Support Matthew 19:9 is pro polygyny!?!?

[The Revolting Man]

Many of you may have realized this already but it just bit me like a thunderbolt. Matthew 19:9 is implicitly allowing polygyny.

Here’s a response I just sent to a question that came up in a private conversation. Give me your feedback please.

Dear Sir,

Thank you for your message to us concerning your thoughts on Matthew 19:9. You bring up a common argument against our stance that polygamy, more properly called polygyny, does not violate and dictate of scripture.

To restate your claim, in case we’ve misunderstood it, you assert that Matthew 19:9 is a de facto ban on polygyny. Allow now me to quote the verse:

“And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.”

You have two glaring problems here, the first and less serious, is that this verse does not purport to be about what constitutes a valid marriage but only the permissible way to lawfully put away a wife and still be able to take another. The verse does not claim to have any application farther than that. In short, it is a verse about divorce not marriage.

The more serious problem that you have is that verse very explicitly limits the inability to take a second wife to men who have improperly divorced a previous wife. Men who have not improperly divorced a previous wife are not prohibited from taking a second wife. It is because they are allowed to take additional wives that it is necessary to prohibit improperly divorced men from doing so. If the restriction applied to all men it would simply say that. It does not. Ergo, not all men are prohibited from taking multiple wives. Polygyny is implicitly allowed in the New Testament and by our Savior Himself.

So rather than being a verse that disallows polygyny, Matthew 19:9 is a verse that implicitly allows polygyny for most categories of men. I hope this response was helpful. If we can be of any further use to you in your study please reach out to us either through the website as you have already or to me directly through this email.

Respectfully,
Zec Austin

Sent from my iPhone

 

[NVIII]

I wish it was clever, but unfortunately it is a logical fallacy. You were correct about this:

The verse does not claim to have any application farther than that. In short, it is a verse about divorce not marriage.

See the math of it: man & wife - wife + different wife = man & wife. The "another" is literally "an other", not one more in addition to. The entire premise of the statement is divorce, and so the subsequent marriage would be zero net gain. It's not a case for polygyny.

 

[The Revolting Man]

I wish it was clever, but unfortunately it is a logical fallacy. You were correct about this:


See the math of it: man & wife - wife + different wife = man & wife. The "another" is literally "an other", not one more in addition to. The entire premise of the statement is divorce, and so the subsequent marriage would be zero net gain. It's not a case for polygyny.

I wish it was clever, but unfortunately it is a logical fallacy. You were correct about this:


See the math of it: man & wife - wife + different wife = man & wife. The "another" is literally "an other", not one more in addition to. The entire premise of the statement is divorce, and so the subsequent marriage would be zero net gain. It's not a case for polygyny.

You’re going to have to explain that calculus a little more in-depth or maybe we just need to know fast they’re traveling towards each other. Or maybe we we don’t treat it like a word problem in a third grade math class. There’s no logical fallacy.

A man who has a wife and hasn’t put her away is not prohibited from taking another wife. The prohibition is specifically aimed at men who improperly put a way a wife. So no man other than those who have improperly put away a wife, including ones with wives already, can be prohibited from taking additional wives, at least not by this verse.

Since they are not prohibited from taking another wife, they are implicitly allowed to do so. This is a pro-poly verse, one that flows from the mouth of Christ.

 

[NVIII]

A man who has a wife and hasn’t put her away is not prohibited from taking another wife.

Of course that is true. But that's not what this verse says. You are adding to it. You had it pegged perfectly right here:

this verse does not purport to be about what constitutes a valid marriage but only the permissible way to lawfully put away a wife and still be able to take another. The verse does not claim to have any application farther than that. In short, it is a verse about divorce not marriage.

 

[NVIII]

Compare and contrast that verse with one recently brought up in another place in the forum: taking your wife's sister. In that verse we see conditions for adding a wife, which we correctly deduce means that two is ok under at least those circumstances. Because 1+1=2.

In the Matthew verse, we see conditions for taking a wife after having gotten rid of one. In that case, all we are shown is 1-1=0, unless she fornicated, in which case 1-1+1=1 is permissible. We would be in error to extrapolate from  that verse that it is ok to take more than one wife at a time, because it's simply not there.

The one you were writing to made a similar but different error in thinking the Matthew verse went further to prohibit taking an another wife without divorcing the first. It says nothing about that. It's not about that, either. It is as you said, a verse about divorce.

