_LAWS OF PURITY (CHASTITY AND MARRIAGE)_
In dealing with the ten commandments it has been already shown
that, though these great statements of religious and moral truth
were to some extent inadequate as expressions of the highest life,
they yet contained the living germs of all that has followed. But
we cannot suppose that the reality of Israelite life from the first
corresponded with them. They contained much that only the experience
and teaching of ages could fully bring to light; therefore we cannot
expect that the actual laws in regard to the relations of the sexes
and the virtue of chastity should stand upon the same high level as
the Decalogue. The former represent the reality, this the ultimate
ideal of Israelite law on these subjects. But neither is unimportant
in forming an estimate of the value of the revelation given to
Israel, and of the moral condition of early Israel itself, nor can
either be justly viewed altogether alone. The actual law at any
moment in the history of Israel must be regarded as inspired and
upborne by the ideal set forth in the ten commandments. But it must,
at the same time, be a very incomplete realisation of these, and
its various stages will be best regarded as instalments of advance
towards that comparative perfection.
In regard to the relations of the sexes and the virtue of purity
this must be peculiarly the case. For though chastity has been
safeguarded by almost all nations up to a certain low point, it
has never been really cherished by any naturalistic system. Nor has
it ever been favoured by mere humanism.[115] Consequently there is
no point of morals in regard to which man has more conspicuously
failed to work out the merely animal impulse from his nature than in
this. And yet, for all the higher ends of life, as well as for the
prosperity and vigour of mankind, purity in the sexual relations is
entirely vital. One great cause of the decay of nations, nay, even
of civilisations, has been the abandonment of this virtue. This was
the main cause of the destruction of the Canaanites. It may even be
said to have been the cause of the wreck of the whole ancient world.
We should consequently measure what the Mosaic influence did for
purity of life, not by comparing early Israelite laws with what has
been accomplished by Christianity, but with the condition of the
Semitic peoples surrounding Israel, in and after the Mosaic times.
[115] Cf. Renan, _Philosophic Dialogues_, iii. p. 26: "La nature
a intérêt à ce que la femme soit chaste et à ce que l'homme ne le
soit pas trop. De là un ensemble d'opinions qui couvre d'infamie la
femme non chaste, et frappe presque de ridicule l'homme chaste. Et
l'opinion quand elle est profonde, obstinée, c'est la nature même."
What that was we know. Their religions, far from discouraging sexual
immorality, made it a part of their holiest rites. Both men and
women gave themselves up to natural and unnatural lusts, in honour
of their gods. To the north, and south, and east, and west of
Israel these practices prevailed, and as a natural result the moral
fabric of these nations' life fell into utter ruin. In private life
adultery, and the still more degrading sin of Sodom were common.
The man had a right to indiscriminate divorce and remarriage, and
marriage connections now reckoned incestuous, such as those between
brother and sister, were entirely approved. In all these points
Israel as a nation was without reproach. The higher teaching
this people had received in respect to the character of God, and
it may be some reminiscence of Egyptian custom, which was in some
respects purer than that of the Semitic peoples, raised them to a
higher level. Yet in the main the early Israelite view of women was
fundamentally the uncivilised one.
But at all periods of Israelite history, even the earliest, women
had asserted their personality. In the eye of the law they might
be the chattels of their male relatives, but as a fact they were
dealt with as persons, with many personal rights. They had no
independent position in the community, it is true. They could take
no part in a festival so important as the Passover, nor were they
free to make vows without the consent of their husbands. In other
ways also social restraints were laid upon them. Nevertheless their
position in early Israel was much higher than it is in the East
to-day, and their liberty was in no wise unreasonably abridged.
