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no man henceforward was to do. But as this kind of marriage is already forbidden by implication in the 16th verse, where the marriage of a woman with two brothers, and therefore that of a man with two sisters, is prohibited, the marginal reading, "Thou shalt not take one wife to another," appears preferable. At any rate, it prevents any doctrine being built on a verse of doubtful interpretation. But some reply, that had polygamy been forbidden in this verse, it would not have been so generally practised. But neither does this follow. David, Solomon, and their descendants knew perfectly well the command (Deut. xvii. 17), not to multiply wives to themselves, yet they openly disobeyed it.
Secondly, it is urged that the marriage of a woman with two brothers cannot be wrong, or it would not have been sanctioned in a particular case; and hence it is rather illogically argued that the marriage of a man with two sisters is lawful. Now as we see by the history of Judah's sons, marriage with the widow of a childless brother was a Hebrew custom before the law was given, but this no more sanctions it now, than divorce and polygamy are sanctioned by their having been permitted to the Jews. The express command of the law-giver makes any act lawful in that particular instance, just as the Israelites were justified in slaying the Canaanites. Cain and Abel married their sisters, Jacob his sister-in-law; Amram married Jochebed, his aunt; in this special instance, where a Jew was allowed to marry his sister-in-law, the exception proves the rule. In all but that one case, of a Jew dying childless, a specified case among a specified people, the prohibition was explicit. The marriage of a woman with two brothers was pronounced "an unclean thing," Lev. xx. 20, 21, and the curse of dying childless was denounced upon it. Some may require proof of the