Isn't there a long discussion about this verse already on the forum, one which you were prevalent in? I think it was you who had some really good insight into it at that time, how the "putting away", especially coupled with the subsequent "taking of another", was some kind of loophole that was being exploited. I seem to recall it being explained as not the divorce it's translated to, but a provision for turning a girl back to her father for remedial training shortly after marriage, but that some men would simply never go back to reclaim her, and they would go on to take a different one, which could become more or less a sort of wife-swapping scheme when exploited like that, which was the adultery.

 

[FollowingHim]

Unfortunately @NVIII is correct @The Revolting Man. You have correctly shot down the logical fallacy of the monogamist in extrapolating this verse to be about marriage, then in the next paragraph fallen for the exact same logical fallacy yourself by extrapolating it again to be about marriage.

In monogamous societies it is common for a man to divorce one wife to take another. This verse places clear limits on taking a wife after divorcing the first. It is talking only about this situation. To assume it is talking about something broader is to read too much into the verse.

“And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery:

To put it a different way, I'll use the same language for an entirely different situation, and we'll see what it means:
"And I say unto you, whosoever shall abandon his parrot, except if the parrot is dead, and shall buy another parrot, committeth animal neglect"
Ok, that's a bit weird, but I was struggling to think of a good example and the Monty Python parrot sketch came to mind. So let's run with that ridiculous illustration...

This would mean that it is wrong to just abandon a parrot and buy another one, leaving the first one uncared for, because it is negligent. Someone who would do that has shown that they are untrustworthy to keep a parrot. On the other hand, if their parrot dies, they can abandon it and buy another.

Does it say anything about whether a person can own two or more parrots? Not at all. It doesn't address that. Maybe there is a law that says people can only own one parrot, or maybe there is not. You could not tell from this statement, because the statement would apply to someone with multiple parrots just as much as it would apply to someone with one - abandoning any one of their parrots and trying to just replace it would result in the same condemnation.

 

[NVIII]

It occurred to me this morning that, if the wording was switched, if it said, "Whoever takes another wife and puts away the first...", it would be entirely different. In that case it would be about plural marriage not about divorce, it would say exactly what you thought it said, and perhaps that's the way you were seeing it.

@Keith Martin provided an explanation about dependent and independent clauses here that I think also helps explain why this verse, as it is arranged, cannot imply plural marriage.

 

[The Revolting Man]

I know I can be better at exhortation than in depth study sometimes but slow down and listen to what I’m saying.

Matthew 19:9 addresses a situation when a man is not allowed to take a subsequent wife. If you put away your wife and marry another you commit adultery.

That means that every possible OTHER permutation of a man who has a wife and takes a subsequent wife does not commit adultery. That’s the foundational assumption in the verse, a man with a wife is taking a subsequent wife. This verse does not apply to widowers or single men. It can’t. The whole teaching is predicated on the man already having at least one wife and wanting a subsequent wife.

IF the man has put away a wife unlawfully he is not allowed another. Now I know this is where I’m losing you, but stick with me.

We all know that every biblical teaching on marriage is pro-polygyny, because polygyny is biblical. It seems stupid to reverse engineer this verse to arrive at a conclusion we all know a half dozen better ways to arrive at the same conclusion, but you’re missing the point.

Look at the claim being made by the skeptic, he says that in Matthew 19:9 we have an example of marrying a subsequent wife improperly being labeled adultery and hence polygyny, the marrying of a subsequent wife without having first divorced the previous one for fornication, is adultery. Okay, that’s a ridiculous claim to us, we should just point out that the verse is about divorce and move on.

Except the verse isn’t primarily about divorce, it’s primarily (remember that adultery is a capital offense) about taking the subsequent wife.

A man who unlawfully puts away a wife isn’t in violation of this verse until he takes the subsequent wife after all.

So we have a verse from Christ about who can not take a subsequent wife, men who have put a way a wife unlawfully. All other categories of men can take a subsequent wife then, yes the men explicitly allowed are those who have lawfully put away a wife. But the verse is not identifying those men who are allowed to take a subsequent wife, it is identifying the very specific subset of men who are forbidden from doing so.

