Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.
Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.
It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep.
Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth.
Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them!
He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.
Comment: Is monogamy commanded in the Bible? People quote Genesis 2: 24/25 to support this. It reads ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.’ And reading the book of Genesis the first example of polygamy occured in the seventh generation from Adam. (Gen 4: 19) ‘And Lamech took two wives. The name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other Zillah.’ We must note that Genesis does NOT give all the sons and daughters of every marriage that occured. The records are selective in that the whole Bible is leading to the coming of Jesus. But reading first chapters of 1 Chronicles, which were obviously written from kept records, you can see how thorough and detailed the records were kept! And their memories were trained to remember! We think of the first people as being illiterate and in some ways backward compared to us. Adam and Eve had the privilege of walking and talking with God! After the beginning polygamy seems to be the norm! But Jesus didn’t pull punches. For instance in Matt 19: 4-6 He says “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” And that is pretty easy to understand! At the moment in the West the average family is producing less than two children per family. Allowing for infertility, the number needed to keep the population at least stable is three children per family. God said, before the fall of Adam and Eve, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.” I have spoken, recently, with a number of young women at Christian meetings who have said that they do not plan to have children! I wonder what God thinks about that? And children are to be taught the parents’ Faith! Deut 6: 7 “You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.”
Proverbs 22: 6, “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it”
Prayer: Please God help us to think seriously on these issues!
As I read it! 