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A deep dive into the story of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar, which is the foundation for all claims of God ordained polygamy.
Genesis 11-22
Genesis 12:19 – various translations

Summary

In this episode, Michelle Stone critically examines the story of Abraham’s polygamy and its role in justifying Doctrine & Covenants 132 and Mormon polygamy. She argues that Abraham’s plural marriage to Hagar was not divinely commanded and explores the ethical, historical, and theological contradictions surrounding the practice. The discussion dives deep into scriptural analysis, uncovering misinterpretations and the problematic foundations of LDS polygamous doctrine.

Key Themes:

  1. Abraham’s Polygamy: A Justification for Mormon Polygamy?
    • Many LDS polygamy defenders claim that Abraham’s polygamy is a foundational justification for plural marriage in the LDS Church.
    • Doctrine & Covenants 132 explicitly references Abraham, asserting that God commanded him to take multiple wives.
    • Stone questions this premise, arguing that the biblical account does not support this claim.
  2. Was Abraham Actually Commanded to Practice Polygamy?
    • Genesis 16 clearly states that the idea of Abraham marrying Hagar came from Sarai (Sarah), not from God.
    • D&C 132:34 falsely claims that Abraham was commanded to take Hagar as a wife, yet no scripture supports this claim.
    • The footnotes in D&C 132 even cite Genesis 16, which directly contradicts the claim that God commanded polygamy.
  3. Hagar: A Victim of Slavery and Forced Marriage
    • Hagar was an Egyptian slave, given to Abraham as property—a fact often ignored in discussions of polygamy as a righteous institution.
    • The relationship between Abraham and Hagar was not a covenantal marriage but an arrangement designed to produce children for Sarah.
    • Stone compares this to The Handmaid’s Tale, where women are used as surrogate wombs for elite families.
    • The modern LDS Church condemns sexual coercion, yet Abraham’s polygamy was rooted in an abusive system.
  4. Sarah’s Polyandry: A Forgotten Part of the Story
    • Before Abraham ever had multiple wives, Sarah was married to Pharaoh in Egypt.
    • The Bible states that Pharaoh took Sarah as his wife, which means she had two husbands at once—a clear case of biblical polyandry.
    • Stone points out that if Abraham’s polygamy needed to be restored, why was Sarah’s polyandry never restored?
  5. The Expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael
    • After Sarah gives birth to Isaac, Hagar and her son Ishmael are cast out into the wilderness.
    • Abraham abandons his own child, an act that Stone highlights as deeply troubling and contradictory to righteous family values.
    • The Bible repeatedly refers to Isaac as Abraham’s “only son,” further undermining the idea that Hagar and Ishmael were part of the covenant.
  6. The Ethical and Doctrinal Issues with Polygamy in LDS Teachings
    • Stone argues that if Abraham’s polygamy was divinely commanded, then slavery and sex slavery should also be part of LDS doctrine—a conclusion most LDS members would reject.
    • She challenges listeners to ask if God would truly endorse a system where women are treated as property and men can abandon their families without consequence.
    • The idea that polygamy is an “Abrahamic test” is also flawed, as Abraham never actually sacrificed Isaac, yet LDS polygamous marriages went through with the sacrifice of women’s autonomy.
  7. Final Thoughts: Polygamy as a Cautionary Tale
    • Rather than being an example of righteous living, the story of Abraham’s polygamy is a cautionary tale about the dangers of human interference in divine promises.
    • She encourages listeners to read the story of Abraham with fresh eyes, seeing it as an example of cultural corruption rather than divine law.
    • The episode concludes with a call to critically evaluate D&C 132, especially as the series transitions into a deep dive into its claims and contradictions.

Transcript

[00:00:02] Welcome to 132 Problems revisiting Mormon Polygamy, where we explore the scriptural and theological case for plural marriage. Thank you for joining us. I always ask that you please listen to these episodes from the beginning and continue all the way through. There are just so many parts and pieces, and they hopefully are designed to build on one another. My name is Michelle Stone, and this is episode 6, Abraham’s polygamy. Thank you for joining us as we take a deep dive into the murky waters of Mormon polygamy. The strongest claim of polygamy being from God is the story of Abraham. Abraham’s polygamy is the foundational claim of Section 132 and of every polygamist, polygamist, scholar, polygamist, apologist I have ever read or interacted with. So I think it’s a good, a good place to start our study of polygamy in the Bible. It’s an it’s an essential topic to cover. So, um, OK, so as I got into the story of Abraham again this week and oh man. I just, again, was hit by what a gut-wrenchingly exquisite story this is, the depth of it, the pain of it, the experiences that every character in the story encounters is just. It is an elegant, exquisite story. So, um, I think that we often use Abraham’s story and this, you know, with Sara Abraham Serai and Hagar, right? And then their names are changed, so it’s a little confusing. So we’re gonna go through and call them Abraham and Serai. In the narrative and tell the point that their names are changed, just to try to keep it a little more clear. But, um, I think we usually tend to use this story, at least when I encounter it, sort of as a means to an end. Like we want to make a point or justify something, so we talk about Abraham in a certain way. But I, I think that it’s easy for us to, because we’re familiar with the story, because we tend to do that, to miss the, the actual. Emotion of the story, the actual narrative that they go through. So I’m going to try to get into that a little bit today. We have to go really fast because it’s a very long story. But if any of you are interested, I invite you to go back to that story and I think the most effective way for me to read it is to really try to empathize with every character in that story, put myself in their shoes, experience what they’re experiencing. And it just really, for me anyway, opens my mind and, um, my heart to receiving more information. About that story, more understanding of it. I think for me that’s part of what Nephi means when he says that we should liken all scriptures unto us is put ourselves in those situations and see what lessons we can learn. So, OK. So we’re gonna start, we first encounter Abraham and Serai in Genesis 11:30, right after they’re married, and it says, but Serai was barren. She had no child. So right there, the pain in this story, I honestly. I tend to believe that childlessness for those who want

