Jacob begins to explain Yahweh’s reasons for prohibiting polygamy in this context: the sorrow of Nephite wives over their husbands’ “wickedness and abomination.” To assume that this sorrow is caused only because they dislike polygamy imposes a modern interpretation on an ancient culture. If polygamy is legally and socially valid, then the wives have no inherent reason for complaint. In the Bible, Abraham’s barren wife supplied him with a concubine to bear him a son (Gen. 16:1–2). Jacob’s two wives also supplied their handmaids to Jacob as concubines (Gen. 16:29–30). Although each of these situations resulted in family discord, they cannot be described as “whoredom.” They might be called jealousy. They may have involved issues of inheritance. They may have involved perceived status. They may have been similar to some discord in monogamous marriages. Whatever they were, they were not whoredoms.