III

"Awake, awake, Deborah,Awake, awake, utter a song."

"Awake, awake, Deborah,

Awake, awake, utter a song."

Deborah comes at the call of distress. The people are rapidly marshalled to her help. But some hold back:

"Why abodest thou among the sheepfolds,To hear the bleatings of the flocks?.........................................Gilead abode beyond JordanAnd why did Dan remain in ships?"

"Why abodest thou among the sheepfolds,

To hear the bleatings of the flocks?

.........................................

Gilead abode beyond Jordan

And why did Dan remain in ships?"

The battle is joined. Canaan is worsted before the followers of the woman of the hour.

"The stars in their courses fought against Sisera.The river Kishon swept them away,That ancient river, the river Kishon.O my soul, march on with strength."

"The stars in their courses fought against Sisera.

The river Kishon swept them away,

That ancient river, the river Kishon.

O my soul, march on with strength."

Then, turning upon the indifferent and laggard hosts that held back and refused to strike the blow for liberty, the poetess exclaims:

"Curse ye Meroz, said the angel of the Lord,Curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof,Because they came not to the help of the Lord,To the help of the Lord against the mighty."

"Curse ye Meroz, said the angel of the Lord,

Curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof,

Because they came not to the help of the Lord,

To the help of the Lord against the mighty."

Concerning the woman whose unfailing hand had struck the fatal blow, the poetess sings:

"Blessed above women shall Jael be,The wife of Heber the Kenite.Blessed shall she be above women in the tent."He asked waterAnd she gave him milk,She brought forth butter in a lordly dish."

"Blessed above women shall Jael be,

The wife of Heber the Kenite.

Blessed shall she be above women in the tent.

"He asked water

And she gave him milk,

She brought forth butter in a lordly dish."

The tent pin has pierced the temples of the oppressor of Israel:

"At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down,At her feet he bowed, he fell,When he bowed, he fell down--dead."

"At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down,

At her feet he bowed, he fell,

When he bowed, he fell down--dead."

Very dramatic do the lines become when, imagining the mother of Sisera waiting for her son to return victorious from the battle, and looking out through the lattice of her dwelling wondering at his long delay, she asks:

"Why is his chariot so long in coming,Why tarry the wheels of his chariots?"

"Why is his chariot so long in coming,

Why tarry the wheels of his chariots?"

But Sisera never returns to his maternal roof. For forty years did the people enjoy the freedom of Deborah's deliverance, the woman whose influence went out from "the sanctuary of the palm."

It is said of this period, commonly known as the Age of the Judges, that "every man did that which was right in his own eyes." This would be known in political theory as well as in practical government as nothing short of anarchy. And indeed, it was, for while each man did that which was right in his own eyes, the "right" of each was so frequently wrong, that social chaos reigned with almost unbroken sway. And while one woman of the period became a deliverer for four decades, for more than a century many women suffered untold misery for lack of unity among the tribes and leaders capable of bringing the life of the reign to rights.

It is often affirmed that sons more frequently inherit characteristics of their mothers, while to the daughters are bequeathed the traits of their fathers. An unnamed woman of this period of the political chaos, the wife of a certain Manoah, from the family of the Danites, was chosen to be the mother of a giant. Now, giants were rare in Israel, though in the earlier days of Palestinian occupation,Nephelim, and "the sons of Anak," are mentioned as among those enemies of the Hebrews. Their huge forms, it is written, were a menace to Israel's peace, and in comparison with these monsters her sons were said to be "as grass-hoppers." One day, as the story runs, an angel appears to this nameless, hitherto childless, wife of Manoah, and informs her that a son who is to be born, and nourished at her own bosom, is to have a remarkable history. She herself is to take care neither to drink wine nor any strong drink, for her son is to be dedicated to the abstemious life of the Nazarite. The woman is obedient to the angelic voice; and she with her husband offers up a burnt offering to Jehovah in grateful praise. The son is born. He is taught that no intoxicating draught shall enter his lips, nor should a razor touch his head, that his long-grown locks might speak outwardly of his vows. But wine is not the only temptation that is to beset this giant youth. The daughters of neighboring Philistia were to his eyes more than passing fair.

The influence of these young women, whose features, we may suppose, bore some characteristics of Grecian beauty,--as their progenitors had landed on the shores of Canaan from the island of Crete, gradually adopting a Semitic language and civilization,--was very potent over the heart of the muscular but susceptible young Hebrew. A love affair in which the long-haired Nazarite plays a prominent rôle will introduce us, somewhat at least, into woman's world of this disorganized period in the early life of Western Palestine at a day more than a thousand years before the Christian Era.

This affair of the heart was brought to light when one day the young man came in to tell his father and his mother that a fair damsel in Timnah, a city of the Philistines, had captured the very citadel of his being. Neither the protestations of his parents, nor their careful descanting upon the virtues of the daughters of his own people could move the young man. His heart was set. Neither parents at home nor the lion that met him on the way to secure his bride could thwart his firm-set purpose. Mother and father are for the moment forgotten, and the lion is torn asunder by the strong arms of this young giant. Every obstacle is surmounted and Delilah is in the arms of Samson.

Now, George Sand was doubtless correct in the rather prosaic remark: "It is not so easy to see through a woman as through a man." Samson did not quite penetrate the wiles of his lady love. Her beauty hid all else, and Samson fell. "The whisper of a beautiful woman," says Diana of Poitiers, "can be heard further than the loudest call of duty." The Nazarite vow, so strong and binding, became in Delilah's hands, as she held the shears, weaker than the withes she bound about the arms of the captured giant. Robert Burns has, in a characteristic fashion, given what might well be inscribed to Samson's memory:

"As Father Adam first was fooled,A case that's still too common,Here lies a man a woman ruledThe devil ruled the woman."

"As Father Adam first was fooled,

A case that's still too common,

Here lies a man a woman ruled

The devil ruled the woman."

