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We’re diving into God’s establishment of marriage in Genesis, Moses, and Abraham. Where did marriage come from? What did God create and command? When did polygamy begin?

Summary

In this episode, Michelle Stone explores the origins of marriage in scripture and how the first recorded case of polygamy in the Bible contrasts with God’s original plan. She analyzes the creation of Adam and Eve, the Book of Moses’ additional insights, and the introduction of polygamy through Lamech, a descendant of Cain. Through a scriptural deep dive, Stone argues that monogamy was God’s original and perfect order, while polygamy emerged as a result of human corruption and wickedness.

Key Themes:

  1. God’s Original Plan: Monogamy in Creation
    • The Genesis, Moses, and Abraham accounts consistently depict Adam and Eve as a monogamous couple.
    • Genesis 2:24 states that a man shall “cleave unto his wife” (singular), reinforcing monogamy.
    • Stone argues that if God intended polygamy from the beginning, He would have created multiple wives for Adam.
  2. Brigham Young’s Contradictory Claims About Adam
    • Brigham Young once claimed that Adam had multiple wives.
    • However, Doctrine & Covenants 132 itself never mentions Adam as a polygamist, which Stone finds telling.
    • She challenges how LDS leaders justify polygamy when scripture consistently presents monogamy as the divine standard.
  3. Scriptural Proof That Monogamy Was the Norm
    • Moses 5:3 states that Adam’s children married “two by two,” reinforcing monogamy.
    • The human birth rate (approximately 50/50 male and female) supports monogamous pairings as the natural order.
    • Stone critiques the idea that polygamy is God’s ideal by pointing out that polygamy only works if large numbers of men are eliminated through war or exile.
  4. The First Polygamist in Scripture: Lamech, a Murderer
    • The first recorded case of polygamy appears in Genesis 4:19, where Lamech, a descendant of Cain, takes two wives.
    • Lamech is also a murderer, paralleling Cain’s violent nature and showing polygamy’s early association with wickedness.
    • Stone emphasizes that God did not command polygamy—it was introduced by men who rejected His laws.
  5. Secret Combinations and the Corruption of God’s Order
    • Moses 5:29-31 describes how Cain entered into a secret combination with Satan to gain power and wealth.
    • Lamech followed the same path, participating in murder, secret oaths, and polygamy.
    • Stone argues that polygamy, like secret combinations, was a human corruption of God’s perfect system.
  6. The Book of Mormon’s Warnings About False Traditions
    • Jacob 2 condemns polygamy, stating that it “breaks the hearts of wives and children.”
    • The Book of Mormon repeatedly warns about false traditions, and Stone suggests that polygamy is one of those traditions.
    • She urges LDS members to reevaluate long-held beliefs and focus on scriptural truth over historical justifications.
  7. Final Thoughts: Restoring the True Understanding of Marriage
    • Stone concludes that God’s plan for marriage was always monogamy and that polygamy is a human distortion.
    • She encourages listeners to seek truth, even when it challenges long-standing traditions.
    • The episode sets the stage for future discussions on how polygamy infiltrated LDS doctrine and the contradictions it presents in scripture.

