way? And sometimes the most honest answer a parent can give is, “We’re taking the long way because there’s road work on the highway, and you’re not quite ready to understand traffic patterns, but trust me, we’ll get home.”

There is something profoundly parental about how God deals with His people in the Old Testament. Read it carefully and you will notice that the patriarchs and kings whom Scripture calls righteous are also men whose marriages would scandalize any pew on a Sunday morning.

Abraham fathers a child by his wife’s servant. Jacob ends up with two wives and two concubines after a tangled mess of family deception. David, the man after God’s own heart, accumulates wives like a king of his era was expected to. Solomon, in his folly, takes the practice to its absurd conclusion with seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines (1 Kings 11:3).

And we are tempted to ask: Why didn’t God just put a stop to this from the beginning?

If marriage was meant to be one man and one woman, as Genesis 2 so beautifully describes, then why does the sacred text seem to tolerate, even narrate without comment, what looks like its violation?

The answer Jesus gives, when pressed on a related question by the Pharisees, is one of the most illuminating windows we have into how God actually works with us. “It was because you were so hard-hearted that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so” (Matthew 19:8, NRSV).

From the beginning it was not so.

 

The Pedagogy of God

Saint Paul, writing to the Galatians, uses a remarkable image to describe the function of the Old Covenant Law. He calls it a paidagōgos, a Greek word often translated “disciplinarian” or “guardian,” but which in the ancient world referred to the household servant who walked the children to school, kept them safe, and taught them basic manners until they were old enough for real instruction. “Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came” (Galatians 3:24).

This is the key. God’s relationship with His people in the Old Testament is genuinely educational, genuinely formative, and like all real education, it meets the student where they are.

A first-grade teacher does not begin with calculus. A parent does not give a teenager the car keys on the day they turn five.

And God, in His tender wisdom, did not begin His pedagogy with the full ethical demands of the Sermon on the Mount.

What He did instead was something far more patient and far more beautiful.

He began the long journey back to Eden.

Notice the trajectory. In the time of Lamech, men boasted of taking multiple wives and avenging themselves seventy-sevenfold (Genesis 4:23-24). By the time of the patriarchs, polygamy is present but increasingly portrayed as a source of agony rather than glory. Read the story of Hannah and Peninnah in 1 Samuel 1, and you can hear the lament built into the very household structure of polygamy. By the time of the prophets, monogamous marriage has become the dominant image for the covenant between God and Israel. Hosea marries one wife. The Song of Songs sings of one beloved. And then, when the fullness of time comes, Jesus quotes Genesis back to His questioners: “the two shall become one flesh” (Matthew 19:5).

The arc of the Old Covenant is a slow, patient leading of a hard-hearted people back toward what was lost.

God did not abolish the consequences of the Fall in a single decree.

He did something more gracious. He walked with His children, allowing for their hardness, even legislating around it, while always tilting them gently toward home.

 

The Hardness of Heart

Jesus’ diagnosis is worth lingering over. He does not say Moses was wrong to permit divorce. He says Moses permitted it because of the hardness of their hearts. This phrase, sklērokardia in Greek, literally means a heart that has become stone-like, calcified, unable to bend or feel.

This diagnosis is uncomfortably honest. The reason the Old Testament looks the way it does is not because God’s standards were lower then. It is because we were lower then.

The standard never changed. We did. Or rather, we needed to be changed.

And here is where the New Covenant comes thundering in with a promise the prophets had been whispering for centuries:

“A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” (Ezekiel 36:26)

This is the hinge on which everything turns. Jesus is not simply giving us a stricter version of the Mosaic Law in the Sermon on the Mount. He is not raising the bar and then walking away to see if we can clear it. He is doing something infinitely more radical.

He is changing the very organ that does the loving. He is taking out the stone and putting in living flesh.

The teaching on the permanence of marriage, perhaps one of the most difficult of all His teachings for our age, is not a return to law. It is the announcement of a new creation. It is the proclamation that Eden is being restored, and that what was impossible for hearts of stone becomes possible for hearts made new.

Yet, we must be brutally honest: even with the promise of a new heart, we often live as if the surgery were only half-complete. We are in the "already but not yet." The modern complication of marriage is that we still carry the tools of the old Adam into the covenant of the new.

Even in Christian circles, we have a sophisticated way of objectifying the other. We treat our spouses not as subjects with their own "good" to be sought, but as functions of our own needs. We objectify them when we view them as a source of emotional stability, a co-parenting business partner, or a means of self-actualization. When the "product" no longer provides the expected utility, we feel justified in our coldness. While there is a "completion" to the human being in God's design, when he takes what was "not good" (that man should be alone), and we still experience the longing of a kind of solitude wrought in sin, we often use language that sounds almost pious: "you complete me." But what do we mean by that, or rather, what's meant by it in most Hollywood romances? We usually mean, "you satisfy my desires," and we seek such "completion" as if the other were merely some kind of "tool" to use in our project of self-actualization. We forget that the "other" is not there to actualize us, to satisfy us, to merely meet our carnal needs; they are there for us to die for.

