The Bible and Polygamy: Does the Bible Sanction Polygamy?Newman, John Philip
Religion
The Bible and Polygamy: Does the Bible Sanction Polygamy?
Newman, John Philip
Bible -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.; Latter Day Saint churches -- Doctrines; Polygamy -- Religious aspects
Again, what says the Lord in the days of Moses, under another
dispensation? We have seen that in the days of Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob, He approved of polygamy and blessed His servants who practised
it, and also their wives and children. Now, let us come down to the
days of Moses. We read that, on a certain occasion, the sister of
Moses, Miriam, and certain others in the great congregation of Israel,
got very jealous. What were they jealous about? About the Ethiopian
woman that Moses had taken to wife, in addition to the daughter of
Jethro, whom he had taken before in the land of Midian. How dare the
great law-giver, after having committed, according to the ideas of the
present generation, a great crime, show his face on Mount Sinai when it
was clothed with the glory of the God of Israel? But what did the Lord
do in the case of Miriam, for finding fault with her brother Moses?
Instead of saying "you are right, Miriam, he has committed a great
crime, and no matter how much you speak against him," He smote her with
a leprosy the very moment she began to complain, and she was considered
unclean for a certain number of days. Here the Lord manifested, by the
display of a signal judgment, that He disapproved of any one speaking
against His servants for taking more wives than one, because it may not
happen to suit their notion of things.
I make these remarks and wish to apply them to fault-finders against
plural marriages in our day. Are there any Miriams in our congregation
to-day, any of those who, professing to belong to the Israel of
the latter-days, sometimes find fault with the man of God standing
at their head, because he, not only believes in but practises this
divine institution of the ancients? If there be such in our midst, I
say, remember Miriam the very next time you begin to talk with your
neighboring women, or any body else against this holy principle.
Remember the awful curse and judgment that fell on the sister of Moses
when she did the same thing, and then fear and tremble before God, lest
He, in his wrath, may swear that you shall not enjoy the blessings
ordained for those who inherit the highest degree of glory.
Let us pass along to another instance under the dispensation of Moses.
The Lord says, on a certain occasion, if a man have married two wives,
and he should happen to hate one and love the other, is he to be
punished--cast out and stoned to death as an adulterer? No; instead of
the Lord denouncing him as an adulterer because of having two wives, He
gave a commandment regulating the matter so that this principle of hate
in the mind of the man towards one of his wives should not control him
in the important question of the division of his inheritance among his
children, compelling him to give just as much to the son of the hated
wife as to the son of the one beloved; and, if the son of the hated
woman happened to be the first-born, he should actually inherit the
double portion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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