Roman law forbade polygamy. This did not necessarily obligate citizens (or kings) of client states, but Herod did his best to emulate Roman customs.
As far as the Bible - you have not quoted a single example of l'ishah unequivocally meaning anything "less" than a legal wife.
Herod walked a fine line between Oriental despotism and Roman "rule of law". A Roman could only have one wife at a time, so Herod was careful to dispose of one before marrying anothe.
Other monarchs in the Roman world did not care. Polygamy, I think, had to do less with fine feelings than with the practical issues of inheritance and--in the case of kings--of regency. Also, common people would have find it difficult to provide for several wives.
I do think that 'verb lo l'isha' etymologically means something like concubine, or property-wise lighter than marriage. In time, it might acquire either colloquial sense, close to concubine, or archaic and ceremonial sense. Russian, "take into [the circle of one's] wives" became ceremonial. Both interpretations are meaningful in the case of Rivka, though each remains a more or less possible conjecture.
The point is, however, that the preposition l in 'verb lo l'isha' is meaningful; not just "became a wife" (instrumental), or "took a wife" (accusative), but perhaps, "took for a wife," "took similarly to a wife" or something like that, an idiom originally different from simple "took a wife." Since "verb lo l'isha" is an idiom, it seemingly does not prove instrumental case for l'nephesh in Gen2:7. I still assert that l is always dative, and hih l always mean that subject becomes close to the object, but not strictly an object; thus, similar to it.
Vadim
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