 

The New Adam Under the Tree

To see how deep this restoration goes, we have to return to the garden one more time.

The traditional reading often places the weight of the Fall on Eve. She, after all, took the fruit first. She listened to the serpent. She gave it to her husband. But read the Genesis account carefully and you will notice a small detail that changes everything. When the serpent speaks to Eve, the text says she “took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate” (Genesis 3:6).

He was with her. The whole time.

Adam was not off naming animals in some distant corner of paradise while his wife was being seduced into ruin. He was standing right there. And he said nothing. He did not interpose himself between the serpent and his bride. He did not defend her. He did not lay down his life for her. He watched, and then he joined her in the disobedience.

This is the original failure of the husband, the original failure of love. The man, called to protect, abdicated. The man, called to lay down his life, in cowardice remained silent, ironically meriting death itself for himself and all his descendants.

Now consider what happens in the Passion. Saint John tells us, in a way that's almost chilling if you read it slow enough to let the words sink in, that “the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him” (John 13:2), and later, that “after he received the piece of bread, Satan entered into him” (John 13:27).

The serpent is back. He has found a new vessel. The attack on the bride, on humanity, on the new Eve who will be the Church, has resumed.

And what does the new Adam do?

He stands between.

He does what the first Adam refused to do. He places His own body between the enemy and His bride, and He absorbs the entire blow.

The first Adam reached out his hand to a tree and took fruit that brought death. The new Adam stretches out His hands on a tree and becomes the fruit, the food that brings life. “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life” (John 6:54). The tree of disobedience becomes the tree of obedience. The fruit that killed becomes the fruit that heals. The garden is being remade in the very moment it seems most lost.

This is why Saint Paul can write in Ephesians 5 that marriage is a great mystery, and that he is speaking about Christ and the Church (Ephesians 5:32). That word for "mystery" was mysterion, which when rendered into Latin in the Vulgate, became sacramentum. It's the word we often term "sacrament," today. While I realize this is a word foreign to many ecclesial communities, it's been a part of Christian vocabulary from the beginning. Christian marriage is not merely a contract or a partnership. It is a participation in the very pattern of the cross. The husband loves “as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25).

The bond becomes a grace, a sacrament, a mysterion, because it is configured to the sacrificial love of the new Adam.

 

Love as the Good of the Other

True love—the kind that flows from a heart of flesh—is the willing of the good of the other as other. This is a radical, sacrificial shift. It means I do not love my spouse because of how they make me feel or how well they manage our home. I love them for their sake.

In the modern world, "self-care" is often weaponized to avoid the messiness of this sacrifice. We are told that if a relationship is "draining," we should protect our energy. As someone gets older and their body no longer "pleases" us the way it used to, many divorce and attempt to "exchange" their spouse for a "newer model." When our spouses frustrate us, or the feelings of infatuation that we had when we first met vanish, we look for other avenues to fulfill our pleasures, and those avenues are too numerous to mention, but you know what I'm talking about. Often, feeling that we just aren't "getting" out of a relationship what we used to, we decide to "part ways," often even if there's been no violation of the marital covenant. This is because, in the modern world, we've turned marriage into a commodity that serves the self.

But the New Adam didn't protect His energy; He didn't 'move on' to another the moment his disciples acted foolishly, or failed to provide him companionship; He poured out His blood.

This sacrificial love, which we're called to participate in if we're called to marriage, is not a human achievement; it is a divine infusion. We only receive this new heart when our hearts are united to His heart—the heart that was pierced so that its contents could spill out into ours. We don't just need "marriage tips"; we don't just need to "work through our issues"; we need a heart transplant.

 

Living the Long Way Home

What does any of this mean today, when the marriage is hard, or the family is fractured, or the calling to faithfulness feels too heavy for the heart we currently have?

First, take comfort in the patience of God. If God walked with His people for centuries, meeting them in their hardness while gently turning their faces toward Eden, He is walking with you too. Sanctification is rarely a lightning strike. It is far more often a long road trip with a patient Father who knows the way home, even when you do not. The discouragement you feel at your own slow progress is not evidence that God has given up. It is, more often, evidence that He is still teaching.

Second, ask honestly where your heart has become stone. The hardness Jesus diagnosed is not a problem reserved for the Pharisees. It is the inheritance of every child of Adam. Where, in your own life, have you stopped feeling? Where have you settled for less than what was meant from the beginning? A marriage where love has cooled into mere coexistence. A friendship calcified by old wounds. A prayer life reduced to obligation. The good news is that Jesus did not come to scold or smash the stone. He came to remove it. The honest naming of our hardness is the first invitation to the surgery only He can perform.

Third, take up the posture of the new Adam in your own relationships. This is especially true for husbands with respect to our wives. Stand between the people you love and what would harm them. Do not stand by, silent, while the serpent whispers. Speak. Pray. Defend. Sacrifice. The pattern of the cross is not a one-time historical event you admire from a distance. It is a way of loving you are invited into every day, in every small choice to put yourself between someone you love and the thing that threatens them, even when the thing that threatens them is your own selfishness.

