The Woman's Bible Part 26

13 And she shall put the raiment of her captivity from off her, and shall remain in thine house, and bewail her father and her mother a full month: and after that she shall be thy wife.

14 And it shall be, if thou have no delight in her, then thou shalt let her go whither she will: but thou shalt not sell her at all for money, thou shalt not make merchandise of her, because thou hast humbled her.

15 If a man have two wives, one beloved, and another hated, and they have borne him children, both the beloved and the hated; and if the firstborn son be hers that was hated:

16 Then it shall be, when he maketh his son to inherit that which he hath, that he may not make the son of the beloved firstborn before the son of the hated, which is indeed the firstborn:

17 But he shall acknowledge the son of the hated for the firstborn, by giving him a double portion of all that he hath: for he is the beginning of his strength; the right of the firstborn is his.

All this is done if the woman will renounce her religion and accept the new faith. The shaving of the head was a rite in accepting the new faith, the paring of the nails a token of submission. In all these transactions the woman had no fixed rights whatever. In that word "humbled" is included the whole of our false morality in regard to the equal relations of the s.e.xes. Why in this responsible act of creation, on which depends life and immortality, woman is said to be humbled, when she is the prime factor in the relation, is a question difficult to answer, except in her general degradation, carried off without her consent as spoils of war, subject to the fancy of any man, to be taken or cast off at his pleasure, no matter what is done with her. Her sons must be carefully guarded and the rights of the first-born fully recognized. The man is of more value than the mother in the scale of being whatever her graces and virtues may be. If these Jewish ideas were obsolete they might not be worth our attention, but our creeds and codes are still tinged with the Mosaic laws and customs. The English law of primogeniture has its foundation in the above text. The position of the wife under the old common law has the same origin.

When Bishop Colenso went as a missionary to Zululand, the horror with which the most devout and intelligent of the natives questioned the truth of the Pentateuch confirmed his own doubts of the records.

Translating with the help of a Zulu scholar he was deeply impressed with his revulsion of feeling at the following pa.s.sage: "If a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand, he shall be surely punished. Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money." Exodus xxi: 20, 2 1. "I shall never forget," says the Bishop, "the revulsion of feeling, with which a very intelligent Christian native, with whose help I was translating these last words into the Zulu tongue, first heard them as words said to be uttered by the same great and gracious Being, whom I was teaching him to trust in and adore. His whole soul revolted against the notion, that the Great and Blessed G.o.d, the Merciful Father of all mankind, would speak of a servant or maid as mere 'money,' and allow a horrible crime to go unpunished, because the victim of the brutal usage had survived a few hours!"

Though they had no Pentateuch nor knowledge of our religion, their respect for the mother of the race and their recognition of the feminine element in the G.o.dhead, as shown in the following beautiful prayer, might teach our Bishops, Priests and Levites a lesson they have all yet to learn.

EVENING PRAYER.

"O G.o.d, Thou hast let me pa.s.s the day in peace: let me pa.s.s the night in peace, O Lord, who hast no Lord! There is no strength but in Thee: Thou alone hast no obligation. Under Thy hand I pa.s.s the day! under Thy hand I pa.s.s the night! Thou art my Mother, Thou my Father!"

Placing the mother first shows they were taught by Nature that she was the prime factor in their existence. In the whole Bible and the Christian religion man is made the alpha and omega everywhere in the state, the church and the home. And we see the result in the general contempt for the s.e.x expressed freely in our literature, in the halls of legislation, in church convocations and by leading Bishops wherever they have opportunities for speech and whenever they are welcomed in the popular magazines of the day.

E. C. S.

CHAPTER V.

Deuteronomy xxiv.

1 When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pa.s.s that she find no favour in his eyes, then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house.

2 And when she is departed out of his house, she may go and be another man's wife.

3 And if the latter husband hate her, and write her a bill of divorcement, and giveth it in her hand and sendeth her out of his house: or if the latter husband die, which took her to be his wife;

4 Her former husband, which sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after that she is defiled; for that is abomination before the Lord: and thou shalt not cause the land to sin which the Lord thy G.o.d giveth thee for an inheritance.

