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K
I'm not saying it was sinful necessarily back then. I am aware of the practice in the OT and I am aware God didnt outright condemn it. But He didn't encourage it either. Those verses are only talking about the already married, and they don't encourage getting more wives by any means. Also notice that whenever God DOES actively give advice about marriage , He always uses the singular not the plural. ''A pludent wife is from the Lord'' ir very different from simply saying '' I gave you your wives''. While I don't think He is condemning having many wives here, that is the only instance in the Bible where we find a sort of approval for polygamy, and it simply isn't that great because a few more verses later God is talking about taking away those wives from David. Polygamy caused a lot of trouble back then, and I bet it would cause many troubles today also.
As for staying unmarried, it's true it is better. But Paul does say that it is good to get married, and he never says it's good to marry many wives. He does however talk about marriage always as a single wife and a single husband joined together. He even uses the analogy of Christ and the Church, which I think makes the principle even clearer that the ideal marriage is between two people, not the whole cast of The Sister Wives.
The way I see it, it's like the issue of slavery. Slavery wasn't condemned in the OT or even in the NT, but not because it was necessarily okay. I wouldn't say right now, especially in our times, that we should go back to owning slaves simply because it's not condemned in the Bible. Though I think a monogamous marriage has a stronger case, because again, the ideal is always presented as one man and one wife several times.
As for staying unmarried, it's true it is better. But Paul does say that it is good to get married, and he never says it's good to marry many wives. He does however talk about marriage always as a single wife and a single husband joined together. He even uses the analogy of Christ and the Church, which I think makes the principle even clearer that the ideal marriage is between two people, not the whole cast of The Sister Wives.
The way I see it, it's like the issue of slavery. Slavery wasn't condemned in the OT or even in the NT, but not because it was necessarily okay. I wouldn't say right now, especially in our times, that we should go back to owning slaves simply because it's not condemned in the Bible. Though I think a monogamous marriage has a stronger case, because again, the ideal is always presented as one man and one wife several times.
K
I don't know if this is going to make sense but, I'll try to explain my point. I believe God has different kinds of Wills. God wills everything that happens on earth by either permitting something or by actively doing something. I believe this was an example of the former, not the latter. He permitted it for a long time and I believe it was a better option than unmarried women left to starve to death or become prostitutes, which was pretty much the only options they had if they didn't marry back then. But his ideal plan, as I see it in Scripture, has been from the beggining that ''the two shall become one''. And that ''the wife will submit to the husband like the Church to Christ, and that the husband will love his wife like Christ loves the Church''. And poligamy certainly isn't an example of that.