WOMEN UNDER POLYGAMY
upon the Jewish inhabitants of Palestine and the Eastern alien proselytes. It was impossible to extirpate so ancient a practice in a few years. The polygamy of David and Solomon could always be quoted as sanctioned by Jehovah. Most of the accredited Hebrew lawmakers and pious scribes had permitted plural marriage and concubinage. Rachel did not prevent Jacob's association with the handmaidens Bilhah and Zilpah, an instance of the Eastern solicitude for the begetting of sons.
Esau had three wives. Gideon had "any wives" and "three score and ten sons." In the time of Moses, women taken in warfare became the wives, concubines, or slaves of their captors.
Maimon, the Jewish historian, states that a man might possess as many wives as he could afford to maintain. So general, therefore, was the custom of polygamy that the early Christians were confronted with a very formidable social problem. As a matter of fact, plural marriage, even though it was considered an offence, was not wholly abolished for many centuries after the time of St. Paul. Its occurrence was regular in most parts of Europe. In the Sixth Century, according to the tribunal of Narbonne, a man married to several women was compelled to do penance, but this enactment did not suppress the system of plurality of wives.
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