Transcript

[00:00:01] Welcome to 132 Problems revisiting Mormon Polygamy, where we discuss the scriptural and theological case for polygamy. Please remember to listen to these episodes in order. If this is your first time with us, welcome. If you wouldn’t mind, please go back and listen to the first episode and then go through an order until you’re back up with us. And also, please feel free to make any comments or ask questions or leave feedback. I think this podcast will do the best if it is a rich and full discussion. This is episode 3 in the beginning where we look at God’s establishment of marriage and the very first case of plural marriage in the scriptures. Thank you for joining us as we take a deep dive into the murky waters of Mormon polygamy. OK, before we get going in the new episode, I had one clarification I wanted to make from last week’s episode last week’s episode, the loophole. Um, someone pointed out to me a brilliant insight that I missed. I talked extensively about these things in Jacob 2:30 and how these things refer to the abominations and whoredoms, but a listener pointed out to me that these things actually has a more specific meaning. In verse 20. 3, it says, but the word of God burdens me because of your grosser crimes, for behold, thus saith the Lord. This people began to wax in iniquity. They understand not the scriptures, for they seek to excuse themselves in committing whoredoms because of the things which were written concerning David and Solomon, his son. I think that’s such an important insight to realize that these things refer to the things which were written about David and Solomon, and applying it to verse 30, if God doesn’t specifically command His people, then his people will hearken to these things which are written about David and. Solomon, the things that they were misinterpreting and using to justify their desire to have more than one wife. So anyway, I thought that that was a very useful clarification, and now we will go on to our topic for today, which is in the beginning, God’s establishment of marriage. Before I started studying polygamy, I had never really thought about polygamy in regard to God’s establishment of marriage. So that was one thing that really was interesting to me when I started to think about it and study about it. That’s what I want to talk about today. So, we as members of the church of Jesus Christ have lots of creation accounts. Um, first of all, we have the one that we share with everyone, which is Genesis one. And then Moses 2 and Abraham 4 covered the same territory, and in most ways they’re rather similar. So let’s just look at the creation that we have. God created the heavens and the earth, the night and the day, the water and dry land, plant life, the sun, moon, stars and planets, the animals, and then finally, God created man and woman. In each stage of creation, God said it was good. I really loved the explanation I heard of good several years ago. That said good meant in this regard it meant covenant keeping or covenant enabling. If the purpose of this earth was for God to, well, uh, referring back to our discussion last week of Jacob too, perhaps we could describe the purpose of this creation as a means so that God could raise up seed to Himself. This earth was created for a place that these may dwell so that God could give us this earthly experience as a step in our eternal progression. And so, um Saying it was good means it is capable of doing that work. It’s capable of fulfilling that purpose. It enables covenants. And so um one thing that I really love is that after man and woman

[00:03:55] were created, and to clarify, it is very distinctly woman, not women. After woman with man and woman were made, God declared the creation to be very good, and um, I would love to hear your interpretations of that. For me, I wonder if perhaps that means complete or worthy of higher covenants and higher ordinances and um. It strikes me that God in this creation said it was good and that it was very good, and that must mean that it is, it has all the means necessary to fulfill every covenant, every law that God would have us live in this earth. And so if any parts that were needed were missing, then it couldn’t be very good. So God has made it clear that one man and one woman, with one man and one woman, creation was very good, meaning, I believe, capable of fulfilling every covenant necessary for exaltation. So I’m curious to hear what you think, how you would explain that um. That creation could be very good with one man and one woman if many women were needed for one man to make exalting covenants. That seems confusing to me. So we move on to Genesis 2, which is the same as, um, Moses 3 and Abraham 5. The creation of man and woman is revisited and expanded and clarified. So we can start in. Verse 18, and it says, And the Lord God said, It is not good that man should be alone. I will make Ann help me for him. So again, with our idea of good, it is not enabling of covenants for the man to be alone. And so he needs and help me. That’s pretty specifically 11 help meet. And, um, that’s similar in all three accounts. Let’s see, um. Well, I’ll let you guys read that on your own. I won’t take your time to read it right now, but it is a beautiful thing. I think we’ll go into it in a different episode in how Woman was made. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about and trying to understand the creation of Eve, and so maybe we’ll do a separate episode on that, but um right now we’ll continue on. Um, I think it’s so interesting that. The creation story makes it explicitly clear repeatedly that Adam had one wife. So it’s strange to me that Brigham Young claimed that Adam had multiple wives. As I understand it, maybe some of you who um have better sources or who have looked into this longer than I have can. Help me understand if I’m incorrect, but my understanding, what I have read and seen is that there are claims that Brigham Young said that Adam had several wives. And um it’s interesting because even 132, Section 132, which we are going to get to and have lots of discussions on, but even Section 132, which mistakenly claims that um Isaac was a polygamist, doesn’t even try to claim that Adam was a polygamist. So I think there should be pretty clear agreement that Adam, Adam. Was created and Eve was created, and Adam had one wife who was Eve, and that was the perfect creation, the perfect establishment of God. I cannot find any evidence to the contrary. So, um, let’s see, and then, and then the pattern continues. We’re gonna talk a little bit more, but jumping ahead to Moses 53. And from that

