From the very outset of biblical history, Marriage is portrayed as monogamous. Cain's descendant, Lamech, is the first to contravene this norm by marrying two wives (Gen. 4:19). It is only when Sarah proves barren that Abraham---at her behest---takes Hagar also to wife (Gen. 16:1-3). Esau has three wives and Jacob marries two sisters, Leah and Rachel, who give him their respective handmaids as concubines. The Book of Deuteronomy (21:15-17) acknowledges the legality of a bigamous marriage (bigamy---or polygamy---being the prevaling custom in the Ancient Near East).
During the era of the Judges, polygamous marriages were not uncommon, but thereafter (except for Elkanah, the father of Samuel) monogamy seems to have become the norm once again, only kings maintaining polygamous families. At Hebron, David already had six wives and he added considerably to that number once he moved to Jerusalem. Rehoboam had 18 wives, a number which the Talmud was later to declare the maximum for a king. Solomon maintained the most famous of these royal harems, which reportedly contained no fewer than 700 wives and 300 concubines (I Kings 11:3). A stern warning against such "multiplication of wives" and its foreseeable consequences had nevertheless appeared centuries earlier in the Pentateuch (Deut. 17:17).
Wisdom Literature, when referring to marriage, always has the monogamous family in mind (cf. Prov. 5:15-19, 31:10-31; Eccl. 9:9) and this is true also of the Apocrypha (Ecclus. 26:1-4; Tobit). It is this concept of a man and his wife that underlies the prophetic metaphor describing the bond between God and Israel--- God as the husband and Israel as the often disloyal wife (Hos. 2:4ff.; Isa. 50:1; Jer. 3:1).
Differing attitudes toward polygamous marriage came to the fore in Hellenistic and rabbinic times. Thus, while the Babylonian amora Rava saw no legal objection to polygamy, always supposing that the husband could provide for each of his wives, the second-generation Palestinian amora R. Ammi formulated the rule whereby a man is not allowed to take a second wife unless his first spouse expressly consents to this arrangement (Yev. 65a). All such marriages could only be terminated by Divorce or the wife's death. Two other relevant factors were the duty to contract a Levirate Marriage and a woman's prolonged infertility. Some rabbis considered it obligatory for a man to perform yibbum (levirate marriage) with the widow of a brother who had died childless; others favored the ceremony of ḥalitsah (levirate divorce), which relieved both the dead man's widow and surviving brother(s) of this duty. There was general agreement, however, that a man could take a second wife if the first had remained barren after ten years of marriage. Jewish law eventually insisted that the first (barren) wife be divorced and not retained by her husband.
Though increasingly rare, polygamy is still halakhically permissible in the Sephardi-Oriental world, no doubt as a result of Muslim custom and influence. In the (Roman and medieval Christian) West, however, where monogamy was the rule, levirate marriage had been abolished and polygamy among Jews had virtually disappeared by the 13th century. A decisive factor was the special Takkanah (regulation) attributed to Rabbenu Gershom (Me'or ha-Golah), which outlawed the practice of bigamy throughout the Ashkenazi world and threatened to place offenders under a ban of Excommunication (ḥerem). This Ḥerem de-Rabbenu Gershom, as the law against polygamy is known, also prohibited a man from divorcing his wife without her consent. In exceptional cases (e.g., on the grounds of a wife's insanity), the husband may obtain a "release" from 100 rabbis permitting him to marry a second wife.
In the State of Israel, both rabbinic and civil law have grappled with problems arising from a multiplicity of communal religious traditions. While new immigrants with more than one wife remained exempt, the Chief Rabbinate substituted ḥalitsah for levirate marriage in 1950 and bigamy was prohibited by the State in 1959. Israeli courts nevertheless make allowance for decisions of the rabbinical authorities permitting an additional marriage when the first wife has been committed to a mental institution or has refused to accept a rabbinically approved bill of divorce.
