criminal intercourse. Yet there is found one exception. The 17th verse says, "Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of a woman and her daughter." Now, we apprehend, the law does not here forbid a man to have intercourse with a woman to whom he is married, but only to have intercourse with the daughter of his wife. Our translation is, we think, unfortunate. The original word is precisely the same as that rendered in other verses by the English word wife; and had it been so translated, the ambiguity would have been avoided. It would then have read: "Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of a wife and her daughter."
The Hebrew word is translated uxor, wife, both by the Septuagint and by the Vulgate; and Charles Thomson has very properly used the term wife, in his version of the Septuagint. The Hebrews understood the word to signify wife. See Selden De Lege Nat. et Gen. Lib. v. chap. i., p. 590.
Here, then, the phrase is used to express the lawful intercourse of married persons; and this intercourse is pronounced by the Supreme Lawgiver to be "honorable in all."
