As another objection against the adoption of the marginal reading we may urge, that Moses, in the chapter, speaks of affinity and consanguinity, and it is therefore reasonable to conclude that he speaks in our verse of one sister to another, and not of one woman to another. The rendering of the text in our authorized version, "a wife to her sister," stands then so far yet unshaken.
But nothing tends to sharpen the mind so much as difficulties, for the greater these are, the more active is the mind to find a way to overcome them. This natural propensity of overcoming obstacles is more or less inherent in every person, and exhibits itself in every walk of life, in the pursuit of science as well as in other occupations. Difficult questions naturally call forth a variety of opinions, and the more abstuse the point the greater the scope for the exercise of ingenuity. Hence, one can hardly be astonished at the strange theories sometime met "with in the endeavour to solve some knotty questions.
The Old Testament, from its antiquity, its idiomatic and peculiar expressions, its figurative language, its reference to ancient customs and practices, and not least, from its language being now a dead language, offers a large and fertile field to commentators and critics for the display of their acumen and the exercise of their ingenuity. That these qualities have not been allowed to lie dormant, will be found sufficiently evident on reference to different critical commentaries on the Bible. It is to one of such ingenious renderings that I now wish to draw the reader's attention. Dr. Pusey, whose name is no doubt familiar to most of the readers, has endeavoured to surmount the difficulty by rendering our verse: "Thou shalt not take a woman besides her sister as long as she (the former) lives," by which we are to understand that a man should never marry a second sister. But we may well
