Why did the Law of Moses tolerate polygyny (polygamy) but not polyandry? [closed]

Question

Why did the Laws of Moses tolerate men having multiple wives, but did not grant the same type of toleration to women? I am not asking why God tolerated polygyny, although that may be included in the answer. The question is, Why for men and not women?

Considering how disturbing it would be for a spouse to be unfaithful, why was a man allowed many wives, but a woman even suspected of adultery could suffer an inspection from a priest and possible stoning if sleeping with another man?

The question can also be phrased as, 'Why is adultery (the kind you could be stoned for) only defined by sleeping with a married woman and not a married man?' 

Reference verse:

¹⁵If a man has two wives, and he loves one but not the other, and both bear him sons but the firstborn is the son of the wife he does not love, ¹⁶when he wills his property to his sons, he must not give the rights of the firstborn to the son of the wife he loves in preference to his actual firstborn, the son of the wife he does not love. ¹⁷He must acknowledge the son of his unloved wife as the firstborn by giving him a double share of all he has. That son is the first sign of his father’s strength. The right of the firstborn belongs to him. —Deuteronomy 21:15-17 (NIV)

Note: I do not question the perfect Holiness of God's Laws is asking this question.

Answer 1

Occam's answer:

The toleration of polygamy in the OT is not to say that it was an ideal, and we see that the laws dealing with it are mostly proscriptive. The ideal is more likely represented by the monogamous story of Adam and Eve. But for various reasons, the position of women in the ancient world was such that polygamy was an unavoidable fact of life (Isaiah 4:1).

At the time of the giving of the Law, Israelite society, like the surrounding societies, was patriarchal. Again, that's the state that we were in at the time, not necessarily an ideal, but the Law has to reflect the reality of the situation. In a patriarchal society the lineage and inheritance is passed through the father to his children. So if the patrimony is not known, then the organization of the society itself is at risk. An individual who threatens the organization of society commits a capital offence by definition, anywhere, whether male or female.

Since it is the woman who carries the baby, the patrimony, it is the woman who must undergo the test of the "sotah". That's biology. This solution in cases of suspicion is preferable to the "honor killings" prevalent in the region to this very day. But the sotah test wasn't such a badge of honor for the husband either, so the law was "on the books" but not widely used. Historically, its actual execution was abolished in 70 CE when the Sanhedrin declared it to be ineffective in a time of general immorality.

Answer 2

We often think that the punishment for adultery in the Bible was stoning but according to the Mishnah (Sanh. xi. 1) it was strangulation. John Owen says, strangulation was used for: adulterers, strikers of parents, man-stealers, old men exemplarily rebellious against the law, false prophets, and those who predicted the future under the names of idols (John Owen Works Volume 17, P670). According to this link “the rabbinical theory being that wherever the death penalty was mentioned in the Bible, without any specific statement of the manner of its infliction, strangulation was meant (Sifra, Ḳedoshim, 4, 9).”

The question is also, 'Why would a man be strangled for sleeping with another man’s wife but if he slept with a prostitute, or a virgin, no capital crime was committed?'

The literal answer seems to lay in the fact that the promised seed (Gen 3:15) was passed through a patriarchal society. A patriarchal society meant among other things that property and title were inherited by the male lineage, not to mention the rights of the first-born who had double the measure of inheritance. This birth-right become symbolic and literally mixed in the promise of Messiah when we look at instances like Jacob and Esau. This is why God showed such extreme displeasure with acts that would not only include sinful lusts, but the very destruction of society and lineage upon which Messiah was to proceed.

If we think about it, if a man took a woman who was not married and had sex with her, the father of the child is still clearly understood. However if a man slept with a married women, and they did not confess their sin, the child would be raised by the man who was not the father. He may even think that this child is the first born, who then steals the birthright from his true child. In addition to the Messianic connection, even from a basic level in that society, taking a man’s wife and inserting your own child into his bloodline, steels and destroys that man's family. It also puts the children at risk. If the man of the home finds out later that his child is not his own, it may hurt the relationship. God asked Hosea to marry an adulterous wife and children of unfaithfulness as a way, in part, to experience the feelings God had against Israel. (Hosea 1:2) This destruction of home was not considered a small matter.

