Daughters of God

Jacob’s sermon is full of women: tender wives, wounded hearts, daughters whose cries reach God. How does God view His daughters? Read his words below and ask whether he would command the very thing he says is breaking their hearts. To the women reading this, see if these words resonate with you, and help others understand what they mean to you.

Read and Consider

• before your wives and your children, many of whose feelings are exceedingly tender and chaste and delicate before God, which thing is pleasing unto God (Jacob 2:7)
• they have come up hither to hear the pleasing word of God, yea, the word which healeth the wounded soul (Jacob 2:8)
• to enlarge the wounds of those who are already wounded, instead of consoling and healing their wounds (Jacob 2:9)
• have daggers placed to pierce their souls and wound their delicate minds (Jacob 2:9)
• in the presence of the pure in heart, and the broken heart (Jacob 2:10)
• I, the Lord God, delight in the chastity of women. (Jacob 2:28)
• I, the Lord, have seen the sorrow, and heard the mourning of the daughters of my people in the land of Jerusalem, yea, and in all the lands of my people (Jacob 2:31)
• I will not suffer, saith the Lord of Hosts, that the cries of the fair daughters of this people, … shall come up unto me against the men of my people (Jacob 2:32)
• they shall not lead away captive the daughters of my people because of their tenderness (Jacob 2:33)
• Ye have broken the hearts of your tender wives (Jacob 2:35)
• the sobbings of their hearts ascend up to God against you (Jacob 2:35)
• many hearts died, pierced with deep wounds (Jacob 2:35)
• you that are pure in heart. Look unto God with firmness of mind, and pray unto him with exceeding faith, and he will console you in your afflictions, and he will plead your cause (Jacob 3:1)
• O all ye that are pure in heart, lift up your heads and receive the pleasing word of God, and feast upon his love; for ye may, if your minds are firm, forever (Jacob 3:2)
• their husbands love their wives, and their wives love their husbands; and their husbands and their wives love their children (Jacob 3:7)

Thoughts to Ponder

Question: If God has heard their prayers and delights in their “feelings [which] are exceedingly tender and chaste and delicate before [Him], which thing is pleasing unto [Him];” and “He delights in the chastity of women” … doesn’t it seem odd that the Lord would command the very thing that is breaking the hearts of his daughters?

Question: Would not God’s daughters’ hearts be just as broken if He commanded polygamy the exact same as if he didn’t? If we are honest with ourselves, is it possible to have a polygamist union and not have a broken heart? Is “just learn to share” really the answer we’d give our daughters?

Question: To the men, could you imagine sharing your wife with another man in a polyandrous union? When you imagine the horrors of that type of relationship would you ever ask your wife to do the same? Wouldn’t your heart be broken? Wouldn’t you be filled with jealousy? Could you imagine the rage and violence that would occur if polyandry were instituted?

Now I understand that the official purpose is to have more children (Part 1.2), even though each plural wife had fewer. But it’s worth putting the shoe on the other foot to try to understand the hearts and minds of God’s daughters. Would you ever subject your spouse to something that you yourself would not be subjected to?

Question: If God wants lots of babies He will break His daughters’ hearts to get the outcome he wants? If this is the case, then can we name the many other opportunities where God could have instituted polygamy, but didn’t? Adam, Noah, the brother of Jared, Lehi. In 1831 the Lord told Joseph the same thing he told Adam: “it is lawful that he should have one wife, and they twain shall be one flesh.”¹ If God is eternal, patient, loving, and kind, does he need polygamy to speed up the process? Are we required to run faster than we have strength?²

Question: If the purpose was children, why does the Lord’s complaint center on “the hearts of your tender wives” and the “confidence of your children,” and not on how many children there were?³ Jacob even warns that the practice may “bring your children unto destruction.”⁴ A practice meant to raise up children ends up hurting them.

Question: Malachi says the Lord is a witness “between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously… And did not he make one?… 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.”⁵ If godly seed comes through faithfulness to one wife, how could raising up seed require more?

Question: Jacob has just told the men that if they seek riches, it should be “to liberate the captive.”⁶ A few verses later the Lord says they “shall not lead away captive the daughters of my people because of their tenderness.”⁷ Instead of freeing captives, they were taking them. What does it mean for a daughter of God to be led away captive? Did she choose it?

Question: Can we notice a difference between “authorized” and “unauthorized” plural marriages? If we look at the history of “sanctioned” polygamist marriages, do we find joy and happiness or do we see those with “broken hearts,” “sobbing hearts,” and “hearts pierced with deep wounds?” I have listed several books written by women who experienced polygamy in early Utah: Polygamy Resources.

Question: Even the Bible’s plural households are full of rivalry and grief. Hagar despised Sarah, Leah felt unloved while Rachel envied her, and Peninnah is called Hannah’s “adversary,” who “provoked her sore, for to make her fret.”⁸ We’ll look at the Bible later in the series, but did any of these women have joy in it?

Polygamy Continues Today

In LDS Mormonism a man can still be sealed to more than one woman in this life, after a divorce or a wife’s death, and keep both sealings in the afterlife. The highest leaders in the church are included with those who have been sealed to more than one woman while in mortality.⁹

There is a book by Carol Lynn Pearson called “The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy: Haunting the Hearts and Heaven of Mormon Women and Men” and it is heartbreaking. Hearing the stories of modern LDS Mormon women who live in constant fear and dread about having to share their husbands for eternity is gut-wrenching and makes one heartsick. It really feels like we’re still suffering curses of polygamy rather than blessings.

For those women in polygamist communities, I know that “sacred loneliness” is a teaching that permeates your circles. Just remember, “Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy.”¹⁰ Before Nephi died and before polygamy entered the picture, “… it came to pass that we lived after the manner of happiness.”¹¹ When the Nephites temporarily had Zion, “there could not be a happier people among all the people who had been created by the hand of God.”¹² You do not have to listen to or follow “those who seek your destruction.”¹³ I would also add that it may not be wise to break up families, but work instead to educate and prevent your children from adopting the practice.

The Lord is not pleased with those who “lead away captive the daughters of [his] people” and those who do so will be destroyed.¹⁴

In the same breath as verse 30, the Lord makes a promise: “I will not suffer, saith the Lord of Hosts, that the cries of the fair daughters of this people… shall come up unto me against the men of my people.”¹⁵ If verse 30 were a command to take more wives, it would be a command to cause the very cries he says he will not allow. The Lord who hears his daughters sobbing isn’t looking for a way to break their hearts.