And remember that this divorced man could of had multiple wives before the divorce and his subsequent wife could be adding a third or more. Every possible permutation of a man taking a subsequent wife is able to be in compliance with this verse IF the man hasn’t unlawfully put away a wife. This is a pro-polygyny verse, at the bare minimum implicitly. It doesn’t apply exclusively to polygyny but if Christ did not support the practice He would of had to of worded this verse completely differently to also exclude the polygynist. He would of had to say that the divorced man and the married man were not able to take a subsequent wife. He did not. The only category of men not able to take a subsequent wife is the improperly divorced man, all other categories of men; the properly divorced and still married, are allowed to do so.

Christ has implicitly allowed polygyny in Matthew 19:9. It is a pro-polygyny verse.

 

[NVIII]

That’s the foundational assumption in the verse, a man with a wife is taking a subsequent wife.

No. The foundational assumption of the verse is that there is a man who once had a wife but put her away. It establishes that that particular woman is no longer part of the picture.

This verse does not apply to widowers or single men. It can’t.

Correct. The foundation requires at least one marriage to have been ended by divorce and not death.

The whole teaching is predicated on the man already having at least one wife and wanting a subsequent wife.

No, it is predicated on the man already having had at least one wife, gotten rid of her, and now wants a replacement, not one in addition.

All other conceivable variables are immaterial, not implied, not considered, and outside the scope of this teaching. We can establish that multiple wives are permissible from other scripture, but not from this. Using this is begging for refutation and a closing of the listener's mind.

 

[The Revolting Man]

No. The foundational assumption of the verse is that there is a man who once had a wife but put her away. It establishes that that particular woman is no longer part of the picture.

No. You’re being myopic, that is one subset of who the verse can apply to. It is not limited to a man who had one wife and no longer has any because of his unjust divorce. The man could have any number of wives and only considering divorcing one of them and still fall under the dictates of this verse.

You’re making the same mistake the skeptic is, simultaneously artificially limiting the verse and adding to it.

 

[paterfamilias]

Dubious as can be about another and an other being a lynch pin

Not being one who jumps into the Bible quotes often, no going to pretend experience obviously but I am always dubious about attempting to detect nuance in phrases without knowing about varying context of translation, alternative potential translations and the potential motive of a chosen translation when looking at potential controversial issues. I have seen a few examples of this sort of deep crunchy details about interpretation and counter interpretations based on different translations on the forum here I feel confident.

Even if we simply take it as red that that the translation is dead bang accurate, I read the verse and took away essentially the same thing as Zec outlined before reading his parsing.
I get the vibe that the another/an other notion has more to do with modern vs archaic parlance.

A lateral question for those more knowledgeable on the topic. Of the various books that were in time left out of the Bible but may have missed the cut by a couple of votes as it were, are they many references to polygamy or marriage customs at all?
I ask because it always seems increasingly strange for what was the social and cultural norm (implies the legal norm) before any dubious prescriptions could be perceived to have changed these norms without specific efforts to edit out explicit references to a presumably contentious cultural/legal change.

 

[NVIII]

You are very close. We are almost agreeing completely. None of this is false, and none of it have I disagreed with:

that is one subset of who the verse can apply to. It is not limited to a man who had one wife and no longer has any because of his unjust divorce. The man could have any number of wives and only considering divorcing one of them and still fall under the dictates of this verse.

What I have disagreed with is that the verse in any way implies or considers any number of wives greater than one. It is blind to any and all other marriages the man may have except for this one. It is not talking about adding but about exchanging. To say that it does is, in fact, adding to the scriptures. The scope of this verse is exactly the same as that of those which prohibit other forms of adultery or which prohibit laying with animals or your sister: completely limited to the issue at hand. The verses which dictate conditions for multiple wives do broaden that scope and allow (require) us to deduce that multiple wives are allowed, but this is not among those verses because it is only about an exchange of one woman for another and not about adding. Net zero gain, and all other factors which may or may not be are not part of the picture.

 

[steve]

What I have disagreed with is that the verse in any way implies or considers any number of wives greater than one.

Ok, but it is accepting of any number of wives greater than one.

 

[JudahYAHites]

Many of you may have realized this already but it just bit me like a thunderbolt. Matthew 19:9 is implicitly allowing polygyny.

Here’s a response I just sent to a question that came up in a private conversation. Give me your feedback please.

Dear Sir,

Thank you for your message to us concerning your thoughts on Matthew 19:9. You bring up a common argument against our stance that polygamy, more properly called polygyny, does not violate and dictate of scripture.

To restate your claim, in case we’ve misunderstood it, you assert that Matthew 19:9 is a de facto ban on polygyny. Allow now me to quote the verse:

“And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.”

