God's Original Plan for Marriage was Lifelong Monogamy

There was the big question why God allowed polygamy in the Old Testament while His original plan in Genesis 2:24 saying, "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh." The reasons behind God allowing polygyny (one husband, many wives) arrangement could be as follows during the Old Testament:

• Unmarried women in the past were frequently prone to prostitution or slavery.
• The population problem was another. After the flood, the Earth wasn't very filled. Men can impregnate multiple women at the same time.
• There was a huge population imbalance of women back then as well.

Jesus during His earthly ministry later affirmed the one man, one wife policy as God had originally intended it to be. Matthew 19 and Mark 10 specifically bans divorce and directly suggests a monogamous relationship, therefore it no longer allows polygamy. Ephesians 5:22-23 is clear that the husband is the head of the wife NOT the husband is the head of the wives and that in illustration, Christ is married to the one true Church (spiritually one, physically divided into several local, autonomous Christian churches, please note the difference between Church and church) and not married to any counterfeit "church".

On the other hand, polygamy and divorce have their lifelong consequences such as broken family ties (ex. children estranged from parents, unintended incest between half-siblings, a higher chance of quarrel over properties) and patriarchal/matriarchal headaches because of switching between partners accompanied by spousal rivalry.

Examples of these consequences can be seen between Jacob's two wives Leah and Rachel (who both added two more wives Zilpah and Bilhah), Elkanah's two wives Peninah and Hannah, David's sons rebelling against him and not to mention Solomon's infamous 700 wives-300 concubines arrangement brought disorder to what was already a highly established empire. If you read Song of Solomon, you can see Solomon can only love one woman, the Shulammite woman and everyone else was just an add-on that made him feel he made a fool out of himself as he wrote Ecclesiastes.

If you observe today's societies that allow polygamy, you can see the chaos. Try to observe how Muslim families tend not to stay together. Even if the wife is submissive, however having more than one wife is always chaotic. It's already a headache to have one wife, how much more of there are many more wives?