In today’s society we do not see marriage as established for child bearingas much as they did of old. We tend to look at it as proper setting for us to have sex and we emphasis the equality of both sexes. The Bible does not focus on that aspect, and its temporary allowance of the sin of polygamy shows the patriarchal emphasis in terms of passing on the birthright of legitimate children. For example, in the same manner of protecting the blood line of inheritances, the brother of a deceased man was obliged to marry his brother's widow (Deuteronomy 25:5).

John Calvin describes this same idea:

if a man had broken faith with his wife by having connection with a harlot, it was not a capital offense; but if any man, though a bachelor, had committed adultery with the wife of another, (he was to die, 68 ) because both the husband is grossly injured, and the dishonor descends to the offspring, and all adulterine race is substituted in place of the legitimate one, whilst the inheritance is transferred to strangers, and thus bastards unlawfully possess themselves of the family name. This cause impelled the Gentiles, even before the Law, to punish adultery with severity, as clearly appears from the history of Judah and Tamar. (Genesis 38:14.) Nay, by the universal law of the Gentiles, the punishment of death was always awarded to adultery; wherefore it is all the baser and more shameful in Christians not to imitate at least the heathen. Adultery is punished no less severely by the Julian law 69 than by that of God; whilst those who boast themselves of the Christian name are so tender and remiss, that they visit this execrable offense with a very light reproof. (Deuteronomy 22:22 Harmony of the Law - Volume 3)

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So a literal reason why Laws of Moses tolerated men having multiple wives, but did not grant the same toleration to woman was the protection of the blood line from which Messiah would come and from which the whole society was based. Adultery that resulted in strangulation was more than just having sex when a married person, it was destroying society and potentially the purity of the bloodline of Messiah himself.

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Answer 3

Polygyny was acceptable because women were considered to be possessions. That is why Sarah called Avraham adon (Gen. 18:13 cp. 1 Pet. 3:6), or "sir"/ "lord"/ "master." The husband is essentially considered to be his wife's "master," and she, his servant.

This is why women did not have the right to divorce their husband. The only way they could re-marry was if 1) the husband died or 2) the husband put her away (divorced her).

The Babylonian Talmud, in tractate Kiddushin, Chapter 1, Folio 2a, states,

A wife is acquired in three ways and acquires herself in two ways: by money, by a deed, and by intercourse...

האשה נקנית בשלש דרכים וקונה את עצמה בשתי דרכים נקנית בכסף בשטר ובביאה

The verb נקנית is the Nif'al (passive voice) conjugation of the root verb קָנָה (kanah), meaning "to purchase, acquire, buy." This same verb is used to describe an Israelite purchasing a Hebrew servant.

For example, in Exo. 21:2, it is written,

If you purchase (תִקְנֶה) a Hebrew servant, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh [year], he shall go out free for nothing.

כִּי תִקְנֶה עֶבֶד עִבְרִי שֵׁשׁ שָׁנִים יַעֲבֹד וּבַשְּׁבִעִת יֵצֵא לַחָפְשִׁי חִנָּם

It is also used in the context of purchasing goods and possessions (cp. Gen. 25:10; 2 Sam. 24:21).

In his epistle to the Romans, as Paul is discussing the marriage covenant, he uses the Greek word ὕπανδρος (hypandros) to refer to a "married" woman" (Rom. 7:2). The Greek word literally means "under a man."

Furthermore, in order to express the idea of a woman being "married to another man" (Rom. 7:3), he uses the Greek expression [ἐὰν] γένηται ἀνδρὶ ἑτέρῳ (genētai andri heterō) which literally means "[if] she became another man's." Again, this indicates that a woman became the possession of a man.

Answer 4

If you believe that the text is divine, then this isn't a question about the text. It's a question about why G!d chooses this asymmetrical policy. And, as such, that question belongs, I believe, on a doctrinal site.

If you look at the text as a text, then you are looking at the social and cultural context of the time in which it was written. In that society and that time, polygamy was a fact, and polyandry was not. Other answers here have filled in some of the usual explanations, to which I can add that here is a good deal of interesting anthropological writing about why polygamy is so much more common than polyandry, and what is distinctive about the polyandrous societies.

Answer 5

The primary function of the scriptures is to make Christ known. Marriage is a symbol of Christ and the church. That is it's primary function.

Eph 5:32 This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.

There is only one true man. Christ. He has taken Israel as a bride and the church as a bride. The two brides represent one bride with a dual nature. She is the prostitute (having gone after false gods) who has been made to be a virgin (righteous before God) by the works and blood of the man.