[00:07:32] and from that time forth, the sons and daughters of Adam began to divide 2 and 2 in the land and to till the land into 10 flocks, and they also begat sons and daughters. So again, also the children of Adam and Eve were in twosomes, one husband, one wife, and they began to multiply and fulfill that commandment which we talked about last week, which they were perfectly capable of doing. So it’s interesting because we have the biblical account and one thing that we’re taught in our church is that the Bible, we believe it to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly. So we believe the Bible has gone through. Multiple iterations of translations and maybe maybe changes here and there. So, um, so we believe that further revealed scripture can further clarify or add to teachings in the Bible, especially things that maybe are not clear or are not complete. Now, it’s interesting because we through Joseph Smith have 2, in some ways 3 if we count the temple, but there’s some, you know, that’s, that’s a whole other topic to go into, but we do at least have 2 other versions of the creation account directly from Joseph. Smith through inspiration, if that’s if that’s what we claim to believe. And so God had a lot of opportunity to reveal anything that was missing about Adam, like the somewhat important tidbit that, you know, he had Eve and And company and other wives. And so Moses and Abraham completely agree with Genesis in the explicit, they could not be more clear that Adam had one wife who was Eve. And um let’s see, and then Moses, many things in Moses make it even more clear and more difficult to argue with, like for example, Moses 5:3 that they their children began to divide 2 and 2 in the land. So that’s something interesting to think about. If Joseph Smith had wanted to add the doctrine of plural marriage, if he had really believed that doctrine, especially when, well, he was re receiving these additional revelations as he was doing the Um, doing his work on retranslating the Bible. So he had many, many years and much time that he could have worked on this, that he could have said, hey guys, guess what, um, God needs us to have more than one wife. So that’s a big hurdle to try to get over. Um, I can’t make sense of that. So let’s see. Um, oh, and then, you know, beyond the scriptures, we have an additional witness of the perfection. So I guess the point I’m trying to make is God created his perfect creation. Exactly. And just to clarify, I, I have a hard time referring to God as male because we believe that God is male and female. So just know that when I am saying God, I am talking about our view of God, which is father and mother. But Um, when God created the earth, it was in this perfect method in this perfect order, according to the order that God wanted. God established it perfectly. It didn’t,

