Polygamy

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POLYGAMY.—See Family, Marriage.
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible
Edited by James Hastings, D.D. Published in 1909

Polygamy. See Marriage.
Smith's Bible Dictionary
By Dr. William Smith.Published in 1863

pṓ-lig?a-mi:
1. Meaning of the Term
2. Origin of Polygamy
3. The Old Testament and Polygamy
4. Polygamy Unnatural
The Eunuch
5. Weakness of Polygamy

1. Meaning of the Term:
Polygamy has been and is the open blazon by the human race of sex vice. The very term is a misnomer. Since man became moralized he has apprehended that the proper marriage relation between the sexes is monogamy. Whatever may have been the practice, since man could ask himself, What is right? he has known that ἀπ ἀρχῆς, ap' archḗs (?from the beginning,? Mat_19:4), au fond, at bottom, marriage is the choice of one man and one woman of each other for a life family relation. La Rochefoucauld said: ?Hypocrisy is a sort of homage which vice pays to virtue.? There is hypocrisy beneath the word polygamy. It is an attempt to cover up by the term ?plural marriage? what is not marriage and cannot be marriage. There is no particular need of defining what the condition is, so long as we can look upon it as a violation and negation of the marriage relation. The very use of the term from any language covering a like condition is attempt -
?To steal the livery of the court of heaven
To serve the Devil in.?
Polygamy is a general term and might mean a multiplicity of partners in the family relation by one of either sex. But it does not. Polygamy practically means exactly ?polygyny? (γυνή, gunḗ), i.e. it describes a many-wived man. The correlative term ?polyandry? describes the condition of a woman who has many men in family relation with herself. They are all husbands to her, as in polygamy all the women are wives to one man. But polyandry in historic times has had so little illustration that it may be dismissed as so exceptional as to be worthy of no further notice here.
Why polygamy has captured the whole position philologically covered by polygyny is readily apparent. The might of the physically strongest has dictated the situation. Man has on the average one-fourth more muscular force than woman. When it comes to wrong in sex relation, man has that advantage, and it has given him the field covered by the word ?polygamy.? There he is master and woman is the victim.

2. Origin of Polygamy:
It is plainly evident that polygamy is primarily largely the outcome of tribal wars. When men had separated into clans and had taken up different places of abode, collisions would soon occur between them. What would happen in such cases would be what we know did happen in North America soon after its first settlement by Europeans, to wit, the destruction of the Hurons by the Iroquois. The great majority of the men were massacred; the women and children, driven to the abode of the conquerors, disappearing there mainly in concubinage and slavery. What shall be done with this surplus of women? Here again the might of the strongest comes to the front. The chief or the most heroic fighter would assert his right to choice of captives, and thus concubinage or what is the same thing - polygamy - would be set up. Successes in further wars come and add other women to be distributed. Of course to the sheik or king there soon comes the seraglio and the harem. Polygamous practices will come in in other ways. The prisoner of war becomes property and passes from hand to hand by gift or sale. So woman - the weaker party - endures what comes to her as slave, concubine. We have now no longer the ?helpmeet? originally destined for man - ?bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh? - for whom he would ?leave his father and his mother? and to whose single self he would ?cleave? for life (Gen_2:18, Gen_2:24; Mat_19:5, Mat_19:6). Monogamy, with its unity in labor, thought and feeling, with its immeasurable modifying influences of moral, ideal and spiritual cast, is gone. Woman is reduced to the position of ministrant to man's unmodified sensuality.