[00:03:14] children is one of the most painful experiences that humans, particularly women, can experience, um. It is a hard trial. And for Sara in her day, there wasn’t any alternative path she could take to fill her time, to ease her emptiness, to give her something else to be excited about and to, um, have to show for her life. So she just kind of had to be stuck there. And I think that that’s something that is painful that we encounter in the Bible with quite a few women. Um, OK, so Going forward in the next few chapters, God several times promises Abraham posterity in great ways. First Genesis, um, OK, Genesis 12:2, and I will make of thee a great nation. Then again in verse 7, unto thy seed will I give this land. Um, repeatedly we’ll see the Lord make these promises to Abraham, Abraham that seem to go unfulfilled. So, um, OK, in Genesis 12, there’s a famine, so they go to Egypt. And this is part of the narrative that I think we tend to ignore. It’s actually where it first starts to play with marriage in very interesting ways. And so um it is interesting that we ignore this because it’s just as much a part of the story as as the other ways that it plays with marriage. So, OK, we learned that Saray is exceptionally beautiful. Abram Abraham worries that they will kill him, so that for her sake. So she he asks her to say she has a sister. Um, OK, the King James version of this for some reason is really muddled and hard to understand, but every other version of the of the Bible makes it very clear what happens next. So you can go to like Bible Hub or Strong’s Concordance and look up different. Different um translations of the Bible. This is the new international version. It’s apparently the most popularly sold Bible, so it’s very commonly used more than the King James, and I’m just going to read it for clarity’s sake. So it’s Genesis 16:14 to 19. When Abraham came to Egypt, the Egyptians saw that Sarai was was a very beautiful woman, and when Pharaoh’s officials saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh, and she was taken into his palace. He treated Abraham well for her sake. Um, so what this means, he paid Abraham. A very handsome dowry, actually a bride price, which is the opposite of a dowry. It says, and Abram acquired sheep and cattle, male and female donkeys, male and female servants and camels. But the lord inflicted serious diseases on Pharaoh and his household because of Abram’s wife Serai. So Pharaoh summoned Abraham. Why have you done? What have you done to me? he said. Why didn’t you tell me she was your wife? Why did you say she is my sister so that I took her to be my wife? Now then, here is your wife. Take her and go. OK, there’s a lot here, and I don’t want to spend time on it, but think of all of the foreshadowing that’s happening, happening here.

[00:06:13] Abraham finding favor with Pharaoh and being made rich by Pharaoh is a foreshadowing of Joseph, and then being released from Egypt with all of their possessions following plagues inflicted by the Lord is, um, a parallel with Abraham’s descendants 400 years after that. Um, but the thing that’s important to us in this is that Serai was married to Pharaoh. OK, so that is interesting, that is fascinating, that is not part of the story that we talk about that Sarai actually was the first one to have two husbands long before Abraham had two wives. So, You know, I, I, I imagine that this was extremely difficult for Abraham as well as for Soraya. I imagine they prayed desperately to the for, for the Lord to intervene, which he did. But um the thing is this was a clear case of uncondemned biblical polyandry. I think it’s important to consider since we give polygamy, um, Abram Abraham’s polygamy so much weight. OK, so we have to define terms really quickly because I wasn’t aware of this before. So I just thought that polygamy meant one man having multiple wives. Actually, polygamy is just a term for multiple spouses for more than more than a husband and a wife. Polyandry is the term for a woman having more than one husband, and polygyny is the term for a man having more than one wife. So actually, Mormon polygamy would better be described as polygyny. We just use the term polygamy. So I wanted to get that out of the way so that you would know what I meant when I talk about seri’s polyandry. That is very interesting. So, um, just so much of it has been made of Abraham’s polygyny. We use it to justify and explain and actually motivate the the complete doctrine and social system that grew up around. Around Mormon polygamy. And it’s interesting that, you know, nobody claimed that Sarah’s polyandry needed to be restored, that it was an eternal part of the gospel necessary for the highest degree of exaltation, right? So that’s just something interesting to think about. So, OK. So moving on, after Egypt, with all of it’s interesting also that Abraham accepted the bride price paid to him by the by the pharaoh, and the pharaoh was just so happy to get rid of them with all of the plagues that he was like, take it all, go, leave. So. So after Egypt, they are so wealthy Abraham and Lot that they had to separate, and Abraham received another confirmation of the Lord’s promise of posterity, Genesis 13:16, and I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth, so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered. So another promise. OK. Genesis 15 after three very profound yet still unfulfilled promises of posterity. God makes his first official covenant with Abram, not the, not the big one that comes a couple of chapters later, but this is the first one, and God says, I am thy shield and thy exceeding great, exceeding great reward. And Abram said, Lord God, what wilt thou give me seeing I go childless, so. He’s been promised posterity. God is saying, I am, you know, I am your protector, and he’s like, but you’re not fulfilling this promise. And Abrams said, Behold,

