From the Beginning: “Christian Polygamy”

Introduction

There has been an uptick in the trend in those arguing for so-called “Christian” polygamy. While it’s easy to dismiss the polygamy chatter as “another social media” trend, acceptance of polygamy among Americans has risen from 7 percent in 2001 to now 21 percent as of the most recent Gallup polling. A threefold rise in public moral approval is more than an isolated social media fad.

While numbers regarding the opinions of Christians on polygamy weren’t readily available, other views on marriage and sexuality were not promising. Even without hard numbers, there are a few signs, including men like, Vince Bantu, a church history professor at Fuller Theological Seminary, publicly accused of practicing and defending polygamy, and Chuck McKnight, a professing Christian, openly writing in defense of his own polyamorous marriage.

Unprepared Sheep

The preparedness of most Christians to engage heretical teachings is undermined by a pandemic of Biblical illiteracy. Only 39 percent of Americans engage Scripture on their own even three times a year, tying the lowest figure in over a decade of tracking (American Bible Society, State of the Bible), and the share of evangelicals doubting the Bible’s literal truth has risen from 17 percent to 26 percent since 2016 (Ligonier Ministries / LifeWay Research, State of Theology).

In contrast, those pushing heresy are already attempting to justify beliefs and thoughts which conflict with the established teachings and cultural norms, reasoning — poorly or not — why his or her sin is justified.

The natural result is an asymmetry in messaging. The church responds “That’s wrong and icky” and the heretics respond, “Here is why Scripture says it’s not.”

This is a shame, because Scripture, front to back, provides a robust defense against polygamy.

The Polygamy Misconception

Why then does there seems to be a consensus that, at one time, God permitted and blessed polygamy? This position is popularly repeated by theologians and pastors who in the same breath will argue now polygamy is wrong. A few reasons come to mind, but the biggest being, a general distaste for the Old Testament and the Torah, and how either have any relevance to Christian ethics, even among those who reject antinomianism outright.

The end result is a Christian doctrine which treats the Old Testament as largely irrelevant to Christian ethics, the law of God as functionally unrighteous, and an inability to properly defend marriage when it’s most under attack.

The Old Testament makes a positive case for monogamous marriage. The New Testament writers don’t introduce this as new — they reiterate what marriage was designed for from the beginning: a picture of Christ’s singular, covenantal love for His Church (Eph. 5:22-33).

This argument is essential for understanding and refuting the heresy of so-called “Christian” polygamists who believe they are introducing a legitimate, alternate morality that is biblically defensible. It isn’t. It turns the biblical theology of marriage on its head.

Scripture Interprets Scripture

A key belief of the Protestant Reformation is that God has spoken clearly, infallibly, and authoritatively by His Word (2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Pet. 1:20-21). The Bible is God speaking, therefore the words written in Scripture are the most authoritative interpretation of other words in Scripture.

Building on this, our argument does not artificially remain in the Tanakh. If New Testament speakers provide interpretations of the Tanakh and what it has always meant, we accept their interpretations as authoritative.

Definitions

Polygamy, Polygyny, Polyamory

Most, if not all presentations, of “Christian” polygamy is technically polygyny — one man, multiple wives — though the broader category includes polyandry (one woman, multiple men) and polygynandry (combination). This article uses the umbrella term polygamy throughout.

Polygamy is worth distinguishing from polyamory and open relationships, which lack polygamy’s formal marriage bond, though it should be noted that both serve as ad hoc polygamy in places where polygamy is illegal.

Marriage, Defined

Jesus does not reach for a new interpretation — Which He could arguably do as God incarnate. Instead, He grounds the Pharisees in the first book of the Torah, citing Genesis 2:24 — the very passage He then quotes directly. Starting in Matthew 19:4-6 (LSB):

4 And He answered and said, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.”

He expects teachers of the Torah to already understand this from a plain reading of the text, as it has already been revealed to them.

What “Have You Not Read” Assumes

Christ’s appeal to Genesis 2:24 is the conclusion of a scene, and the scene builds toward it deliberately. Before woman exists, God brings every animal to Adam to name:

“but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him” (Gen. 2:20).

The search fails first, on purpose. God did not discover, in real time, that Adam needed a helper — the delay was not God learning something as He went. He already knew. The failed search exists to make the point undeniable that Adam was without a suitable companion. The solution was always going to be Eve.

God’s solution is not to build several women. He takes one rib from Adam and forms one woman (Gen. 2:21-22). Woman’s very existence, before any command has been spoken, is already singular in its material cause.

Adam’s response is recognition, not classification — “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh” (Gen. 2:23) — a demonstrative pointing at one person, not a category of persons. Even the naming is built for one: ishah (woman) is formed from ish (man), a one-to-one correspondence embedded in the Hebrew itself.

Then verse 24: “For this reason” — ????????, al-ken, “therefore” — “a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife.” “Therefore” draws its conclusion directly from what was just narrated: one rib, one woman, one marriage.

The Word who became flesh (John 1) defined marriage from the first definition. One man and one woman, joined as one flesh — not one man leaving his father and mother to cleave to his wives.

This is why “have you not read” functions as a complete rebuttal in Christ’s mouth. He is not citing an isolated sentence and hoping it holds alone. Genesis 2 is a structured argument, and 2:24 is its conclusion. Every later text this article draws on inherits its force from an argument Genesis had already made in full.

The Wife of Your Youth

In the Old Testament, the term “wife of your youth” is invoked four times: Proverbs 5:18, Isaiah 54:6, and twice in Malachi 2:14-15. The wife of a man’s youth is as much an individual as she is an archetype. She is the first woman a man enters into a marriage covenant with.

The first reference we see is in Proverbs 5:18:

“Let your fountain be blessed, And be glad in the wife of your youth.”

All of Proverbs 5 is a warning against adultery. The author’s solution: Be glad in the wife of your youth.

As a loving hind and a graceful doe, Let her breasts satisfy you at all times; Be intoxicated always with her love. (v. 19)

The solution is to not find another wife, but to be “intoxicated always with” the love of the wife of your youth. Under inspiration of Scripture, that is a divinely inspired method for avoiding adultery, the disposition a wise and righteous man should have towards his wife.

Proverbs 5 ends with a warning: Abandoning the wife of your youth and following adultery is sin and leads to death (v.22-23). The polygamists, of course, will argue that pursuing a second wife is not adultery. We’ll address this later.

Judgment For Betrayal

Remaining references to “wife of your youth” in the Old Testament pertain to judgment.

In Malachi 2, God explains coming judgment on Israel for first, profaning His sanctuary. The second reason:

14 But you say, ‘For what reason?’ Because Yahweh has been a witness between you and the wife of your youth, against whom you have dealt treacherously, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant. (Malachi 2:14 LSB)

They have “dealt treacherously” with the “wife of your youth,” God “no longer regards the offering or receives it as acceptable.” There are direct spiritual consequences for a man who breaks covenant with his first wife — “for she is your companion and your wife by covenant.” Taking a second wife while the first lives is treachery against her, by the plain sense of the term.

Malachi 2:15 repeats the warning in the same breath: “Be careful then to keep your spirit, and let no one deal treacherously against the wife of your youth.”

Isaiah 54:6 strikes a similar note: Israel is described like a forsaken wife of one’s youth, called back into restored affection after judgment — the same pattern this article closes on.

Triage of Sin: Regulation Is Not Permission

We’ll first address the strategy the polygamist typically employs when appealing to God’s regulation of polygamy (e.g., Exodus 21:10-11 and Deuteronomy 21:15-17). The flesh seizes on opportunities to sin, sees a law, and seeks to exploit it. The Pharisees make an adjacent play in Matthew 19, verse 7:

7 They said to Him, “Why then did Moses command to give her a certificate of divorce and send her away?” 8 He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way.

The Law addresses and convicts of sin (Rom. 7:13, 1 Tim. 1:9). Jesus appeals to “from the beginning.” He’s not introducing a new concept. He’s telling the teachers of the Torah what the Torah actually teaches.

Because of the hardness of their hearts (their sin), the Law handles their sin in this fashion. The Law’s handling of divorce is a judgment on how the broken circumstances of two people under sin are remediated under God’s righteous justice.

The just penalty for all sin is death (Rom. 6:23). Any “regulation” of sin under the Law is not permission to do what is justly penalized by death — it is God’s patient forbearance of what is otherwise a death sentence. Just because God does not immediately smite a thief, a liar, or a polygamist does not mean the just penalty for their sin is anything less than death; the discussion is not one of “permission,” but of “patience.”

A man seeking justification will read God’s mercy toward the wife as approval of the husband — the same dynamic Paul names in Romans 7: “sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, worked out in me coveting of every kind” (Rom. 7:8). The Law restrains sin; it does not sanction it.

The Law on Polygamy

Now that we’ve established a definition of marriage and God’s handling of sin, it’s time to turn what we’ve learned towards texts the “Christian” Polygamists like to invoke, starting with Exodus 21:10-11:

10 If he takes for himself another woman, he may not reduce her food, her clothing, or her conjugal rights. 11 And if he will not do these three things for her, then she shall go out for nothing, without payment of money. (Exodus 21:10-11 LSB)

And and Deuteronomy 21:15-17:

15 “If a man has two wives, the one loved and the other unloved, and both the loved and the unloved have borne him sons, if the firstborn son belongs to the unloved, 16 then it shall be in the day he wills what he has to his sons, he cannot make the son of the loved the firstborn before the son of the unloved, who is the firstborn. 17 But he shall recognize the firstborn, the son of the unloved, by giving him a double portion of all that he has, for he is the first of his vigor; the legal judgment for the firstborn belongs to him. (Deuteronomy 21:15-17 LSB)

First, both passages are responding to things which happen, not permitting them to happen: “If he takes…” and “If a man has…” The jump in reasoning is that since these passages do not explicitly condemn the act, there is no condemnation on the act. That’s not how the Torah works.

Second, note who is protected by the law. Exodus 21:10-11 protects the first wife’s food, clothing, and conjugal rights. The statute establishes no protections for a second wife’s position as such. Deuteronomy 21:15-17 does the same: it protects a firstborn son’s inheritance regardless of his mother’s status, but never protects a wife’s standing as second wife.

What the Law consistently protects is the original covenant wife against the fallout of what her husband does after her. That is the same figure Proverbs, Malachi, and Isaiah have already named: “the wife of your youth.” The Law does not build a framework for plural marriage to function. It was guarding the one relationship it already recognized as legitimate from the damage a second one introduces.

That’s the same legal logic behind Deuteronomy 24:1-4 on divorce, which Jesus explicitly names in Matthew 19:8 as accommodation to hardness of heart, not approval — “from the beginning it was not so.”

This should not be misinterpreted to mean a second wife, after a biblically legitimate divorce, is not protected. That discussion is beyond the scope of this article.

Her Sister

A deeper argument against polygamy can be found in Leviticus 18:18:

And you shall not marry a woman in addition to her sister as a rival while she is alive, to uncover her nakedness.

The knee-jerk response to this passage is often to assume “sister” means blood sister. What about half-sisters? Adopted sisters? The treatment of this passage, even in traditional commentaries, is a circus. There is a biblical case for broader application.

One To Another

The Hebrew idiom ishah el-achotah (“a woman to her sister”) is Torah’s own idiom for “one to another” — Hebrew has no standalone adjective for “another,” and reaches for kinship language to express reciprocity instead.

The tabernacle’s curtains use this exact construction where a literal sister is impossible: “joined one to another” (ishah el-achotah, Exod. 26:3, repeated in 26:6, 17). Curtains have no sisters. This isn’t an isolated grammatical curiosity:

• The masculine equivalent, ach (“brother”), does identical work throughout Torah’s civil and ceremonial law to mean simply “a fellow Israelite,” detached from any actual sibling relationship: “if your brother becomes poor” (Lev. 25:25, 35, 39),
• “You shall not see your brother’s ox or sheep straying” (Deut. 22:1),
• “You shall not lend interest to your brother” (Deut. 23:19).

The ach/achot root is a settled idiomatic pattern across the Law, not a one-off reading forced onto a single difficult verse.

The grammar itself points the same direction. Leviticus 18:17, one verse earlier, uses the conjunction “and” to name an actual kinship pair — “a woman and her daughter.” Verse 18 switches construction entirely, using the preposition “to” instead — “a woman to her sister.” The passage doesn’t say “and her sister” but “to her sister.” That shift is not incidental; it is not the grammar of a stated kinship relation, but of a comparison between two parties.

Covenant Vocabulary: Sister

The Torah explicitly forbids marrying outside the covenant community — “you shall not intermarry with them… for they will turn your sons away from following Me” (Deut. 7:3-4). Note the language even here — “your sons” — the same familial vocabulary this argument depends on, used in the very verse establishing the boundary. Ruth and Rahab confirm the boundary was covenantal, not ethnic: both are received in through professed loyalty to Yahweh (Ruth 1:16; Josh. 2:11), not by birth. But the boundary itself was real.

Which means every woman an Israelite man could lawfully marry was, by definition, already within the covenant — already a “sister”. There was no lawful wife who wasn’t. We continued the use of this language in the New Testament — Paul calls Phoebe “our sister” (Rom. 16:1) with no blood relation in view. It wasn’t a new phenomenon in the church; it was Torah’s own vocabulary, carried forward.

Read this way, Leviticus 18:18 is not a narrow prohibition on marrying two literal sisters. It is a general prohibition: do not take one wife in addition to another, as a rival, while the first lives.

Exodus 21:10-11 and Deuteronomy 21:15-17 never built a category protecting a second wife once she’s there. Leviticus 18:18 says she should never have been added in the first place. Prohibition and regulation converge on the same silence.

The Brother’s Duty: Levirate Marriage

One Torah text looks, on its face, like a positive command toward polygamy rather than mere regulation of it: the levirate law of Deuteronomy 25:5-10. If a man dies without an heir, his brother is obligated to marry the widow and raise up a son in the dead man’s name, “so that his name will not be blotted out from Israel.” If the brother is already married, fulfilling this duty makes him polygamous. It is a real command — and unlike Exodus 21:10-11 or Deuteronomy 21:15-17, which manage the fallout of an already-existing plural marriage, this text could generate a new one.

The law provides a lawful exit. If the brother is unwilling, the widow may bring him before the elders; he is publicly released through the halitzah ceremony — his sandal removed, her declaration made, his family carrying a mark of shame afterward (Deut. 25:7-10). No man is compelled into this marriage without recourse. The shame attached is for declining an act of covenant loyalty toward his dead brother, not for avoiding sin.

This is not a marriage entered for desire. It is an obligation discharged for the dead brother’s inheritance, name, and place among the covenant people — which is precisely why the causal chain of adultery established earlier does not apply here. That argument required a man lust for another wife. This is a duty-bound obligation to his brother.

The purpose reaches further than one family’s name. Torah’s concern for unbroken lines runs back to the seed promise of Genesis 3:15, traced through specific households toward a specific line — The Messiah, Jesus Christ.

She’s Not A Rival

This also resolves what would otherwise be a real tension with Leviticus 18:18’s prohibition on taking a second wife “as a rival.” Deuteronomy 25:6 reassigns the child’s legal identity entirely — he is not the living husband’s heir, but the dead brother’s. There is no inheritance for a second son to compete for.