3. The Old Testament and Polygamy:
The complications introduced into morals by polygamy are not often considered. But the Bible sets them forth in plainness. The marriage of Abraham and Sarah seems to have been an original love match, and even to have preserved something of that character through life. Still we find Sarah under the influence of polygamous ideas, presenting Abraham with a concubine. Yet afterward, when she herself had a son, she induced Abraham to drive out into the wilderness this concubine and her son. Now Abraham was humane and kind, and it is said ?The thing was very grievous in Abraham's sight? (Gen_21:11). But he was in the toils of polygamy, and it brought him pain and retribution. A Divine direction may be hard to bear.
The conditions of Jacob's marriages were such that it is hard to say whether any of his children were of any other than of polygamous origin (Gen_35:22-26). Where the family idea and affection went, in such mixed condition, is evidenced by the unblushing sale, for slavery in Egypt, of one of the brothers by the others (Gen_37:28).
David was a singer of sweet and noble songs and wanted to be a righteous man with his whole heart. Yet, probably in common with all the military leaders and kings of the earth of his day, he had a polygamous career. His retributions ran along an extended line. There was a case of incest and murder among his children (2 Sam 13). The son in whom he had most hope and pride organized treason against his throne, and lost his life in the attempt. David left his kingdom to Solomon, of whom much might be said, but of whom this can be said - evidently originally a man bright, keen-witted, wise, yet in his old age he went to pieces by the wiles of the women with whom he had loaded his harem. Partly by his extravagance in his polygamous life, and partly in attempt to build temples in distant places for the religions represented by the inmates of his harem, he bankrupted his nation. As a consequence his kingdom was divided at his death, and there was never again a united Israel (1Ki_11:12). Polygamy may be justly charged with these untoward results.

4. Polygamy Unnatural:
It can be demonstrated scientifically, even mathematically, that polygamy is a moral wrong. Statistics show that births are substantially equally divided between the sexes. Excess seems slightly on the side of males. When this fact is considered and also the fact of the wide prevalence of polygamy, it would seem that polygamy (polygyny) is a greater crime against Nature than polyandry. To put out of view for a moment the wrong to woman in denying to her the rights and privileges of monogamous marriage, the interference with the rights of man to such marriage looms up in vast proportion. Every harem is the denial to men of the right to seek among its inmates wives according to the dictates of their own hearts.

The Eunuch.
But we are not done with the crime against man. Given a harem, and he who set it up has made, or there brought, the eunuch. The lord of the harem must be served by emasculated men. A search in history will reveal an amount of this wickedness that is past belief. The eunuch has been everywhere among all nations and peoples and tongues. They have not only been servitors to women in harems, but they have acquired such influence with their masters that they have sometimes even dictated the policy of government. They have been the secret cabinet that has had the last word in public affairs. They have sometimes held public positions and shown therein astonishing ability. Witness Narses, the brilliant general of the emperor Justinian. See EUNUCH.

5. Weakness of Polygamy:
Gibbon noticed the fact that nations began to decline in power when their policies were dictated and managed by eunuchs. But that is taking a symptom for the disease. There are weaknesses behind that weakness. We have found woman in muscular strength equal to three-fourths of a man. If we claim nothing more for woman than that ratio through the whole scale of her potencies, what would be thought of a nation that should try to reduce that three-fourths of potency as nearly to zero as it could? This is what polygamy has done - reduced woman as nearly to a cipher as it could in all the departments of her being. She has been held to the lowest and most primitive industrial pursuits. She has been deprived of intellectual development. She has been debarred from society, permitted to look at it only through a home lattice, or, if abroad, through a swathod face. The harem of sheik or sultan has fixed the condition of woman in province or nation - set the bounds to her life. The highest office assigned her has been breeder of children, and for one-half of them - the daughters - she could have no possible hope or ambition. See WOMAN.
Where in such degradation is the ?helpmeet? for man in all his problems? This condition is reflected back over man. What possible appeal can there be to him for thought and energy except to repeat the same dull round exhibited in his daily life? Polygamous nations have never been industrial inventors, have contributed little to science. They have usually ruined the fertility of the lands they have occupied. They have been heavily weighted with the lethargy of a system that appeals to nothing but the most primitive instincts and vices of man.
The monogamous have been the forceful nations. Rome conquered the world while she was monogamous, and lost control of it when she dropped to the moral level of the sex corruption of the peoples that she had conquered. The Teuton trundled into and over Europe in ox-carts mounted on solid wood trucks. But his cart carried one wife, and now all polygamy is held under the trained guns of the Tenton.
There may seem to be two exceptions - the establishment of the Mogul empire in India and the subjugation of Western Asia and Eastern Europe by the Turk. That in both cases there was great success in war is granted. They were authorized by their religion to exhibit the frenzy of bloodshed and indulge in lust. Indeed, enjoyment of the latter was a bright hope for the life to come. But when they had possession of a country, and massacres and ravishing were over, what then? For what is mankind indebted to them?