Delilah, the Philistine, is to be contrasted with the typical Hebrew women, not only in the matter of feminine chastity for which they stand out among ancient women as preëminent, but also in that fidelity to husband and to native land which made the Hebrews the most stable and persistent race with which the world is acquainted.

In marked contrast with this witch of the Philistine plains, stands out the heroic daughter of Jephtha. Her purity, patriotism, and her deep respect for the sacredness of a religious oath, place her at the very opposite pole. "Great women," says Leigh Hunt, "belong to the history of self-sacrifice." If this be true, Jephtha's daughter must be enrolled among the great, as her heroic self-devotion shines through the dimness of ancient history. Her father was one of Israel's deliverers in the days of tribal division and political chaos. Returning from victory over the hostile Ammonites, Jephtha purposes to give, as sacrifice to Jehovah for bringing him success in arms, the first creature that comes forth to meet him as he turns his face homeward. It is his own daughter, his only child, going out to meet him with the timbrel and with dances. In his eyes a "very daughter of the gods, divinely tall, and most divinely fair." Will he break his vow? Will the young woman herself, this Hebrew Alcestis, shrink from the sacrifice? "My father, thou hast opened thy mouth unto the Lord, do unto me according to that which hath proceeded out of thy mouth."

For a woman to die childless in Israel was looked upon as a calamity, a mark of divine displeasure, and the daughter of Jephtha was a virgin. It is for this reason that she begged the coveted privilege of two months' respite that, with her maidens, she might withdraw to the neighboring mountain and there "bewail her virginity." At the end of the required period, returning to her father's house, she yields herself a sacrifice to the hasty but well-meant vow of her patriotic father. So deeply did her pure devotion to filial and patriotic ideals impress the daughters of Israel, that every year they went out to lament, four days, in honor of the daughter of Jephtha, the Gileadite, of whom N. P. Willis has drawn this appreciative picture:

"Now she who was to die, the calmest oneIn Israel at that hour, stood up aloneAnd waited for the sun to set. Her faceWas pale but very beautiful, her lipHad a more delicate outline and the tintWas deeper; but her countenance was likeThe majesty of angels!"

"Now she who was to die, the calmest one

In Israel at that hour, stood up alone

And waited for the sun to set. Her face

Was pale but very beautiful, her lip

Had a more delicate outline and the tint

Was deeper; but her countenance was like

The majesty of angels!"

Among no ancient people was the love of chastity in women so thorough and imperative. There is probably no better illustration of this fact than in the very ingenious method by which the men of Benjamin obtained their wives, at a time when total extinction of the tribe seemed to stare them in the face. An aged Levite, with his wife, who had been unfaithful to him, but by his efforts had been reclaimed and with him was returning home, is passing through the land of Benjamin. When they reach the city of Jebus, afterward named Jerusalem, the famous centre of Israel's later life, no one offered the customary hospitality, so the man and his wife were about to lodge in the street, a disgrace to the city, according to the common customs of entertainment. It is then a temporary resident of the city invites the homeless ones into his house. When the Benjamites saw them go in, they took the woman from the house and shamefully maltreated her, leaving her helpless upon the steps till morning. The Levite, incensed at the terrible crime, took the woman, cut her in pieces and sent the fragments throughout the tribes, telling the story of the deed of some of the sons of Benjamin. It is pronounced by all the worst blot upon the land since the sojourn in Egypt. The whole people is aroused to anger. They collect men of war from the tribes, and go up to battle against their brethren of Benjamin, till the entire tribe seems about to be exterminated. Especially was the destruction of their women grievous. What must be done when the dust of battle has rolled away? Shall a tribe be lost to Israel? This must not be. The sacred number must be preserved. How shall Benjamin obtain wives, for all the rest of Israel had made a solemn oath that they would never give their daughters to the sons of Benjamin because of this horrible crime which had been so peremptorily punished. At length, the elders of all the people devise a plan. Marriage with the Gentile peoples is, of course, not sanctioned, and all the tribes of Israel have refused to give their daughters to Benjamin--there is yet a way out of the dilemma. Some one remembers that every year at harvest time there is given a feast at Shiloh, where many Hebrew damsels come together to enjoy the religious and festal dances. It is agreed that the sons of Benjamin shall hide themselves in the adjacent vineyards, and while the maidens are dancing, each man is to run out, seize a wife and make his way swiftly homeward. But what say the fathers and brothers of the purloined damsels to this high-handed procedure of the young men of Benjamin? The elders agree to step in then and to advise all to acquiesce in quietness, for the people had not violated their oaths. Their daughters had not been given to Benjamin; they were stolen! So Benjamin obtained wives and the tribal existence was preserved by the same method in which Rome was repeopled at the expense of the Sabines.

Israel holds a high place among the people of the earth because of the prevalence of piety among its women. Religion is deeply grounded in the intuitions and feelings of the race, and derives force, at least, from the sense of dependence upon higher powers, as Schliermacher has taught. Since women are far truer in their intuitions and feelings than men and the sense of dependence is more highly developed, it is not strange that women everywhere are more religious than men. Among the holy women of old none can be accorded higher place than Hannah, the mother of Samuel.

One may at first be astonished that childlessness is so frequently mentioned as characteristic of women in the Scriptures. Among them, Sarah, Rebekah, Rachael, the unnamed wife of Manoah, Hannah, and Elisabeth,--mother of John the Forerunner,--are all familiar examples. But barrenness was probably not more common among the Hebrews than among other peoples. Only, in Israel, childlessness was accounted a calamity, if not a direct visitation of the Almighty. Hence, every pious woman wished to be released from the curse. The women themselves ridiculed and ever despised those who were not blessed with offspring. Besides, every man among the Hebrews wished to live in his descendants. To die without children was to be "cut off" from the face of the earth, and to be forgotten. There was a yearning to live forever in the land.

The contrast between the great emphasis which the Egyptian laid upon immortality, the large place it held not only in their religious teachings, but in the development of their civilization, as modern excavations have revealed it, and the lack of such emphasis in the writings of the Hebrew Scriptures has frequently been noticed, and by many greatly wondered at. But the Hebrews gave little thought to immortality in the next world. Their prophets spent most of their time stressing the importance of righteousness in this life, and the people emphasized the earthward side of immortality--that is, one's power to live forever in one's posterity.

