How Many Wives did the Children of Israel Have?Since there can only be one first born per family then the number of families will be very close to the same number as the first born. Ignoring any exceptions which will make our calculation conservative we can find out how many fighting men were born to each family in Israel.
2 Chronicles 11:21. "Now Rehoboam loved Maachah the granddaughter of Absalom more than all his wives and his concubines; for he took eighteen wives and sixty concubines, and begot twenty-eight sons and sixty daughters." In this example we see that Rehoboam was consistent in the number of sons with 28. We also see that he had a very large number of daughters above what we suggested. Another example is Jacob/Israel. He had 4 wives (two wives and 2 concubines). The scripture records that he had 12 sons and 1 daughter. We know that the number of daughters was not normally recorded. Dinah was mentioned because she was violated by Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite. This is purely speculation, but if Jacob had 24 children that means that each wife bore him, on average, 6 children. Since Rachel only had two boys then some of the other wives may have had more than the average. Each family in Israel may have had an average of 13 or 14 or so wives during the time of the count. I am sure that the number of wives varied with Israel's political status. If they were free they had more wives. If they were under bondage they had fewer. True Israel is under bondage now and we have fewer wives per man. Isaiah 4:1 may yet come to pass however. So we see that a man having more than one wife was the norm in Israel. Even if my non-Bible sourced numbers are off by fifty percent then the men of Israel still had many wives. Regular Version Feel free to send your helpful comments. Thank You Christian Polygyny |