>>DU, Abraham's polygamy is an extremely poor case study if you are arguing for divine approval of polygamy.
OK, then logically disprove it.
Also disprove Jacob’s
Also disprove David’s (before Bathsheba)
I’ve got more, just not as famous.
>>God gave Abraham assurance that he would have many descendants.
Yes he did, and it was because Abraham was very righteous, not because he was going to become an adulterer.
>>Yet Abraham and Sarah did not have faith in this assurance and the taking of
>>Hagar as a concubine was an act of doubt in God's providence.
Got Scripture?
No?
Got Speculation = Got Nothing.
>>The issue of the concubinage with Hagar was a curse to Abraham,
>>Ishmael and his descendants were persecutors of his true heirs and
>>are to this very day.
Persecution is not a curse, quite often it keeps the persecuted on the path God intends for them.
>>Scripture shows that Abraham's polygamy was an utter and enduring disaster.
We seem to have problem here with the confusion of Opinion (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/opinion) and Fact (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Fact). Many on this forum continually state their opinion as fact. I understand this proclivity as the Media today does this all the time. However, it does not become us, and it does not make for polite and rational discussions (however it can be fun to attack with logic, and I am having fun on this thread!)
You have to prove your implied thesis: that everything God permits is what He desires most for His children.
That is disproven, since Jesus instructs us that His Father permitted divorce under the law of Moses because of man's weakness.
Is the capacity to divorce a blessing that God desires and encourages?
No.
It is a concession He had made to man's sin-flawed nature.
Abraham took a concubine because he was impatient with God's promise of descendants.
Jacob took concubines because he was immorally deceived into marrying his first wife and the rest because of infertility.
David took multiple wives ebcause Saul had multiple wives, and given the nature of Saul's ascendancy in Israel, repudiation of any of Saul's wives would be a repudiation of the alliances forged through those marriages that kept Israel a unified nation.
BTW, there is no Scriptural evidence that Bathsheba was a Hittite. She had a Hebrew name and so did her father. And of course, David's own great-grandmother was a non-Israelite Moabite married to an Israelite - and that Moabite-marrying Israelite was indeed blessed by being made the forefather of the King of Israel and of the Messiah.
Got Scripture?
It has been cited. Isaac the heir was born to Sarah as God promised. There was no need to look beyond Sarah for the son of the promise, but Abraham did anyway.
You say he did so because of some special blessing to be found in polygamy.
there is no Scriptural evidence for this.
What we do see here is what we see here continually throughout Scripture: God being exceedingly good, and ungrateful men not appreciating their blessings but reaching for more.
Persecution is not a curse
LOL! What a bizarre statement.
We seem to have problem here with the confusion of Opinion (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/opinion) and Fact (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Fact). Many on this forum continually state their opinion as fact. I understand this proclivity as the Media today does this all the time. However, it does not become us, and it does not make for polite and rational discussions (however it can be fun to attack with logic, and I am having fun on this thread!)
Congratulations on the most condescendingly egomaniacal paragraph i've read on FR in some time.