You have two glaring problems here, the first and less serious, is that this verse does not purport to be about what constitutes a valid marriage but only the permissible way to lawfully put away a wife and still be able to take another. The verse does not claim to have any application farther than that. In short, it is a verse about divorce not marriage.

The more serious problem that you have is that verse very explicitly limits the inability to take a second wife to men who have improperly divorced a previous wife. Men who have not improperly divorced a previous wife are not prohibited from taking a second wife. It is because they are allowed to take additional wives that it is necessary to prohibit improperly divorced men from doing so. If the restriction applied to all men it would simply say that. It does not. Ergo, not all men are prohibited from taking multiple wives. Polygyny is implicitly allowed in the New Testament and by our Savior Himself.

So rather than being a verse that disallows polygyny, Matthew 19:9 is a verse that implicitly allows polygyny for most categories of men. I hope this response was helpful. If we can be of any further use to you in your study please reach out to us either through the website as you have already or to me directly through this email.

Respectfully,
Zec Austin

Sent from my iPhone

@The Revolting Man is correct, I wouldn't put it in the same way, nevertheless he is essentially correct in what he is presenting.

Why? context.

What is missed is that when the Pharisees asked the question they only asked about divorce NOT marrying another.

Matthew 19:3 KJV — The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him, and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?

Mark 10:2 KJV — And the Pharisees came to him, and asked him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife? tempting him.​

Jesus/YaHushuWaH knew what they were getting at so he added in the statement about marrying another in verse 9

The Pharisees had an anti polygynous stance so the underlying conversation was indeed to do with polygyny not simply divorce.


Edit addition

I would not say that Jesus / YaHushuWaH was "allowing" polygyny, I would say he was 'defending' polygyny or biblical marriage.

 

[NVIII]

Ok, but it is accepting of any number of wives greater than one.

It is not even a consideration. Just as it is not even a consideration when speaking of sleeping with your sister or your dog.

 

[The Revolting Man]

Ok, but it is accepting of any number of wives greater than one.

YES!

 

[The Revolting Man]

It is blind to any and all other marriages the man may have except for this one.

Yes! Thank you. It implicitly allows polygyny by not forbidding it. The skeptic claims that the verse limits the man to one lawful wife but a literal application of the teaching wouldn’t accomplish that. The literal application of the teaching could apply equally to the monogamist and polygynist. Christ treated both as equally valid in verse 9.

It is not talking about adding but about exchanging.

We were so close. It can be applied to either. There is nothing in the verse that would restrict it to exchanges. It works just the same with addition or even multiplication. You’re artificially restricting it to exchanges.

but this is not among those verses because it is only about an exchange of one woman for another

It can be but as I’ve pointed it is not restricted to that.

and not about adding.

You need to prove this. Why would this verse not apply to a polygynist?

Net zero gain,

Again, why? What is the escape clause that lets the polygynist not submit to this teaching?

 

[NVIII]

Yes! Thank you. It implicitly allows polygyny by not forbidding it. The skeptic claims that the verse limits the man to one lawful wife but a literal application of the teaching wouldn’t accomplish that. The literal application of the teaching could apply equally to the monogamist and polygynist. Christ treated both as equally valid in verse 9.

We were so close. It can be applied to either. There is nothing in the verse that would restrict it to exchanges. It works just the same with addition or even multiplication. You’re artificially restricting it to exchanges.

It can be but as I’ve pointed it is not restricted to that.

You need to prove this. Why would this verse not apply to a polygynist?

Again, why? What is the escape clause that lets the polygynist not submit to this teaching?

Sorry, Zec. I'm out of ideas. I fail to understand how it is you can't see that divorce and remarriage doesn't move the needle on the number of wives, and therefore I fail to find a way to help you see. The fact that the teaching is given without respect to the number of wives is no more supportive of polygyny than it is detractive. It is like the dozens of other laws that govern marriage while lacking bearing on the quantity of marriages. Only a handful of laws give conditions that are predicated on or elude to the existence of multiple marriages at the same time, and this is not one of them. If anything, it smacks of serial monogamy.

Someone else can carry the torch. I'm out.

 

[FollowingHim]

This is a very good summary of your argument, which simultaneously reveals the fundamental logical flaw in it:

It implicitly allows polygyny by not forbidding it.

