LESSON 74.
THE OLD TESTAMENT AND POLYGAMY.
589. We must never forget that polygamy (more explicitly
speaking, polygyny), from the Biblical point of view, is
something quite different from that legal fiction which
alone falls under the condemnation and punishment of our
legal enactments. A man is quite able to live as a
polygamist in modern civilisation (and British law will even
compel his more decent wife to live in the indecent relation
with him, unless he, besides being a polygamist, inflicts
"gross cruelty" upon her), and not be condemned as such.
This is done by making the ceremony proof of the
crime, instead of the crime itself. If a man can be proved
to have gone through more than one marriage ceremony, during
the life-time of the woman with whom he went through it the
first time, he can be punished, not otherwise, generally.
590. But the Bible nowhere prescribes a marriage
ceremony, nor can we find more than a slight trace of such
ceremony in the Old Testament. Dr. Christian D. Ginsburg
says: "Cohabitation without any religious ceremony whatever
constituted and consummated marriage among the early
Hebrews.” This gives us the true test as to what constitutes
polygamy in its true and Biblical sense.
591. Prof. A. H. Sayce says: "The Biblical records have
been put into a category by themselves, to their infinite
harm. Commentators have been more anxious to discover their
own ideas in them, than to discover what the statements in
them really mean.” Thus it was in early times as regards
polygamy. The Jew sought a salvo for his own conscience as
regarded the practice of polygamy, and thought he found it
in the O. T. Christian expositors have preferred, for the
most part, to accept the Jewish teaching that God did not,
of old, discountenance polygamy,¾indeed,
that He even ordained it. It would carry us too far afield
to fully discuss this question, but some points may be
brought out of profit to us.
592. Without saying anything against the marriage
ceremony (it is of the utmost importance for the protection
of women and children in our day), yet we must not allow
this mere ceremony to blind our moral sense as to the
loathsome sin of polygamy. A polygamous man should not be
permitted to shelter himself (as the law permits), behind
the defense that more than one ceremony cannot be proved
against him.
593. Take away, than, that sham test as to the crime,
and we are bound to
admit that there live in our midst today polygamists who are
highly honored, and seldom rebuked even by Christian mn,¾particularly
if they happen to be monarchs, aristocrats, or men of great
wealth. Their relations with women of loose morals are
matters of public scandal; they answer to every Biblical
test, as to their polygamy. And were these men of today
subjects of Biblical record, they would be frankly pictured
as precisely what they are, and the number and names of
their wives and concubines might be given,¾since
Scripture takes no account of the marriage ceremony as a
test or proof of the offense. We have already called
attention to the (to us) misleading sense in which the term
"concubine" is sometimes used in Scripture (paragraph 548).
It may not imply polygamy.
594. The Bible is nothing if not true to the truth, to
which it will sacrifice the mere reputation of a hero
ruthlessly, whereas the modern biographer may write up his
hero, carefully concealing his "private life.” For instance,
David is pronounced a man of "integrity” as a king, 1
Kings 9:4, as the context shows; and "perfect," as a
king, because he never went into idolatry, or led his
people into it, 1 Kings 11:4; but the contexts show these to
be political estimates; the same biographers show that David
was faulty and sometimes criminal. Now because of these
things, frankly written in the Bible, but carefully
suppressed in the biographies of our day, though alas! too
often equally true, have we any right to say that the Old
Testament countenanced polygamy, whereas we who live in New
Testament days do not? No; in these we suppress the truth,
in those days the Bible acknowledged it. David was a
polygamist. Putting aside shams, on the Bible test, how many
of the "Christian" kings of the world, have been anything
better?
595. There are only about a dozen instances in the Old
Testament record, covering 4,000 years or so, where a man's
wives are listed, and of some of these, we have no means of
knowing but they were the second or third wives of
widowers. We must not conclude too hastily that God ever
thought polygamy was any less to be abhorred than He abhors
it today. Indirect evidence of a thing is often proof of
highest order. Years ago, we attended a service on Sunday
morning at the Mormon Tabernacle in Utah, in company with a
band of Christian missionaries. The comparatively
inexperienced "preacher" who occupied the pulpit said: "A
man should set a good example before his wives.” The
slip made a sensation of uneasiness in the presence of
"Gentiles." There are no such slips as this in God's speech,
in His Book. "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife,"
not "wives," Exodus 20:17;
¾"towards
the wife of his bosom,"
not "wives," Deuteronomy 28:54; "Thy wife shall be
as a fruitful vine,” not "wives" Psalm 128:3;
"Rejoice with the wife of thy youth,” not "wives,"
Proverbs 5:18; "Even the husband with the wife,” not
"wives," Jerermiah 6:11, and so on, throughout the
Bible. These are strong bits of evidence against a Divine
countenance of polygamy.
596. But the traditional assumption that the O. T.
sanctions polygamy has led to careless and perverted
translation, at this point. Deut. 21:15 should read: "If
a man has had (past tense) two wives,” as proved
by the tenses a little further along, "have borne" and "was
hated.” The Hebrew language has no proper tenses, as we
understand them, so that the tense must be determined
largely by other forms in the context. The verse begins, "If
a man has had two wives," in the Septuagint Greek, the Latin
Vulgate, the Syriac and the Arabic versions, and also in the
Targum. The teaching is: If a man, whose first wife "was
hated," remarries, after her death or divorcement, he may
not transfer the birthright from the first wife's eldest son
to the second wife's eldest son, as the second wife would
naturally wish him to do.
597. We do not pretend that what is said in the Mosaic
Law concerning polygamy is ideal; but it was the best that
could be said to a degraded people. The same can be said of
polygamy that Jesus Christ said of divorce, in Matthew 19:8,
"Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered
you to put away your wives," not because it was right
so to do, but because there was wrong in the men. All
that law, put into the hand of man to enforce, ever can
accomplish is: (1) to find the transgressor on his own
level; (2) give him a help against sinking lower; and (3)
protect others against his bad influence, or his abuse.
"The law could make nothing perfect," says Hebrews 7:19.
This is taught all through the N. T. Had Moses made his laws
absolutely ideal, there would have been an open rebellion
against him, and his entire following would have returned to
Egypt and degradation. Practically, he could never have
enforced ideal laws among a people just emerging from
slavery. Spiritual and moral teaching must always accompany
the enactment of laws, or a people cannot be elevated.
598. There are many instances in the O. T. where
circumstances prove a closer tie between a child and its
mother than between the same child and its father. These
were all formerly explained on the basis of polygamy,¾that
is, in polygamous countries, and among such people, the
father does not seem so close to his children as the mother.
But since the discovery of the early matriarchy, such
instances are not considered as necessarily proof of an
existing polygamy in the family, but rather as testimony in
the direction of female kinship. Thus, the fact that
Rebekah's father has less to do with her matrimonial affairs
than her mother is testimony to existing matriarchal
customs. But on the other hand, the fact that Samuel’s
mother has more to do with Samuel than his father seems to
be the natural result of his father having two wives. There
are many other instances which will be found in illustration
of these two customs, alike demonstrating a closer tie
between mother and child than father and child. |