Bible Studies: Essays on Phallic Worship and Other Curious Rites and Customs

OLD TESTAMENT MARRIAGE

"Marriage," says Goethe, "is the beginning and end of all culture." Too often the end of all culture, the cynic may say. It may safely be affirmed that marriage is the chief cause and product of civilisation. Like other institutions, it has passed through various stages of growth among 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 kinship was reckoned through mothers only. Of this we have some evidence in the Bible. Abraham, the father of the faithful, married Sarah, "the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother" (Gen. xx. 12). His brother Nahor took the daughter of his other brother, Haran, to wife (Gen. ix. 27-29). Such marriages could not have occurred except when relationship through males was not sufficiently acknowledged for a bar to marriage 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 time of pious King David marriage with half-sisters was not considered improper, for when Ammon wished to force his sister Tamar, she said unto him, "Speak unto the king; for he will not withhold me from thee" (2 Samuel xiii. 13). Brothers by the same mother are specially distinguished (Deut. xiii. 6, Judges viii. 19). The child, moreover, in early times, was thought rather to belong to the mother than the father. Thus we find that Ishmael was turned adrift with Hagar, and Hannah, one of the wives of Elkanah the Levite, had the right of presenting or devoting her son Samuel to Jahveh.

A survival of consanguine marriage is found in Deut. xxv., where it is expressly ordered that when a brother's widow is left childless "her husband's brother shall go in unto her and take her to him to wife"; and in the event of his refusing 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 him. Judah now putting Tamar off from taking his next son, she disguised herself and made her father-in-law do his son's duty, he acknowledging "she hath been more righteous 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 remember that the disgusting 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 family it was desirable, in the struggle for existence, that its numbers should not be diminished. Many instances are found in the Bible of the blessing of a large family. "Happy is the man who has his quiver full." The blessing 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 family stock did not diminish. We find at the beginning 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 most important personage. To him the tribe looks to avenge or redeem a kinsman's death or misfortune. On him the widow and fatherless depend for support. He is, above all, the blood-balancer, who sees that the house is kept in its normal strength, and who seeks to recruit it as far as possible from the same blood—a state of things implying feud with surrounding tribes. Job, in his anguish, can find no stronger consolation this—"I know that my goel liveth." According to the morality of that time, not only Tamar, but the family was grossly 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. Tamar resorted to cunning, the weapon of the weak, and Judah's confession is the real moral of what, to a modern, must be considered the very disgusting story in Genesis xxxviii.

All the Old Testament heroes, from Lamech downwards, were polygamists. Indeed, both polygamy and concubinage were practised by those Hebrew saints who were most distinguished by their piety, faith, and communion with Jahveh. Abraham not only took Hagar 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, who was wiser than all men, boasted of seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines (1 Kings xi. 5). Jahveh, while denouncing intermarriage with women of foreign races, never says a word against either polygamy or concubinage. 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 might sell his daughter to be a wife, concubine, or maid-servant to an Israelite, and her master might put her away if she pleased him not (Exodus xxi. 7-11). Women taken captives in war might 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 women alive? "Now therefore kill every male among the little ones and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that hath not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves." And the Lord took shares in this maiden tribute (Numb, xxxi.)

Woman in the Bible is treated as merchandise. In Jacob's time she was bought by seven years' service, but in the time of the prophet Hosea she was valued only at fifteen pieces of silver and a homer and a half of barley. In the Decalogue it is prohibited to covet a man's wife on the same ground as his man slave, his maid slave, his ox, or his ass, or anything that is his. Her lord and master could say with Petruchio:

 
She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house,
My household stuff, my field, my barn,
My horse, my ox, my ass, my anything.
 

By God's law a man was permitted to dismiss a wife when she found "no favor in his eyes," by simply writing out a bill of divorcement. There is no mention of the woman having any similar power of getting quit of her lord and master. If he suspected her fidelity he could compel her to go through an ordeal in which the priest administered to her the water of jealousy, which if guilty would cause her to rot, but which was harmless if she was innocent. No doubt this was a potent means in securing wifely 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 from the beginning 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 form of marriage still found in some tribes, and known in Ceylon as beenah marriage. Mr. McLennan, one of the highest authorities on primitive marriage, says:

"In beenah marriage the young husband leaves the family of his birth and passes into the family of his wife, and to that he belongs as long as the marriage subsists. The children born to him belong, not to him, but to the family of their mother. Living with, he works for, the family of his wife; and he commonly gains his footing in it by service. His marriage involves usually a change of village; nearly always (where the tribal system is in force) a change of tribe, but always a change of family. So that, as used to happen in New Zealand, he may be bound even to take part in war against those of his father's house. The man leaves father and mother as completely as with the Patriarchal Family prevailing, a bride would do; and he leaves them to live with his wife and her family. That this accords with the passage in Genesis will not be disputed.⁵³

"Marriage by purchase of the bride and her issue can hardly be thought to have been primeval practice. When we find beenah marriage and marriage 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."⁵⁴

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 Abishag, the comforter of David's old age, the wise Solomon kills him, as thus betraying designs on the throne. In the custom that widows passed 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 title 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 God" 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 institutions.

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 passage which says, "We have a little sister, and she hath no breasts." In short, nearly every possible explanation has been offered of this portion of the Word of God except the obvious and natural one, that it is an erotic poem. That there is any allegory in the piece is a pure assumption. 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 God: "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 appetite with love to their blessed Savior, and was perhaps aware that a number of Christian hymns might appropriately have been addressed to Priapus.⁵⁵

In the Jewish Church no one under the age of thirty was permitted to read the Song of Songs, a prohibition which may have assisted to give it its sacred character. It is, nevertheless, not more indelicate than many other portions of God'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 scrap 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 associate 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 sexual passion 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 god Krishna in the guise of a shepherd. Christ and his Church only appear in the headings given to the chapters.

Though to be classed 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. Réville, 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 Abishag, 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."⁵⁶ 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.

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 passion 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.