Pick absolutely any other verse in scripture on any topic whatsoever and you could apply the same argument. "Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church" implicitly allows polygamy because it does not forbid it. "Honour the Sabbath day and keep it holy" implicitly allows polygamy because it does not forbid it. "Jesus wept" implicitly allows polygamy because it does not forbid it.

Even if you were technically correct @The Revolting Man, the argument is so weak that it is counterproductive to use. It comes across as you grasping for weak technicalities to support your case, and the person you are trying to persuade will see your position as weak and unpersuasive. So:

Using this is begging for refutation and a closing of the listener's mind.

 

[Keith Martin]

See the math of it: man & wife - wife + different wife = man & wife. The "another" is literally "an other", not one more in addition to. The entire premise of the statement is divorce, and so the subsequent marriage would be zero net gain. It's not a case for polygyny.

Correct and incorrect; it's not a case for polygyny, but @The Revolting Man doesn't assert that it is; he states that it implies acceptance of polygyny, and it most certainly does that.

And incorrect: @NVIII, you subsequently linked to my explanation about dependent and independent clauses.

It occurred to me this morning that, if the wording was switched, if it said, "Whoever takes another wife and puts away the first...", it would be entirely different. In that case it would be about plural marriage not about divorce, it would say exactly what you thought it said, and perhaps that's the way you were seeing it.

@Keith Martin provided an explanation about dependent and independent clauses here that I think also helps explain why this verse, as it is arranged, cannot imply plural marriage.

If one follows that link, one will also find an explanation of the importance of the use of the word for 'and' in the clause. The same is true here when it comes to the use of the 'and' in the phrase, "whoever should be dismissing his wife (not for prostitution) and should be marrying another." [CLNT] The 'and' more than implies that these are functionally simultaneous acts, which makes the man's behavior a violation of Exodus 21:10.

Matthew 19:9 addresses a situation when a man is not allowed to take a subsequent wife. If you put away your wife and marry another you commit adultery.

A man who has a wife and hasn’t put her away is not prohibited from taking another wife.

I would just quibble with your use of the word 'subsequent;' nothing in the verse indicates that it had to be long enough after to imply 'subsequent,' and, as noted before, the use of 'and' implies contemporaneity -- and thus I don't see this as a definitive prohibition against ever taking another wife; if so, Onan could have escaped his death sentence by divorcing his existing wife when his brother died.

Except the verse isn’t primarily about divorce, it’s primarily (remember that adultery is a capital offense) about taking the subsequent wife.

My opinion is that it's more about adultery than about either marriage, divorce or polygyny.

Christ has implicitly allowed polygyny in Matthew 19:9. It is a pro-polygyny verse.

Correct. Incorrect. It implies that polygyny is permitted, but it's not a pro-polygyny verse (nor is it an anti-polygyny verse). Just because x is mentioned does not necessarily imply either promotion or condemnation.

No. The foundational assumption of the verse is that there is a man who once had a wife but put her away. It establishes that that particular woman is no longer part of the picture.

Incorrect. The use of 'and' at the very least implies concurrence but most certainly does not require the passing of time.

A lateral question for those more knowledgeable on the topic. Of the various books that were in time left out of the Bible but may have missed the cut by a couple of votes as it were, are they many references to polygamy or marriage customs at all?

Nothing I've ever found that adds anything substantive.

but this is not among those verses because it is only about an exchange of one woman for another and not about adding.

It neither addresses nor excludes the possibility of already-existing plural wives.

Why? context.

BOOM!

The Pharisees had an anti polygynous stance so the underlying conversation was indeed to do with polygyny not simply divorce.

Context. Context. Context.

I would assert that, by Design, we were meant to be befuddled by this verse, because it is consistent with every single instance of Yeshua's verbal interactions with the Pharisees. That is the context: this statement of Yeshua's was almost certainly spoken in Hebrew and, as with other interactions with those snakes intended to acknowledge that He knew they were trying to trap him and intended to use enough relevant words to obscure the fact that (a) He wasn't accepting their premise and (b) He proceeded to provided an answer that met His own Agendas while craftily refraining from addressing the trap.

And this is what He proceeded to do in :9b-12.

Polygyny was not condemned. Divorce was generally but not universally condemned. And He emphasizes that a man who wrongfully divorces a woman becomes an indirect but definitive adulterer by forcing his wife and her subsequent man/men to become adulterers.

What is not addressed one way or another in this verse but that we should always be mindful of are the potential for the man to become repentant/make atonement and/or the potential for the man to take his wife back before she ends up in the conjugal arms of another man.