Troublesome Topic: Solomon’s Many Wives

The Song of Solomon naturally brings up an important question which goes something like this: Could Solomon be fully committed to the Shulammite while having many other wives?

In the eyes of the people of his day the answer was SURE!

 In my opinion the answer is POSSIBLY.

Here are the reasons behind the answers above:

1. We know from other parts of the Bible that having more than one wife was relatively common and was not frowned upon in ancient times, including in ancient Israel. I do not think polygamy was God’s original plan because he created mankind as one man and one woman, not one man and several women. However, it was something God allowed because it would have been dangerous for a woman to be without a man in ancient cultures.

 So having many wives was not technically a problem. While it would create some big headaches, it was not against the law. The problem was that most of Solomon’s wives were of foreign origin. Marrying foreigners was against the Law because they would likely draw a man toward their religion.

2. The Bible gives us various indications that Solomon did what was right during most of his life. I Kings 3:3 is the clearest indication, but there are several others that I mention in the course of this discussion about Solomon’s life.

The statement telling us that Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines was intended to tell us that he was very successful in many treaties and alliances. It also sets the stage for telling us that there was indeed a spiritual problem that would eventually show itself because of all these wives.

The administrative palace Solomon built was 100 cubits long by 50 cubits wide by 30 cubits high (I Kings 7:2). Even if that palace was where Solomon and his wives lived (which it was not), it would not be nearly big enough to house over 1000 people in their own quarters. I Kings 7:8 says that “the palace where he was to live, set further back, was a similar design.” So we don’t know how large his residential palace was, but it was probably smaller than the dimensions given above. An extra-biblical Jewish source, called the Bava Metzia, apparently says that each wife had her own quarters. This is logical since each wife was a special gift connected to a treaty or alliance. We know from the Bible that Pharaoh’s daughter had her own palace. All this tells us it is quite likely most of these wives lived in their own well-appointed quarters, away from Solomon’s palace, where they were well cared for, but may have remained childless; they were nothing more than tokens of some treaty. Thus, based on Eccl. 6:3, and contrary to our commonly held notions and assumptions, it is likely that Solomon did not have sexual relations with all his “wives” prior to the writing of Ecclesiastes, but rather with a carefully selected “few.” More children could have been born to him after his apostacy.

However, there is another option which pertains to the legal rights of a wife in ancient Israel. See 4C below for an explanation of that alternate interpretation.

3. The law seems to imply that marrying a foreign woman required her to become a proselyte, i.e. a convert to Judaism.

Dt 21:10-13 contains the passage that describes the proper way to take a captive woman from the battlefield and make her a wife. It was a process that took 30 days. This passage does not tell us specifically that she had to become a convert to Judaism, but I think it is implied. The signs involved in converting to Judaism and mourning the loss of loved ones were very similar. This is because conversion involved leaving behind what one had known in the past and mourning involves leaving family behind. Her conversion is the only way that this could work and remain in agreement with the rest of the Law. Based on that assumption, and since the signs were almost the same, I assume that both mourning personal losses and converting to Judaism were intended. If she became a proselyte (a convert), the rest of this could be done in a way that did not violate any of the regulations of the Law. If those signs did not refer to becoming a proselyte, then the marriage would be against the law so why bother fulfilling any of the prescribed requirements?

Solomon knew that bringing in wives of foreign birth was a problem, but if he required that they convert to the Jewish religion it was no longer a problem, at least not on the surface. Therefore I believe Solomon made all his foreign wives become converts to Judaism. Ps 45 appears to be a wedding song for Solomon and a foreign wife (probably Pharaoh’s daughter). The only way to make sense of everything in that psalm is if she became a proselyte, otherwise the relationship would have been against the Law and not something honorable as Psalm 45 describes.

The problem was not really the number of those wives, but the fact that so many of them were raised to believe in other gods. His foreign wives were still a problem, even if they had outwardly converted to the Jewish religion. Having them become proselytes did not remove from their hearts a love of foreign gods.

4. In my translation and paraphrase of Song of Solomon I note that Solomon speaks to Shuly as if she is the only one for him.

