This somewhat conjectural account of the ancient marriage ceremony would have an important addition could we follow Mackie in interpreting Ps 196 in the light of modern custom. “At a Jewish wedding,’ he says, ‘ the most interesting feature is the canopy under which the bride; mand bride sit or stand during the ceremony. It is erec in the court or large room of the house where the guests are assembled, and it is made of
1m branches and embroidered cloth. It is suggestive of the
ome sometimes seen above pulpits, and gives to the wedding the appearance of a coronation. .. . The sight of the robed bride- groom issuing from the canopy (tabernacle) and receiving the congratulations of his friends suggested the simile of the sunrise in Ps 195’ (p, 123). But in early times the Aw, would seem to have been an actual tent (cf. 7] 216), and the canopy described by Mackie (a picture of which is given in Boden- schatz, Kirch. Verfas. iv. p. 126) is doubtless a late ornamental ezection evolved from the old bridal tent.
The wedding festivities which followed wera long drawn out. In ancient times, as still among the fellaheen of Syria, the usual period for the rejoicings was a week (Jg 7). Feasting, music, and dancing, such as celebrated the return of the Prodigal Son, were the staple of the festivities of the season, and we hear of the exercise of the wits by riddles and wagers (1ῤ.). The ex- pense must have pressed somewhat heavily on the humbler folk—the more so that a marriage seems to have been treated as a festival for the community, and more than one thrifty saw in Pr may well have been suggested by an extravagance that injured the guest with the host. It is prob- able that then as now some contribution towards the cost was made in the case of peasant marriages by the guests themselves (Tristram, p. 93).
One of the most important contributions to this subject is the description of the marriage rejoicings of the Palestinian fellaheen in an article on the Syrian threshing-sledge by Dr. J. G. Wetzstein (Zeitschrift fir Ethnologie, Rae τερον 287 ff.). The following are the principal points. During thr seven days following the wedding the young couple are treated by the villagers as king and queen; the threshing-floor, where they are married, is their court; and the threshing-sledge is their throne. March is the favourite month. The most pro- minent incidents of the wedding-day are the sword-dance of the bride, and the great feast. On the following day they hold a reception, being greeted first by the best-man (wezir), then by the friends of the bridegroom (seldb el-aris). Then the sledge is transported on stalwart shoulders, with singing of martial or erotic songs, to the threshing-floor. Here a sta or scaffolding some two ells high is erected, and on this the sledge is placed and covered over with a gaily-coloured carnet
on which two embroidered cushions are planted. On this with all pomp the husband and wife are enthroned. A tribunal ie
MARRIAGE
MARRIAGE
posed to include dropsy, Jos. Ant. 11. xi. 6), and is shunned as accursed (v.27); if innocent, she has the compensation of again becoming a re other (v.).
The Jewish law of divorce has a long history, beginning with the early period in which the right of ‘ putting away’ a wife appears as the traditional prerogative of the husband, then passing into the stage in which the exercise of the ae was at least impeded by prophetic protest and legislative enactment, and ending with the effective protec- tion of the wife’s position, alike by the Talmudic jurisprudence and the ethics of the Gospel.
That the power of divorce should have been
anciently regarded as a traditional right was in harmony with the general ideas and practice of the time in regard to woman’s status. When compensation was given to the wife’s relatives it was natural to regard her under the point of view of property, and the notion of property involves liberty to alienate it. In heathen Arabia the continuance of a marriage depended on the hus- band’s pleasure, and Mohammed was content to leave matters on the old footing (Wellhausen, Gott. Nach. 1898, p. 4521). The old Hebrew practice, perhaps also the very procedure, is ex- emplified in Abraham’s dismissal of Hagar (Gn 21%). From the action of Saul (1S 25%) it might be supposed that the wife’s father had also power to dissolve a marriage, but the transference of Michal to another husband by paternal authority evidently has the aspect of an outrage. * The Deut. code acknowledged the husband’s right of divorce, but guarded against its abuse. To prevent so important a step being taken in the heat of passion, it required him deliberately to write her ‘a bill of divorcement’ (241). Another check was imposed upon impulsive action by the provision that, under certain conditions, the separa- tion should be final—if, that is, the divorced woman should marry a second time, and should later on be again free to marry (vv.**‘). That this was an innovation may be inferred from the story of Hosea (Nowack, Arch. i. p. 347). The purely arbi- trary exercise of the prerogative was discouraged by assuming that there was some solid ground of resentment—‘ that she finds no favour in his eyes because he hath found some unseemly thing in her’ (y.1, see below). In certain cases, again, the right of divorce was forfeited by misconduct. The husband who falsely charged his wife with ante- nuptial fornication (22'%1*), and the ravisher of a betrothed virgin (2238. 39), were bound in perpetuity by the marriage tie. In the school of the prophets the higher conception of woman’s claims, which has some expression in Dt, found more definite utterance. The germ of the Deut. reforms, and of greater than these, was contained in J (Gn 28:35), which in the narrative of the Creation had described the husband as knit to the wife in the most intimate union. It is, however, in Mal that the prophetic spirit definitely breaks with established custom, and declares without qualification that God hateth divorce (218). God’s disregard of the sacrifices is due, he teaches, to His wrath at men’s treacherous dealing with the wife of their youth (v.’4), In the period following the Exile it would seem that divorce had become very common ; doubt- less the divorce of strange women required by Ezra (9. 10) had reacted upon the general practice, and had retarded and even set k the movement carried forward by the prophets.