The writer in the one hundred and twenty-eighth Psalm expressed the common Hebrew conception, as, in recounting the blessings of a truly happy man, he said: "Thou shalt eat the labour of thine hands: happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee. Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of thine house: thy children like olive plants round about thy table." Or as another psalmist, in the same spirit, prays: "That our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth; that our daughters may be as cornerstones, polished after the similitude of a palace." Many a time in the Hebrew Scriptures is this ideal prominent. For a psalmist again writes: "As arrows in the hand of a mighty man, so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them. They shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate." And when the prophet Zachariah foretells the coming glory of Jerusalem, which should supersede the then present distress, he gives as one item of blessing: "And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls, playing in the streets thereof."

It may therefore be readily surmised how a woman of Hannah's piety might feel in the thought of her condition of childlessness. And while the hardships of the barren woman in Israel could in no way compare with those of some other peoples, as in Australia, where the childless woman of the aborigines is driven out to a dire struggle for existence, yet the feeling that her God was, for some cause, against her and that her husband might in his secret heart despise her, must have been agony indeed. "The brain-woman," says Oliver Wendell Holmes, "never interests us like the heart-woman; white roses please us less than red." Hannah was preëminently a heart woman; the red blood of warm devotion coursed through her veins. When at length her prayers, made in bitterness of suffering, were answered, and heaven gave her a son, she named him Samuel, for, she said, "God hath heard," and dedicated him wholly to Jehovah, placing him at the service of the tabernacle. When the time came to wean the lad, she journeyed with him to Shiloh, the place of the sanctuary, with her offering, as the custom was, and "lent him" forever to Jehovah, her God.

"I think it must somewhere be written that the virtues of the mothers are occasionally visited upon their children, as well as the sins of the fathers." These words of Dickens suggest one of the occasions in which motherly virtues seem to have been visited upon the child, for Samuel became the earliest representative of a long line of prophets who, for many centuries, were the spiritual leaders of Israel. He was the father and founder of a "school of the prophets," the earliest theological seminary of which we have any record. The prayer of thanksgiving which the records say Hannah uttered when God blessed her with this precious gift of a son, influenced not only the famousMagnificatof Mary, when she was told of the birth of her greater Son, but also that of Zacharias when the birth of John the Baptist was predicted by the angel who talked with him in the temple.

History records several famous cases of friendship between men; that between David and Jonathan, and that between Damon and Pythias of Syracuse, have become proverbial. Fewer have been the friendship among women. Indeed, some have argued the impossibility of such friendships. But there is probably no more attractive story of womanly devotion in all the range of literature than that which tells of the love between Ruth and Naomi. The Book of Ruth is a beautiful idyll of early Hebrew life, and the heroine here stands the test. The scene is laid in the time when judges ruled in Israel; and in this, as in many instances in the early days of Palestine, an epoch was born out of a famine. Elimelech, with his wife, Naomi, and their two sons, Mahlon and Chilion, hunger-driven, set out for the land of Moab. Death lays its claim to the husband and father, and Naomi, with her boys, is left widowed in a strange land. Mahlon and Chilion, now grown to manhood, marry two daughters of Moab, by name Orpah and Ruth. A decade passes, and the sons themselves die. Bereaved and broken in spirit, Naomi at length turns her heart toward her native Judean hills. Finding her daughters-in-law inclined to follow her into the uncertainty of her future subsistence in her former home, Naomi counsels their return, each to her mother's house. "And they lifted up their voice and wept." Orpah reluctantly obeys, but Ruth cleaves to her mother-in-law, with those unsurpassed and memorable words, which the author of the book of Ruth throws into Hebrew measure:

"Intreat me not to leave thee,Or to return from following after thee;For whither thou goest, I will go;And where thou lodgest I will lodge;Thy people shall be my people,And thy God, my God.Where thou diest, will I die,And there will I be buried.The Lord do so to me, and more also,If aught but death part thee and me."

"Intreat me not to leave thee,

Or to return from following after thee;

For whither thou goest, I will go;

And where thou lodgest I will lodge;

Thy people shall be my people,

And thy God, my God.

Where thou diest, will I die,

And there will I be buried.

The Lord do so to me, and more also,

If aught but death part thee and me."

"Some women's faces are in their brightness a prophecy, and some in their sadness a history." As these two women stood with their faces set toward Palestine, upon one was written a history of sorrow; upon the other there fell the sunrise of a new day. In Ruth's determination to follow Naomi, even to death,--for "a woman can die for her friend as well as a Roman knight" when she has one, as Jeremy Taylor has declared,--the young widow of Moab began a new life, which was destined to make her the ancestress of Judah's royal house, the great grandmother of David the king.