A Lyric.
A lyric has been put in the hand of the present writer by a friend who wrote it at the last date of the title. It is one of the lyrics of the centuries in its synthesis of history and in its insight into the forces physical, moral and immoral at work in the Mogul empire of India. Notice the dates. The text will show what took place between.
The Mogul 1525-1857
A war steed coursed out the wind-swept north,
Jarring the crags with hoofs of fire,
Snuffing far battle with nostril wide,
Neighing the joy of fierce desire.
The crisping herbage of arid plains
Had toughened his sinews like bands of steel;
The snow-fed waters of Zarafshan
Had nerved the might of a northern will.
The war steed grazed in the fertile meads,
Drinking the waters of indolent streams:
He rested at eve on bloom-dight beds,
Toyed with by maidens in the goldening gleams.
They charmed his ear with dalliant song:
They closed his eyes in witchery's glee:
They fed him the vineyards' wildering draught -
He slept in the breath of the lotus tree.
White bones lie strewn on the flowering mead,
In flesh-rank grass grown high and dark.
The carrion bird hath flown - hath died -
Riseth the war-horse? Neigheth? Hark!
- Josiah Torrey Reade, Amherst, 1856.
The above lyric may be taken as the epitaph of any polygamous nation. The last words are significant - ?Neigheth? Hark!? Would the old war steed arise? ?Hark!? The Sepoy rebellion was on! We ?hearkened,? but the rebellion went to pieces and an end was put to the Mogul empire. We have listened for half a century and heard no sound. We hear mutterings now, but the end will be as before - even if the ?war-horse? riseth and is victorious. He will then again lie down in ?flesh-rank grass grown high and dark,? and the ?carrion bird? will fly from his ?white bones.? Streams cannot rise higher than their fountains. The causes remaining, the same effects will follow. See DIVORCE; FAMILY; MARRIAGE.

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
PRINTER 1915.

[MARRIAGE]




The Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature
by John Kitto.

Polygamy
was anciently and still is a prevailing custom in the East (comp. of the Persians, Strabo, 15:733; Herod. 1, 135; 3, 88: Rhode, Heil. Sage, p. 443; of the Indians, Strabo, 15:714; of the Medes, 11:526; of the Getae, 7:297; see also 17:835; on the Egyptians, see Herod. 2, 92; comp. Died. Sic. 1, 80; Hengstenberg, Mos. p. 210 sq.), which stands in close connection with the great fruitfulness of Eastern women; and some have tried to show that it is connected with a preponderance of female births (Mariti, Reis. p. 14), but this is denied by Burdach (Physiol. 1, 403 sq.) and the most recent authorities. Even the Mosaic law did not forbid polygamy (Polygymy), which, indeed, existed among the Israelites from the beginning of their nation (Gen_28:9; Genesis 29, passim; 37:2; 46:10), but seems to be expressly permitted (Deu_21:16 sq.; Exo_21:9 sq.; Lev_18:18); and there are several direct instances under the law (Jdg_8:30), and more indirect ones (10:4; 12:9, 14), of polygamy, or at least bigamy, chiefly in the time of the Judges. Yet the lawgiver had certainly placed difficulties in the way of polygamy by many remarkable directions (comp. the Koran, 4:3, which allows a Mussulman but four wedded wives, without, however, limiting the number of his concubines!). The Mosaic law aimed at mitigating rather than removing evils which were inseparable from the state of society in that day. Its enactments were directed
(a.) To the discouragement of polygamy; this object was forwarded by the following enactments:
(1.) The castration of young men, which is usually associated with polygamy, was forbidden (Deu_23:1), and thus attendants in the harem were not easily to be obtained; while marriageable women might reasonably expect each to obtain a separate husband.
(2.) Every act of sexual intercourse rendered the man unclean for a day (Lev_15:18), which, with a considerable number of women, each of them having her peculiar claims upon him, would have been very burdensome.
(3.) The favoring of one wife among several was forbidden (Exo_21:8 sq.), and the man was required to perform his marriage obligations in equal measure to every wife. This limitation also would be oppressive to many. Besides all this, the mutual jealousy of the several wives of one man, which is the inevitable consequence of polygamy (1Sa_1:2 sq.; 2Ch_11:21), renders home life unpleasant (Niebuhr, Beschreibung, p. 73 sq.). The same reason keeps some Turks from polygamy now (D'Ohsson, 2, 366 sq.; Volney, 2, 360 sq.). The result was that most Israelites contented themselves with a single wife (see Pro_12:4; Pro_31:10 sq.), or at most took one or two concubines in addition. The same appears to have been the case with the ancient Egyptians (Wilkinson, Anc. Egyptians, 2, 62 sq.). In the age following the Captivity monogamy appears to have prevailed (comp. Tob_1:11; 2:19; 8:4, 13; Susan. 29:63; Mat_18:25; Luk_1:5; Act_5:1). It became acknowledged, too, as a prescriptive obligation, although the doctors of the law still held to their old canon, that a man might marry wives at pleasure hundred if he would-provided that he had means of support for them. Hence we cannot in 1Ti_3:2; Tit_1:6, think of a simultaneous polygamy (comp. Vesperce Gronig. [Amster. 1698], p. 125 sq.), although it must be confessed that Paul's expressions, taken alone, most naturally bear this interpretation. The Talmudists insist that no Jew can have more than four wives at once, and a king, at most, but eighteen (Otho, Lex. Rabbin. p. 528 sq.; see esp. Selden, Jus. Nat. et Gent. 5, 6; Buxtorf, Sponsal. p. 47 sq., in Ugolino, Thesaur. vol. 30; Michaelis, Mos. Rit. 2, 171 sq.; Jahn, I, 2, 235 sq.; comp. Selden, De Polygamia. bk. 7:in his Otia theol. p. 349 sq.). According to Deu_17:17, kings were forbidden to take many wives; but in spite of this prohibition they (as e.g.David, 2Sa_5:13; Solomon, 1Ki_11:3; Rehoboam, 2Ch_11:21; Abijah, 13:21, and others; and so Herod the Great, Josephus, Ant. 17, 1, 3) had large harems, for whose service they procured eunuchs in foreign lands. SEE HAREM.
(b.) The second object of the Mosaic regulations on the subject was to obviate the injustice frequently consequent upon the exercise of the rights of a father or a master. This was attained by the humane regulations relative to a captive whom a man might wish to marry (Deu_21:10-14), to a purchased wife (Exo_21:7-11), and to a slave who either was married at the time of his purchase, or who, having since received a wife at the hands of his master, was unwilling to be parted from her (Deu_21:2-6), and, lastly, by the law relating to the legal distribution of property among the children of the different wives (Deu_21:15-17). These provisions embrace two quite distinct cases.
(1.) The regulations in Exo_21:7-11 deserve a detailed notice, as exhibiting the extent to which the power of the head of a family might be carried. It must be premised that the maiden was born of Hebrew parents, was under age at the time of her sale (otherwise her father would have no power to sell), and that the object of the purchase was that when arrived at puberty she should become the wife of her master, as is implied in the difference in the law relating to her (Exo_21:7) and to a slave purchased for ordinary work (Deu_15:12-17), as well as in the term amdh, “maid-servant,” which is elsewhere used convertibly with “concubine” (Jdg_9:18; comp. Jdg_8:31). With regard to such it is enacted
(1) that she is not to “go out as the menservants” (i.e. be freed after six years' service, or in the year of jubilee), on the understanding that her master either already has made, or intends to make her his wife (Jdg_8:7);
(2) but, if he has no such intention, he is not entitled to retain her in the event of any other person of the Israelites being willing to purchase her of him for the same purpose (Jdg_8:8);