In David's day women could appear in public to converse with men
without scandal.[116] They also took part in religious festivals
and processions, giving life to them by beating their timbrels, by
singing, and by dancing.[117] They could be present also at all
ordinary sacrifices and at sacrificial feasts; and, as we see in
the case of Deborah and others, they could occupy a high, almost a
supreme, position as prophetesses. In the main, too, the relations
between husband and wife were loving and respectful, and in Israel's
best days, when the people still remained landed yeomanry, the wife,
by her industry within the house, supplemented and completed her
husband's labour in the fields. The Israelite woman was consequently
a very important person in the community, whatever her status in law
might be; and if she had not the full rights which are now granted
to her sex in Western and Christian lands, her position was for the
times a noble and independent one. That all this was so was largely
due to the improvements which Mosaism wrought on the basis of that
ancient Semitic custom which we sketched at the beginning of this
chapter, and with which it seems natural to suppose the Israelite
tribes had also begun.
[116] Cf. 1 Sam. xxv. 18 ff; 2 Sam. xiv. 1 ff.
[117] Cf. Exod. xv. and 1 Sam. xviii. 6 f.
Bearing these preliminary considerations in mind, we now go on to
consider the actual legislation in regard to the relations of the
sexes. But here we must once more recall the fact that, in regard
to all matters vitally affecting the community, there had always
been a custom, and even before written law appears that custom had
been adopted and modified in Yahwism by Moses himself. That this was
actually the case here is rendered highly probable by the history
of legislation in this matter. In the Book of the Covenant there
is no mention of sexual sin, save in one passage (Exod. xxii. 16),
where the penalty for seduction of a virgin who is not betrothed
is that the seducer shall offer a "_mohar_" for her, and marry her
without possibility of divorce, if her father consent. If he will
not, then the "_mohar_" is forfeited to the father nevertheless, as
compensation for the degradation of his daughter. But it is obvious
that there must have been laws or customs regulating marriage other
than this, for without them there could have been no such crime as
is here punished. Obviously, also, there must have been laws or
customs of divorce. But of what these laws of marriage and divorce
were Exodus gives us no hint. Deuteronomy, the next code, which on
the critical hypothesis arose at a much later time as a revision
of the Book of the Covenant, contains much more, _i.e._ it draws
out of the obscurity of unwritten custom a more extensive series
of provisions in regard to purity. The Law of Holiness then adds
largely to Deuteronomy, and with it the main points of the law of
purity have attained to written expression. But the influence of the
higher standard set in the Decalogue also makes itself felt,--not
in the law so much as in the historic books and the prophets--and
our task now is to trace out first the legal development, then the
prophetical, and to show how the whole movement culminated and was
crowned in the teaching of Christ.
Beginning then with Deuteronomy, we find that the chastity of women
was surrounded by ample safeguards. Religious prostitution was
absolutely prohibited (Deut. xxiii. 18). Further, if any violence
was done to a woman who had been betrothed, the punishment of the
wrong was death; if done to a woman who was not betrothed, the wrong
was atoned for by payment of fifty shekels of silver to her father,
and by offering marriage without possibility of divorce. If marriage
was refused, then the fifty shekels was retained by the father in
consideration of the wrong done him. When the woman was a sharer in
the guilt the punishment in all cases was death; while pre-nuptial
unchastity, when discovered after marriage, was punished, as
adultery also was, with the same severity.[118] In women who were
free, therefore, purity was demanded in Israel as strenuously as
it ever has been anywhere, though in man the only limit to sexual
indulgence was the demand, that in seeking it he should not infringe
upon the father's property in his daughter, or the husband's in his
wife or his betrothed bride.
[118] Chap. xxii. 13-18.
