after the wife's death, has been uniformly rejected by our Church, I need hardly add one word more as to the translation itself. I will simply say that a sect of the Jews, the Karaites, read the 18th verse as meaning "thou shalt not add one wife to another,"—"a wife to her sister" being a common Hebraism for adding one thing to another, even as applied to inanimate things, and so translated in every other passage (about thirty times) where it occurs, and so rendered in our margin[1]. Many learned men have taken the same view. I am bound to do justice to Dr. M' Caul's research, and to say that he has produced a powerful body of evidence in favour of a contrary translation, and if the matter rested here, and was concluded by translation merely, then though a reverent man might hesitate in a matter of such deep importance, yet less scrupulous minds might be satisfied. There remains, however, even then a question to whom the words "in her lifetime" refer. If they refer to the wife's sister, then it is an absolute
- ↑ The objection that Polygamy could not have been prohibited because holy men of old had more than one wife at a time, is not to my mind conclusive. Abraham, Isaac, and Joseph had each but one wife at a time. The case of Abraham's concubine Hagar was peculiar, and certainly not favourably viewed either in the Old Testament, or by St. Paul in the New. Jacob was tricked into his first marriage. Elkanah's case was certainly one not attended with blessing. David and Solomon openly transgressed the distinct law against the King's multiplying wives. The subject, however, is too long for such a publication as the present.
