Women Under Polygamy/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV
ANCIENT JEWISH POLYGAMY
Among the Semitic people more than one kind of marriage existed. Jacob was the husband of two sisters, and Amram, the father of Moses, married his aunt. The greatest of the Jewish saints were polygamists, and many owned concubines and slave-women. David possessed both wives and concubines. Solomon was the lord of seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines.
Purchase-marriage was the custom; the Hebrew parent was allowed to sell his daughter as a wife, concubine, or maid-servant. The purchaser could dismiss the wife or handmaiden at will. Plurality of wives was also maintained, as in Babylon and Egypt, by the capture of women in warfare.
When Moses conquered the Midianites, he commanded: "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."
The price paid for a wife in the time of Hosea was fifteen pieces of silver and a homer-and-a-half of barley. If the buyer grew tired of the woman, he had merely to publish the fact that she had "no favour in his eyes," and send her from the home. When a husband conceived suspicion of his wife's infidelity, he was permitted to subject her to a barbarous form of trial by ordeal.
The Jews remained a semi-barbaric race when Babylon and Egypt were hoary nations. The position of their women was greatly inferior in every respect to that of the women of ancient Babylon. Up to the Fifth Century, B.C., polygyny of an almost primitive character survived among the Hebrew people. The practice was not even reprobated by some of the early Christian reformers. It lingered till the Reformation, and was permitted by Martin Luther.
The priestess had wielded power in the old civilisations of the East; but, under the rule of St. Paul, Christian women were even forbidden to speak in the churches. The celibate life was exalted. Later, St. Gregory of Nyssa taught that wedlock is the outcome of iniquity. St. Augustine, who believed in woman's inferiority, declared that bigamy might be permitted if a wife was sterile.
The Jewish harem reached its highest importance and splendour in the time of David and Solomon. David first married Michal, the daughter of Saul, who, after a quarrel, transferred Michal to another husband. Abigal was the next bride of David, and afterwards he formed an adulterous union with the lovely Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah. In his palace were many concubines. Ten of these women misconducted themselves with the king's son Absalom, and as a punishment they were imprisoned for the rest of their lives.
Chastity was inculcated by Moses and Solomon, and fornication was condemned. "Do not prostitute thy daughter to cause her to be a whore, lest the land fall into whoredom, and the land become full of wickedness." (Leviticus 19–29.) Solomon, in the seventh chapter of Proverbs, warns young men against "the strange woman." "Let not thine heart decline to her ways, go not astray in her paths."
In the courts of Baal and Asherah there are distinct traces of ancient Phallicism, and this worship survived till the time of Joshua. The temple of Solomon was of Phœnician character, and the decorations were Phallic. Jeremiah complains that the people "defiled the land, and committed adultery with stones and with stocks." The worship of Priapus is mentioned by Ezekiel (xvi. 17), and such worship of sexual images is referred to in Deuteronomy iv., 16.
Sacred prostitution was known among the Jews, as both Kuenen and Kalisch testify. The latter writer says: "The unchaste worship of Ashtarte, known also as Beltis and Tannais, Ishtar, Mylitta, and Anaitis, Asherah, and Ashtaroth, flourished among the Hebrews at all times, both in the kingdom of Judah and Israel; it consisted in presenting to the goddess who was revered as the female principle of conception and birth, the virginity of maidens as a first-fruit offering; and it was associated with the utmost licentiousness. This degrading service took such deep root that in the Assyrian period it was soon extended by the adoption of new rites borrowed from Eastern Asia, and described by the name of "Tents of the Maidens."[1]
The Song of Solomon, one of the oldest books of the Bible, has been ascribed to the same writer as the Book of Ecclesiastes. Some critics have urged that "the Song of Songs" was a bridal poem celebrating the marriage of Solomon with the daughter of Pharoah. Whoever the author may have been, the Song of Solomon conveys instructive evidence of the strongly erotic conception of women among the Jews. The poem abounds in sensuous images and rapturous delight in the physical charm of women. This fine relic of ancient Oriental literature was forbidden by the Jewish Church to readers under thirty years of age, on account of its amatory character. The outspokenness of certain passages merely reveals the ordinary Eastern conception of women and love.
The fair damsel of Shulam, who speaks in the Song of Solomon, is an instance of a Hebrew woman's recoil against enforced polygamy. She had been captured and taken to the king's harem, and a place of honour was offered to her. But the Shulamite maid loved a shepherd youth of her native country. The monarch tries all the arts of wooing, and promises precious gifts; but the girl bears in her heart a deep love for her shepherd swain. Even when the king offers to make her the chiefest of "three score queens and four score concubines and virgins without number," the daughter of Shulam still pines for her own land and the caresses of her chosen lover.
In this story we have one of the few Old Testament instances of a preference for the single love-union, and an illustration of the constancy of a woman to her humble suitor, whom she values more than all the privileges and delights of the royal harem.
Four wives were permitted to each man by the old Hebrew teachers. A king might marry eighteen women. Divorce was easily obtained by men, one of the grounds being ugliness in a wife.
Among the Jews professing the faith of Islam, polygamy is still practised in Jerusalem.[2] The conditions of harem life are like those prevailing in Turkey and Egypt. There is a tendency to adopt Western fashions in dress, and the women are clad in Parisian gowns. Marriage is followed by seven days of feasting. The bridegroom hangs swords from the bride's neck, as a sign that she is under his authority. As elsewhere in the East, the wife is heavily perfumed on the bridal day, and her nails and toes are stained with henna.
A. Goodrich Freer says that the children of the Jewish Mohammedans are treated affectionately by their parents, and that there is improvement in the education of girls.