Admittedly the original underlying motive for this moral severity
was a low one, the mere proprietary rights of the father or
husband. But it would be a mistake to suppose that purely ethical
and religious motives had no place in establishing the customs
or enactments which we find in Deuteronomy. With the lapse of
time higher motives entwined themselves with the coarse strand of
personal proprietary interest, which had originally, though perhaps
never alone, been the line of limitation. Gradually there grew up a
standard of higher purity; and when Deuteronomy was written, though
the original line was still clearly visible, it was justified by
appeals to a moral sense which reached far beyond the original
motives of the customary law. The continually recurring burden of
Deuteronomy in dealing with these matters is that to work "folly
in Israel" is a crime for which only the severest punishment can
atone. To "extinguish the evil from Israel," and to put away such
things as were "abominations to Yahweh their God," are the great
reasons on which the writer of Deuteronomy founds the claim for
obedience in these cases. Obviously, therefore, by his time, under
the teaching of the religion of Yahweh, Israel had risen to a moral
height which took account of graver interests than the rights of
property in legislating for female purity. The cases included in
the law had been determined by considerations of that kind; but the
sanctions by which the commands were buttressed had entirely changed
their character. The holiness of God and the dignity of man, the
consideration of what alone was worthy of a "son of Israel," have
taken the place of the coarser sanctions. In this way a possibility
of unlimited moral progress was secured, since the cause of purity
was indissolubly bound to the general and irresistible advance of
religious and moral enlightenment in the chosen people.
Moreover the personality of the woman was acknowledged in the
entire acquittal of the betrothed woman who had been exposed to
outrage in the country, where her cries could bring no help. In the
earliest times most probably the punishment of death would have
been inflicted equally in that case, since the husband's property
had been deteriorated to such a degree as to make it unworthy of
him. But in the Deuteronomic provision quite other things are drawn
into the estimate. The moral guilt of the person concerned is now
the decisive consideration. The woman has ceased to be a mere
chattel, and the full claims of her personality are in the way to
be recognised. These were great advances, and for these it is vain
to seek for other causes than the persistent upward pressure of the
Mosaic religion. The moral superiority of Israel at the time of the
conquest over the much more cultured Canaanites, as also over the
nomadic tribes to which they were more nearly related, is due, as
Stade says, ultimately to their religion; and no reader of the Old
Testament, in our time at least, can fail to see that their moral
progress in the land they conquered depended entirely upon the same
cause. At the Deuteronomic epoch purity had already been placed upon
a worthy basis, as a moral achievement of the first importance, and
impurity had taken its proper place as a degrading sin. But much
still remained to be done before these principles could be extended
into all domains of life equally.
How far they had penetrated in early times may perhaps best be seen
in the Deuteronomic references to divorce. Before Deuteronomy there
is no law of divorce, nor indeed is there any after it. We may
perhaps even say that there is in it not so much the statement of a
law of divorce, as a reference to custom which the writer wishes to
correct or reinforce in one particular respect only. Notwithstanding
the Jewish view, therefore, which finds in Deut. xxiv. 1-4 a divorce
law, we must adduce the passage as a new and striking proof of what
we have all along asserted, that neither Deuteronomy nor any other
of the legal codes can be taken as complete statements of what was
legally permitted or forbidden in Israel. Behind all of them there
is a vast mass of unwritten customary law, and divorce was doubtless
always determined by it. That this was the case will be seen at once
if the passage we are now concerned with be rightly translated. It
runs thus: "When a man taketh a wife and marrieth her, and it shall
be (if she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found in her
some unseemly thing) that he writeth her a bill of divorcement, and
giveth it into her hand, and sendeth her out of his house, and she
go forth out of his house and goeth and becometh the wife of another
man, and if the latter husband also hate her, and write her a bill
of divorcement, and give it in her hand and send her out of his
house, or if the latter husband die who took her to him to wife,
then her former husband who sent her away may not take her again to
be his wife after that she has permitted herself to be defiled."
All the passage provides for, therefore, is that a divorced woman
shall not be remarried to the divorcing man after she has been
married again, even though she be separated from her second husband
by divorce or death. There is consequently no law of divorce here
stated. There is merely a reference to a general law or custom by
which divorce was permitted for "any unseemly thing," and according
to which a chief wife at any rate could be divorced only by a "bill
of divorcement," and not by mere word of mouth, as is common in
many Eastern lands to-day. Mosaic influence may have procured this
last slight increase in rigour, and Deuteronomy certainly adds
three other restrictions, viz. that after remarriage a woman cannot
be again married to her first husband, and that pre-nuptial wrong
done to a woman by her husband, or a false accusation by him after
marriage, takes away his right of divorce altogether. But the woman
has no right of divorce at all, so firmly fixed throughout all Old
Testament time was the belief in the inferiority of women. On the
whole, therefore, divorce in Israel remained, after the law had
dealt with it, much on the level to which the tribal customs had
brought it. So far as the legislation dealt with it, it tended to
restriction; but when all is said it remains true that the Israelite
_law_ of divorce was in the main much what it would have been had
there been no revelation. But the _spirit_ of the religion of Yahweh
was against laxity in this matter, and this more rigorous feeling
finds expression in the evident distaste for the remarriage of a
divorced woman which is expressed in Deut. xxiv. 4. Remarriage is
not forbidden; but the woman who remarries is spoken of as one who
has "let herself be defiled." No such expression could have been
used, had not remarriage after divorce been looked upon as something
which detracted from perfect feminine purity. The legislator
evidently regarded it as the higher way for a divorced woman to
remain unmarried so long at least as the divorcing husband lived. If
she remained so, the possibility of reunion was always kept open,
and the law evidently looked upon the ultimate annulment of the
divorce as the course which was most consonant with the ideal of
marriage.
It is thus clearly seen how our Lord's statement (Matt. xix.
8)--"Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to
put away your wives, but from the beginning it hath not been so"--is
true.
And when we leave the law and come to history and prophecy, we
find this view to have been a prevalent one from early times.
In one of the earliest connected historical narratives, that of
J (Gen. ii. 24), the union of husband and wife is said to be so
peculiarly intimate that it makes them one body, so that separation
is equivalent to mutilation. And the prophets remain true to this
conception of marriage, as the one which fitted best into their
deeper and loftier views of morality. From Hosea onwards[119] they
represent the indissoluble bond between Yahweh and His people as a
marriage relation, founded on free choice and unchangeable love.
The possibility of divorce is no doubt often admitted, and the
conduct of Israel is represented as justifying that course. But the
prophetic message always is that the love of God will never permit
Him to put away His people; and the people are often addressed as
faithless and faint-hearted, because they yield to the temptation
of believing that He has cast them off (Isa. l. 1). Evidently,
therefore, the prophetic ideal of marriage was that it should be
indissoluble, that it should be founded upon free mutual love,
and that such a love should make it impossible for either husband
or wife to give the other up, however desperate the errors of the
guilty one might have been.
[119] Hosea ii. 19.
Perhaps the finest expression of this view occurs in Isa. liv., in
the exhortation addressed to exiled Israel and beginning "Sing, O
barren, thou that didst not bear." There the ideal Israel is urged
to lay aside all her fears with this assurance: "For thy Maker is
thine husband; Yahweh of Hosts is His name: and thy Redeemer, the
Holy One of Israel, the God of the whole earth shall He be called.
For Yahweh hath called thee as a woman forsaken and grieved in
spirit; how can a wife of youth be rejected? saith thy God." The
full meaning of this last touching question has been well brought
out by Prof. Cheyne (_Isaiah_, ii., p. 55): "Even many an earthly
husband (how much more then Yahweh!) cannot bear to see the misery
of his divorced wife, and therefore at length recalls her; and when
his wife is one who has been wooed and won in youth, how impossible
is it for her to be absolutely dismissed." The rising tide of
prophetic feeling on this subject culminates in the pathetic scene
depicted by Malachi, who in chap. ii. 12 ff. reproves his people
for their cruel and frivolous use of divorce. Drawn away by love of
idolatrous women, they had divorced their Hebrew wives; and these in
their misery crowded the Temple, covering the altar of Yahweh with
"tears and weeping and sobbing," till He could endure it no more. He
had been witness of the covenant made between each of these men and
the wife of his youth; yet they had broken this Divinely sanctioned
bond. He therefore warns them to take heed, "for Yahweh the God of
Israel saith, I hate putting away, and him who covers his garment
with violence." The Rabbinic interpreters, not being minded to give
up the privilege of divorce, have wrested these words into "for
Yahweh the God of Israel saith, If he hate her put her away." But,
so wrested, the words bring down the whole context in one ruin. They
are intelligible only if they denounce divorce, and in this sense
they must undoubtedly be taken.
There remains for consideration, however, a marriage which the
Deuteronomist permits, which seems to run counter to all the finer
feelings and instincts of his later time. It is dealt with in chap.
xxv. 5-10, and is notable because it is a clear breach of the
definite rule that a man should not marry his deceased brother's
wife. But it will be obvious at once that the permission of this
marriage stands upon quite a different footing from the prohibition.
It is permitted only in a special case for definite ends; and while
the sanction of the prohibition is the infliction of childlessness
(Lev. xx. 21), the man who refuses to enter upon marriage with his
deceased brother's wife is punished only by being put to shame by
her before the elders of his city. We have not here, therefore,
a law in the strict sense. It is only a recognition of a very
ancient custom which is not yet abolished, though evidently public
feeling was beginning to make light of the obligation. Its place
in the twenty-fifth chapter, away from the marriage laws (which
are given in xxi. 10 ff., xxii. 13 ff., and xxiv. 1-4), and among
duties of kindness, seems to hint this, and we may consequently
take the law as a concession. That the custom was ancient in the
time of Deuteronomy may be gathered from the fact that in Hebrew
there is a special technical term, _yibbēm_, for entering on such
a marriage. The probability is, indeed, that levirate marriage was
a pre-Mosaic custom connected with ancestor-worship. It certainly
is practised by many other races, _e.g._ the Hindus and Persians,
whose religions can be traced to that source. Under that system,
it was necessary that the male line of descent should be kept up
in order that the ancestral sacrifices might be continued, and to
bear the expense of this the property of the brother dying childless
was jealously preserved. In India, at present, both purposes are
served by adoption, either by the childless man or by the widow.
In earlier times, when fatherhood was to a large extent a merely
juridical relationship,[120] when, that is to say, it was a common
thing for a man to accept as his son any child born of women under
his control, whether he were the father or not, the same end was
also attained by this marriage.[121] Originating in this way, the
practice was carried over into the Israelite social life when it
changed its form, and the motives for it were then brought into
line with the new and higher religion. The motive of keeping alive
the name and memory of the childless man was substituted for that
of securing the continuance of his worship; and the purpose of
securing the permanence of property, landed property especially,
in each household, was substituted for that of supplying means for
the sacrifice. Later, the motive connected with the transmission
of property possibly became the main one. For, since the levirate
marriage came in, according to the strict wording of our passage,
whenever a man died without a son, whether he had daughters or
not, this marriage would seem to have been an alternative means of
keeping the property in the family to that of letting the daughters
inherit.[122] But the spirit of the higher religion, as well as
a more advanced civilisation, was unfavourable to it. The custom
evidently was withering when Deuteronomy was written, though in
Judaism it was not disallowed till post-Talmudic times.
[120] _The Primitive Family_, Starcke, p. 141.
[121] Indeed in India it was not only the widow of the childless man
who might bear him a son whose real father was a near relation, but
his childless wife also.--Maine, _Early Law_, p. 102.
[122] That the latter course may in some cases have been unpopular
with the sonless man's nearest kin is clear, since under it
the inheritance must be divided, and it might pass to remoter
connections, though not beyond the tribe. The nearer relations
would, therefore, probably prefer that their brother's property
should be kept intact and be transmitted with his name, and this
ancient custom, sanctioned and modified by Mosaism, would give them
that choice.
The impression, therefore, which the laws and customs regulating the
relations of men and women in Israel give to the candid student must
be pronounced to be a strangely mixed one. It would probably not be
too much to say that it is at first a deeply disappointing one. We
have been accustomed to fill all the Old Testament utterances on
this subject with the suffused light of Gospel precept and example,
till we have lost sight of the lower elements undeniably present in
the Old Testament laws and ideas concerning purity. But that is no
longer possible. Whether of enmity or of zeal for the truth, these
less worthy elements have been dragged forth into the broad light of
day, and in that light we are called upon to readjust our thoughts
so as to accept and account for them. Evidently at the beginning the
Israelite tribes accepted the uncivilised idea of woman. On that
as a basis, however, customs and laws regarding chastity, marriage
and divorce were adopted, which transcended and passed beyond that
fundamental idea. The moral complicity of woman, or her innocence,
in cases where her chastity had been attacked, came to be taken into
account. Polygamy, though never forbidden, received grievous wounds
from prophets and others of the sacred writers; and as marriage
with one became more and more the ideal, the higher teachers of the
people kept the indissolubleness of marriage before the public mind,
till Malachi denounced divorce in Yahweh's name. In regard to the
bars to marriage there was little change, probably, from the days
of Moses; but the old family rules were reinforced by a deep and
delicate regard for even the less palpable affections and relations
which grew up in the home.
The final attainment, therefore, was great and worthy enough; but
the cruder and less refined ideas, which had been inherited from
pre-Mosaic custom, always make themselves felt, and have even
dominated some of the laws. They dominated, even more, the practice
of the people and the theory of the scribes; so that on the very eve
of His coming who was to proclaim decisively the indissolubility
of marriage, the great Jewish schools were wrangling whether mere
caprice, or some immodesty only, could justify divorce. Nevertheless
the Decalogue, with its deep and broad command, culminating in
prohibition even of inward evil desire, had always had its own
influence. The teachings of the prophets, which breathe passionate
hatred of impurity, had taught all men of good-will in Israel
that the wrath of God surely burned against it. But the stamp of
imperfection was upon Old Testament teaching here as elsewhere. Like
the Messianic hope, like the future of Israel, like all Israel's
greatest destinies, the promise of a higher life in this respect was
darkened by the inconsistencies of general practice; and uncertainty
prevailed as to the direction in which men were to look for the
harmonious development of the higher potencies which were making
their presence felt. It was in them rather than in the law, in the
ideals rather than in the practice of the people, that the hidden
power was silently doing its regenerating work. The religion of
Yahweh in its central content, surrounded all laws and institutions
with an atmosphere which challenged and furthered growth of every
wholesome kind. The axe and hammer of the legislative builder was
rarely heard at work; but in the silence which seems to some so
barren, there slowly grew a fabric of moral and spiritual ideas and
aspirations, which needed only the coming of Christ to make it the
permanent home of all morally earnest souls.
With Him all that the past generations "had willed, or hoped, or
dreamed of good" came actually to exist. He made what had been
aspiration only the basis of an actual Kingdom of God. As one of its
primary moral foundations He laid down the radical indissolubility
of marriage, and made visible to all men the breadth of the law
given in the Decalogue by forbidding even wandering desires. In
doing this He completely surpassed all Old Testament teaching, and
set up a standard which Christian communities as such have held to
hitherto, but which from lack of elevation and earnestness they
seem inclined in these days to let slip. That such a standard was
ever set up was the work of a Divine revelation of a perfectly
unique kind, working through long ages of upward movement. Humanity
has been dragged upwards to it most unwillingly. Men have found
difficulty in living at that height, and nothing is easier than to
throw away all the gain of these many centuries. All that is needed
is a plunge or two downwards. But if ever these plunges are taken,
the long, slow effort upwards will only have to be begun again, if
family life is to be firmly established, and purity is to become a
permanent possession of men.