These descriptions, which so madden weak minds, signify, in fact, no more than the iniquities of Jerusalem and Samaria; these expressions, which appear to us licentious, were not so then. The same vivacity is displayed in many other parts of Scripture without the slightest apprehension. Opening the womb is very frequently mentioned. The terms made use of to express the union of Boaz with Ruth, and of Judah with his daughter-in-law, are not indelicate in the Hebrew language, but would be so in our own.
People who are not ashamed of nakedness, never cover it with a veil. In the times under consideration, no blush could have been raised by the mention of particular parts of the frame of man, as they were actually touched by the person who bound himself by any promise to another; it was a mark of respect, a symbol of fidelity, as formerly among ourselves, feudal lords put their hands between those of their sovereign.
We have translated the term adverted to by the word "thigh." Eliezer puts his hand under Abraham's thigh. Joseph puts his hand under the thigh of Jacob. This custom was very ancient in Egypt. The Egyptians were so far from attaching any disgrace to what we are desirous as much as possible to conceal and avoid the mention of, that they bore in procession a large and characteristic image, called Phallus, in order to thank the gods for making the human frame so instrumental in the perpetuation of the human species.
All this affords sufficient proof that our sense of decorum and propriety is different from that of other nations. When do the Romans appear to have been more polished than in the time of Augustus? Yet Horace scruples not to say, in one of his moral pieces: "Nec metuo, ne dum futuo vir rure recurrat" (Satire II., book i., v. 127.) Augustus uses the same expression in an epigram on Fulvia.
The man who should among us pronounce the expression in our language corresponding to it, would be regarded as a drunken porter; that word, as well as various others used by Horace and other authors, appears to us even more indecent than the expressions of Ezekiel. Let us then do away with our prejudices when we read ancient authors, or travel among distant nations. Nature is the same everywhere, and usages are everywhere different.
I once met at Amsterdam a rabbi quite brimful of this chapter. "Ah! my friend," says he, "how very much we are obliged to you. You have displayed all the sublimity of the Mosaic law, Ezekiel's breakfast; his delightful left-sided attitudes; Aholah and Aholibah are admirable things; they are types, my brother—types which show that one day the Jewish people will be masters of the whole world; but why did you admit so many others which are nearly of equal strength? Why did not you represent the Lord saying to the sage Hosea, in the second verse of the first chapter, 'Hosea, take to thyself a harlot, and make to her the children of a harlot?' Such are the very words. Hosea takes the young woman and has a son by her, and afterwards a daughter, and then again a son; and it was a type, and that type lasted three years. That is not all; the Lord says in the third chapter, 'Go and take to thyself a woman who is not merely a harlot, but an adulteress.' Hosea obeyed, but it cost him fifteen crowns and eighteen bushels of barley; for, you know, there was very little wheat in the land of promise—but are you aware of the meaning of all this?" "No," said I to him. "Nor I neither," said the rabbi.
A grave person then advanced towards us and said they were ingenious fictions and abounding in exquisite beauty. "Ah, sir," remarked a young man, "if you are inclined for fictions, give the preference to those of Homer, Virgil, and Ovid." He who prefers the prophecies of Ezekiel deserves to breakfast with him.
FABLE.
It is very likely that the more ancient fables, in the style of those attributed to Æsop, were invented by the first subjugated people. Free men would not have had occasion to disguise the truth; a tyrant can scarcely be spoken to except in parables; and at present, even this is a dangerous liberty.