You wrote:
“If one bothers to read the scriptures, it is quite rational. “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.””
You’re completely off. Logically one cannot use a verse from scripture about marriage - that doesn’t even mention the number of children resulting from a union as somehow retroactively making a union a marriage - as proof of what you claim. It simply doesn’t say ANYTHING about what you’re talking about and fails in every way to bolster your argument.
“Obviously, if one continues over and over to join his flesh with the woman to whom he is legally married, then he is, by his own behavior, validating the marriage.”
No. 1) The civil legality of a marriage is essentially immaterial to the actual nature of the marriage. This was not so in ancient Israel where the civil law and the religious law were essentially one in the same. 2) The frequency of sexual intercourse between a man and woman shows nothing about the validity of a union.
“It’s not as if he did an “oopsie” one time. So yes, having 7 children with the woman to whom you are legally married makes quite a bit of difference.”
No, actually it makes no difference at all. You’re only proving my point by failing to come up with an argument that holds water.
“Maybe to the worldly mind. But certainly not sound scripturally.”
According to the Old Testament scriptures, polygamy is moral. And here is another example of scriptural marriage law that no Christian follows today:
Deuteronomy 22:28-29, “If a man finds a girl who is a virgin, who is not engaged, and seizes her and lies with her and they are discovered, then the man who lay with her shall give to the girl’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall become his wife because he has violated her; he cannot divorce her all his days.”
Seize a virgin and you get her as your wife after paying 50 shekels.
When people invoke the scriptures in regard to marriage, they should know what they’re talking about.