Rival Defined by Torah

Polygamists argue the husband “loves both wives equally” and therefore has no rivals. But the rival is defined by law, not by feelings. In this case, Deuteronomy 25:6 makes the second wife not a rival and Exodus 21:10-11 protects the rights of the first wife — food, clothing, conjugal rights. This applies regardless of how a second marriage arose, levirate duty included.

A man cannot use this obligation as cover to neglect his existing wife, and her own path to an heir for her own husband’s line remains fully intact alongside it.

Levirate marriage was a statute written to a covenant people intended to preserve the covenant people and the Messianic line.

The Patriarchs: Transcription Is Not Prescription

We often approach the patriarchs the way we’d approach a Sunday school lesson — tidy stories with clear morals, compressed into neat lessons. But that’s not how Scripture actually records them, and it doesn’t leave rave endorsements for their family life. See for yourself:

• Sarah and Hagar record real contempt, real cruelty, and a mother and child cast into the wilderness (Gen. 16, 21).
• Rachel and Leah — two sisters married to the same man, locked for years in open rivalry over his affection and their children (Gen. 29-30). None of this is presented as the ideal — it’s what happened.

But nowhere is the cost of these households clearer than in the house of Jacob.

The House of Israel

Jacob’s sons — the fruit of his multiple wives and their maidservants — conspired to kill their brother Joseph, and when that plan failed, sold him into slavery (Gen. 37:18-28). This is not domestic friction, it’s attempted fratricide and human trafficking.

When Jacob died, Joseph’s brothers approached Joseph and threw themselves at his mercy, “certainly repay us for all the evil which we did to him…Behold, we are your servants” (Gen. 50:14,18). This was the fruit of Jacob’s polygamous marriage. A life of suffering and turmoil for him and his children.

The House of David

David’s household tells the same story louder. Nathan’s rebuke over Bathsheba opens by reciting what God had already given him:

“I also gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your care… and if that had been too little, I would have added to you many more things like these” (2 Sam. 12:8).

That is not divine endorsement of David’s wives. It’s the setup for an indictment. David had this much, and it still wasn’t enough to keep him from murder and theft for another wife.

Sons born to different wives carried divided loyalties and old grievances:

• Amnon, son of Ahinoam, raped his half-sister Tamar, daughter of Maacah (2 Sam. 13).
• Absalom, Tamar’s full brother, waited two years and then murdered Amnon in revenge (2 Sam. 13:28-29),
• Absalom rebelled against his own father and publicly violated David’s concubines in the sight of all Israel — an act Nathan had already named, in advance, as judgment (2 Sam. 12:11-12; 16:22).

One household. Sons of different wives. Rape, fratricide, and civil war. “Blessed.”

The House of David: Solomon

Solomon needs less commentary, because Scripture supplies its own verdict. 1 Kings 11:1-3 records seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines — a direct violation of the warning already given in Deuteronomy 17:17, that a king “shall not multiply wives for himself, so that his heart does not turn away.” The text then states the consequence outright: “his wives turned his heart away after other gods” (1 Kings 11:4). God responds by tearing the kingdom from his son (1 Kings 11:9-13).

The Patriarchs in Review

These are the fruits of the patriarchs’ polygamous relationships — the very fruits “Christian” polygamists hand-wave away as God’s blessings. Transcription is not prescription. Scripture telling us what happened in a patriarch’s household is not Scripture telling us it was good. The Patriarchs being blessed for faithfulness in certain areas is not a stamp of approval for all of their actions.

A Second Wife: Adultery in the Heart

In Matthew 5:21-30, Jesus establishes that sin begins in the heart before it’s ever acted on. This isn’t new. It’s the application of texts like Jeremiah 17:9 and numerous Psalms and Proverbs which warn the heart is the source of sinful action.

