What is the concern over and over again in Scripture with regard to men and their wives: do not deal treacherously with the wife of your youth.
Malachi 2:14 Yet ye say, Wherefore? Because the LORD hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously: yet is she thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant. 2:15 And did not he make one? Yet had he the residue of the spirit. And wherefore one? That he might seek a godly seed. Therefore take heed to your spirit, and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth. 2:16 For the LORD, the God of Israel, saith that he hateth putting away: for one covereth violence with his garment, saith the LORD of hosts: therefore take heed to your spirit, that ye deal not treacherously.
Monogamy as practiced today does nothing to alleviate this problem. Men still deal treacherously with the wife of their youth, trading her in for a younger model, leaving broken lives in their wake.
When a relationship is broken it must be restored and healed. That is what confession, repentance, restitution, and reconciliation are all about. But what God is talking about here is the systematic, pre-meditated destruction of a marriage covenant by a man. When this is the case God Himself takes up the cause of the woman so victimized.
So the concern in Scripture is not that a man would take a second wife, as Tom Shipley makes clear in Man and Woman in Biblical Law, but that he would break covenant with his first wife.
It is false righteousness when our Christian culture is quite accepting of such treacherous men, but totally intolerant of men who want to be faithful to the wife of their youth when they desire another in addition. What kind of monstrous evil is this!? We say to a man who desires another wife, “Yes, you can have her, only be sure to get rid of the wife of your youth first.” Thus, through our man-made definition of sin (having more than one wife at a time) the church has, in effect, decreed the exact thing that God abhors and brings the severest punishment upon.
In this the church has sinned against God and we have been made subject to our enemies as a result.
Malachi 2:9 Therefore have I also made you contemptible and base before all the people, according as ye have not kept my ways, but have been partial in the law.
The mouth of the Lord has spoken it.
When you remain silent when faced with evil, you are partakers of it and will be judged accordingly. Beware the doom of God. Confess, repent, make it good, and be reconciled to God.