Replies

Other than the fact that

- Levirate marriage law makes no allowances or exceptions should the marriage result in polygamy.

- King David was called a man after God’s own heart and he had 8 wives

- King Solomon asked for and was granted wisdom and he had wives in the hundreds

King David also sent Bathseba’s husband to the front lines to be killed so he could have her. King David may have been a man after God’s heart but he was still a sinner and God did not approve of him having multiple wives. Polygamy causes jealousy and turmoil in the family as the wives politic for their son to be next in line for the throne. Solomon may have been granted wisdom, but he committed a great sin when he tried to appease his foreign wives by allowing them to build temples to and worship their false gods.

http://www.letusreason.org/Biblexp185.htm

For behold, I reveal unto you a new and everlasting covenant; and if ye abide not that covenant, then are ye damned; for no one can reject this covenant and be permitted to enter into my glory - Doctrine & Covenants Section 132

Joseph Smith may have commanded it, and Joseph may have practiced it with 33 plural wives in addition to Emma (See LDS Historian Todd Compton's In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith) but your assertion that God did not specifically disapprove of polygamy could not be more incorrect. Consider the following:

Exodus 20:14 - Thou shalt not commit adultery

Note: Scripture defines adultery as a married man having sexual relations with anyone other than his wife or a married woman having sexual relations with anyone other than her husband (see Mark 10:11-12, Luke 16:18, 1 Corinthians 6:15-16, and 1 Corinthians 7:2 among others) There are many verses condemning this terrible practice, enough for a detailed study in its own right.
Exodus 20:17 - Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife
Deuteronomy 17:17 - Neither shall he multiply wives to himself
Proverbs 6:32 - [But] whoso committeth adultery with a woman lacketh understanding: he [that] doeth it destroyeth his own soul.
Matt. 5:31-32 - Furthermore it has been said, 'Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce. But I say to you that whoever divorces his wife for any reason except sexual immorality causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a woman who is divorced commits adultery.'
Mark 10:6-8 - But from the beginning of the creation, God 'made them male and female.' 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, 'and the two shall become one flesh'; so then they are no longer two, but one flesh.

Note: The two as one is the pattern on how marriage was to be conducted from the start ... NOT more than two as one.
Romans 13:9 - Thou shalt not commit adultery
1 Corinthians 6:9 - Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals,
1 Corinthians 7:2 - Nevertheless, [to avoid] fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.
1 Timothy 3:12 - Let the deacons be the husbands of one wife, ruling their children and their own houses well.
1 Timothy 3:2 - A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach
Hebrews 13:3-4 - Marriage is honorable among all, and the bed undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge.

Additionally, you should note the following:

God never commanded polygamy or divorce. Scripture says that He only permitted it because of the hardness of their hearts (Deut. 24:1; Matt. 19:8).
Abraham, David and Solomon were not blessed for practicing polygamy. In fact, every polygamist in the Bible was punished. This indicates that this practice is not God's will.
God never condoned polygamy but like divorce he allowed it to occur and did not bring an immediate punishment for this disobedience.

Bottom line: What Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, every other LDS President from 1830-1945, and thousands of Mormon patriarchs did was terribly wrong and their actions do not change the fact the Bible condemns it.

- King David was called a man after God's own heart and he had 8 wives

- King David was called a man after God's own heart and he committed adultery and had his lover's husband killed.

King Solomon asked for and was granted wisdom and he had wives in the hundreds

Wisdom is one thing.

Applying it is another...

Deuteronomy 17:16-17
The king, moreover, must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them, for the LORD has told you, "You are not to go back that way again."

And he shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away, nor shall he acquire for himself excessive silver and gold.

1 Kings 11:1-3
But King Solomon loved many foreign women, as well as the daughter of Pharaoh: women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites; from the nations of whom the Lord had said to the children of Israel, "You shall not intermarry with them, nor they with you. Surely they will turn away your hearts after their gods." Solomon clung to these in love. And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines; and his wives turned away his heart.

OOps....

- King David was called a man after Godâ€™s own heart and he had 8 wives

First of all, let's deal with the suggested premise here by way of analogy: Moses was used of God & encountered Him face-to-face. But Moses was also a manslaughterer. (You wouldn't stoop to citing Moses' relationship with God as some means to justify manslaughter, would you?)

Secondly, let's review David's woman/concubine/wife track record, shall we?

Besides infamous Bathsheba, who were the women David slept with?

(1) David's first wife was Michal, daughter of Saul. Saul took Michal, however, and gave her to another man (1 Sam. 25:44) at a point when no other women were part of David's life.

(2) Concubines who David inherited when he took over Saul's kingdom. (They came with the "palace," so to speak.) How do we know they were concubines? 2 Sam. 16:21-22 convincingly shows us that those referenced in 2 Sam. 12:8 were concubines. 2 Sam. 16:21-22 shows us they weren't sexually loyal to David (and David made no personal fuss to his son, whom these concubines slept with in broad daylight on roof for all of the community to see). Were concubines usually considered as "wives"? (No -- concubines is another word for servant girls or slaves).

So you don't think sleeping with slave girls or servant girls is transferrable to modern times, do you TaxControl?

(3) During that era --David & the next two generations -- who you slept with wasn't simply a "changing mores" issue as much as a royal alliance issue...tribal heads would give a daughter or another member of that tribe to another king or even future king as an issue of being part of a peace pact.

Is there such an example we know of with David? Yes. Absalom was his son born of Maacah, daughter of Talmai, king of Geshur.

So you don't think sleeping with daughters being traded for political peace purposes is transferrable to modern times, do you TaxControl?

(4) Bathsheba. We know that circumstance. What we don't know with Bathsheba is how many of David's previous wives were still alive when he married her. In fact, Nathan, when he confronts David about that, doesn't mention his four or five earlier wives, one of whom was given to another man by the father of that woman. Nathan only mentions concubines David inherited as part of the kingdom. Certainly, we know how he slept with her when she was another man's wife. You don't think sleeping with another woman whose the wife of another man is transferrable to what we should do in modern times, do you, TaxControl?

(5) OK, of all the women that David slept with in 2 Sam. 3 that resulted in sons, and believe me, he slept with several, who's conspicously not "identified" as his "wife?" Answer? Haggith and Abital who are listed before Eglah (Eglah is identified as his wife).

IOW, we don't know if Haggith and Abital were his wives, or concubines. (That passage in 2 Sam. 3 immediately goes on to talk about Saul's concubines)

So, not knowing these two women's status (or Maacah above) that leaves only two WIVES whom we know of for certain that were simultaneously married to David (Ahinoam and Abigail) -- 1 Sam. 25.

So, we know David had a lot of wives; and we know he had some concubines. But we don't know the timing for each of them (especially Eglah in comparison to Ahinoam and Abigail). How many of them were wives simultaneously (vs. serially). Except for Ahinoam and Abigail, we don't know.

Bottom line: So you're going to defend an entire instititution (polygamy) based upon David taking a second wife and a series of what may have been serial wives?