(3) he might, however, assign her to his son, and in this case she was to be treated as a daughter, and not as a slave (Jdg_8:9);
(4) if either he or his son, having married her, took another wife, she was still to be treated as a wife in all respects (Jdg_8:10); and, lastly, if neither of the three contingencies took place (i.e. if he neither married her himself, nor gave her to his son, nor had her redeemed), then the maiden was to become absolutely free without waiting for the expiration of the six years or for the year of jubilee (Jdg_8:11).
(2.) In the other case (Deu_21:10-14) we must assume that the wife assigned was a non-Israelitish slave; otherwise the wife would, as a matter of course, be freed along with her husband in the year of jubilee. In this case the wife and children would be the absolute property of the master, and the position of the wife would be analogous to that of the Roman contubernalis, who was not supposed capable of any connubium. The issue of such a marriage would remain slaves in accordance with the maxim of the Talmudists, that the child is liable to its mother's disqualification (Kiddush. 3, 12). Josephus (Ant. 4:8, 28) states that in the year of jubilee the slave, having married during service, carried off his wife and children with him: this, however, may refer to an Israelitish maid- servant. SEE CAPTIVE.
(c.) The third object of the Mosaic statutes on this subject was to bring divorce under some restriction; and this was effected by rendering divorce a formal proceeding, not to be done by word of mouth as heretofore, but by a “bill of divorcement” (Deu_24:1), which would generally demand time and the intervention of a third party, thus rendering divorce a less easy process, and furnishing the wife, in the event of its being carried out, with a legal evidence of her marriageability: we may also notice that Moses wholly prohibited divorce in case the wife had been seduced prior to marriage (22, 29), or her chastity had been groundlessly impugned (22, 19).
(d.) The fourth object, which was to enforce purity of life during the maintenance of the matrimonial bond, forms the subject of one of the ten commandments (Exo_20:14), any violation of which was punishable with death (Lev_20:10; Deu_22:22), even in the case of a betrothed person (Deu_22:23-24). SEE ADULTERY.
The practical results of these regulations may have been very salutary, but on this point we have but small opportunities of judging. The usages themselves to which we have referred, remained in full force to a late period. We have instances of the arbitrary exercise of the paternal authority in the cases of Achsah (Jdg_1:12), Ibzan (Jdg_12:9), Samson (Jdg_14:20; Jdg_15:2), and Michal (1Sa_17:25). The case of Abishag, and the language of Adonijah in reference to her (1Ki_1:2; 1Ki_2:17), prove that a servant was still completely at the disposal of his or her master. Polygamy also prevailed, as we are expressly informed in reference to Gideon (Jdg_8:30), Elkanah (1Sa_1:2), Saul (2Sa_12:8), David (2Sa_5:13), Solomon (1Ki_11:3), the sons of Issachar (1Ch_7:4), Shaharaim (1Ch_8:8-9), Rehoboam (2Ch_11:21), Abijah (2Ch_13:21), and Joash (2Ch_24:3); and as we may also infer from the number of children in the cases of Jair, Ibzan, and Abdon (Jdg_10:4; Jdg_12:9; Jdg_12:14). It does not, however, follow that it was the general practice of the country: the inconveniences attendant on polygamy in small houses or with scanty incomes are so great as to put a serious bar to its general adoption, and hence in modern countries where it is fully established the practice is restricted to comparatively few (Niebuhr, Voyage, p. 65; Lane, 1, 239). The same rule holds good with regard to ancient times: the discomforts of polygamy are exhibited in the jealousies between the wives of Abraham (Gen_16:6), and of Elkanah (1 Samuel 1, 6); and the cases cited above rather lead to the inference that it was confined to the wealthy. Meanwhile it may be noted that the theory of monogamy was retained, and comes prominently forward in the pictures of domestic bliss portrayed in the poetical writings of this period (Psa_128:3; Pro_5:18; Pro_18:22; Pro_19:14; Pro_31:10-29; Ecc_9:9). The sanctity of the marriage- bond was but too frequently violated, as appears from the frequent allusions to the “strange woman” in the book of Pro_2:16; Pro_5:20, etc., and in the denunciations of the prophets against the prevalence of adultery (Jer_5:8; Eze_18:11; Eze_22:11).
In the post-Babylonian period monogamy appears to have become more prevalent than at any previous time; indeed, we have no instance of polygamy during this period on record in the Bible, all the marriages noticed being with single wives (Tobit 1, 9; Tobit 2, 11; Susan. 29, 63; Mat_18:25; Luk_1:5; Act_5:1). During the same period the theory of monogamy is set forth in Sirach 26, 1-27. The practice of polygamy nevertheless still existed; Herod the Great had no less than nine wives at one time (Josephus, Ant. 17, 1, 3); the Talmudists frequently assume it as a well-known fact (e.g. Ketub. 10, 1; Yebam. 1, 1); and the early Christian writers, in their comments on 1Ti_3:2, explain it of polygamy in terms which leave no doubt as to the fact of its prevalence in the apostolic age. Michaelis (Laws of Moses, 3, 5, § 95) asserts that polygamy ceased entirely after the return from the Captivity; Selden. on the other hand, that polygamy prevailed among the Jews until the time of Honorius and Arcadius (cir. A.D. 400), when it was prohibited by an imperial edict (Ux. Ebr. 1, 9). SEE MARRIAGE.

CYCLOPEDIA OF BIBLICAL, THEOLOGICAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL
press 1895.

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