As the poetic story of Ruth proceeds, it records several interesting ancient marriage customs among the people of Israel. In marked contrast with the Hindoo custom of condemning widows to a life of scarcely bearable hardships, the Hebrew law was so framed as to make widowhood as far as possible a temporary state. The custom of Levirate marriage enforced upon the brother or nearest of kin to the deceased husband the obligation of taking the widow of his brother to wife, in order that the brother might not be without heir and memory in the land. Ruth's deceased husband had rights in the ancestral estate, and the Hebrew law was careful that estates should not pass out of the hands of the original owners, if it were possible to prevent it. Ruth, the widow, suddenly appears at Bethlehem, the old home of her husband's people. It is the time of the barley harvest. Naomi plays the role of the scheming mother. She would have her beautiful young daughter-in-law find a husband among her kindred, that her lamented son might have an heir to honor his memory and that the portion of the estate which was Elimelech her husband's might be redeemed. The love plot sends Ruth into the field of Boaz, a wealthy farmer and near kinsman of Elimelech, to glean after the reapers, for no man was permitted by the law to deprive the poor of whatever pickings they might find when the reapers had passed. The quick success of the plot, the fascination that Boaz feels for the graceful but unknown woman, the command given the reapers to leave behind by purposeful accident a little more of the grain than was usual and be gracious to the girl; the invitation at mealtime to come and partake of the repast of parched corn with the reapers; the resolve of Boaz that should there be found no nearer kinsman--whose duty it would first be to take the young woman to wife--he himself would choose her. All these incidents pass in rapid and romantic succession. The observation is apparently true that "women are never stronger than when they arm themselves with their own weakness." Boaz at once pledged himself to be the damsel's friend and protector. The next of kin declines or waives his right to the young widow, for he does not care to redeem Elimelech's portion of the land, a necessary part of such a matrimonial transaction. Boaz therefore summons the young man, next of kin, who has declined to redeem the land of his deceased brother and raise up heirs for him, to appear at the gate of the city as the law required. Here ten elders sit to witness and make legal the transaction. The shoe of the refusing kinsman is taken from his foot, in the presence of the assembled people, and given to Boaz, symbolizing the relinquishment of all rights in the premises. Then follows the custom of spitting in the face of the "man with the loosed shoe," which became a term of reproach, and was applied to the man who refused to fulfil toward a deceased kinsman the duties of the Levirate marriage. Time passes and the aged Naomi, whose mother named her "winsome," forgets the bitterness of her later years as she holds in her arms the infant Obed, in whom she exultingly sees the pledge that the house of her son shall live on, and a prophecy that his name will become famous among his people. "And Obed begat Jesse and Jesse begat David," the king.

As we pass out of the unsettled age of the judges into the period when the commonwealth of Israel began to take definite shape, we come upon a corresponding change in the life of the Hebrew woman. The heroism in female virtue was perhaps no less frequent, but when the "heroic age" is behind us there is less opportunity for women to stand out in so strong a glare. And, indeed, all through this history the remark of Ruskin is close to the truth when he says: "Woman's function is a guiding, not a determining one." While epoch-making women occasionally appeared in the earlier period, they became fewer and fewer as the social order became more settled.

It was not till the days of the kings that the Mosaic law, in the broadest sense of the term, could exert any very potential influence over the life and conduct of the people. In a disorganized condition of society, of which it was said, "Every man did that which was right in his own eyes," to enforce Mosaic precepts would have been an impossibility, even had the people at large been acquainted with that law. Now, the law of Moses became one of the most powerful factors in giving to the women of Israel the high place they held in the commonwealth. The fifth of the "Ten Words"--which commands were the very nucleus about which the whole law was developed--reads: "Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." Thus, in this, the very first law of the Decalogue respecting duties to man, the duty of honoring the mother was made equally imperative with that of showing honor to the father. And it may be truly affirmed that Israel's remarkable permanence and persistency as a people may be traced to its domestic health, and that this vigorous domesticity is due largely to a better understanding of the true relation of the sexes than is discoverable among any other ancient nation.

That honor for parents makes for the permanence of a people both reason and history affirm. Any nation which honors its ancestry will hold tenaciously to ancestral ideals. Notwithstanding China's limitations in other directions, that nation, because of its worship of the fathers, has lived through many centuries and seen more powerful nations rise and fall.

The position of Israel as a separate people abides in strength because both father and mother have for ages been respected; and even though most of her sons and daughters are no longer "upon the land which the Lord their God gave them," they are still holding with wonderful firmness to the faith and ideals of their fathers. The Mosaic teachings concerning woman are not a little responsible for this remarkable state of racial longevity. The Hebrew woman's standing before the law gave her great advantage over her sisters of the other Semitic and Oriental peoples. The Mosaic law tended greatly to lessen the inequalities and mitigate the hardships of womankind. Even a woman captured in war was protected against the caprice of her captors. Under the law, her life was equally as precious as that of a man, and therefore the taking of a woman's life was punishable with the same severity as was the murder of a man. The law was especially solicitous of her welfare during the period of child bearing, and greatly lessened the sorrows and isolation of widowhood.

While divorces were given almost at the will of the man, yet he could not without formality at once eject the woman from his house. He must give her a "writing of divorcement," which set forth the fact that she had been his wife. Thus was she protected from subsequent suspicion that she had lived with a man unlawfully. Wives of bond-servants were to go out free with their husbands on the seventh year of service, unless the master himself had given the wife to his manservant, in which case the woman and her children still belonged to the master.

Daughters were allowed inheritance as well as sons, though in earlier times than those of the kings they did not inherit their father's property except there were no sons. Fathers were not allowed to discriminate against a firstborn son and pass the inheritance to another because the mother of the oldest child happened to have lost favor in his eyes.

Laws forbidding unchastity and vice were explicit and severe. One who had taken criminal advantage of another's daughter was to marry her and pay the father the usual dowry; if not, he was to be amerced fifty shekels of silver, the ordinary dowry of virgins. If a husband suspected his wife of being unfaithful to him, an elaborate, but not severe, ordeal was laid upon the woman, called "drinking the waters of jealousy." If she passed this examination successfully, her husband had no power further to punish her; if not, she was to suffer for her shame.

The widow and the fatherless were given special consideration under the law. In the feast days when the people's hearts were merry and they were rejoicing in the increase of their lands, the widow was not to be forgotten. In business transactions the people were to take heed that the widow suffer not injustice. Her garments could never be taken in pledge, and judges were enjoined to see that no violence was done to her rights. The fallen sheaf in the harvest field, the forgotten gleanings of the olive trees, the droppings of the vintage were not to be withheld from her.

How deep-seated this sense of obligation to the widow was in Israel may be discovered in the Book of Job. The friends who visited Job in his bewildering grief could find no more probable cause for so severe a divine chastisement upon the arch-sufferer than that Job had neglected the widow or taken her in pledge. One effect of the attitude of the customary law toward widows is discovered in a most signal way in the Second Book of Maccabees, which relates that in the period of which it tells, about B.C. 150, it was customary to lay up large sums of money in the temple treasury for the relief of widows and of fatherless children.

