Joseph Smith and Emma Smith

Joseph Smith and Emma Smith’s marriage brought the private costs of Joseph’s plural-marriage doctrine into direct conflict with his authority as a prophet. Emma loved the husband she had married in 1827 and expected him to keep his promise of fidelity; Joseph invoked divine command to defend marriages she rejected. The July 1843 revelation meant to settle the dispute instead formalized its unequal terms, and Emma remained steadfast in her refusal to consent.

Marriage and the secret doctrine

By 1844, several people in Joseph Smith’s inner circle knew that he had practiced what the narrative calls spiritual wifery, and some were practicing plural marriage themselves. Emma, his original wife, had not accepted the doctrine. At thirty-nine, she objected to sharing her husband with women less than half her age, and she held Joseph to the fidelity he had promised when they married in 1827. Her opposition was outspoken, not tacit: she made her objections known to him and, at one point, threatened to take a plural husband herself if he did not give up his plural wives.

Joseph’s complaint to his secretary about that threat reveals how the conflict reached beyond disagreement over doctrine. He treated Emma’s proposed response as retaliation, while continuing to defend his own plural relationships. The marriage thus became a personal test of a principle Joseph presented as divinely commanded: whether his claim to religious authority could override the promise on which Emma understood their marriage to rest.

The revelation and its unequal terms

On July 12, 1843, Joseph dictated the revelation later canonized as Section 132 of the Doctrine and Covenants. His brother Hyrum Smith had urged him to put the doctrine in writing, believing he could persuade Emma of its truth. The account suggests that the revelation’s immediate purpose was to bring her into compliance: it addressed Emma by name, required her to cleave exclusively to Joseph, and warned that she would be destroyed if she refused the commandment.

The same revelation justified men in taking multiple wives under its law. Its terms set out a sharp asymmetry: Joseph’s additional marriages were framed as permitted, while Emma was commanded to remain faithful to him and faced a divine threat for disobedience. The text presented this arrangement as revelation, but its immediate audience was a wife already objecting to the arrangement it authorized.

Emma’s refusal and Joseph’s response

Hyrum delivered the ten-page document to Emma. She rejected it, remained angry and resentful, and said she did not believe it. The attempt to win her assent failed. Joseph nevertheless continued taking wives, and he made no further effort to obtain Emma’s consent. Her refusal therefore did not end the practice; it marked a limit to the agreement Joseph could secure within their marriage.

Emma’s response also shaped the surrounding relationships. She sought support from William Law, a trusted church leader and friend of Joseph who shared her opposition to plural marriage. In January 1844, Law urged Joseph to renounce the doctrine. Joseph maintained that God had commanded him to teach it and that withdrawing it would bring condemnation. The account describes both men as weeping during their exchange, but the appeal did not persuade Joseph to retreat. Law’s support for Emma and his objection to the doctrine strained his friendship with Joseph, which ended after Joseph made advances toward Law’s wife.

Marriage, authority, and consent

The episode exposes a conflict between marital fidelity and prophetic authority. Joseph’s defense rested on revelation; Emma’s refusal rested on the promise she believed he had made as her husband. Section 132 did not reconcile those positions. It gave religious force to Joseph’s claim while threatening Emma for rejecting it, and its failure to persuade her left the disagreement unresolved in practice as well as in principle.

The marriage is therefore more than a backdrop to the history of plural marriage. It shows how a doctrine claimed as divine could reorganize intimate obligations and place consent under pressure from religious authority. Emma’s rejection did not stop Joseph from continuing the practice, but it prevented the revelation from being mistaken for her agreement.