Bible Studies Part 9

** 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 Abis.h.a.g, the comforter of David's old age, the wise Solomon kills him, as thus betraying designs on the throne. In the custom that widows pa.s.sed 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 t.i.tle 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 G.o.d" 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 inst.i.tutions.

THE SONG OF SOLOMON.

Although there is no book with which students of divinity are better acquainted than with the "Song of Songs," there is also none of the same dimensions over which theologians have expressed so much diversity of opinion. Its authorship has been ascribed to Solomon for no better reason than because that sensual sultan is one of the subjects of its story. It is true it is one of the oldest books of the Old Testament, and begins by calling itself "the Song of Songs, which is Solomon's"; but the book of Ecclesiastes, which is one of the latest in the Hebrew collection, is also ascribed to Solomon, and possibly with as much reason. It has been credited with unfolding the sublime mysteries of the relation of Christ to his Church. It has been called an epithalamium upon the marriage of Solomon with the daughter of Pharaoh. According to a distinguished commentator, De Lyra, the first portion describes the history of Israel from the time of the Exodus to the birth of Christ, while from chapter vii. to the end gives the history of the Christian Church to Constantine. The Roman Catholic theologian, Hug, makes it treat of the ten tribes and Hezekiah. Cocceius, in accordance with his principle that holy scripture meant whatever it could be made to mean, found in the Canticle the history of the Church from its origin to its final judgment. Hahn sees in it a prediction of the victory obtained over the heathen, by the love of Israel, and finds the conversion of the negro in the pa.s.sage which says, "We have a little sister, and she hath no b.r.e.a.s.t.s." In short, nearly every possible explanation has been offered of this portion of the Word of G.o.d except the obvious and natural one, that it is an erotic poem. That there is any allegory in the piece is a pure a.s.sumption. The theory was unknown before the time of the Talmud. The Canticles are never referred to in the New Testament.

There is not the slightest indication in the work itself that there is any such object. Not the most delicate hint, save in the headings of the chapters made by King James's bishops, that by the secret charms of the young lady we are to understand the mysterious graces of the Christian Church. In all allegories it is necessary the subject should be in some way indicated. The parables of Jesus often proved puzzles to his disciples, but they had no doubt they were parables. Moreover, the allegory--if it is one--is absurd or blasphemous. Why should the Church say of G.o.d: "His head is as the most fine gold, his locks are bushy and black as a raven"? or compare his legs to pillars of marble, or celebrate other parts of his divine person which are not usually mentioned in polite society? Nor is it easy to see why Christ should say to the Church: "Thy teeth are like a flock of sheep that are even shorn, which came up from the washing; whereof every one bear twins, and none is barren among them"; or why he should declare, "Thy neck is as a tower of ivory; thine eyes like the fish-pools in Heshbon, by the gate of Bath-rabbim; thy nose is as the Tower of Lebanon, which looketh towards Damascus." Of course, to parody a phrase of Voltaire's, the Holy Ghost was not bound to write like Alfred Tennyson, but, if intended for human guidance, one would think the divine meaning should be a little more apparent.

The truth of the matter is, an allegorical interpretation has been forced into the Song of Solomon in order to relieve the Holy Ghost from a charge of indecency. Grotius ventured to call the Song of Songs a libertine work. Even the orthodox Methodist commentator, Adam Clarke, earnestly exhorted young ministers not to found their sermons on its doubtful phrases. He knew how apt religious people are to mix up carnal desire and appet.i.te with love to their blessed Savior, and was perhaps aware that a number of Christian hymns might appropriately have been addressed to Priapus.*

* See Rimini's History of the Moravians and Southey's Life of Wesley* vol. i. pp. 188, 387.

In the Jewish Church no one under the age of thirty was permitted to read the Song of Songs, a prohibition which may have a.s.sisted to give it its sacred character. It is, nevertheless, not more indelicate than many other portions of G.o.d's Holy Word, and viewed in its proper light as an Oriental dramatic love poem, although it cannot be acquitted of outraging modern notions of decency, it is not, I think, so much, as some other portions of the Bible, open to the charge of teaching immorality. On the contrary, its purpose is commendable. An attentive reading of the Revised Version, which is without the misleading headlines, and is divided to indicate the different speakers in the love drama, will make this apparent, and show this little sc.r.a.p of the Jewish national literature to possess a certain natural beauty which has been utterly obscured by the orthodox commentators who, from the time of the early fathers to Hengstenberg and Keil, have sought to a.s.sociate it with Christ and his Church.

Sir William Jones, in his essay on the mystical poetry of Persia and India, called attention to the sensuous images in which Oriental religious poetry expresses itself. This connection will surprise no one who has discovered from the history of religion that women and wine formed important features in ancient worship. The readiness with which ungratified s.e.xual pa.s.sion runs into religious emotion has frequently been marked by physicians, and finds much corroboration in the devotional works of monks and nuns. But the Song of Songs has nothing religious about it. Even the personages are not religious, as in the Hindu erotic _Gita Govinda_, by Jayadeva, which tells of the loves of Badha and the G.o.d Krishna in the guise of a shepherd. Christ and his Church only appear in the headings given to the chapters.