Such women as Miriam and Deborah were factors to be reckoned with in the political movements of their times. So it was with the prophetesses generally, for just as the great prophets dealt with the politics of state, so a prophetess could not always escape the problems of statesmanship to which her time might give birth. Both prophet and prophetess were looked upon as the chosen spokesmen for Jehovah. Because of this, Huldah acted as a sort of prime minister and adviser of both king and high priests in their Jehovistic reforms during the reign of Josiah.

That women generally took a deep interest in political matters may be perceived in the way in which the exploits of David appealed to the imaginations of the women when Saul's star was setting and David's appearing above the horizon; for young women went out to meet the coming hero and king with musical instruments, singing a song whose refrain was:

"Saul hath slain his thousands,David his tens of thousands."

"Saul hath slain his thousands,

David his tens of thousands."

The power of the feminine idea may be forcefully seen in the very common conception of the nation itself as a young woman. Both prophet and poet--and the prophets were usually poets--refer many times to the "daughter of Zion," meaning the people of Israel.

The prophet Jeremiah, foreseeing the coming destruction of the army of Babylon, says: "I have likened the daughter of Zion to a comely and delicate woman" who is about to be ravaged by the invader. And Isaiah, seeing the time at hand for the people to return from Babylonish exile, cries out: "Loose thyself, O captive daughter of Zion."

Affection for the native land was strong among the women as well as among the men. Lot's wife did not turn because of curiosity, but by reason of the strong attachment to locality; she looked back longingly toward her forsaken and burning home. The little Hebrew maid, torn by an invading army of Syrians from her native land, was quick to tell Naaman, the leper,--her new master,--of the virtues of her country and impelled him to seek out Elisha, the prophet of Israel.

The social position of Hebrew women was exceptionally free and independent. While a daughter's matrimonial plans were largely in the hands of father and brother, and wives were expected to look up to their husbands with all reverence, yet the recorded examples of independent action and influence among the women reveal a place of social equality and power, a lack of masculine restraint and domination that would do credit to more modern times.

Deborah accompanied, if she did not lead, the soldiers into battle and cheered them on to victory. The daughters of Shiloh, unaccompanied, were accustomed annually to attend festal dances in the vineyards of Benjamin. Women often went without escorts upon difficult and dangerous missions. Prophetesses frequently exerted not only a powerful but at times a decisive influence.

Marriage customs among the Hebrews in the days of the kings were not greatly different from those of other Oriental people of the same era. They differed but slightly from those of an earlier period. As a rule, marriage was not born out of impulse of the heart; though there were many marriages that surely ripened into love. If, as Jean Paul Richter says, "Nature sent woman into the world with a bridal dower of love," we have an explanation of the fact that there are many happy marriages in Israel, notwithstanding the fact that the arrangements continued to be largely in the hands of the parents. A daughter belonged to her father till of age: after this she could not be betrothed except by her own consent. Among the Hebrews betrothal was of the nature of an inviolable contract, and could be annulled only by divorce. If not in early days, yet in the later periods of Hebrew history there were writings of betrothal which set forth the mutual agreements between the parties. Later, there followed the marriage contract, also in writing. The amount paid for a maiden came to be at least two hundred denars, and just one-half as much for a widow. The father was to provide dowry according to his ability, and an orphan girl's dowry was bestowed by the community.

The marriage ceremony consisted of leading the bride from her father's house to that of the bridegroom. At which time there was a season of festivity and rejoicing. The marriage of a maiden usually occurred on Wednesday evening, that of a widow on Thursday. The "children of the bride chamber," the name by which the invited guests were called, made merry at the "marriage feast," which was always provided and lasted several days. As the procession passed along, going from the bride's to the bridegroom's house, people along the route might join in the festivities.

Grains of corn, nuts, and other edibles were the confetti tossed good-humoredly at the bridal pair. It became the custom, which still exists among Jews to-day, to break a glass bottle at Hymen's altar to indicate that the former life is no more, and that the bride has entered upon a new estate. Among the Hebrews the married woman was better protected in her rights than among most people of ancient times. While her property was usually under control of her husband, yet the dowry came to be considered her own, whether it be money, property, or jewels. A husband could not compel his wife to remove from the land of her fathers; and in many ways her individual rights were protected. Woman's inferior position in Greece was one element in the decline of that remarkable country; the defilement of the womanhood of Rome hastened the downfall of that city's power; but the protection given to Hebrew wifehood and widowhood became an element of great strength in the life of Israel.

The Greek attitude toward woman could probably be reflected in the old saying: "A woman who is never spoken of is praised most." In the period of Rome's decay women became immodestly conspicuous in the social and public functions of the day. As opposed to both these conditions the Hebrew, the wise man in the Proverbs, calls her a virtuous woman whom her husband can praise in the very gates.

Edersheim calls attention to a suggestive custom which sprung up from the slight difference of sound in the words for "find" in two passages of Scripture concerning women, both of which occur in the wisdom writings. The first of these reads: "Whoso findeth a wife, findeth a good thing." (Proverbs 18: 22.) The other, "I find more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and nets." Hence arose the habit of saying to a newly married man, "MazaorMoze?" "Have you found a 'good thing' or a 'bitter'?"

The tendency in Israel continued to restrict marriage to one's own tribe. The law of inheritance gave force to this custom. Those very near of kin were thus regarded as most eligible for wedlock. Jacob married two of his first cousins. A similar situation is seen in the marriage of Abraham and Sarah, of Isaac and Rebecca. Each husband, under specially trying circumstances, had claimed that his wife was his "sister," and so she was,--for in the patriarchal form of society all who belonged to the same family or clan were brother and sister,--but not in the strict sense which the word was intended to convey. While brothers and sisters of the whole blood might not marry, yet it would not have been regarded as altogether out of place for half-brothers and sisters to marry, especially if they had a different mother.

The story of Amnon and Tamar not only throws light upon this point, but illustrates how brother and sister by the same father as well as the same mother stood in a greatly different relation, the one to the other, in the matter of brotherly protection from that of half-brother and half-sister.

