There sure is a lot of polygamy...

Day 73

OT Reading: Deuteronomy 23-25

NT Reading: Mark 14:53-72

So let me get this straight...

If a man marries a woman, then dies without a son, his brother has to marry the widow to make sure that his (the now deceased man) name is continued.

Yep. That's about right.

To us, that seems really, REALLY weird. To most of us the idea of polygamy or even marrying someone's brother-in-law just seems to be ridiculously out of the question. In fact, if our understanding of the New Testament is right, God seems to indicate that a man should be the husband of just one wife (1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1). So...why is all this happening? Is it really ok or did God just change his mind somewhere along the way?

This is a fairly common question, especially when we deal with Old Testament topics. So I'll do my best to deal with what all was happening.

1. God never condones polygamy. No where in the Old Testament (at least...if it's there I haven't found it) does God explicitly say that having multiple wives is ok. So in a sense God is kind of just tolerating this sort of activity during this time. And really, we'll see that God tolerating man's actions isn't really uncommon.

When we get to 1 Samuel we'll see the nation of Israel ask for a king. God assures them they don't need a king and actually has Samuel lists off all sorts of reasons that having anyone besides God as their king is a bad idea. Yet as the people persist God basically says, "Ok...you wanted it. You've got it."

Now as it turns out, everything that God predicted through Samuel happened (go figure). But God let them have what they asked for. Here God doesn't directly condemn the activity nor condone the activity, but simply deals with the way things are operating. And at the time this practice was common among all the surrounding cultures.

2. The people believed they were obeying God's first command. If you remember back to the very beginning in Genesis God commanded Adam and Eve to "be fruitful and multiply." But at the time he didn't qualify "with only one person." So it didn't take too long for people (men I'm guessing) to determine that there might be a more "efficient" way to fulfill that command (and that sounds like how a man would say it). Granted, I wouldn't want to try to have that sort of conversation with my wife...(Happy Anniversary again by the way honey) but to these guys it was all part of obeying God.

3. The Israelites had a different view of living eternally. So far through our readings while we may have references to "God's kingdom lasting forever" and the like, there has been no official mention of heaven to this point. As it turns out our view of heaven and hell has developed as our understanding and knowledge of God has developed. To the Israelites...don't miss this...their understanding of living forever, was through their offspring. This, of course, made child bearing one of the most important actions that one could undertake. So for them, the more kids I can have, the more I can live on.

Does that mean that God's ok with this, as some groups may claim? No. I don't believe so. Like everything if we limit what portions of the Bible we look at, we can find a Scriptural basis for just about anything. But as we take a more holistic view of the Bible we see that marriage was not developed just so women could pop out babies and to keep men from shacking up with whomever they wanted in the name of "following God's command." But the entirety of Scripture shows us how intimate this sort of relationship is to be. So intimate that God chose the marriage relationship to be the illustration of the relationship that exists between Christ and his church. And that is not a concept to be ignored or downplayed.

But yes...as we go on...there sure is a whole lot of marrying going on.