Though to be cla.s.sed among erotic poems, the Song of Songs cannot fairly be called immoral or obscene. The character of the interlocutors and the division of the scenes is a little uncertain. It is, for instance, dubious whether the first speaker is Solomon or the Shulamite. If we take the version of M. Reville, the piece opens with the yearnings of the heroine, whom "the king hath brought into his chambers," for her absent lover. "Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for thy love is better than wine." She is black but comely; swarthy, because having to tend the vineyards she has been scorched by the sun. She is a Shulammite, or native of Shulam, now Solma, near Carmel--a part renowned for the beauty of its women. It was Abis.h.a.g, a Shulamite, who was chosen when they sought for a fair damsel throughout all the coasts of Israel to warm the bed of old King David. Solomon had seen the fair maid of Shulam, and, when she went down into the garden of nuts "to see the green plants of the valley," or ever she was aware, she was abducted. In vain, however, does the monarch offer her the best place in his harem.

Amid the glories of the court she sighs for the shepherd lover from whom she is separated. She tells how early one spring morning her beloved engaged her to go out with him. "For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come. And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land and now, although she seeks and finds him not," she declares "my beloved is mine and I am his." Her constant burden to her harem companions is, "I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up nor awaken love until it please."* Love must be spontaneous, she declares, and she refuses to yield to the wishes of the libidinous monarch. When Solomon praises her she replies with praises of her beloved peasant swain. She longs for him by day and seeks him in dreams by night. Solomon offers to place her above his "threescore queens and fourscore concubines and virgins without number"; but she is home-sick, and prefers the embraces of her lover to those of the lascivious king. Her humble vineyard is more to her than all the king's riches. The moral is, "Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: If a man would give all the substance of his house for love he would utterly be condemned." And a far better one too than most morals to be drawn from the pages of the Old Testament.

* Revised Version. The Authorised Version changes the whole purpose of the piece by reading "that ye stir not up nor awaken my love till he please."

The Song of Songs, which is _not_ Solomon's, is a valuable relic of antiquity, both because it utterly refutes the orthodox notion of biblical inspiration, and because it deals with the old old story of human pa.s.sion which surges alike in peasants and in princes, and which animated the hearts of men and maidens two thousand years ago even as it does to-day.

SACRED SEVEN.

It was natural that in the early ages of human intelligence man should attach a superst.i.tious reverence to numbers. The mystery attached to the number seven has been variously accounted for. Some have explained it by the figures of the square and triangle, others by the stars of the Great Bear nightly seen overhead. Gerald Ma.s.sey says: "The Constellation of the Seven Great Stars (Ursa Major) was probably the primordial figure of Seven. Seven was often called the perfect number. Its name as Hept (Eg.) is also the name for Plenty--a heap of food and good luck. The Seven were the great heap or cl.u.s.ter of stars, an image of plenty, or a lot that revolved together."* My own opinion is that the superst.i.tion arose in connection first with the menstrual period, and then with the phases of the moon as a measurer of time. Its period of twenty-eight days could be twice divided until the week of seven days was reached, and then further division was impossible. Hence we everywhere find the superst.i.tion linked to the days of the week and the seven planets supposed to preside over these days.

* Natural Genesis, ii., 219.

The Egyptians worshipped the seven planets, and Herodotus tells us of their seven castes. So with the Babylonians. From them was derived the Jewish week. Hesiod, according to Eusebius, said "The seventh is the sacred day." What he says in his _Works and Days_ is, "On the seventh day Latona brought forth Apollo"; and aeschylus, in his _Seven Against Thebes_, says the number Seven was sacred to Apollo. The moon periods were sacred as measuring time and also in connection with female periodicity. Man discovered the month before the year. Hence the moon was widely worshipped. The worship of the queen of heaven in Palestine is alluded to in Jer. vii. 18 and xliv. 17. The superst.i.tion of the new moon bringing luck has descended to our own time. When the year was reckoned by thirteen moons of twenty-eight days, thirteen was the lucky number; but when this was changed for the twelve months of solar time, thirteen became one too many. The Pa.r.s.ee Bundahisli, according to Gerald Ma.s.sey, exhibits seven races of men--(1) the earth-men, (2) water-men, (3) breast-eared men, (4) breast-eyed men, (5) one-legged men, (6) batwinged men, (7) men with tails.

Section 7 of the Kabbalistic Sepher Yezirah* says, "The seven planets in the world are Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon. Seven days in the year are the seven days of the week; seven gates in man, male and female, are two eyes, two ears, two nostrils and the mouth."

Again, section 15 says, "By the seven double consonants were also designed seven worlds, seven heavens, seven lands, seven seas, seven rivers, seven deserts, seven days a week, seven weeks from Pa.s.sover to Pentecost, there is a cycle of seven years, the seventh is the release year, and after seven release years is jubilee. Hence G.o.d loves the number seven under the whole heaven."