5 When a man hath taken a new wife, he shall not go out to war, neither shalt he be charged with any business: but he shall be free at home one year, and shall cheer up his wife which he hath taken.

All the privileges accorded man alone, are based on the principle that women have no causes for divorce. If they had equal rights in law and public sentiment, a large number of cruel, whiskey drinking and profane husbands, would be sued for divorce before wives endured one year of such gross companionship.

There is a good suggestion in the text, that when a man takes a new wife he shall stay at home at least one year to cheer and comfort her.

If they propose to have children, the responsible duties of parents should be equally shared as far as possible. In a busy commercial life, fathers have but little time to guard their children against the temptations of life, or to prepare them for its struggles, and the mother educated to believe that she has no rights or duties in public affairs, can give no lessons on political morality from her standpoint.

Hence the home is in a condition of half orphanage for the want of fathers, and the State suffers for need of wise mothers.

It was customary among the Jews to dedicate a new house, a vineyard just planted, or a betrothed wife to the Lord with prayer and thanksgiving, before going forth to public duties. This idea is enforced in several different chapters, impressing on men with families that there are periods in their lives when "their sphere is home"

their primal duty to look after the wife, the house and the vineyard.

Deuteronomy xxv.

5 If brethren dwell together, and one of them die, and have no child, the wife of the dead shall not marry without unto a stranger: her husband's brother shall take her to wire.

6 And it shall be, that the firstborn which she beareth shall succeed in the name of his brother which is dead, that his name be not put out of Israel.

7 And if the man like not to take his brother's wife, then let his brother's wife go up to the gate unto the elders, and say, my husband's brother refuseth to raise up unto his brother a name in Israel, he will not perform the duty of my husband's brother.

8 Then the elders of his city shall call him, and speak unto him: and if she stand to it, and say, I like not to take her:

9 Then shall his brother's wife come unto him in the presence of the elders, and loose his shoe from off his foot.

I would recommend these texts to the consideration of the Bishops in the English House of Lords. If a man may marry a deceased brother's wife, why not a deceased wife's sister? English statesmanship has struggled with this problem for generations, and the same old plat.i.tudes against the deceased wife's sister's bill are made to do duty annually in Parliament.

Deuteronomy xxviii.

56 The tender and delicate woman among you, which would not adventure to set the sole of her foot upon ground for delicateness and tenderness, her eye shall be evil toward her husband of her bosom, and toward her son, and toward her daughter, and toward her children which she shall bear; for she shall eat them for want of all things secretly in the siege and straitness, wherewith thine enemy shall distress thee in thy gates.

64 Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy ground, and the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep.

68 And the Lord shall bring thee into Egypt again with ships, by the way whereof I spake unto thee, thou shalt see it no more again: and there ye shall be sold unto your enemies for bondmen and bondwomen, and no man shall buy you.

This is addressed to men as most of the injunctions are, as to their treatment of woman in general. In enumerating the good things that would come to Israel if the commandments were obeyed, nothing is promised to women, but when the curses are distributed, woman comes in for her share. Similar treatment is accorded the daughters of Eve in modern days. She is given equal privileges with man, in being imprisoned and hung, but unlike him she has no voice in the laws, the judge, the jury, nor the manner of exit to the unknown land. She is denied the right of trial by her own peers; the laws are made by men, the courts are filled with men; the judge, the advocates, the jurors, all men!

Moses follows the usual ancient idea that in the creation of human life, man is the important factor. The child is his fruit, he is the soul. The spirit the vital spark. The woman merely the earth that warms and nourishes the seed, the earthly environment. This unscientific idea still holds among people ignorant of physiology and psychology. This notion chimes in with the popular view of woman's secondary place in the world, and so is accepted as law and gospel. The word "beget" applied only to men in Scripture is additional enforcement of the idea that the creative act belongs to him alone. This is flattering to male egoism and is readily accepted.