Elkanah with his Two Wives, Ninth German Bible (Cologne Bible) (Anton Koberger: Nurenburg: 1483) Los Angeles County Museum of Art
The Biblical Prohibition of Polygyny?
Popular legend tells us that Rabbenu Gershom (d. ca 1028) was the first to prohibit polygyny. The Damascus Covenant’s understanding of the law in Leviticus 18:18, however, suggests that polygyny may have been prohibited more than a thousand years earlier by the Priestly authors.
Published: May 3, 2016
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Last Updated: September 7, 2026
This article is a condensed version of Isaac Sassoon, The Status of Women in Jewish Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), chs. 1 and 2.
See, Hayim ben Yoseph Tawil, Akkadian Lexicon Companion for Biblical Hebrew (Jersey City: Ktav, 2009), 328.
See 1Sam 1:6; m. Yev. 1:1 and passim.
“Polygamy” is a broader term, marrying more than one spouse, while “polyandry” refers to a woman marrying more than one husband.
For more on this, see my essay “The Priestly Repudiation of Yibbum,” TheTorah (2016).
Peretz Tishby, for example, believes the custom dates from the 12th century. See Peretz Tishby, “Concerning the Enactments (Taqqanot) of Rabbenu Gershon Meor Haggola,” Tarbiz 34 (1964-1965): 49–55 [Hebrew; English summary pp. IV–V].
See the lengthy discussion of this process in, Mark Goldfeder, “The Story of Jewish Polygamy,” Columbia Journal of Gender and Law 26.2 (2014): 234-315.
Halakhic literature in the early Ashkenazi period came up against the same yibbum problem referenced earlier. Some posqim allowed second marriages in the case of yibbum—at least theoretically—as an exception to the rule. See discussion in Encyclopedia Talmudit vol. 17, “חרם דרבינו גרשום,” section 9 (בנישואי מצוה), and references there in n. 346.
