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(according to Grotius) allowed polygamy. But there is no necessity for disputing the authority of these precepts, since they impliedly sanction the very marriage in dispute. The whole question turns on the eighteenth verse:
"Neither shalt thou take a wife to her sister, to vex her, to uncover her nakedness, beside the other in her life time"—Leviticus, chap, xviii. ver. 18.
Upon this, Dr. Dodd's commentary is:
"Custom and practice are the best interpreters of law; and it appearing from these that polygamy was allowed amongst the Jews, as well as from Deut. xxi. 15, &c. xvii. 17, it is plain that the marginal interpretation (viz. one wife to another) cannot be true, but that the marriage of two sisters at the same time is here prohibited; and Grotius justly observes, that as the feuds and animosities of brothers are, of all others, the most keen; so are, generally, the jealousies and emulations between sisters. Therefore, the historian used the strong expression to vex her: but though a man might not marry two sisters together, it seems a natural conclusion, from the phrase in her lifetime, that he might marry the sister of his deceased wife: and thus, we learn from Selden, the Jews in general understood it."
Adam Clarke says:
