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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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...