[00:10:46] it seems crazy to think that God established it and needed man to come along and fix it. And so what I was going to say as a second witness of the perfect order of God, if you look at the human birth rate, it is just barely over 50% male and just barely under 50% female, which works out perfectly because girls have a slightly higher survival rate, infant survival rate than boys do. So it turns out that there is a perfect creation, a matchup. God created this earth in monogamy and established the birth rate to perfectly match that. The only way that polygamy can be Sustained or justified is through disaster, mainly war and so. So it’s hard to understand how we would say God created this perfect order, wanted us to love one another, but made it so that there would be a lot of war. The only way it could work was with a lot of war. Like, you know, in most polygamist establishments, it seems to me the men with a lot of wives have to figure out a way to get rid of the other men who don’t have wives because not enough girls were born to Make it so that men could have many wives. And so actually David and Uriah is a good example of that. David had to get rid of Uriah so that he could have Bathsheba as a wife. Now that’s just one example, but I hope the principle that I’m talking about is clear. If God had wanted this earth to be a place where there would be many. Wives per husband, then the birth rate would be 7 to 1 if men needed 7 wives, wouldn’t it? So, so it seems to me that creation itself is another testimony of the perfection of what God established through Adam and Eve, which was monogamy. So, um, let’s see. Well, we’ll go on. I wanted to read a little bit of Moses 2 and um which is the same as um well Genesis 2, Moses 3, and Abraham 5. Maybe I’ll let you do that on your own because it goes on and on to talk about the importance of um one man and one wife. So let’s see if I can just get there for one second, um. My computer is going a little slow. OK, yes, it just talks again about that it was not good for a man to be alone, and I, the Lord God, caused deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he, as he slept, I took, and I took one of the ribs and closed up the flesh in the stead thereof again, one rib, as I said, I’d like to readdress this in another episode, but one rib and the rib which I, the Lord God, had taken from man made I a woman and brought her unto man, a woman. And Adam said this I I know now is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Thereforefore shall a man leave his father and mother and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh. They twain shall be one flesh. So what was separated out, so maybe Adam, well, and I want to go into this more later, but maybe Adam was sort of a completion and then was separated out into two that needed to be united to receive, to have that same completion again. Um, and so it’s pretty clear that’s in Moses and it’s the same in Genesis and Abraham, so it’s a pretty hard claim to make

[00:14:21] that God really wanted it to be this other way when he’s made it so clear, so repeatedly that this is the the perfect order. So now that we have an idea of um of what God established, which I strongly to be. To believe to be the perfect pattern of monogamy through Adam and Eve, we can look forward and try to see where polygamy came from in the scriptures. So, um, Interestingly, the first case of polygamy that we have is both in Genesis and then again much further clarified in Moses. So again, I want to establish. Well, here, let me, let me read this scripture, and I’ll tell what I mean with it. This is Moses 6:28, and for these many generations ever since the day that I created them, have they gone astray and have denied me and have sought their own counsels in the dark and in their own abominations have they devised murder and have not kept my commandments which I gave unto their father Adam. Those commandments including included man cleaving to his wife. So the point I’m wanting to make is that it seems to me rather clear that God establishes perfectly. And then because this is a fallen world with fallen mortals, things get corrupted from there. So we always want to look at the, the clean, like the clean water upstream, not the muddied water that comes downstream, right? What did God do? Not what did man do later on if we’re really seeking truth. That seems to me to be a pretty important principle, and it seems to hold true in this case. So let’s look at the first plural marriage. We find that in Genesis 4, which is Moses 5, is equivalent to Moses 5. And so let’s read Genesis 4:19, and Lau took up took unto him two wives. The name of one was Ada and the name of the other was Zillah. And I have to say, I do love that the wives of Lammo are named because we have so few named women in the Bible, and I actually in some ways think highly of these two women. I’ll explain. a little bit later, but, um, let’s skip to verse 23 of Genesis 4, and Lamec said unto his wives, A Ada and Zillah, Hear my voice, ye wives of lame, hearken unto my speech, for I have slain a man to my wounding and a young man to my hurt. If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, truly lame 70 and 7nfold. So it was pretty clear that Lau took unto himself two wives. They were not given to him. He was not inspired to do any of the claims that people make throughout other scriptures. Um, he did it himself, and who was lameick? Well, he was a murderer. So the first case of polygamy that we have recorded in scripture was a murderer, but not only a murderer, a man who aspires to follow in the footsteps of Cain. So that’s the first case of polygamy. I’m seeing the foundation of this. Monogamy, God created directly through Adam and Eve, polygamy, lamic, a descendant of Cain who aspires to be like Cain. OK, that’s important information. So, um, if we look at Moses 5, there is more information. So I want to clarify a term.