[00:09:33] to me thou hast given no seed, and lo, one born in my house is my heir, meaning a er a slave. And behold, the word of the Lord came unto him, saying, This shall not be thine heir, but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowel shall be thy heir. And he brought him forth abroad and said, Look now toward heaven and tell the stars if thou be able to number them. And he said unto him, So so shall thy seed be, so. OK, for anyone who’s had any kind of similar experiences, ah, it can seem at this point in some ways that the Lord was just being cruel, that he was toying with Abraham and tormenting his soul with yet another. Deep promise of the deepest desire of his heart, yet with no evidence of it ever being fulfilled. So that is, that is a hard place to be like you, you know, sometimes you just keep having this yearning that the Lord keeps confirming is true, but But it just keeps not coming, keeps not happening. That’s, that is a hard test. And, um, that’s where Abraham was. So, but then verse 6, and he believed the Lord and it counted to him for righteousness. OK, I love that. Just the continued faith counted to him for righteousness. I want to just point out, we’re not getting deeply into 132, but this is one of the problems, one of the smaller, but still, still substantial problems with 132. It uses the same wording counted to him for righteousness that we find in Genesis 15:6, but it twists it and changes the meaning. So, um, 132, 36, and 37, let’s see. Here it is, is that it, oh, it, it claims in those, in those verses that what is accounted to Abraham, Abraham, it uses the term Abraham, for righteousness is his willingness to sacrifice Isaac and his willingness to take concubines, um. That’s not true according to the biblical narrative. It’s harkening back to the language of the biblical narrative, but it’s twisting the meaning, and I think that that is Somewhat problematic. That’s not how that doesn’t seem to me to follow God’s pattern, to sort of twist meanings rather than it, and it’s not expanding or giving us more information. It’s just twisting those words to make them seem valid, but changing the meaning. So, anyway, I wish I had explained that more clearly. Hopefully you’ll look at it and understand what I’m saying. So, we’ll go now to chapter 16, verse 1. Now, Sarai, Abram’s wife bear him no children. Again, the pain of that, this is years after all of those promises. Oh, OK. And just if you put yourself in her shoes, her husband, and, and maybe she is well,

[00:12:15] but for sure her husband is getting all of these promises of his endless posterity, and I imagine she must have felt that she was getting in the way. Um, she desperately wanted children for herself, but she desperately wanted her children, her husband, to have children and to see the Lord’s promises fulfilled, and You know, so that test for Abraham when he was the one having the revelations and being given the promises, and Serai is just feeling like, I don’t know, I can’t, I can only imagine that she felt like she was letting everybody down and out, and the yearning of her heart and her what she saw as her purpose was not being fulfilled. So, We’re going to go on, and she had a handmaid, an Egyptian whose name was Hagar. OK, what do we know about Hagar? Not very much other than that she was an Egyptian and she was a slave. So my assumption is that since Abraham had been given many slaves in Egypt by the pharaoh, that I’m assuming that Hagar was part of the bride price that the pharaoh paid to Abraham. When he took Soray away, and I should, you know, just let me fill in. There is no evidence of whether the marriage between Pharaoh and Seraya was consummated. Uh, the story doesn’t get into that. We just know that they were married and You know, we can’t assume that it wasn’t consummated by the fact that Sara didn’t have a child because we know that she was barren, so it’s just complicated and we don’t really know what’s going on there. So anyway, I wanted to point that out. But so now we have Sarai, who I think was given as part of the bride prize to Abraham. She was unmarried, so I imagine that she was young. We know that she was thought of as a pos possession. She was a slave, right? And Serai said unto Abraham, Behold, now the Lord hath restrained me from bearing. I pray thee, go in unto my maid. It may be that I may obtain children by her. And Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai. OK, there’s a lot to unpack here. So first, it’s important for us to recognize that Hagar was not a wife for her own sake. She was being used as a surrogate mother. To be the womb to bear children for Abraham and Sarai. Sarai says it may be that I may obtain children by her. This is the show The Handmaid’s Tale comes from this idea, um. Whenever I, I assume I haven’t watched it, but I know the general premise of it, so forgive me if I’m wrong, but that’s kind of what’s happening here. Whenever we consider Abram’s polygamy to be a justification for modern day polygamy, we have to face what it really was. This wasn’t polygamy in the way we want to talk about it. It was sex slavery. Hagar was a slave who, you know, we don’t know her feelings about it, but Her body, her womb, even the fruit of the of her womb were not her own. And um, That’s, that’s really heartbreaking to consider. I think even, even the most ardent polygamist apologist today draw the line at taking away a girl’s or a woman’s choice

[00:15:30] and her freedom. Um, OK, although. Sadly, it’s not always, that’s not always the case. We do have stories, several stories, particularly that I’ve seen from the FLDS, the Warren Jeff’s group of girls being imprisoned, like held in a cellar or in some way imprisoned, even refused food if they refuse to go through a marriage that Has been ordained for them, um, but in, in a lot of the groups there are less physical but still harsh and manipulative means of forcing girls into marriage. They are often or can be threatened with internal eternal damnation or the exclusion from their family and their religious society, which is often all that they have ever known. So. It is hard to take a second to realize that this polygamist enslavement, which really amounts to sex slavery, at least to some degree, persists to this day. OK, so these are hard realities that are in the story of Abraham and that are also in the heritage of Mormon polygamy. So I just, I recommend just take a second and ask yourself if you honestly believe that this system is of God. Is it an essential doctrine necessary for salvation and um it isn’t valid to argue here that well the people doing it today, you know, I think that um members of the Mainstream LDS church often will say, well, the people doing polygamy today aren’t ordained of God, so they’re doing it in wickedness, so we can’t look at them as examples. But the point, or we can’t, we can’t use them as a means to judge polygamy. But some of them are actually doing it very well. I think much better than than the early. Church members did, but the thing I’m trying to point out is that Abraham, whose polygamy is the foundation for all of it, his polygamy was sex slavery. Hagar was literally a slave, so. So that’s really where it comes from, where the very idea of it comes from. So we just have to ask God if this is what he wants for his daughters or for his sons. We’re going to use the story of Abraham, Serai, and Hagar as a means to claim that polygamy is an essential doctrine that had to be restored and is necessary to reach the highest degree of exaltation. Then we’re kind of stuck with the whole picture of sex slavery. There’s no reason, there’s no better justification to say polygamy had to be restored than, like we already said, to say that polyandry, to rise polyandry, had to be restored, or to say that slavery and sex slavery also have to be restored and should be part of Zion and part of the celestial kingdom. There’s, there’s no better claim for one than the other, and they all kind of go together. So in my opinion, opinion, looking at this story. I think it’s far better to just understand that that all cultures are corrupt. Ours certainly is in many, many ways, and yet God bears with us with all of the blood and sins of our generation, the corruptions of our cultures. Sorry, bump the table, God bears with us as we hopefully. Progress closer and closer to becoming a Zion people. God can’t just completely change us and change our culture overnight, and we dwell within our cultures.

[00:18:39] So, um, so that’s how I think that we can look at Abraham’s polygamy, not that he was fulfilling some eternal law, but that he was living in that he was a righteous man living in his culture. Soraya, I think, was a righteous woman living in her culture and Hagar was a slave, a victim of her culture. So, um. So looking at the story, I really do just have, I think there’s room for compassion, so much empathy for every participant in this story. It’s very painful. So rise, pain and desperation watching the years pass by with no children coming. I think that when she finally gives, um, yeah, we’ll get into that when she finally gives Hagar to Abraham, um, cause she was her slave, so she was hers to give. Um. That was 10 years after they had come out of Egypt and after the last promise. So it’s been a long, long time. So, um, the next words in the narrative are critically important. After Abrams after Serai tells Abraham takes, take my servant Hagar, it says, and Abramm hearkened to the voice of Sarai. OK, there are so many things here. Um, first, we’ll look at, we’ll look at this one part of it. So first, this again, completely 100%. Is diametrically opposed to what is claimed in 132. So 132 34 says God commanded Abraham, Abraham, and Sarah gave Hagar to Abraham to wife. And why did she do it? Because it was the law. And from Hagar sprang many people. This therefore was fulfilling among among other things, the promises. Was Abraham therefore under condemnation? Verily I say unto you, nay, for I, the Lord commanded it. OK, so that’s 132, 34, and 35. The claim that God commanded Abraham is a huge problem. So first of all, there is not the slightest tiny smithereen of evidence for it. Um, even, OK, so when you really want to get the best evidence, you can look at the footnotes for where the claim is made, right? So, even the footnotes, so the foot footnote A in 1324, that’s on the word commanded for God commanded Abraham. So it’s where the evidence would be that God commanded Abraham and I looking at those footnotes, it’s actually shocking. It’s stunning. So the first reference goes to Genesis 16. Those are the verses we’re here looking into. The verses we’re going over to clearly show that God did not command Abraham to take Hagar of his wife. Nowhere. There’s no indication of any kind that God commanded Abraham. It was Serai’s idea and Abraham harkened unto Serai to what she asked him to do. OK, the next, the second, um, footnote goes to Galatians 4,

[00:21:26] which is really strange. I can’t figure out why they did that other than to try to say. Look, we’re just going to put footnotes here so it looks like there’s evidence for this because Galatians 4 has zero evidence of any commanded command of polygamy, and instead focuses on the fact that only Isaac was the birthright son and only Sarah was the covenant wife, which is scripturally sound. That’s repeated elsewhere. We’ll go over. That a little bit more, but it really destroys the claim of polygamy within the covenant because Hagar and Ishmael were excluded from the covenant. So there’s no covenantal polygamy, and polygamy doesn’t help move the covenant along in any way. So that has nothing to do, it makes no claim that God commanded polygamy actually seems to contradict it. And then the third footnote is 132 itself. It goes to 13265. Which um we’ll get to later when we get more into 132, but it is, in my opinion, a particularly unfortunate averse, which again, just, it just quickly echoes its own unfounded claim. 132 already claimed that God commanded. Abraham, and here it just mentions that God commanded Abraham to take Hagar to wife. So it’s using itself as its authority, as its own authority. And then it points to two other places that have that, that basically say the opposite of what it’s claiming. So we can really say that in the story of Abraham, Abraham, God never commanded polygamy. There is no, in fact, there is no commandment of polygamy anywhere in the scriptures. I, I like. You know, please look, please hunt, find it. Prove me wrong. I have, and from this we’re going to exclude 132, which itself doesn’t actually command polygamy. It just justifies it and claims that God commanded it. But I’ve looked and looked and asked and asked repeatedly, the best polygamist apologists and scriptorians and, um, scholars I can find. And it does not exist. There is no commandment of Abraham Abraham’s polygamy. And um, when you look at the footnotes, that’s actually further evidence of that because if it existed, you can guarantee that in their effort to justify the truth of the fact that it was commanded, they would have found it and they would have included it. So the, the hard truth is that 132 really does just make that up out of whole cloth. It’s, it’s simply false. There is, there is no verification for it. It contradicts it directly contradicts all of the scriptures that we have that tell us the story. So, um, you know, and it’s that kind of that matters because we are harkening to the story of Abraham at all because it’s in the scriptures. So we have to use the scriptures, at least to some, some extent as the resource for the truthfulness of that story, you know, for, for the elements of that story. And so we can’t just say, hey, Abraham’s in the scriptures, but we’re just going to completely change it and ignore what it actually says. So, um. OK,

[00:24:33] so again, it was Serai’s idea, Serai’s suggestion, and as a good husband, Abraham harkened to the voice of Serai. This is actually an important part of the story too, because Abraham hearkened to the voice of Serai, just as Adam righteously hearkened to Eve in the garden. Um, There are, I, I just want to go here for one minute. There are different ideas of why Abraham’s polygamy is not condemned in Jacob 2 or elsewhere, and we’ll touch on some of them later. But one thing that really occurred to me years ago as I was really wondering about this is I think it’s a critically important fact that Abraham and I believe Jacob. Unlike pretty much every other polygamist I have seen, did not ever in any way exercise unrighteous dominion. Defined by Doctrine Covenants 1213 in 39, it says, we have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men. As soon as they get a little authority as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion. Go on to 40, hence many are called but few are chosen. It’s even as a mom, I know how easy it is to exercise and right just dominion. It’s basically just using our power. I have some power, so I’m going to use it to force someone else to do what I want them to do or what I think they should do. And as opposed to what we are taught in that in 121, that it’s gentleness, meekness, long suffering, love unfeigned, we, right, we counsel with people and give them their freedom and. Um, that’s not always what happens in the church or especially in, in polygamous situations, but Abram never did that. I find that remarkable. He was an exceptionally good man and a good husband. He was about as as opposite of unrighteous dominion as it is as it is possible to be throughout the entire narrative. He continually submits to the will of Soraya. He’s to Sarah, sorry, to Sarah. He’s there to serve her. He had long suffering faith and patience in God and in his, and he honored his wife and let her take the lead in everything to do with her stewardship of bearing children. She desperately wanted to have a child even if it had to be through a slave girl, so he consented. Later, when it blew up in her face and she couldn’t take it, he again submitted, and um, he submitted again and then again to her will, even when it meant abandoning Ishmael, which was extremely painful for him. A picture emerges of Abraham as an incredibly strong and powerful yet faithful, gentle husband who was remarkably humble and who wholeheartedly loved his wife. In all of those years that they were suffering childness and childlessness and not seeing the fulfillment of God’s promises, he never blamed her or in any way held her in lower regard for their for their childlessness. He never complained about her to the Lord. He never sought or desired a second wife, even just for the sake of the promised children, which is what my grand, my great grandfather did. He never viewed women and children as possessions that would increase his glory. That’s very different than 132 and LDS polygamy. He was unflinchingly faithful to his one wife. For me, that’s a huge consideration of why Abraham would not be included with David and Solomon and others in in condemnation. He, um, he was not a polygamist at heart.

[00:28:08] So, um, let’s go back to the narrative 163 it says, and Serai Abram’s wife took Hagar, her maid, the Egyptian, after Abram, here it is, after Abraham Abram had dwelt 10 years in the land of Canaan. And gave her to her husband Abraham to be his wife, verse 4, and he went in unto Hagar and she conceived. And when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her eyes. So in this part it’s interesting cause you can get to reading it and think, oh, Hagar was bad here, right, or she did something wrong, but Man, again, putting myself in her shoes, I just want to pause this spot in the narrative. Hagar, a slave, was now the wife of her master, right? She had shared his bed and she was now carrying his child. I can see that it would be galling to be expected to continue to carry out slave duties. It could, it could like. Maybe she was sick. I have really hard pregnancies, and maybe she did and felt it was unbearably unfair that she was being used both as a surrogate womb and still as a slave. Maybe. You know, maybe she did want to rub it in a little bit to her mistress, to to Seray that, aha, I’m doing what you can’t. I don’t know. I don’t know that what her situation is, but we can imagine that she might have felt done being treated as a slave. And, you know, and maybe she wanted to be treated as a wife. I don’t know what the situation was, but whatever it was, it was far too much for Sara’s already. Devastated heart and she just loses it and launches into Abraham in verse 5. It’s like I’m summing it up with this is all your fault, you know, she goes to Abraham and I did this for you, you got her pregnant and now she’s doing this. This is all your fault. And Abraham, I mean, all of us can look at it and see the unfairness of that accusation that Abram patiently takes it and again submits to his wife’s desire and importantly reaffirms Hagar’s position as a slave. She was not any kind of, she had no kind of equality. As a wife, she did not have standing as his wife or as the mother of his child. It says Abraham, oh, Abram, in verse 6, Abram said unto Sarai, Behold, thy maid is in thy hand. Do to her as it pleaseth thee. So he just reaffirms, this isn’t my wife who deserves my protection. This is your slave who has to be obedient to you, right? So whatever happens, Sarah’s treatment of Hagar, whether she beats her or in whatever way treats her harshly, and it causes Hagar to run away, where she is found hopeless, desperate, and ministered to by an ministered to by an angel who makes promises of posterity to her for her own sake. Verse 10, I will multiply thy seat exceedingly that it shall not be numbered for multitude. Verse 11. And the angel of the Lord said unto her, Behold,

[00:31:11] thou art with child and shalt bear a son and shall call his name Ishmael, because the Lord hath heard thy affliction. Hagar was really suffering, and he will be a wild man. His hand will be against every man and every man’s hand against him, and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren. Kay, so this is fascinating to me here. This was not simply part of Abram’s own promise from the Lord. It’s, it’s, it’s separate. It’s different. It has different elements to it. So Hagar was given her own independent promise from the Lord for her own sake. I actually think. I actually love this because in many ways, it’s quite rare for God to make these kinds of promises to women in the scriptures. We don’t have many cases. I know there’s Mary and a few others, but this promise made to Hagar is quite profound. And it just feels to me like a testimony of how Of how God loves his daughters and sees them in their suffering, you know, Hagar was in bondage. She was a slave who was being Forcibly impregnated, I don’t know whether it was against her will or not, but in any case, she didn’t have the freedom to choose, right? And then she’s being beaten. Then she, you know, it’s better to die in the wilder in the desert than to face what’s happening with Sarai back at the camp. So she runs away and the Lord finds her. And he loved and preserved this suffering daughter in the bondage and injustice that she faced and is a victim of unjust societal practices, the slavery and polygamy, and he sends her back. Um, God makes promises to her and then sends her back. So Hagar has Ishmael. And then another note I want to make here is that Abram let Hagar, the baby’s mother, choose his name. She was the one commanded by the angel to name him Ishmael, so Abram listened to her and chose that name that she wanted, that she felt inspired to be his name, and again. That’s very different from the pattern in early LDS polygamy, and I think it’s a beautiful thing. So next we’re going to go to Genesis 17. This is 13 years later, and this is where Abraham is given his big covenant where his where their names are changed from Abram and Sara to Abraham and Sarah. So now we can call them that. And Abraham is again in profound ways promised posterity and lands, and Sarah is given her own promises in verse 16. So this is Genesis 17:16, and I will bless her and give the assent also of her. Yeah, I will bless her, and she shall be the mother of nations. Kings of people shall be of her. Then now listen to Abraham. Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said in his heart, Shall a child be born unto him that is 100 years old? And shall Sarah, that is 90 years old, bear? And Abraham said unto God, Oh, that Ishmael, Ishmael might live before thee. Look, God, I have a son. Let your covenant, let the covenant and promise be fulfilled through him. And God said, Sarah, thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed, and thou shalt call his name Isaac, and I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant and with his seed after him. And as for Ishmael,

[00:34:27] I have heard thee. Behold, I have blessed him and will make him fruitful and will multiply and will multiply him exceedingly, so he’ll fulfill the promise he made to to Hagar. Um, 12 princes shall he beget, and I will make him a great nation. So Abraham loves Ishmael, and God is comforting him, saying, Look, I’m gonna take, I mean, yeah, I’m gonna take care of Ishmael, verse 21, but my covenant will I establish with Isaac, which Sarah shall bear unto thee at this set time in the next year. OK, so. This again is important. The covenant God made to Abraham and his seat after him was only given to and through Abraham and Sarah and Sarah’s son Isaac. This is confirmed repeatedly in every book of scripture. So just we’ll look at a couple of them. Um, and then, you know, maybe I’ll point out a little more if I need to why this matters. I hope you’re understanding. Um, but first, let’s look at the where it’s where it’s confirmed. These are just a few of the cases. Isaiah 51:2, which is repeated and in 2 Nephi 8:2. Look unto Abraham, your father, and Sarah that bear you, for I called him alone and blessed him and increased him, makes it clear that the covenant comes through Abraham and Sarah and has nothing to do with Hagar or her son. Um, again, in Galatians 4, this is the source cited at 1:32 that does not show that God commanded, but it commanded Abraham, but it does clearly show where the, um, where the where the covenant is. Verse 22, for it is written that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a free woman. But he who was of the bond woman was born after the flesh. But he of the free woman was by promise, skipping down to 30. Nevertheless, what saeth the scripture? Cast out the bond woman and her son, for the son of the bond woman shall not be heir with the son of the free woman. So then, brethren, we are not children of the bond woman but of the free. There’s a lot of pride in this that they are in the covenant, not outside of the covenant. The scriptures continue constantly refer to the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob. Ishmael’s not in there. Here’s one of dozens of examples. This is First Nephi 1740. And he loveth those that will have them to be their God. Behold, he loved our fathers and covenanted with them. Yeah, even Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and he remembered the covenants which he has made. Wherefore he did bring them out of the land of Egypt. The covenant was Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all of their descendants. Ishmael was not in the covenant. It could not be more clear that Hagar and Ishmaelmael were not in any way necessary for God to establish or fulfill His covenant with Abraham. So there’s really no logical way to claim any doctrinal or covenantal necessity

[00:37:29] for Abraham’s polygamy for for for polygamy based on Abraham at all. Do you see what I’m saying? We, we say, well, Abraham did it, therefore it has to be restored. Well, Abramham also had slaves. Abraham also in his story is Pollyandre Serai had two husbands for a time, just as Hagar, I mean, just as Abram only had two wives for a time, a very short time, and so. It’s really strange that we try to say that polygamy is somehow involved or necessary in the gospel any more than any of these other societal practices that they had, um, so. In fact, in fact, to go on, Ishmael was actually disowned, it seems, and not even claimed as Abraham’s son, and that happened with God’s blessing. Like God counseled Abraham to basically disown Ishmael. Um, as soon, so Hagar was useful to have a child when they were childless and needed an air, right? As soon as Sarah had Isaac, they no longer needed Hagar and Ishmael, Genesis 22:9, and Sarah saw the son of Hagar, the Egyptian, which she had borne unto Abraham, mocking. Wherefore, now again, if anyone feels like, well. Ishmael shouldn’t have been mocking. OK, hold on a second. Ishmael just went from being Abraham’s beloved son and heir to being completely irrelevant to what happens next. Um, and the thing was, let’s see, wherefore she said unto Abraham, Cast out this bond woman and her son, for the son of this bond woman shall not be heir with my son, even with Isaac. And again, that sentiment, as we see is repeatedly echoed in scripture. And the thing was very great grievous in Abraham’s sight because of his son. Abraham loved his son. He’d been raising him up as his heir, and now he was being told to abandon him. But again, he submits to his wife. Also, the Lord comforts him in that and tells him, so he’s submitting to the Lord as well. But my goodness, he is not guilty of unrighteous dominion. And, um, in verse 12, God said unto Abraham, let it not be grievous in thy sight because of the lad and because of the bond woman. In all that Sarah hath said unto thee, hearken unto her voice, for in Isaac shall thy seed be called. So again, Abraham, with the Lord’s promise that he’ll take care of Ishmael, he submits to Sarah’s desire, even when it means kicking out his son, and um. He abandons Hagar and Ishmael in the desert. Basically, other than the Lord’s promise leaves them to die. They suffered and almost died and without miraculous intervention from the Lord, they would have died. So looking at Abraham’s polygamy, right,

[00:40:27] it is very difficult to claim that this is a model of marriage that we should in any way desire to emulate. Hagar was not a wife. She was a slave who was used once to provide a child for Abraham and Sarah before they had their own. And then she was abandoned. She’s called wife because the. Because the marriage needed to be needed to be consummated in order to impregnate her, but that was the only way that she was in any way a wife. Other than that, she was a slave, which was confirmed multiple times throughout the story. Um. So she was used and then abandoned. Ishmael went, as I said, went from being Abraham’s heir and beloved son to being disowned and abandoned. Even God seems to assert that Abraham disowned Ishmael, since Isaac is repeatedly called Abraham’s only son. That happens multiple times in the scriptures. In the very next chapter, Genesis 22, God says, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and offer him as a sacrifice. Two more times, verse 12 and verse 16 of Genesis 22, God refers to Isaac as Abraham’s only son. And in a way now that he’s abandoned his other son, Isaac is his only son. Um, Doctrine Covenant’s 1014 says the same thing. It talks about Abraham, I mean, Isaac is Abraham’s only son and This is, this, this matters, it’s an important part of the story because of how Abraham’s Abraham’s um. Next step of being willing to offer Isaac as a sacrifice of what that represents. So Jacob 4:5 says, um, this is in the Book of Mormon Jacob chapter 4 verse 5. Abraham was, OK, quoting here, obedient unto the commands of God in offering offering up his son Isaac, which is a similitude of God and His only begotten son. So the parallel there of God’s only begotten son and Abraham’s only son is made often, is made many times. So Isaac really was considered even by the Lord to be Abraham’s only son. So, OK. If we honestly consider, honestly consider the experiences of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar, there is no way to claim any sort of moral, familial, societal. Gospel, covenantal or even personal good from polygamy based on this story. You can’t say, look, polygamy is good in this way or this there there is like there is literally nothing good about polygamy in this story. It just caused heartache. heartache, heartache. There are so many profoundly good lessons that we can take from Abraham and from his story, but polygamy should not be one of them other than as a cautionary tale, right? His like. It caused incredible suffering, his very brief polygamy because he only was with Hagar enough to impregnate her. And then it seemed to it she wasn’t a wife anymore and again it just caused suffering and division for everybody involved. Incred in fact, it led to we are told by their fruits we shall know them. And the fruits of Abraham’s polygamy have not been good, and in fact,

[00:43:58] they continue to this day with the descendants of Ishmael and the descendants of Isaac, if, if, if we see that literally and the constant warring and contentions between them because of the promises made to their father that they both think are fulfilled through their seat, their line, right? So, um, So it’s very interesting that we take Abraham’s polygamy as the foundation for our entire claims of polygamy. It’s, it’s really Interesting and I, I think troubling and pro problematic. We need to really think about it, read through the story of Abraham and see if there’s any indication anywhere that polygamy is more a part of their lifestyle or more. Commanded by God or somehow a doctrine more than any of their other cultural practices that they engaged in, including polygamy and bride price and polyandry and all of the other and slavery, right? All of those things. They just had a very, very different culture. So, um, OK, I know that this has been long. I’m sorry. There’s one more point I think we need to to address and, um. That is that polygamy is often referred to as an Abrahamic test, and that’s, that’s been interesting to me. So I researched it again preparing for this and The term Abrahamic test or Abrahamic sacrifice is not anywhere in scripture, and, and it actually, from what I have been able to see, it doesn’t even seem to exist outside of Mormonism. So go ahead again and correct me if I’m wrong, but everything I find when I Use that term or search for that term is specific to the church and from the church so it seems to me that that term Abrahamic test or Abrahamic sacrifice has developed in our own culture and I’m guessing in large part because of polygamy because of how it’s used in polygamy, so. We’ll get into this a little bit more when we talk more about 132 and then, you know, and then studying this has made me think there’s more to talk about about the Abrahamic test idea. There’s a lot there, but for now I just want to say one thing about it that I think is a glaringly obvious problem, and that is that. Referring to Isaac, sacrificing Isaac as Abraham’s test. Abraham did not go through with it, right? Isaac was not sacrificed. That’s because Isaac doesn’t actually represent the savior. I think it makes more sense to say that Isaac represents all of mankind and the ram in the thicket is a better representation for the savior. It was the ram in the thicket that was provided to save Isaac’s life to help us understand the depth of gratitude we should have that we don’t all have to die. Eternally for our sins because of the savior, it gives us a better way to appreciate and understand the atonement and the sacrifice of the savior. So there’s a lot to think about with the story of Abraham and Isaac and the sacrifice, but there, and there are actually many other reasons it can’t be used as a parallel for polygamy. But the one I really want us to think about here is that it didn’t happen. Abraham did not break a commandment. Abraham did not kill his son, and Isaac, who is actually the one who really would have been making the biggest sacrifice because he was the one that would have been in the place of the savior, he was not forced to die. That was not the case with Mormon polygamy or even with Abraham’s polygamy, which there’s no indication that it was commanded by God again or that it was a difficult test for Abraham,

[00:47:36] right? I think the childlessness was a difficult test. In Abraham’s polygamy, Hagar was taken as a wife. She was impregnated. She was mistreated or beaten, and then she was abandoned with her son. In Early Mormondom, the women, just like the women in Jacob 5, were also sacrificed because their husbands went through with it. They didn’t stop. They did break the commandment. They did go through with it and they did practice polygamy, so. Anyway, I know that there are claims by some old um some of our historical church leaders saying that. Polygamy seemed like an Abrahamic test to them when they first heard it. Again, there are a lot of problems with those claims that we’ll get into a little bit, but again, unlike Abraham with Isaac, they actually carried it out. They did sacrifice the hearts of their wives. There was no, there’s no savior in the analogy for the wives. There’s no. Um, ram in the thicket to save their lives. Um, there was no merciful command from God to tell their husbands to stay their hand and to not stab them to the heart. There was no ram in the thicket sent to miraculously save them, so the parallel does not stand. I want to point that out, like, you know, and it’s always talked about the men are the ones with the Abrahamic test, and yet they went through with it unlike Abraham, and it was the wives who were sacrificed, unlike the wives are the parallel with Isaac. So. Anyway, I know that this has been a lot to get into. I hope that you found this useful. I would recommend go and look at the story of Abraham and Sarah and, um, Hagar, maybe with new eyes and really see what you find in it. I would love to know your thoughts. And I, yeah, I would love to know, um, how this all works for you. So anyway, I’m so thankful that you are here with us. Next week, we will look at, um, 132. We’re gonna start getting into 132. So again, This is 132 problems and we’ll see you next time.