Amnon, son of David, fell desperately in love with his half-sister, David's daughter, Tamar. By a cunningly devised plot Amnon succeeded in bringing the beautiful damsel into his chamber. When Absalom, Tamar's brother and half-brother to Amnon, heard that his sister had thus been dealt with, he felt himself under obligation to defend her honor, by slaying his half-brother, which he did at a feast given during the season of sheep shearing, when the king's sons were all making merry.

The remark of Frances Power Cobbe is as true in Israel as elsewhere. "A man may build a castle or a palace, but poor creature! be he as wise as Solomon or as rich as Croesus, he cannot turn it into a home. No masculine mortal can do that. It is a woman, and only a woman,--a woman all by herself if she must, or prefers, without any man to help her,--who can turn a house into a home." It was the Hebrew wife and mother who largely gave to the homes of the Israelites their peculiar quality. But it may be said it was seldom her necessity or her preference to set up a home without the presence of some son of Israel.

The birth of children was always considered an occasion for rejoicing. Hebrew women were, as a rule, active and strong, and natural in their mode of life. There are but two cases in all the Hebrew Scriptures of death at the time of childbirth. One is that of Rachel, who, when upon a fatiguing journey with her husband and family, gave birth to Benjamin and died; the other is the wife of Phineas, who, when she heard the sad news of the victory of the Philistines over Israel, the capture of the Ark of Jehovah, of her father Eli's and her husband's death in the battle, gave birth to a child whom the nurse called Ichabod, for said she: "The glory is departed from Israel." In the naming of her children the Hebrew mother thus often revealed a poetic imagination that is of a high order. In this the Hebrew language was helpful, for, as one has remarked of it: "Every word is a picture."

The bright eyes and graceful form of the gazelle suggested the name for a daughter of Tabitha, of which Dorcas is the Greek. Zipporah was a little bird; Deborah, the busy bee; Esther, a star; Tamar, a palm tree; Zillah, a shadow; Sarah, the princess; Keturah, fragrance; Hadassah, the myrtle. Thus, some resemblance or poetic association suggested to the mother, either at the birth of the child, or because of some fact or incident of later experience, the name the little one was to bear. Often there is a tragedy or a mother's sorrowful life history crystallized in a name. When Rachel, Jacob's favored wife, brought forth her second son amidst the suffering which was to take away her life, the woman standing by tried to comfort her in the fact that another son had been born to bless her. The mother, with her last faint breath, replied: "Call his name Benoni (son of my sorrow)." But the father, unwilling thus to perpetuate his wife's anguish, called him Benjamin (son of my right hand). When Naomi, the widow, bereft of her husband and sons, returns to her native Bethlehem after many years of absence and of sorrow, the women came out to meet her, saying: "Is this Naomi?" She answered them: "Call me not Naomi (pleasant or winsome), call me Mara (bitter), for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me." So, among the Hebrews, names not only were given to both men and women at birth, but were frequently changed at some critical moment or because of some extraordinary experience in their life. Ordinarily, however, the favorite method of naming sons connected the boy in some way with his God; as when Hannah named her baby boy Samuel (God hath heard), and the name of Jacob (the supplanter), was changed to Israel (the prince of God). The girls seldom if ever bore names ending inel(God),ajah(Jehovah), but were called by some name of poetic association or natal experience. In no respect do the Hebrew mothers deserve greater praise than for their share in the upbringing of children. While the Jewish law placed the responsibility for the training of the Hebrew youth upon the father, a very large share of the responsibility fell upon the mother. With the Hebrew child, as with the children of all nations, it is impossible to say exactly where its education begins. The famous dictum: "If you would bring up a child in the way it should go, you must begin with its great-grandmother," finds special force among the Israelites. The women held an honored place in the education of the Jewish youth. Before the child could walk or could lisp a syllable, while still in its mother's arms, it would see her, as she passed from one room to another in the house, stop and touch themesusahon the doorpost, and then kiss the finger that had thus come in contact with the sacred words of the law encased there. The little one would easily learn to put out its own tiny finger and touch the aperture of the sacred box on the doorpost, and then press it to the baby lips.

Here was the first lesson in the law of its fathers. Very early the mother took her babe to the temple, and offered a sacrifice for it. Especially was the birth of the firstborn significant, for the firstborn son belonged to Jehovah, just as the firstborn of the herd and the flock and the first-fruits of the ground. These must be sacrificed on the altar of the Lord. But, happily for the mother heart, the firstborn son might be redeemed by the sacrifice of a lamb, or, if the mother were poor, by a pair of turtle-doves or two young pigeons. So the young mother brought her boy to the altar, made her offering, and took her babe back to her bosom.

From the time of offering onward, the mother greatly aided in shaping the life of the young Israelite. In this training the sacred Scriptures played an important part. The rabbis, however, never regarded women as becoming masters of the intricacies of the law. It was a saying among them that "Women are of a light mind." This was doubtless an appropriate remark, for it is certainly true that much of the rabbinic lore is heavy, almost beyond expression. There were not a few women, though, who were well versed in the Scriptures and also in rabbinical teaching. The synagogues were open to the women, where they occupied seats partitioned from those of the men. The attendance of women upon the great feasts, where much could be learned of custom, tradition, and teaching, also gave them opportunity to be instructed in the religion of their fathers. The Christian apostle Paul congratulated his young friend Timothy, that from a babe he had known the Hebrew Scriptures, which he had learned from his mother Eunice and his grandmother Lois. These are typical mothers of the higher order; and while probably only the richer homes owned a copy of the entire Bible, most families possessed at least one or more scrolls containing parts of the sacred writings.

The strength of motherly devotion was nowhere stronger than among the mothers of Israel. The spirit of Rizpah was the spirit of most of them. For when seven of her sons, the sons of Saul, had been slain and their bodies exposed, in the revolution which brought David to the throne, Rizpah took a piece of sackcloth, and, spreading it upon a rock near by, guarded the bodies of her offspring from the beginning of barley harvest till the early rains: that neither birds might molest them by day nor beasts of the field by night.