[00:17:57] Um, Master Mayhan. That is a very, that’s a term specifically that’s only given in Moses, um, in the book of Moses, but, um, let’s read about what Master Mayhan means. So Moses 5:29 is the first time we encounter it, and it said, And Satan said unto Cain, Swear unto me by the throat, and if thou tell it, thou shalt die, and swear their swear thy brethren by their heads and by the living God that they tell it not, for if they tell it, they shall surely die. And this that they thy father may know it. And this day I will deliver thy brother Abel into thy hands, and Satan swear unto Cain that he would do according to his commands, and all these things were done in secret. And Cain said, Truly I am Mayhan, the master of this great secret, that I may murder and get gain. Wherefore Cain was called Master Mayhan, and he gloried in his wickedness. So one thing that is an important part of our scriptures and our restored gospel is the idea of the evil of secret combinations, and this is the very beginning of them where they are first revealed to man through a covenant between Cain and Satan. And Master Mayhan is the title, it sounds to me that Cain takes upon himself in glorying in his wickedness and the power of the secret combination. So then if we go to Moses 5, starting in verse 47. Um, oh, we’re, we’re still in Moses 5, and Lame said unto his wives Ada and Zillah, Hear my voice, ye wives of lame, hearken unto my speech, for I have slain a man to my wounding and a young man to my hurt. If Kate, this is all the same as Genesis. If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, truly lame it. Shall be 70 and sevenfold. Here’s what’s new for Lamec, having entered into a covenant with Satan after the manner of Cain, wherein he became Master Mayhan, master of that great secret which was administered unto Cain by Satan, and Erad, the son of Enoch, having known their secret, began to reveal it unto the sons of Adam. Wherefore Lamec, being angry, slew him. Not like unto Cain, his brother Abel for the sake of getting gain, but he slew him for the oath’s sake. For from the days of Cain there was a secret combination, and their works were in the dark, and they knew every man his brother. Wherefore the Lord cursed Lamak and his house and all them that had covenanted with Satan, for they. Not the commandments of God, and it displeased God, and he ministered not unto them, and their works were abominations. That’s an interesting word that we find in many places. I think it has several meanings, but let’s compare abominations to what it talks about in Jacob 2, shall we? I think that’s useful and began to spread among all the sons of men, and it was had and it was among the sons of men. So it goes on and talks about and thus the works of darkness began to prevail among the sons of men, and God cursed the earth with the sore cursed and was angry with the wicked with all the sons of men whom he had made, for they would not hearken unto His voice, just like in Jacob too. And I know that this could this refers to all forms of righteousness and wickedness, but this is one of them. They would not hearken unto his voice nor believe on his only begotten son, even whom whom he had declared would come in the meridian of time, who was prepared from the foundation of the world, so, um.

[00:21:33] Let’s see, and thus all things were confirmed unto Adam by a holy ordinance, and the gospel preached and a decree sent forth that it should be in the world until the end thereof, and thus it was amen. So the truth of the gospel with Adam, the later corruptions in wickedness, just like God established man and woman, it was Satan who snuck in with secret combinations with murder, with all of these with war, with all of these terrible ideas that did not come from God. And it seems to me from looking at At the very beginning, the establishment, what God established and created and what men who were inspired by Satan later corrupted later established as they corrupted the perfect establishment of God. So, um. I know that’s a little bit heavy and maybe a little bit of a um harsh critique, and I’m not meaning to be harsh. I just think it’s important that we look at what this truly is as we try to discern truth. Again. I think the important thing is truth, no matter how much it surprises us, no matter how much we have to realize that we have had false traditions that we need to shake off, that that recognizing that we have false traditions that we need to shake off should actually be another confirmation of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon. That’s what it is for me because There’s lots of talk about that in the Book of Mormon and lots of um warnings of our false traditions and lots of the Book of Mormon calls us to repent for our false traditions many times. And so maybe having our eyes open to the truth of marriage and God’s perfect establishment of marriage versus the later corruptions of man, maybe that’s one opportunity for us to begin to heed that commandment that we begin to repent from our false traditions. So, Anyway, I hope you will join us next week. And this, thank you for being here today. This has been 1132 Problems revisiting Mor Mormon Polygamy and I am Michelle Stone.