A Hebrew father might sell his daughter to be a wife, concubine, or maid-servant to an Israelite, and her master might put her away if she pleased him not (Exodus xxi. 7-11). Women taken captives in war might be used as wives and dismissed at pleasure (Deut. xxi. 10-14). In the case of the Midianites only virgins were preserved. Moses indignantly asked, Have ye saved all the women alive? "Now therefore kill every male among the little ones and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that hath not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves." And the Lord took shares in this maiden tribute (Numb, xxxi.)
Woman in the Bible is treated as merchandise. In Jacob's time she was bought by seven years' service, but in the time of the prophet Hosea she was valued only at fifteen pieces of silver and a homer and a half of barley. In the Decalogue it is prohibited to covet a man's wife on the same ground as his man slave, his maid slave, his ox, or his ass, or anything that is his. Her lord and master could say with Petruchio:
She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house,
My household stuff, my field, my barn,
My horse, my ox, my ass, my anything.
By God's law a man was permitted to dismiss a wife when she found "no favor in his eyes," by simply writing out a bill of divorcement. There is no mention of the woman having any similar power of getting quit of her lord and master. If he suspected her fidelity he could compel her to go through an ordeal in which the priest administered to her the water of jealousy, which if guilty would cause her to rot, but which was harmless if she was innocent. No doubt this was a potent means in securing wifely devotion and a ready remedy for any hated spouse. In the hands of a friendly priest the concoction would be little likely to fail, and even should it prove innocuous there was the expedient of writing a bill of divorcement.
It is usually said that God "winked at" (Acts xvii. 30) these proceedings, because of the hardness of the old Jews' hearts, and that from the beginning it was not so. In proof of this is cited the passage in Genesis which says, "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh." The proper interpretation of this passage illustrates a very early form of marriage still found in some tribes, and known in Ceylon as beenah marriage. Mr. McLennan, one of the highest authorities on primitive marriage, says:
"In beenah marriage the young husband leaves the family of his birth and passes into the family of his wife, and to that he belongs as long as the marriage subsists. The children born to him belong, not to him, but to the family of their mother. Living with, he works for, the family of his wife; and he commonly gains his footing in it by service. His marriage involves usually a change of village; nearly always (where the tribal system is in force) a change of tribe, but always a change of family. So that, as used to happen in New Zealand, he may be bound even to take part in war against those of his father's house. The man leaves father and mother as completely as with the Patriarchal Family prevailing, a bride would do; and he leaves them to live with his wife and her family. That this accords with the passage in Genesis will not be disputed.*
"Marriage by purchase of the bride and her issue can hardly be thought to have been primeval practice. When we find beenah marriage and marriage by purchase as alternatives, therefore it is not difficult to believe that the former is the older of the two, and it was once in sole possession of the field."**
* The Patriarchal Theory, p. 43; 1885.
** Ibid, p. 45.
It was a beenah marriage which Jacob made into the family of Laban, and we find from Genesis xxiv. 1-8 that it was thought not improbable that Isaac might do the same. In beenah marriage the children belong to the mother's clan, and we thus find that Laban says: "These daughters are my daughters, and these children my children." It was exactly against such a marriage as that of Jacob, viz., with two women at one time that the text (Lev. xvii. 18) was directed which is so much squabbled about by both opponents of and advocates for marriage with a deceased wife's sister. The custom of the Levirate mentioned in Deut. xxv. possibly indicates pre-existent polyandry. Lewis, in his Hebrew Republic, says: "In the earliest ages the Levir had no alternative but to take the widow; indeed, she was his wife without any form of marriage."
Casting off a shoe, it may be said, is a symbol of foregoing a right; thus the relatives of a bride still "throw slippers." The Arabs have preserved the ceremony intact. A proverb among them, when a young man foregoes his prescriptive right to marry his first cousin, is, "She was my slipper; I have cast her off" (Burckhardt, Bedouins and Wahabys, i. 113). Among the Caribs of Venezuela and in Equatorial West Africa, the eldest son inherits all the wives of his deceased father with the sole exception of his own mother. Schweinfurth relates that the same custom obtains in Central Africa. On the Gold Coast the throne is occupied by the prince, who gains possession of the paternal harem before his other brothers. Thus Absalom took David's harem in the sight of all Israel before the old man had gone to glory, as a proof he wished his reign to be considered over; and when Adonijah asks his brother Solomon for Abishag, the comforter of David's old age, the wise Solomon kills him, as thus betraying designs on the throne. In the custom that widows passed to the heir with other property, and hence that marriage with the widow grew to be a sign of a claim to the deceased person's possessions, we have a reasonable explanation of what must otherwise appear irrational crime. The custom of inheriting widows is adverted to in the Koran; and Bendhawi, in his commentary, gives the whole ceremony, which consists in the relative of the deceased throwing his cloak over the widow and saying, "I claim her." The Mormons always defended their plurality of wives from the divine book, and polygamy has been defended by various Christian ministers, from the Lutheran divine, Joannes Lyser, author of Discoursus Politicus de Polygamia, and the Rev. Martin Madan, author of Thelyphthora to the Rev. Mercer Davies, author of Hangar, and Ap Richard, M.A., who urges a biblical plea for polygamy under the title of Marriage and Divorce. Such works have done little to bring into favor the divine ordinance of polygamy, but they have done much to show how unsuited is the morality of "the word of God" to the requirements of modern civilisation. Surely it is time that the Christians were ashamed of appealing to polygamous Jews for any laws to regulate social institutions.