By Rev. Emmanuel Boachie
The noisy revival of polygamy advocacy on social media is not a cultural awakening but moral backsliding disguised as ancestral pride. To glorify it is to baptize barbarism and perfume decay. Civilization progresses when it purges error, not when it resurrects it. Not every tradition deserves veneration; some belong in the archives of moral ruin.
The Cultural Mirage
Those who hail polygamy as “African heritage” forget that it was also Africa’s heritage of rivalry, jealousy, and sorrow. From tribal huts to royal courts, it multiplied strife and disinherited peace. When a man divides his affection, he multiplies affliction; when he spreads his love too thin, he starves his home of harmony.
Children from such homes grow up not in unity but in rivalry—locked in a lifelong contest for favour and paternal affection, which is their natural right. History bleeds with their stories: brothers slaughtered brothers for thrones, and heirs waged wars for inheritance. The legacy of polygamy is confusion, and confusion is never divine.
Why Civilized Societies Rejected It
The West and other ethically awakened cultures outlawed polygamy not out of arrogance but out of moral enlightenment. They learned that equality and justice collapse when love is divided by fractions. Polygamy reduces womanhood to rivalry, converts affection into arithmetic, and transforms marriage from a covenant of peace into a marketplace of insecurity. Civilization renounced it because social order demands monogamy as the moral cornerstone of both family and state.
The Divine Blueprint
God never invented, endorsed, nor encouraged polygamy. In Eden, He established the sacred formula: one man, one woman, one flesh, one covenant. “Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave unto his wife”—not wives (Genesis 2:24). The grammar of creation was singular, not plural.
The first polygamist in Scripture was Lamech, a descendant of Cain—the lineage of rebellion (Genesis 4:19). Thus, polygamy’s genealogy begins not with paradise but with defiance. Among the patriarchs, its harvest was heartbreak: Abraham’s home fractured; Jacob’s tent burned with jealousy; David’s house collapsed in incest and blood; Solomon’s palace turned into a sanctuary for idols.
If these be the trophies of polygamy, they are monuments of misery, not medals of honour.
Leah — God’s Sovereign Choice
Yet even within that tangled history, God’s sovereignty shines through. Jacob loved Rachel, but God chose Leah—the despised, unloved wife—as the womb of divine destiny. From Leah came Judah, the tribe of kings, and Levi, the tribe of priests. Thus, the royal sceptre and the sacred priesthood were both born of divine election, not human affection.
Leah prefigured Christ’s dual office as the Great King and Great High Priest—rejected by men yet chosen by God. Her story rebukes the sensual impulses of polygamy and reveals a higher law: that God’s purposes are perfected not through passion but through providence. The rejected woman became the vessel of redemption, proving that divine favour rests not on outward beauty but on covenant faithfulness.
Moses, the Prophets, and Christ
Moses permitted polygamy only as a concession to human hardness (Matthew 19:8). The Prophets—from Hosea’s allegory of divine fidelity to Malachi’s cry against treacherous husbands—reaffirmed monogamy as heaven’s emblem of covenant love: one God, one Bride, one everlasting faithfulness.
Christ Himself ended the debate: “From the beginning, it was not so.” The Apostles reaffirmed it: “A bishop must be the husband of one wife” (1 Timothy 3:2)—a moral pattern for every believer. The Church Fathers thundered in unison: Tertullian called polygamy “refined adultery,” Augustine “a disease of carnal desire,” and the Reformers condemned it as “a relapse into pagan darkness.”
The Eschatological Warning — End-Time Adultery
Polygamy’s resurgence is not revival—it is prophecy fulfilled. Scripture foretold that in the last days, men would be “lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God” (2 Timothy 3:4). The unrepentant spirit of adultery that plagued ancient Israel now resurfaces in the digital age under cultural disguise.
Isaiah foresaw it: “In that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, We will eat our own bread and wear our own apparel; only let us be called by thy name, to take away our reproach” (Isaiah 4:1). The prophetic picture is clear—moral desperation driving many to crave marital titles without covenant loyalty.
And Jesus warned: “As it was in the days of Noah, they were marrying and giving in marriage, until the flood came” (Matthew 24:38). Endless unions without repentance, pleasure without purity, and covenant without consecration—these are the marks of an adulterous generation.
A Rebuke to Apostate Pulpits
That some modern preachers now dare to sanctify polygamy is scandalous. Draped in cultural relativism, they defend lust as heritage and sin as custom. Such pulpits have exchanged the gospel of holiness for the gospel of hormones. To sanctify polygamy is to crucify purity and profane the altar of divine love.
The Gospel Mystery
Marriage, in Scripture, is not a social arrangement but a sacrament of divine intimacy—the mirror of Christ and His Church: one Groom, one Bride, one eternal covenant. The man of many wives mirrors the idolater of many gods. Monogamy reveals the mystery of pure worship—exclusive, covenantal, and faithful.
Polygamy, therefore, is not merely marital disorder; it is theological adultery—a shadow of idolatry that blurs the image of the One True God.
The Final Appeal
Let every nation, pastor, and believer return to divine order. Heaven knows no divided unions. Christ is coming not for a crowd of brides but for one spotless Bride—the Church.
Let the adulterous heart repent, the divided soul be restored, and the Church of Christ uphold the original blueprint: purity over plurality, covenant over competition, love over lust.
For the trumpet will soon sound, and the Bridegroom will not share His love with another.
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