Home life among the Hebrews of Palestine to-day is marked by much that characterized that life ten or even twenty centuries ago; therefore a few facts concerning the home life in the Jerusalem of to-day will teach us much concerning that of the past. Probably nine-tenths of the native homes of Jerusalem are unpretentious, unattractive, uncomfortable, and show signs of poverty. The people have learned the fine art of economy in house room. Father, mother, and the multitude of little ones with which the Jewish home is usually blessed do not find it difficult to be tucked snugly away in two or three rooms. These give ample space for cooking, dining, sleeping, and performing the necessary labor of domestic life; besides furnishing opportunity for the hospitality for which the East is still justly noted. Call any time you will, on any business bent, and your hostess, if there be no servant, will, before you are permitted to mention the matter of your call, bring to you a glass of wine or perhaps a cup of coffee to refresh you. This, too, though the family be poor and it be deprivation for even this repast to be served to the guest. And though you know of the sacrifice the hostess makes, you must not refuse, lest you offend and wound the spirit of hospitality at its very heart.

The brunt of the work of the house falls, of course, upon the wife and mother. And it is doubtful if the place of the woman of the Palestine of to-day, even among the Jewish families, is as high as in the days of Israel's independence and power. While great respect is shown the father as head of the family, the mother is often scarcely more than the servant of her children. The sons especially do not give her the respect that was once her unquestioned due. The girl is from her birth looked upon and treated as inferior to her brothers. Patiently, all women of the Orient seem to bear this inferiority--a sort of penalty they must pay because Heaven made them women and not men. The young girl's matrimonial prospects are never in her own hands. She tamely submits to arrangements made for her, and, without test or questioning, assumes that her husband is her superior in all things.

Education among the girls of modern Palestine has been almost hopelessly neglected--except as teachers from England and America have been able to supply the deficiency or overcome the indifference. There is little wonder that home life is unattractive and the housekeeping miserable with so little possibility for the women to catch even a glimpse of the higher things that elevate and refine. Sometimes the Jewish girl is a wife as early as ten or twelve, and frequently at the age of fourteen. Thus home life is often rendered unhappy and divorce frequent. Physical, mental, and moral anguish follow in the wake of many of these early marriages. The young Jewish maiden's life is cheerless before her wedlock, as she is shut out from the joys of social gatherings; and, after marriage, cheerlessness gives way to impenetrable gloom. To say that there are no happy marriages would be wide of the mark. But divorces are sadly common among the Jews of Palestine to-day; the husband having almost unlimited power to break, under very slight provocation, the bond that binds him to his wife. The rabbi must of course confirm the dissolution of the bond, and thirty piasters is the price. The effect of this custom upon modern Jewish womanhood in the venerated land of Rebekah and Rachel is most unhappy.

Home life in ancient Israel was singularly sweet, pure, and industrious. The family was both the social and the religious unit. Idleness was considered a curse; and every child was taught to train his hands as well as to cultivate his heart.

The occupations of women were numerous and varied. Everywhere in the East needlework was and is highly prized. Mothers set their children at it at a very early age and great skill is often attained. The poorer women frequently earn with their own fingers the amount of their marriage portion; and in the hours of seclusion wives of the harem have always found embroidery and other forms of rich needlework a common pastime for the empty hours.

While working in skins, clay, and in metals was reserved for the men, the Hebrew women were very largely the producers of the food and the wearing apparel. They assisted in the cultivation of the fields, were the millers, grinding with their primitive stone mortar and pestle, the bakers, the weavers and spinners, making use of the hand spindle which may be seen in Syria and in Egypt to-day, though in the latter country the men shared with the women the skill in this handicraft. Among the Hebrews, as with the Greeks, Clotho is a woman.

We find the virtuous woman, as ideally drawn in the Book of Proverbs, to be one who finds good wool and flax and works willingly with her hands; distaff and spindle fly at her finger's bidding, so that her whole household sits doubly clothed in scarlet, and even fine linen is wrought in her house, and rich girdles go out to the merchantmen. She makes the field and vineyard turn out profitably and imports her food from afar. Whether as shepherdess, gleaner, or the maker of food stuffs or textiles, the Hebrew woman may justly hold a place of respect among her sex.

Among the amusements in which women specially engaged, those of music and dancing should be given first place. These often had a religious or semi-religious character. Women did not usually sit down, or rather recline, at banquets with the opposite sex. Their songs and dances were generally among themselves; dancing with the opposite sex was unknown. Instrumental music frequently accompanied their singing, a sort of tambourine or hand drum being a favorite instrument. Women played an important part also in mourning customs. Professional female mourners were hired to go up and down the highways, wailing piteously as part of the funeral rites. The prophet Nahum in predicting the overthrow of Nineveh uses a figure suggested by frequent observation of mourning: "Her maids shall lead her, as with the voice of doves, tabering upon their breasts."

The religious status of woman is one of the most significant facts in Israel's history. Passing out of the patriarchal stage of life, when the father was high priest in his home, into a more complex existence, it is not surprising that woman's place should become subordinated. Besides this, the Hebrew worshipped no goddesses, except in times of religious lapses. The women of Israel, however, are often found engaged in sacrifices, prayers, and active service to their God Jehovah.

While only the men were required to attend the annual feasts, the attendance of women in large numbers is often recorded. Their presence seems to be presupposed in the accounts of Hebrew worship; though for them the annual religious pilgrimages to Jerusalem were not obligatory.

In the temple worship they had a separate court, further removed from the inner precincts of the holy altar than the court of the men. And while they might join in the eating of some sacrificial meals, the sin offering was only to be partaken of by males. The official duties of the sanctuary were performed by men, but there were "serving women" who performed certain menial tasks about the sacred enclosure. When the temple ritual became elaborated, women were among the singers in the temple choirs, and they often aided in the music and by singing and dancing in times of great national rejoicing. And it is not without its suggestiveness that the Hebrews spoke of a divine revelation asBath Kol, or "daughter voice."