It sounds like they had a very special relationship, unlike any other. This can be interpreted in a few different ways:

            a). We Americans find it most palatable to believe that once Solomon found the Shulammite, he did not have sex with any of his other wives. This fits best with what we read in the Song of Solomon.

            b). If we look only at the customs of that day, we would be inclined to say that she was his favorite wife, but he did occasionally have sex with some of his other wives (for instance when his favorite wife was having her period). The people of that day would not have found this “favorite wife” idea to pose a problem for the Song of Solomon being what it is. There are various men in the Old Testament who had a favorite wife among their several wives and it was not seen as a negative thing. In their minds, one relationship could be special, even while other marital relationships existed alongside the special one.

            c). However, if we look at the law, we see that a wife had the right to bear children. Ex 21:10-11 says: If he takes another [wife], her food, her clothing and her conjugal rights he shall not diminish. And if he does not do these three for her, she shall go free without [paying] any money. In other words, if a man refused to grant one of his wives the opportunity to have children, it was considered grounds for her to divorce herself from him. Thus, Solomon may have been required by law to have sex with each of his wives at least once.

If this were the case, his sexual relations with these wives would not have been seen as a problem in the eyes of most Jews because they had become proselytes. There may have been just a few people, priests for instance, who were concerned about these foreign wives still thinking like foreigners. You can take the girl out of Moab, but you can’t take Moab out of the girl. My point is that while we may see it as a problem, most of the people of that day did not.

Or it may have been that he did not fulfill this part of his obligation to all of them because he was thinking about dividing his inheritance with a reasonable number of children, not an extraordinarily large number of them and that is why his foreign wives were upset at him. The more wives he obtained, the more grumbling was heard “back home” where they came from. Yet he did not allow them to leave, which made matters even worse.

I think it is quite possible that Solomon could get away with not granting one of the “rights” to all his wives (the one about bearing children) because he was the king. If he did not allow his disgruntled wives to leave him, who would take it upon themselves to lead them away or accept them? They would find themselves recipients of the king’s wrath because taking the wife of a king was a grievous affront to the king.

In the end, doing “the right thing” became a very complicated thing because of the situation he had put himself in. Although I think his intentions were good when he started down this path, he ended up with a lose-lose situation on his hands.

5. Some scholars think that at the time Solomon penned the book of Ecclesiastes, he did not yet have 100 sons. That is because Ecclesiastes 6:3 says “if a man fathers 100 …” and some think that he was setting himself up as the epitome of how many children a person might have. If Solomon had approximately 100 sons at the time of the writing of Ecclesiastes it would mean that most of his wives and concubines remained childless. We cannot prove if this statement is about him, or just a general statement that has nothing to do with him. I think it was a general statement because later in that same verse there is a statement which cannot be about Solomon because it pertains to the man’s burial, so it must be general.

I imagine that Shuly lived with him in his palace in Jerusalem, while the others lived in their own house or small palace.

So it is possible that he had sex with all his wives as little as possible. It could have been just enough to keep them from claiming he had denied them their rights as a wife, or it could have been not at all, which resulted in them being angry with him. In his mind he could do this while still telling the Shulammite she was “the only one” for him. That sounds wrong to us, but culturally, it was accepted by almost everyone in his day.

6. Solomon had a strong distrust of women. This is expressed clearly in Ecclesiastes 7:25-28

For my thoughts on the reason for this distrust of all women see How Solomon Came to Distrust Women Part 1 How Solomon Came to Distrust Women Part 2). It is my opinion that he held that distrust of all women (except the Shulammite) from a fairly early age. Therefore, until the time of his apostacy in his old age, he did not take advantage of his harem like most kings would have.

So, my final answer to the question Could Solomon Be Fully Committed to the Shulammite While Having Many Other Wives? is this: It was possible, but I admit that it remains weird and uncomfortable to us.

However, we should not discount part of the Bible just because it is weird. We should do so if it proves to be contradictory to the rest of Scripture, and I have tried to show the Song of Solomon it is not contradictory in that way.

Thank you for being willing to grapple with a difficult and challenging question. I hope this has been helpful.

For related topics which help give the full view of this issue see: Marriage Is a Covenant, What Made Sexual Sins Wrong? Why Did God Allow Polygamy?

Solomon’s wives did eventually play a key part in luring him away from God. For more details about that see my lesson entitled Why Did Solomon Turn from God to Idols?

The next lesson is: Only Two Daughters