* Trans, by Dr. I. Kalisch, pp. 27 and 81.

The Bible, it has been remarked, begins in Genesis with a seven, and ends in the Apocalypse with a series of sevens. G.o.d himself took a rest on the seventh day and was refreshed, or, as the Hebrew reads, took breath. The Pa.s.sover and other festivals lasted seven days; Jacob bowed seven times; Solomon's temple was seven years in building; the tabernacle had seven lamps, a candlestick with seven arms, etc. In a variety of pa.s.sages it seems, like 40, to have been a sort of round number--as people sometimes say a dozen for an indeterminate quant.i.ty.

Thus in Daniel iii. 19 the fiery furnace was to be heated seven times more than it was wont to be heated. In Proverbs (xxiv. 16) we are told a just man falleth seven times and rises up again. One of the Psalmists says (cix. 164), "Seven times a day do I praise thee because of thy righteous judgments" (see too Lev. xxvi. 18, 28; Dent, xxviii. 7, 35; Job ix; Psalm xii. 6, lxxix. 12; Isaiah iv. 1, xi. 15, x.x.x. 26; Jer. xv.

9, Matt. xii. 45). The week induced reckoning by sevens, and led to such enactments as that the Jews on the seventh day of the seventh month should feast seven days and remain seven days in tents.

The root idea of the number is that of religious periodicity. We find it not only in the Sabbath, but in all other sacred periods. Thus the seventh month is ushered in by the Feast of Trumpets, and signalised by the celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles and Yom Kippur. Seven weeks is the interval between Pa.s.sover and Pentecost. The seventh is the Sabbatical year, when bondsmen were to be released and debts go free.

With this custom is connected the binding of youths for seven years apprenticeship, and of punishing incorrigible offenders for 7, 14, or 21 years. The year succeeding seven times seven is the Jubilee. The earliest form, that of the menstrual period, is shown in the duration of various kinds of legal uncleanness, as after childbirth, after contact with a corpse, etc. So we have the sprinkling of the house seven times with the water of purification (Lev. xiv. 51), the command of Elisha to Naaman to wash in Jordan seven times (2 Kings v. 10). Hezekiah, in cleansing the temple, offered seven bullocks, seven rams, and seven he-goats for a sin offering. Septuple actions and agents abound. Thus the blood of sacrifices were sprinkled seven times (Lev. iv. 6, 17; xiv.

7, 16, 27; xvi. 14, 15). So Jacob bowed to his brother Esau seven times (Gen. x.x.xiii. 3). Balak built for Balaam seven altars, and prepares seven oxen and seven rams (Num. xxiii. 1, 4, 14, 29), and Abraham employed seven victims for sacrifice (Gen. xxi. 28, 30). We are reminded of the lines in Virgil's aeneid (vi. 58).

Seven bullocks, yet unyoked, for Phoebus choose, And for Diana, seven unspotted ewes.

The Hebrew verb _Shaba_, to swear, is evidently derived from _Sheba_ seven, and denoted a sevenfold affirmation. Herodotus (xiii. 8), tells us the manner of swearing among the ancient Arabians included smearing seven stones with blood. Sheba is allied to the Egyptian Seb-ti (5-2), the Zend Hapta, Greek Epta, Latin septem. The Pythagoreans said that Heptad came from the Greek _Sebo_ to venerate, but Egyptian and other African dialects suffice to prove it is far earlier.

The writer of the Apocalypse had the mystic number on the brain. Dr.

Milligan has explained the 666 number of the beast, as a fall below the sacred seven John of Patmos gives us seven golden candlesticks, (i. 1), seven stars (i. 20), seven spirits and churches (iii. 1), seven seals (v. 1), trumpets (viii. 2), thunders (x. 34), vials (xvi. 1), and seven angels with seven plagues (xvi.) The beast has seven heads, horns and crowns (xii. 3, xiii. 1, xvii. 7). The Lamb with seven horns and seven eyes (v. 1 ). There are seven spirits before the throne of G.o.d (Rev. i.

4, etc.) like the seven Dhyani Chohans emanating from Parabrahm in Hindu Theosophy.

So Christians have kept up legends of seven wise men, seven wonders of the world, seven champions of Christendom, seven cardinal virtues, seven deadly sins, seven devils in Mary Magdalene, etc. Of course there is no better reason why there should be seven than the old idea of mystery and completion attached to the number.

Modern Theosophists, too, go in largely for the number seven. There are seven planets, seven rounds on each planet and seven races. Every ego is composed of seven principles--Atma, Buddhi, Manas, Kamarupa, Linga Sharira, Prana, and Sthula Sharira. It may seem strange that a lady of Madame Blavatsky's undoubted powers of imagination should run in the old rut. But the well-worn superst.i.tions work the easiest, although to every instructed person this one carries the mind back to the days when men knew only of seven planets and measured their time by the moon.