Another interesting study is the story of Jacob and Rachel, Bilhah, and Leah, Rachel’s sister.
As it turned out, Rachel did not conceive easily and was envious of her sister wife because she had children and Rachel didn’t. So, she had her handmaiden, Bilhah, mate with her husband, Jacob, and she bore him children. After that time, Rachel conceived Joseph. In verse 20, Leah comments that Jacob is pleased with her for bearing him six sons. After that, having fulfilled his obligation, Jacob asked to leave the place of Laban. Jacob had served Laban for 14 years in payment for both Leah and Rachel. In verse 26 Jacob clearly states of his desire to take his women, plural, and leave. The suffix נָשַׁי in Genesis 30:26 shifts the noun אִשֹּׁת (Strong’s H802) to plural.
I could go passage by passage through scripture, in Hebrew and Greek, and the results are always the same. Ephesians 5:31 says a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to a woman. The specific Greek description γυνή τινος,. The word is a nominative singular feminine noun, nominative means that it is the subject of the verb, The verb it is subject to is “Join.” In Greek this word is προσκολληθήσεται and it is only used twice in the New Testament. It is in the Future Passive Indicative, third person singular. That means it is not a commandment, in English we might say, “this is probably going to happen sometime.” The joining means “To be glued together.” The passage is not restrictive. It is the same kind of phrase as if you were to say he bought a car. It does not limit him to one car, it describes the specific transaction being described. There is a related passage in Ephesians 5:28 (So husbands also ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; ) The word for husband in that specific use is the nominative plural masculine ἀνήρ, it is Strong’s G435 it means men, and it is used 31 times in the New Testament. The word for wives is Strong’s G1135 in the accusative plural form. It is the same noun and form found in 1 Titus3:11, 1Titus2:9, Ephesians 5:25, and a total of eleven times in the New Testament. It is translated as WOMEN, plural.
The second time Strong’s G1135 is used in Eph5:28, it is the accusative singular feminine form γυναῖκα that is used 50 times in the New Testament. It is the same word used in Luke 4:26 as WOMAN. And again in Luke 7:50, and Luke 7:44. It clearly means one woman or wife.
Therefore, we can read Ephesians 5:28 as, “So, husbands should love your wives (plural) as their own bodies. He who loves his wife (singular) loves himself.”
Can you see how looking at passages in the original language brings different meanings to the subject? Time and again as we study scripture we find these biased teachings, but when you take the entirety of scripture into view, I believe the message is clear.
So if righteous society was built around poly family structures, then why did we see a shift to monogamy? The answer is as simple as the ascetic movement, human greed, and politics. As the struggle for influence within the gentile church continued through the third and fourth century, that part of the world didn’t have the Hebrew experience. They were more focused on the Greek philosophy of asceticism and introspection, and there became an outcry that wealthier men in the church had multiple wives, but other men didn’t have the means to even attract even one. Remember, women had no rights. There were very limited options for them to NOT marry, and almost entirely marriages and contracts of concubinage were arranged by the parents of girls during their early teen years. The promotion of monogamy was intended to appease the desires of less successful men by forcing women to marry them. It also suited the philosophy of the ascetic leaders by aligning with their “poverty theology.”
There was also an issue that polygyny was the prevalent social structure within both the Jewish and Christian churches through the second century, and the Romans were fearful that those cultures were out reproducing theirs. Remember, there was a struggle between the Pagan and Judeo-Christian societies.
I use Judeo (Muslim) – Christian society as an example, but the same truth is found in indigenous populations worldwide. My research indicates that 85% of global societies are polygynous. This is proper human behavior and in my opinion, deviating from it has helped produce our current debacle. The evidence is clear if people will actually look. I will tell you that I have many people debating me on these subjects. None of them do so from the original languages and history. Few of them are willing to spend the time needed to do research for themselves.