male iKiltin to an Israelite; or, vice versa, if a Jewess is married to a bastard or nethiii — the child goes after the inferior party; where the woman cannot be betrothed to the man, but might legally be betrothed to another person — e. g., i. if a man married within any one of the degrees proscribed by the law — the child is a bastard or mamzer'''' (Kiddushin, iii, 12). ii. Any person who is nST SI^S, cujus testiculi vulnerati sunt, vel ceiie unus eoi-um, or tiaSlT m^S, a/jus memhrum virile prcedssum est, as the Mishna (Jebamoth, viii, 2) explains it, is not allowed to marry (Deut. xxiii, 1). iii, A man is not to remarry a woman whom he had divorced, and who, af- ter marrj'ing another husband, had become a widow, or been divorced again (Deut. xxiv, 2-4), iv. Heiresses are not allowed to intermarry with persons of anotlier tribe (Numb, xxxvi, 5-9). v. A high-priest is forbid- den to marry a widow, a divorced woman, a profane woman, or a harlot, and restricted to a pure Jewish maiden (Lev, xxi, 13, 14). vi. Ordinary priests are pro- hibited from marrying prostitutes and divorced women (Lev. xxi, 7).
h. The proscription of epigamy with non-Israelites is absolute with regard to some nations, and conditional with regard to others. The Mosaic law absolutely for- bids intermarriage with the seven Canaanitish nations, on the ground that it woifld lead the Israelites into idol- atry (Exod. xxxiv, 15, 16 ; Deut,vii,3, 4) ; and with the Ammonites and Moabites, on account of national antip- athy (Deut, xxiii, 4-8) ; whUe the prohibition against marriage with the Egj^ptians and Edomites only ex- tends to the third generation (Deut. xxiii, 7, 8). The Talmud, which rightly expounds the prohibition to " en- ter into the congregation of the Lord" as necessarily ex- tending to epigamy (comp. 1 Kings xi, 2 ; Kiddushin, iv, 3), takes the third generation to mean of those who be- came proselytes, i. e. the grandchildren of an Ammonite or Moabite who professes Judaism (Mishna, Jebamoth, viii, 3 ; Maimonides, lad Ila-Chazaka, Jssure Biah, xii, 19, 20). This view is confirmed by the fact that the Bible only mentions three intermarriages with Egyp- tians, and records at least two out of the three to show the evil effects of it. One occurred after the Exodus and in the wilderness, and we are told that the son of this intermarriage, while quarrelling ■vWth a brother Jew, blasphemed the name of God, and suffered capital pun- ishment (Lev. xxiv, 10-14); the second occurred to- wards the end of the rulership of the judges, and tradi- tion endeavors to show that Ishmael, the nuirderer of Gedaliah (Jer. xli, 1, 2), was a descendant of Jarha, the Egyptian son-in-law of Sheshan (1 Chron. ii, 34, 35 ; and Rashi, ad loc.) ; and the third is the intermarriage of Solomon, which, however, is excepted from the censure in the book of Kings (1 Kings iii, 1 sq. ; xi, 1, 2). Of intermarriages with Edomites not a single instance is recorded in the O. T. ; the Jewish antipathy against them was transmitted down to a very late period, as we find in the declaration of Jesus, son of Sirach, that his soul hates the inhabitants of Seir (Ecclus. iv, 25, 26), and in the fact that Judas jMaccabaaus carried on a dead- ly war with them (1 Mace, v, 3 ; 2 Mace, xx, 15-23).
An exception is made in the case of female captives of war (Deut. xxi, 10-14), which is evidently designed to obviate as far as possible the outrages committed af- ter the evU passions have been stirred up in the con- flict. The law, however, most humanely ordains that the captor, before making her his wife, should first al- low her to indulge herseli" for a full month in mourn- ing for her parents, from whom she is snatched away, and to practice the following customary rites expressive of grief: 1. Cut off the hair of her head, which was the usual sign of mourning both among the Jews and other nations of antiquity (Ezra ix, 3 ; Job i, 20 ; Isa. xv, 2 ; Jer. vii, 29 ; xvi, 6 ; Ezek. vii, 18 ; xxvii, 31 ; Amos viii, 10 ; Micah i, KJ) ; 2. Cut off her nails, which were stain- ed to form a part of personal adonimcnt ; and, 3. Put off the raiment iu which she was taken captive, since the
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women who followed their fathers and husbands to the war put on their finest dresses and ornaments pre\-ious to an engagement, in the hope of finding favor in the eyes of their captors in case of a defeat (Ovid, Reined. /I OTor. 343; Eosenm tiller, Z>as alte u. neue Morffenland, ii, 308).
The first complaint of epigamy with aliens is, strange to say, made against Moses, the lawgiver himself (Numb, xii, 1). In the days of the Judges the law against in- termarriage was commonly transgressed (Judges iii, G), and from the earlier portions of the book of Proverbs, which ring with repeated denunciations of foreign wom- en (Prov. ii, 16, 17 ; v. 8-11 ; xv, 17), as well as from the ! warnings of Isaiah (ii, 6), it is evident that intermar- riages with foreign women were generally practiced in private life in after times. Of the twenty kings of Israel who reigned from the division of the kingdom to the Babylonian captivity, Ahab is the only one mentioned who married a foreign wife (1 Kings xvi, 31) ; while of the nineteen kings of Judah after the division none in- termarried with aliens. Jlarriages between Israelitish women and proselyted foreigners were at all times of rare occurrence, and arc noticed in the Bible as if they were of an exceptional nature, such as that of an Egyp- tian and an Israelitish woman (Lev. xxiv, 10); of Abi- gail and Jether, the Ishmaelite, contracted probably ^v■hen Jesse's family was sojourning in Moab (1 Chron. ii, 17) ; of Sheshan'e daughter and an Egyptian, who was staying in his house (1 Chron. ii, 35); and of a Naph- thalite woman and a T\Tian, living in adjacent districts (1 Kings vii, 14:). In the reverse case, viz. the mar- riage of Israelites with foreign women, it is, of course, highly probable that the wives became proselytes after their marriage, as instanced in the case of Ruth (i, 16), and probably in that of Solomon's Egyptian wife (Psa. xl, 10) ; but this was by no means invariably the case. On the contrarj^, we find that the Canaanitish wives of Solomon (1 Kings xi, 4), and the Phoenician wife of Ahab (1 Kings xvi, 31), retained their idolatrous practices, and intro- duced them into their adopted countries. Proselytism does not, therefore, appear to have been a si7ie qua non in the case of a wife, though it was so in the case of a husband : the total silence of the law as to any such conclition in regard to a captive, whom an Israelite might ^vish to marry, must be regarded as evidence of tlie reverse (Deut.'xxi, 10-14), nor have the refinements of rabbinical writers on that passage succeeded in es- talilishing the necessity of proselytism. The opposition ol Samson's parents to his marriage with a PhUistiue woman (Judg. xiv, 3) leads to the same conclusion.