MARRIAGE
IIS
MARRIAGE
the motive, and entered into, not only without offence to, l)Ut actually at the suggestion of those who, accord- ing to our notions, woidd feci most deeply injured by it, is a very different thing from what polygamy would be in our own state of society.
2. In the case of polj-gamy, as in that of other na- tional customs, the Mosaic law adheres to the estab- lished usage. Hence there is not only no express stat- ute to jirohibit jwlygamy, which was previously held lawful, but the Mosaic law presupposes its existence and practice, bases its legislation thereupon, and thus au- thorizes it, as is evident from the following enactments : 1. It is ordained that a king " shall not multiply wives imto himself (Deut. xvii, 17), which, as bishop Patrick rightly remarks, "is not a prohibition to take more wives than one, but not to have an excessive number, after the manner of Eastern kings, whom Solomon seems to have imitated;" thus, in fact, legalizing a moderate number. The INIishna {SimJiedrin, ii, 4), the Talmud (Babi/Ion Sanhedrbi, 21 a), Rashi (on Deut. xvii, 17), etc., in harmony with ancient tradition, regard eighteen wives, including half wives, as a moderate number, and as not violating the injunction contained in the expres- sion " multiply^ 2. The law enacts that a man is not to marry his wife's sister to vex her while she lives (Lev. xviii, 18), which, as the same prelate j ustly urges, manifestly means " that though two wives at a time, or more, were permitted in those days, no man should take two sisters (as Jacob had formerly done) begotten of the same father or born of tlie same mother ;" or, in other words, a man is at liberty to take another wife besides the first, and during her lifetime, provided only they are not sisters. 3. The law of primogeniture (Deut. xxi, 15-17) actually presupposes the case of a man having ttco wives, one beloved and the other not, as it was with Jacob and his two wives, and ordains that if the one less beloved is the mother of his first-born, the husband is not to transfer the right of primogeniture to the son of his favorite wife, but is to acknowL'dge him as first- born who is actually so. 4. Exod. xxi, 9, 10, permits a father who had given his son a bond^voman for a wife, to give him a second wife oi freer hirth, and prescribes how the first is then to be treated — that she is to have alimony, clothes, and the conjugal duty; and 5. Deut. XXV, 47 expressly enjoins that a man, though having a wife already, is to marry his deceased brother's widow.
Having existed before the Jlosaic law, and being ac- knowledged and made the basis of legislation by it, po- lygamy continued in full force during the whole of this period. Thus, during the government of the judges, we find Gideon, the celebrated judge of Israel, "had many wives, and three score and ten sons" (Judg. viii, 30) ; Jair the Gileadite, also a judge of Israel, had thirty grown-up sons (Judg. x, 4) and a proportionate number of daughters. Ibzan, another judge of Israel, had thirtj' full-growir sons and thirty fllll-gro^\•n daughters (Judg. xii, 9) ; and Abdon, also a judge of Israel, had forty adult sons and thirty adult daughters — which was ut- terly impossible without polygamy ; the pious Elkanah, father of Samuel the illustrious judge and prophet, had two wives (1 Sam. i, 2). During the monarchy, we find Saul, the first king of Israel, had many wives and half wives (2 Sam. iii, 7; xii, 8); David, the roj-al singer of Israel, " their best king," as bishop Patrick re- marks in his comment on Lev. xviii, 18, " who read God's law day and night, and could not but understand it, took many wives without any reproof; nay, God gave him more than he had before, by delivering his master's wives to him'' (2 Sam. xii, 8) ; Solomon, the wise monarch, had no less than a thousand v.ives and half wives (1 Kings xi, 3) ; Kehoboam, his son and suc- cessor, had eighteen wives and three score half wives (2 Chron. xi, 21); Abijah, his son and successor to the throne of Judah, married fourteen wives (2 Chron. xiv, 21) : and Joash, the tenth king, including David, who reigned from B.C. 378 to 338, had two wives given to tim by the gotUy high-priest Jchoiada, who restored
both the throne of David and the worship of the true God according to the law of Moses (2 Chron. xxiv, 3). A very remarkable illustration of the prevalence of po- lygamy in private life is given in 1 Chron. vii, 4, where we are told that not only did the five fathers, all of them chief men of the tribe of Issachar, live in polygamy, but that their descendants, numbering 36,000 men, "had many wives." De Wette, indeed, afhrms that "the Hebrew moral teachers speak decidedly for monogamy, as is evident from their always speaking of one wife, and from the high notion which they have of a good wedded wife — 'A virtuous woman is the diadem of her husband, but a bad wife is like rottenness in the bones' (Prov. xii, 4); '"Whoso findeth a wife findeth happi- ness' (xviii, 22); 'A house and wealth are an inherit- ance from parents, but a discreet wife is from the Lord' (xix, 14). Prov. xxxi, 10-31 describes an industrious and managing wife in such a manner as one only could be it" {Christl. Sittenlehre,\o\. iii, sec. 472). Similarly Ewald : " Wherever a prophet alludes to matrimonial matters, he always assumes faitliful and sacred monoga- my contracted for the w^hole life as the legal one" {Die Alterthiimer Israels, p. 177 sq.). But we have exactly analogous passages where parental felicity is described : " A wise son is happiness to the father, but a foolish son is the grief of his mother" (Prov. x, 1; xv, 20); "A wise son heareth his father's instruction" (xiii, 1) ; and upon the same paritj^ of reasoning it might be said that the theory of having only one son is assumed by the sacred moralist, because, when speaking of happiness or misery, which parents derive from their offsjiring, only one son is alluded to. Besides, the facts which we have enumerated cannot be set aside by arguments.