[466] The translation, “be brought to the judges,” has no warrant in the Hebrew.
[467] Since Deut. 15:18 says that such a slave has served “double the hire of a hireling,” Dr. Johns thinks that it betrays a knowledge of the Babylonian three-year regulation. This seems, however, quite problematical.
[468] In a marriage contract on a papyrus from the Jewish colony at Elephantine in Egypt, written in the fifth century B. C., it is provided that the wife may institute divorce proceedings on an equality with the husband. Some Jewish women thus secured by contract that which the law did not grant them. Christ assumed such cases among Palestinian women; see Mark 10:12.
[469] From the Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum, I, No. 165.
[470] It is the word so translated in Deut. 33:10.
[471] So rendered in Lev. 7:13; 10:14. Many scholars would render it “thank-offering.”
[472] Compare Exod. 29:13, 14. The Hebrew law differed from the Carthaginian.
[473] This is the rendering of the Revised Version for this word. The Authorized Version rendered it less accurately “meat-offering.”
[474] Each temple had a number of officials connected with it besides the priests, such as carpenters, gate-keepers, slaughterers, barbers, Sodomites, and female slaves. Another Phœnician inscription mentions these.
[475] See Part I, [Chapter I]. § 7 (3).