I rather suspect they had the history of Adam and Eve passed on to them through Noah. There was never any concept of the example of Adam's monogamy requiring monogamy. They understood the nature of hierarchy.
The lives and times of the patriarchs seem to confirm this. According to the Bible all nations descended from Noah, and Shem was still alive in Abraham’s day. As Abraham’s patriarch, Shem would have had every opportunity to knock polygamy out of Abraham had he felt so inclined. Although there were no practising polygamists on the ark. all the nations descending from Noah’s family seemed to have practised it. Against that background then:
Abraham: feared that Pharaoh would kill him to take Sarah into his harem. Polygamy was OK, but remarriage to a divorced woman was obviously socially unacceptable, even for ready money.
Isaac: another monogamist! Never mind, Esau to the rescue: he takes a third wife of the descendants of Abraham to appease his parents for his previous polygamous marriage to two Hittite girls (Gen 26:34, 27:46, 28:8-9). So despite Isaac and Rebekah not being in a polygamous marriage themselves, they did manage to bring up Esau to realise that polygamy was perfectly acceptable, but marriage out of the truth was totally out of order.
Mainstream Christian thought has completely reversed this scriptural teaching.
Jacob, Isaac’s other son, was initially an unwilling polygamist if ever there was one. Nevertheless, when he woke up and found he was married to Leah, he quickly came to see the advantages of the majority view. Again the cultural commentary is of interest:
“Laban said, It must not be so done in our country, to give the younger before the firstborn” (Gen 29:26).
The Biblical law of the firstborn can only relate to male children, but in Laban’s culture, we can see that firstborn status had also been applied to women: the narrative reveals that women’s lib is creeping into the ecclesia.
(Happily, this was rather an own goal for women’s lib as it was resolved by polygamy… Come to think of it, the problems in Jacob's household were not due to polygamy, they were due to women's lib!)
Anyway, to my mind, the lives of the patriarchs and the world they lived in do demonstrate that polygamy was indeed passed on by monogamists to their children.
Gen 18:19 For I know him (Abraham), that
he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the LORD,
to do justice and judgment;
that the LORD may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him.
Last edited: