Jehovah watch between you and me when we are absent from one another. ....you shall (not) take wives besides my daughters, ..God is witness between you and me. Gen. 31:49-50.
God
provided for men to take servant girls as wives (concubines,
Jdg.9:18) and in this provision
strictly commanded such husbands not to discontinue the marriage duties to
the servant wife if he married another wife. This is God’s judgment for
such marriages at the beginning of Israel's kingdom.
Exo 21:2 If you buy a
Hebrew servant, he shall serve six years. And in the seventh he shall go
out free for nothing.
Exo 21:4 If his master
has given him a wife, and she has borne him sons or daughters, the wife
and her children shall be her master's, and he shall go out by himself.
Exo 21:7
And if a man sells his daughter to be a maidservant, she shall not go
out as the menservants do.
Exo 21:8-11 If she does not please her master, who has betrothed her to himself,
then he shall let her be redeemed. He shall have no power to sell her to
a strange nation, since he has dealt deceitfully with her. And
if he has betrothed her to his son, he shall deal with her as with
daughters.
If he takes himself another wife, her food, her clothing, and her duty
of marriage shall not be lessened. And if he does not do these three to her, then she shall go out free
without money.
These Scriptures were in the mind of those seven women of prophecy (Is.4:1-4)
who were prepared to forego their rights under these righteous
ordinances because husbands will be so scarce in that day.
Christians clinging to their “polygamy is a sin” error, have no
Scriptural answer
to these ordinances from God for polygamy.
