In the Hebrew Scriptures we find both monogamy and polygamy as accepted and even expected forms of marriage. Commentators, embarrassed by the polygamy in the Bible, try to mute the subject by insisting its practice was rare and abnormal. The record does not stand up to that assumption. Polygamy was a custom practiced extensively among God’s people …

Israelite society was a polygamous society … If polygamy is immoral at all, it is immoral always. If it happened only once in Scripture, with God’s approval, then we are dealing with an ethical system utterly foreign to modern moralism. Moral absolutes cannot have exceptions, or else they are not absolute.

James Wesley Stivers
Eros Made Sacred
Patriarch Publishing House, 2007, pp. 15-16