Exod. xx. 17 (18th ver. of the Hebrew text): “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife,” אֵ֣שֶׁתʾēšet, esheth, in the construct state, showing that she was appropriated to the neighbour in the singular number. If the passage had read, Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wives, or any of them, the interpretation must have been quite different.
So also Deut. v. 21: “Neither shalt thou desire thy neighbour’s wife,” אֵ֣שֶׁתʾēšet, esheth.
The twenty-second chapter of Deuteronomy relates the law concerning a portion of the relations incident to a married state; but we find the idea always advanced in the singular number. There was no direction concerning his wives. Had the decalogue announced, “Thou shalt have but one wife,” the language of these explanations and directions, to be in unison therewith, need not have been changed.
The subject is continued through the first five verses of the twenty-fourth chapter, but we find the idea wife still expressed in the same careful language, conveying the idea, as appropriated to one man, in the person of one female only. The term “new wife,” here used, does not imply that she is an addition to others in like condition, but that her condition of being a wife is new, as is most clearly shown by the word חֲדָשָׁ֔הḥădāšâ hadasha, from which it is translated. The sentiment or condition explained in this passage is illustrated by our Saviour in Luke xiv. 20: “I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come,”—that is, until the expiration of the year,—having reference to this very passage in Deuteronomy for authority. But this passage is made very plain by a direct command of God: see Deut. xx. 7: “And what man is there that hath betrothed a wife, and hath not taken her? Let him go and return unto his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man take her.”
But the institution of marriage was established, before the fall of man, by the appropriation of one woman to one man. Now, that this fact, this example, stands as a command, is clear from the words of Jesus Christ, in Matt. xix. 4, 5: “And he answered and said, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning, made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother and shall cleave unto his wife; and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore, they are no more twain, but one flesh.”
We trust, “at this age of the world,” there is a sufficiency of light, among even the most unlearned of us, whereby we shall be enabled to interpret these scriptures, not to license polygamy, but to discountenance and forbid it, by showing that they teach a contrary doctrine. But, perhaps, the explanation is more decided in Mark x. 8–11: And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh.” “And he saith unto them, whoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her.”
Surely, if a man commit adultery by marrying the second when he has turned off the previous, it may be a stronger case of adultery to marry a second wife without turning off the first one!
We think St. Paul interprets the Scriptures in the old-fashioned way, Eph. v. 31: “For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.”
See 1 Cor. vi. 16–18: “What! know ye not that he which is joined to a harlot is one body? For two, saith he, shall be one flesh. Flee fornication.” And further, the deductions that St. Paul made from these teachings are plainly drawn out in his lessons to Timothy: “If a man desire the office of bishop, he desireth a good work. A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife.” “Let the deacons be the husbands of one wife.” 1 Tim. iii. 1, 2, 12.
“These things command and teach. Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example of the believers in word, in conversation, in charity, in faith, in purity.” 1 Tim. iv. 11, 12.