There is no moral aspect to being married or remaining single or Paul could not have recommended both. There is no moral aspect to divorce, or God would not tolerate it. Marriage is a symbol of Christ and the church that men could not fully participate in because of the hardness of their hearts, and so God permits divorce. But there is no better symbol of Christ and the church than a faithful man with his bride.

(This sin involved with divorce is the sin of not forgiving and being reconciled, which many are guilty of without being married. God hates this like divorce such that he doesn't want your sacrifices until you are reconciled.)

Since the man represents Christ, all may "marry him". But since the woman represents us, for us there can be only one God. The law perfectly illustrates this.

And the law has a shadow of the "good things coming". Heb 10.1

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Using David as a type of Christ, he was an adulterer. Christ was figuratively an adulterer since he took the bride of the god of this world, and put her husband to death. The first born Child of the union represents Christ in the flesh who dies like David's firstborn of Bathsheba. His second son represents Christ as the second Adam, obtaining the promise that the first lost.

David also dies, not being able to build the temple, because there was blood on his hands. Here he represents Jesus in the flesh who puts us to death by his righteousness:

Joh 3:19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

Christ, as the adulterer, is put to death, by stones (the word of God). But Solomon, representing the resurrected Christ, is fruitful and multiplying.

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Why is an unmarried woman sleeping with a married man not adultery? Because it is marriage. They have become one flesh.

1Co 6:16 What? know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body? for two, saith he, shall be one flesh.

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In sensus plenior there are four layers of meaning. This means that there are four legitimate interpretations each having a different scope. The voice of the priest speaks of the eternal Son, the prophet of Christ in the flesh. The voice of the prophet speaks God's judgement upon the literal historical. The voice of the king is the literal-historical.

When speaking of the Son, all the men are one man and all the women are one woman. In this scope, there is only one woman for one man. When speaking of Christ, the Father has chosen a bride who is a prostitute (Israel and the gentiles) and makes her a virgin. In this scope, we see a polygamous relationsship. Many are called (wooed). But even Jesus's earthly life is but a shadow of the reality of the Son where there is only one woman.

So why does God tolerate polygamy (even today) yet Jesus seems to enforce monogamy. Apparent contradictions are riddles.

In the voice of the judge:

The sin of Eve (which did not bring sin into the world as Adam's sin) was done because she was deceived by the serpent. She was led to believe that because animals live instinctively, eating, procreating, etc by instinct; that she could also live instinctively like an animal. But she was created in God's image and likeness, capable of responding to His word.

We have clothing, grace before meals, marriage, the Sabbath, etc. to remind us that we are more than animals. We do not go naked, eat instinctively, procreate instinctively, nor pass the time instinctively. We are born as animals, and must be taught God's laws and character, and even be born again before we can even "see the kingdom of God" to live according to his law in his grace. (Obeying God is NOT a work! It is acknowledging Him as God Ro 1:18ff).

Polygamy, like divorce, is tolerated because many men still ARE animals, lacking the spirit of God which is given with a new birth. The law tolerated polygamy, but not for kings [1] who were enlightened by God, only for those who still were living instinctively like animals.

Jesus reinforced the teaching that we are more than animals by reminding us that in the beginning there was one man and one woman. And later Paul calls us to the higher living saying that leaders of the church should only have one wife, where a man with many wives obviously does not understand the call to higher living.

The purpose of marriage is to be a "dinner theater" as a witness of Christ and the church. The polygamist, like the adulterer, lives for the flesh.

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What does this do to the idea of a Holy Marriage?

It puts it in a proper perspective. Holy means separate. The Holy marriage is one which has been separated from various marriages that the world offers. It is one which is dedicated to reflect Christ and the Church, not only in the ceremony, but in the man's love for the woman and her honoring her husband.

Though becoming one flesh make A marriage, becoming one flesh in Christ makes a Holy marriage.

[1]

Deut 17: 15 Thou shalt in any wise set him king over thee, whom the LORD thy God shall choose: one from among thy brethren shalt thou set king over thee: thou mayest not set a stranger over thee, which is not thy brother. 16 But he shall not multiply horses to himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt, to the end that he should multiply horses: forasmuch as the LORD hath said unto you, Ye shall henceforth return no more that way. 17 Neither shall he multiply wives to himself, that his heart turn not away: neither shall he greatly multiply to himself silver and gold.