can anyone explain to me why it used to be perfectly ok for a man to have more than one wife? i have never heard a satisfactory answer to this and i would really like to understand this.
I have heard a few logical reasons (though I cannot say if they are grounded in Torah or not – I don’t remember).
1) In olden times, women really needed to be attached to men to survive. Society sort of mistrusted single women on their own. So, almost as a chesed, a woman would be taken into a man’s house by marriage and would be provided for. Remember, land inheritence generally goes by the men (Bnot Zelafchad was a limited exception), so where would these single women live?
2) Due to the death rates, women and children died frequently (women in childbirth and children with many childhood diseases). In order to really populate the earth, it makes sense for a man to have multiple wives to ensure that some of his children survive.
3) Are you asking as opposed to women having multiple husbands? Well, remember that if a woman has multiple husbands, she will never know who the true father of her child is, but a man with multiple wives knows. Also, multiple women could be pregnant at once, whereas if one woman was married to many men, she could still only be pregnant once at a time.
I hope this helps 🙂