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 A Lawyer's Studies in Biblical Law. case the bondwoman who has been betrothed to her master acquired certain rights, among them exemption from being sold by him. It is fair to presume that if the bondwoman had such rights the free born woman had equal if not stronger rights. The patriarchal family was polygamous. The Biblical records take polygamy for granted, and it is unnecessary to give any citation of this very obvious fact. Even such a purely ethical passage as '.' Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh " (Genesis ii, 34), is not incompati ble with polygamy. It simply indicates that polygamy was not in the foreground of the writer's mind, and it cannot properly be con strued into a legalization of monogamy. It is true that the old traditions in Genesis assigned but one wife to many of the ancient patriarchs, such as Adam, Cain and Noah. This, however, is merely negative evidence, and does not preclude the idea that they may have had more than one wife, excepting Adam, who was perforce obliged to be a monogamist. There is a curious incident in the story of Jacob and Laban which has interest in this connection. Laban said to Jacob (Genesis xxxi, 50), " If thou shalt afflict my daughters or if thou shalt take other wives besides my daughters, no man is with us; behold God is witness between me and thee." It appears that Laban sought by this solemn adjuration to prevent Jacob from marrying any other woman who might divide his affections with Leah and Rachel. It is not improbable that the paternal interest which by such means sought to protect the daughters against the danger of rival wives may have been one of the early steps toward the development of monogamic marriage. The levirate marriage was a peculiar insti tution arising out of the notions of family

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solidarity, of preservation of the family es tate, and the perpetuation of the family name. This law (Deuteronomy xxv, 5—10 ) provides in substance that if brethren dwell together, and one of them dies without child, his wife shall not marry a stranger, but shall be mar ried to her husband's brother, and their first born child shall succeed to the name of the brother that died, so " that his name shall not be put out of Israel." Before the Mosaic age, marriage with a brother's widow was lawful whether there were children or not. This, however, seems to have offended the moral sense of later generations, and the law forbade such mar riages except in the case above cited where there were no children of the first marriage. The purposes of the law, as has been said, are principally to prevent the extinction of the family, and a legal fiction was resorted to whereby the nephew was considered the adopted child of the deceased uncle, in order that the name of the latter, to wit, his family, might not be put out of Israel. The story of Ruth and Boaz indicates that at some period of Jewish history, probably a very early one, it was the duty of not only the brother of the deceased to marry the widow, but that other kinsmen were expected to perform this duty. This also appears from the story of Tobit ( Tobit iii, 15-17; vi, 11-12; and vii, 12 ). The change from the old patriarchal abso lutism to the more modern view of the rela tion of parent and child, as well as of men and women is indicated in the Fifth Com mandment : " Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be prolonged in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." Here the blessing of long life is promised to the obedient son, because such obedience is pleasing to God; whereas under the old patriarchal system, obedience to the father probably resulted in long life, but not