One man and one woman

I am convinced that God’s plan for each man was to have only one woman. In our culture, I hear the phrase, “one man and one woman” quite often. Unfortunately, it doesn’t mean much because in most cases it involves the divorce from his first wife in order to take another woman. Cheating is frequently the cause of the break-up of the first marriage. Let’s look closer at Abram’s (Abraham’s) and Sarai’s (Sarah’s) marriage to see how the second woman affected their family. Genesis 16: 5-6, “And Sarai said unto Abram, My wrong be upon thee: I have given my maid into thy bosom; and when she saw that she was conceived, I was despised in her eyes: the Lord judge between me and thee. But Abram said unto Sarai, Behold, thy maid is in thy hand, do to her as it pleaseth thee. And when Sarai dealt hardly with her, she fled from her face.”

Sarai actually asked Abram to choose between her and Hagar. A simple family is much healthier and less stressful than a complex family whereby a man takes more than one wife into his family unit. And in Sarai and Abram’s case, no cheating was committed because it was a mutual decision between the two to bring Hagar into their family.