Part 8 (2/2)
8) says ”I ail and howl, I will go stripped and naked” Zechariah speaks of the prophets ear a rough garment to deceive,” and ”say I am no prophet I am an husbandman” (Zech xiii 45), which is like what Amos (vii 14) says: ”I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet's son; but I was an herdatherer of sycamore fruit”
Isaiah (xxviii 7) says, ”the priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink; they are sed up of wine” Jahveh tells Jeremiah ”The prophets prophesy lies in my name, I sent them not, neither have I commanded them, neither spake unto them; they prophesy unto you a false vision and divination, and a thing of nought, and the deceit of their heart” (xiv 14) Further on he says, ”O Lord thou hast deceived me and I was deceived” (xx 7) The prophets of Jerusalem, Jeremiah declares, ”commit adultery and walk in lies” (xxiii 14) Ezekiel too, prophesies against the prophets and their lying divination (xiii 2-7) Hosea (ix
7) says, ”the prophet is a fool, the spiritual man is mad”
See too Isaiah lvi 11-12; Jer xxvii 10-15, xxix 8-9; Micah iii 5-7
Some of the prophets can only be described as silly Such are the two in 1 Kings xiii 5 the prophet who asks to be ss xii); Zedekiah, who makes hi sprit cos xxii) To these may be added the man of God (2 Chron xxv 7), who hty men of valor,” who in consequence fell upon the cities of Judah and took ion in reading of the Hebrew prophets, is forcibly reminded of the Hindu sunnyasis and Mussulman fakirs In the east insanity is confounded with inspiration, and Dr Maudsley, in his _Responsibility in Mental Disease_, has given his opinion that several of the Hebrew prophets were insane The dread and respect in which they were held is evinced in the legend of the forty-two children ere slain by bears for calling Elisha bald-head Their arrogance and ferocity were exhibited by Sa till he found ain pieces before the Lord” (1 Sa the order of their king (2 Kings ii 9-13), and at another tis xviii 19--40) Elisha was unscrupulous enough to send Hazael to his h at the ti by such exaratulate ourselves that the race of prophets is almost extinct
It must in fairness be said that so the people against their priests and rulers, and that the greater prophets like Isaiah did ion of Israel, which in its ely their creation
OLD TESTAMENT MARRIAGE
”Marriage,” says Goethe, ”is the beginning and end of all culture”
Too often the end of all culture, the cynic e is the chief cause and product of civilisation
Like other institutions, it has passed through various stages of growth a all nations, the Jews included It has been said ”Motherhood is a matter of observation, fatherhood a matter of opinion” Certain it is that in early society kinshi+p was reckoned through mothers only Of this we have some evidence in the Bible Abrahahter of hter of hter of his other brother, Haran, to wife (Gen ix 27-29) Such es could not have occurred except when relationshi+p through e to have been raised upon it Jacob had two sisters to wife at once Amram, the father of Moses, married his own aunt (Exodus ii 1 and 1 Chron vii 3) Even in the tie with half-sisters was not considered improper, for when Ammon wished to force his sister Ta; for he will not withhold me from thee” (2 Samuel xiii
13) Brothers by the sauished (Deut
xiii 6, Judges viii 19) The child,to the mother than the father Thus we find that Ishar, and Hannah, one of the wives of Elkanah the Levite, had the right of presenting or devoting her son Sae is found in Deut xxv, where it is expressly ordered that when a brother'sis left childless ”her husband's brother shall go in unto her and take her to hi to do so he has to have his shoe loosed and his face spat upon Of the antiquity of this usage we have evidence in Genesis xxxviii When Er, Judah's firstborn, died, the father commanded his second son, ”Go in unto thy brother's wife, and marry her, and raise up seed to thy brother” The second son refusing, the thing which he did displeased the Lord, wherefore he slew hi his next son, she disguised herself and”she hath been hteous than I” The custom is also referred to in the story of Ruth
Ewald amends Ruth iv 5: ”Thou must buy also Ruth the Moabitess” The Bible reader will re story of the patriarch Lot and his daughters is related without the slightest token of disapproval The daughters justified themselves by the plea that they would ”preserve seed of our father” To understand these narratives, the reader must remember that in the early history of the fale for existence, that its numbers should not be diminished Many instances are found in the Bible of the blessing of a large fa on the typical servant of Jahveh is that ”he shall see his seed,” It was the duty of the next of kin to see that the fa of Genesis that, when Abel was slain, God gave Seth ”instead” In patriarchal life, as exhibited by the Bedouins, the ”next of kin,” the _goel_, is a e
To hie or redeem a kinsman's death or misfortune On him theand fatherless depend for support He is, above all, the blood-balancer, who sees that the house is kept in its north, and who seeks to recruit it as far as possible fro feud with surrounding tribes
Job, in his anguish, can find no stronger consolation this--”I know thatto the rossly wronged by Onan By refusing to allow Shelah to take the duties of _goel_, on the ground of his youth, Judah himself incurred the responsibilities of that office It was his duty to see that seed was raised Ta, the weapon of the weak, and Judah's confession is the real usting story in Genesis xxxviii
All the Old Testaae were practised by those Hebrew saints ere uished by their piety, faith, and coar as a secondary wife, but turned her adrift in the wilderness when it suited his own goodwill and pleasure Jacob, who lived under the special guidance of God, married two sisters at the same time, and each of them presented him with concubines David, the man after God's own heart, had many wives and concubines (2 Samuel iii 2-5, v 13), while Solomon, iser than all men, boasted of seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines (1 Kings xi 5) Jahveh, while denouncing interainst either polygae
On the contrary, both are sanctioned and regulated by the Mosaic law (Deut xxi 10-15) More than this, God himself is said to have married two sisters, Aholah and Aholibah (Ezekiel xxiii), and although this is figurative, the figure would never have been used had the fact been considered sinful
A Hebrew father hter to be a wife, concubine, or ht put her away if she pleased hiht be used as wives and dismissed at pleasure (Deut xxi 10-14) In the case of the Midianites only virgins were preserved Moses indignantly asked, Have ye saved all the wo the little ones and kill every wo with him But all the wo with him, keep alive for yourselves” And the Lord took shares in this maiden tribute (Numb, xxxi)
Woman in the Bible is treated as ht by seven years' service, but in the time of the prophet Hosea she was valued only at fifteen pieces of silver and a houe it is prohibited to covet a round as histhat is his Her lord and oods, my chattels; she is my house, My household stuff,
By God's law a man was permitted to dismiss a hen she found ”no favor in his eyes,” by si out a bill of divorce any si quit of her lord and o through an ordeal in which the priest aduilty would cause her to rot, but which was harmless if she was innocent No doubt this was a potentwifely devotion and a ready remedy for any hated spouse In the hands of a friendly priest the concoction would be little likely to fail, and even should it prove innocuous there was the expedient of writing a bill of divorcement
It is usually said that God ”winked at” (Acts xvii 30) these proceedings, because of the hardness of the old Jews' hearts, and that fro it was not so In proof of this is cited the passage in Genesis which says, ”Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh”
The proper interpretation of this passage illustrates a very early fore still found in soe Mr McLennan, one of the highest authorities on pri husband leaves the family of his birth and passes into the fa as the , not to hi with, he works for, the fa in it by service His e; nearly always (where the tribal systee of family So that, as used to happen in New Zealand, he ainst those of his father's house The man leaves father and , a bride would do; and he leaves them to live with his wife and her fae in Genesis will not be disputed
”Marriage by purchase of the bride and her issue can hardly be thought to have been prie by purchase as alternatives, therefore it is not difficult to believe that the former is the older of the two, and it was once in sole possession of the field”
The Patriarchal Theory, p 43; 1885