individualism rebelled against the primitive treatment of women as rather chattels than persons; partly their lofty conception of the divine character rendered them increasingly insistent that no conduct could be fitting in man which ran counter to the righteousness of his Creator. The prophets were also poets, and they invested the marriage-relationship with the moral dignity which made it the favourite and most eloquently suggestive symbol of Israel’s relation to Jehovah. And when once they had established that train of religious associations in connection with marriage, polygamy was in every devout Israelite’s mind bound up with polytheism and stricken with the fatal character of apostasy. Jehovah is represented as Israel’s husband; the worship of other gods is a violation of the marriage covenant, devotion to Jehovah alone is as the chastity and faithfulness of a pure wife.
This conception is found in the writings of Hosea, where indeed it appears to have its