Fourth, recognize the "Mysterion" in the mundane. The "complications" of modern marriage—the misunderstandings, the loneliness, the sexual dissatisfaction, the friction—are actually invitations to deeper prayer. They are signals that we have disconnected from the Source. When your heart feels like it’s turning back to granite, remember that marriage is the earthly stage where the divine, self-giving dance of the Trinity is put on display. You are not just managing a household; you are participating in a mystery larger than your own compatibility.

Finally, eat the fruit of the new tree. The Eucharist is not incidental to this story; it is the climax of it. If the first Adam brought death through a meal of rebellion under a tree, the New Adam brings life through a meal of surrender on a tree.

The food that gives life is offered to us, repeatedly and patiently, until our hearts of stone have been entirely replaced. Jesus made this promise clear: “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day” (John 6:54). He does not merely offer us a symbol of his love; He offers us a participation in His very life.

This is why Paul writes, quite poignantly, to the Corinthians: “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ?” (1 Corinthians 10:16). By receiving Christ under the appearance of bread and wine, we are not just remembering a past event; we are being fused to the Vine. We are becoming what we consume. As we abide in Him and He in us (John 15:4), the "hardness" of our hearts is slowly dissolved by the "flesh" of His.

We are still on the long road home, and the journey can be grueling. But the One who is the Way has given us viaticum—food for the journey. He has promised that the garden at the end of the road is more glorious than the one at the beginning. In the first garden, the tree was guarded by a flaming sword to keep us away from the fruit of life (Genesis 3:24). In the final garden, the gates are never shut, and the “tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit” stands open to all, its leaves offering “healing for the nations” (Revelation 22:2).

The Final Battleground

It is no accident that our modern age feels like a war zone for the home. Throughout the last century, many prophetic voices—most notably the visionaries of Fatima—have warned that the "final battle" between the Lord and the kingdom of darkness would be fought over the ground of marriage and the family.

If we look at the landscape of our culture today, we can see the front lines clearly: the casual disposal of marital bonds, the confusion of identity, and the reduction of the person to a biological function or a commodity to satisfy our pleasures, a consumer preference.

The battle is not merely political or sociological; it is ontological. It is an attack on the very image of God. For if marriage is the mysterion that mirrors the relationship between Christ and the Church, then to shatter the image of the family is to obscure the face of God Himself.

This is where we see the thread of God's pedagogy finally pull tight. We look back at the patriarchs with their multiple wives and think ourselves evolved, yet we often practice a "serial polygamy" under the guise of modern freedom. The ancient king took many wives to satisfy a lust for power or pleasure; the modern heart "swipes" through a digital harem, looking for the next person to fulfill a project of self-actualization. In both cases, the "hardness of heart" is the same: it is the refusal to behold the one beloved as a sacred subject, a "thou" to be served rather than an "it" to be used.

God allowed the long, messy detour of the Old Testament to show us, through centuries of domestic agony, that more is not better—that the "one-flesh" union of Eden is the only place where the human heart can truly rest. He tolerated the harems of old to teach us the insufficiency of the flesh, leading us toward the exclusivity of the Cross, where the New Adam has only one Bride.

We live in a time where the "long way home" feels steeper than ever. We are surrounded by a world that encourages us to keep our hearts of stone, telling us that "hardness" is actually "strength" and that "sacrifice" is "erasure." The "pleasure principle" has become the driving force in culture, from the way it's exploited in advertising to the way we pursue intimacy. The serpent is still whispering that we should look out for ourselves, to take the forbidden fruit whenever it appears pleasing to the eye, to remain silent while the other falls, and seek a life without the Cross.

But if this is the final battle, then we know where the victory lies. It lies exactly where the New Adam stood: between the enemy and the beloved.

It lies in the husband who refuses to walk away when the "utility" of the relationship fades. It lies in the wife who chooses to see her husband not as a tool for her self-actualization, but as a subject to be loved into holiness. It lies in the family that remains a "school of love" even when the lessons are painful.

The world will tell you that marriage is a contract of convenience that can be "revoked" when it no longer satisfies. But the Gospel tells you it is a covenant of blood that has already won. We are not fighting for a lost cause or an outdated tradition; we are fighting for the very fabric of reality. And if our marriages are icons of Christ's relationship to His bride, we are fighting for our ultimate hope, realized when the marriage feast of the Lamb is consummated at the end of the age.

So, do not be discouraged by the road work or the long detours. The "hardness" of the world is no match for the "heart of flesh" of the New Adam—the heart He gives us in the New Covenant, received in His body and blood. Stay on the road. Eat the fruit of the Tree of Life, not the Tree of your own judgment about what's "good" or "evil." Stand your ground in the garden. For the battle is the Lord’s, and He is leading us—slowly, patiently, and surely—all the way home.