long as you are in my employ never steal again." May he justly conclude that when not in my employ he has my full approbation for theft? So it by no means follows that, because a man may not take his wife's sister in marriage while his wife is alive, he may marry his wife's sister when his wife is dead. Hooker exhibits his "judiciousness" in the observation—"It is a mistake to suppose that a thing denied with special circumstance doth import an opposite affirmation when once that circumstance is expired." (Bk. v, c. xiv). "The manner of Scripture produceth no such inference as that." (Pearson, Art. iii). (2.) There is nothing to prove that the restriction, "her life,," belongs to the wife—see the literal rendering above. It may and, I hope it will yet appear, does apply to the sister—and it is to be regarded not as a limitation, but as an extension of the prohibition to the whole life, a prohibition thus more stringent than even the nuptial bond, for the latter might be terminated by divorce, while the prohibition has no limits Besides, there is nothing in Scripture to limit the prohibition of marrying a wife's sister to the period of the wife's life-time, any more than there is to limit the prohibition of marrying the wife's daughter or grand daughter. When Hannah says she will give her expected son unto the Lord "all the days of his life," she might just as well be supposed to intend keeping him for herself after his death, as the restriction in Leviticus be explained away as merely temporary—contingent on the life of the first wife. But what shall we think of those who in so serious a matter trust so uncertain an argument—for "uncertain" is the very least we can say of it; and who oppose that uncertainty to the unanimous voice of eighteen centuries of Christianity!
But whether the argument thus far considered is right or wrong, good or bad, it cannot stand, for it is based on a totally wrong translation of the Hebrew text, and an improper division of the context.
2. Mr. Punshon says. "With Dr. McOaul I believe that all criticism must bow before the plain straightforward meaning of the words in Lev: XVIII: 18! "Very well; let us see what that meaning is, and whether Mr. Punshon has bowed before it. It is well known that the words "'a woman to her sister" are a Hebrew idiom, an expression peculiar to the language. The corresponding phrase, "a man to his brother," occurs twenty-five times in the Hebrew Scriptures, and is translated generally as in the following examples, by the Italic words:
Gen. 37 : 19, "And they said one to another"
Ex. 26 : 20, "And the faces of the cherubim shall look one to another."
Ex. 37 : 9, "The Cherubin stood with their faces one to another."
Jer. 13 : 14, "And I will dash them one against another."
Jer. 25 : 26, "And all the Kings of the North one with another."
Ezek. 24 : 23, "And mourn one towards another."
Of the nineteen other examples, some are slightly varied in form. I shall now give all the instances of the expression in dispute—"a woman to her sister."
