V.

THE HOUSEHOLD.

34. Training a Wife.-The Oriental household is a complex institution. The bridegroom brings his bride to his mother's home. The theory is that the mother-in-law should train the girl-wife in her duties. Practically the young wife becomes the slave, doing the drudgery of the family, under the iron rule of the elder woman, who is the mistress. Thus, the household may usually comprise two or three generations, with children, grandchildren, and a retinue of servants and retainers. Abram could muster over three hundred, "born in his own house," to rescue his nephew Lot, taken captive by the predatory Eastern sheikhs.1 In fact, his household seems to have become a clan, or wandering tribe, not unlike the Bedouins now sweeping over the Arabian deserts.

35. Primitive Order.-Was this the primal order of human society? The old law-code of Babylonia reveals wonderfully complex social conditions long before the days of Abram. It is held, by recent scholars, that this code points to a single pair as the normal early relation of the sexes and the foundation of the family. Speculative and rationalistic theorists of the agnostic school of sociologists, I am aware, assume that promiscuous intercourse of the sexes was the primal relation, and that monogamy was a late development of the human race. This is pure assumption and unproved. It is contrary to some facts which they themselves advance to prove their evolutionary theory of steady progress rather than degeneracy in the race. For if this is so, birds have developed further than man. the higher forms of bird life have advanced beyond the promiscuous stage, many of them pairing at least for the year. It would be difficult to prove that either Darwin or Herbert 2 Code of Hammurabi, see 22 141, 148, 149, 162, 163.

1 Gen. 14: 14.

For

Spencer ventured flatly to deny monogamy as the starting-point in the human family. The teachings of Christ seem emphatic on this point. The account of the first human pair in innocency in Eden shows clearly the Bible ideal of the family.

36. The Social Unit.-But whatever view is held respecting the relation of the sexes in the primal stage, there is now substantial agreement that in the moral progress of the race the family, where there is one wife only, is the social unit, and the comparatively even balance of the sexes, so far as known throughout the civilized world, seems to put natural law against polygamy and on the side of one wife only as nature's teaching, and in harmony with the divine ideal in human society.

That polygamy and concubinage widely prevail now, and have existed from time immemorial in many Oriental lands, may account, in part, for the degradation of woman, that being a penalty for the infraction of nature's law. These do not disprove the law, for nearly every law in nature's long code is frequently broken, and the penalties follow, though they are not always recognized as penalties. Nor are they completely deterrent when recognized; the law, however, is not thereby abrogated.

37. Childless.-Children, especially sons, are, and have been, ever the delight of Oriental families. The greatest calamity the Oriental can conceive of is to have a childless household.1 It is counted a mark of the withholding of God's favor. The birth of a girl, however, is not an occasion of rejoicing. Natives avoid alluding to it in public or to the father.

Childlessness was, and is, a frequent excuse with Oriental people for taking a second wife or a concubine, who seems to be regarded as a wife for a limited time. Thus, Lane tells of his exclusion from a certain quarter of Cairo (where he had engaged a room) because he was unmarried. He was urged by the sheikh to marry a young widow for a stipulated time, with the express understanding that he should divorce her at the end of the period. Yet he says it was "not very common for

1 Gen. 21: 6, 7; 30: 1, 2, 23; 1 Sam. 1 : II.

? Modern Egyptians, pp. 194, 225.

an Egyptian to have more than one wife or a concubine slave; the law (Moslem) allows him four wives." In ancient Egypt, according to Wilkinson, the practice, however, was unknown. Malcolm tells of similar limited marriages as prevailing or allowed in Persia.1 The women who consent to such marriages are held in good repute, says Dr. Perkins. Polygamy existed in the patriarchal period, but Noah seems to have had but one wife.2

Childlessness was the plea made to persuade Abram and Jacob each to take more than one woman as wife. The earlier code of Babylonia permitted the custom, and the law of Moses sought to regulate and mitigate the obvious evils of the custom. In fact, it is held that both codes disapprove of it as a proper or ideal state, as shown by passages similar to Lev. 18 : 18.

38. Divorce.-In like manner, the law of Moses restricted and sought to check divorce by requiring the husband to "write her a bill of divorcement."3 Christ condemned the custom of divorce prevalent in his day, based upon the Mosaic statute, and limited it to conjugal infidelity.*

Childlessness was also a ground for divorce under the Sumarian law, and in the code of old Babylonia. But the husband must pay to the divorced wife her marriage portion and the bride-price. Illness was not a ground for divorce under that old code. It required the husband to maintain her, but he might take a second wife. The wife could not get a divorce from her husband except through the courts in patriarchal times, and in non-Jewish lands, but a man could often put away a wife by a word. The most stringent of old codes, in other nations, shows how far in advance was the Hebrew legislation over that among heathen peoples. Even now in Moslem lands a woman may be divorced without legal process, at the freak of her husband, but she can carry away undisputed any amount of gold, silver, jewels, precious stones, or apparel that she has loaded on her person. So she usually wears all her treasures

1 Van Lennep, p. 555.

Deut. 24: 1–3.

1 Gen. 4: 19; 7: 7.

4 Matt. 5 32.

and wealth on her person, not knowing when the fateful word may be spoken. The men likewise had their wealth in portable gems or treasures. This throws light on the remarkable story of Gideon and his ephod.1

While the Oriental household now generally comprises so many persons-sons, sons' sons, and son's sons' sons, children and servants, all under one head or "father"—the early and primal condition implies separation from the patriarchal home, the new couple making a household for themselves. The old record runs: "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh." 2 Whatever may be or have been the customs, this is the Bible ideal.

VI.

ORIENTAL CHILDREN.

39. Joy Over Children.-Orientals still have a great desire for large families. The birth of a son is the occasion for an outburst of rejoicing and congratulations from all the neighbors and friends, and often of a feast. Servants and members of the household vie with one another in being the first to announce the news to the father, with more or less formality and ceremony, and are sure to be rewarded by some customary or special gift.

2

But the birth of a daughter no one wishes to mention. Every one avoids telling the father of it. The strong contrast of the prophet in view of this custom increases to a startling degree the force of his expression.1 Yet to have no children was the bitterest reproach upon the wife. So Rachel rejoiced when Joseph was born, for "God hath taken away my reproach. Elizabeth gives the same reason for abounding joy. "The Lord . . . take away my reproach among men."3 When the first son is born into the family, so great is the joy and so notable is the event, it is heralded through the community. 40. The Son-heir.-One reason for rejoicing when a son is born, and for no congratulation over the birth of a daughter, is because the Oriental expects a son to be a help to his parents; to follow the father's profession or trade, to continue the family name; when married, to live in the same home and keep the inheritance within the family. But a daughter is separated from her parents, and when married goes to build up a house of another, and takes her inheritance away from her father's household to another's. The Oriental sentiment for large families and pride in long continuance of lines of posterity amount almost to a passion. It is forcibly illustrated in the

1 Jer. 20: 15.

2 Gen. 30: 23.

Luke 1:25.