In Matthew 5:27-28:

27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery’; 28 but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

The implication of this passage is often conveniently ignored by polygamists: A man who is already married, must lust after a woman not his wife to first desire her as his wife. According to Christ, this is adultery in the heart. We’ve already established marriage is, by definition, the exclusive one-flesh union of one man and one woman. Pursuing a second wife is pursuit of a union that definition forecloses.

For God to have “permitted” and “blessed” polygamy, God would need to “permit” and “bless” the adultery which necessarily precedes marrying a second wife.

The argument that a man can functionally not lust after a woman and desire her to be a second wife is not supported by the terms. If the only difference between “lust” and “not lust” is the desire to make the object of your desire a wife, then Jesus’ warning is divorced from its context.

God did not abrogate the 7th Commandment for Old Testament saints, neither has He abrogated it for New Covenant saints.

From The Beginning

From the beginning, God establishes a creation ordinance: Male and Female. In the New Testament, the purpose for this creation ordinance is revealed.

Paul held the same command of Genesis the men in Matthew 19 held — and, whether by direct knowledge of Christ’s own teaching or by the same Spirit who inspired Genesis itself, applies it as it was always meant to be understood. The apostle who once persecuted the church now writes as one who finally understood what he had memorized all along.

A Predestined Bride

Ephesians 5:22-33 contains within it marriage instructions and, in it, the clearest example of the purpose of marriage, citing Genesis 2:24 verbatim, focusing here on verses 28-33:

28 So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; 29 for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, 30 because we are members of His body.

31 For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

32 This mystery is great, but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church. 33 Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband.

Revealed here, Paul reaches for the same scene that Jesus had previously invoked years earlier, and which Christ was present for in establishing the one flesh institution at Creation as the Word (John 1:1-3).

Adam and Eve’s marriage represented God’s own predestined plan, set from before the foundation of the world, to save a particular people (Eph. 1:4-5) and unite them to His Son in a singular, intimate relationship as His bride, the Church.

Polygamist Church

In that regard, polygamists will argue that relationship is polygamous in nature. However, the treatment of Christ and the Church is monogamous. Christ is not married to “churches,” He is married to a Church. He does not have bodies, He has a body (Col. 1:24). The Church is made of many members, but the typology is not applied that way.

If their reasoning held — the Church has many women and therefore Jesus Christ is a serial polygamist — the same absurd category would have to apply to the inclusion of men in the Church. Christ would also be a serial homosexual. And yes, as blasphemous as this sounds, Progressive “Christians” use the exact same line of reasoning.

A Singular Bride

The text is clear: Christ is married to His singular wife, the Church (2 Cor. 11:2). That was the model from the beginning, through the patriarchs, fingerprinted throughout the law, and revealed to us more fully under the New Covenant.

This article won’t try to settle the timing. Whether Israel’s inclusion is already underway through the remnant of grace, or awaits a future ingathering (Rom. 11:25-26), the promise lands in the same place: the Church. The wife of your youth is not replaced by a new bride. The promise made to her is fulfilled in the very body Christ calls His own. Christ is married to “the wife of His youth.”

Before God

Genesis establishes that “From the beginning” God intentionally established marriage as part of the created order in taking a single rib from the man, Adam, and forming from his rib, the single woman, Eve. He then gave them to each other as covenant companions before sin entered the world.

After sin entered the world, God reveals His law to restrain sin and reflect His righteous character. The Law is not a permission to do what violates the intentional ordering of Creation, but to handle the hardened hearts of His Creation who rebel against Him.

The burden of proof lies on the “Christian” Polygamists to justify, in light of Genesis 2, in light of the blessings and commands to not betray the wife of one’s youth, in light of adultery beginning in the heart, how adding a wife (or husband) is good, blessed, and righteous.

And Yahweh God fashioned the rib, which He had taken from the man, into a woman, and He brought her to the man. (Genesis 2:22 LSB)

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Edit: Revised @ 5:48am 7/16/26

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