In the days when religious secretism became popular in Israel, and the people began to divide the exclusive adoration they had hitherto given to Jehovah and to worship other gods and even goddesses, women became prominent in idolatrous rites. Jezebel, who was a worshipper of the Phoenician goddess Ashtoreth, not only became the patron of the priests and puppets of the Baal cult, but endeavored to break down Jehovah worship by the destruction of his prophets. Maachah, the mother of King Asa of the southern kingdom of Judah, introduced the worship of the Assyrian goddess Astarte. Devotion to Ishtar, the chief goddess of Babylon became the fashion in Jerusalem in the days of Jeremiah the prophet, who tells of Hebrew women kneading dough and baking cakes in shape of the silvery moon in honor of the "queen of heaven," Ishtar, the moon goddess; or perhaps, as some hold, this was the worship of the planet Venus, for similar offerings were made in Arabia to the goddess Al-Uzza, who was represented by the star Venus; and the Athenians too, we are told, offered cakes of the shape of the full moon in honor of Artemis.

During the period of the Babylonish captivity, before the final fall of Jerusalem, Ezekiel rebukes the women of Jerusalem for worshipping Tammuz, the Babylonian Adonis, who had been taken to the under world; for, says the prophet, "There sat the women weeping for Tammuz," the departed husband of Ishtar.

There was never among the Israelites that reverence for women, akin to awe, which was manifested among the Teutonic tribes--a reverence which made women natural oracles. Doubtless in Israel, as everywhere, the instinctive, intuitive nature of women was discovered by the men of Israel as in other parts of the world. But women as oracles are isolated and exceptional. There were witches, who were under the ban. The highest spiritual influence and leadership in Israel was that of the prophet, for he was regarded as the mouthpiece of God, and, though of a far higher order, corresponded to the oracle among heathen peoples. Could a woman hold this place of dignity and power? The first person of this class mentioned in the literature of Israel is Miriam the prophetess. In the days of political confusion, before the time of the monarchy, Deborah the prophetess arose; and it was Huldah the prophetess who directed the reforms instituted by King Josiah, when the worship of Jehovah was purified, the temple repaired, and Mosaism restored to power. Just as there were false prophets in the days of religious decline, so there arose false prophetesses, like Noadiah, who attempted to thwart the reforms of Nehemiah and put his life in jeopardy. In the early days, the counterfeit of the prophetess, namely, the witch and sorceress, was not unknown in the land of Palestine. The law, however, was very stringent against such persons, though King Saul himself once went disguised to consult the Witch of Endor. Scripture says: "Thou shalt not suffer a sorceress to live." These are the words which were thought to give sanction to the burning of witches in New England a century or more ago.

In writing of the women in the days of the kings, one naturally turns to the days of David, the first who brought Israel to a state of political stability. The familiar saying, "The great men are not always wise," is well illustrated in the matrimonial experiences of King David. Many times was he married. Four of the wives of David are worthy of note. The first may be called his wife of youthful romance, Michal, Saul's daughter; the next, Abigail, the wife of manhood's admiration; the third, Bathsheba, the wife of lustful passion; the fourth, Maachah, the wife of old age's sorrow, for she bore unto him Absalom, the rebel. It was a giddy and dangerous height to which David the youth had suddenly arisen when the people were giving him, because of his prowess in slaying Goliath of Gath, greater honor than the king. Even the young Princess Michal could not disguise her admiration for the new and youthful hero. But he must slay one hundred Philistines if he is to possess Michal, says Saul, thinking David would lose his life in the attempt. But the young man slew two hundred, and claimed his bride. While her father was plotting the life of his young rival, Michal was plotting more skilfully to save it; for, overhearing her father give orders that her husband and lover should be slain, she let him down from the window, substituting for her absent lord an image resting in her bed, beneath the covering, in such wise as to support her statement to the messengers, who came to take him before Saul, that David was sick. Michal, having to make choice between her father and her husband, chose the latter; and though she was long separated from him while David warred with Saul, when at last David reigned he sent and recovered her, his first love, and Michal became his wife again.

But there were women of affairs in Israel, as well as women of sentiment and devotion. The story of Abigail, wife of Nabal, and how she became espoused to David, is a pleasing chapter of woman's power to excite the admiration of a manly heart by combining the grace and the tact of the womanly character with worldly wisdom and courage. It is one of the finest illustrations recorded of woman's independence in the land of the Hebrews. The story of Bathsheba's marriage to David is well known. Falling in love with Bathsheba's beautiful form, the king plotted the life of her husband, put him in the front rank in the battle, and, when he fell, took her to his own house as wife. And while Maachah became the mother of a son who was to be a very thorn in the heart of his father, the wickedness which brought about the marriage to Bathsheba became the cause of the bitterest expression of penitential anguish in all the range of literature. For an ancient tradition, embodied in the introduction to the fifty-first Psalm, affirms that that poem of heart-stinging grief was written when Nathan the prophet had shown King David the heinous blackness of his sin toward Uriah the Hittite.

Diplomatic marriages were not uncommon in the ancient commonwealth of Israel. They were not provided for in the law of Moses. Indeed, they were distinctly prohibited both by the genius of that law and by its positive enactments. And yet, no less influential a name than that of Solomon might have been quoted as giving sanction to this method of assuring national peace.

Even modern governments might be cited--not only of the East, but of the countries of Europe--as pernicious examples of the very ancient custom of cementing political friendship by the interchange of daughters. The Tel El Marna tablets present a number of illustrations of diplomatic correspondence between Oriental kings concerning daughters who had been given as wives to brother monarchs as a seal of friendship. Now this well-nigh universal custom of diplomatic marriages, though discouraged by the law of the Hebrews, spoken against by their prophets, and forbidden by the very genius of their religion, was not uncommon in the land of Israel. Saul, the first king, can scarcely be said to have welded the tribes into a stable and recognized nationality. David, his successor, was a warrior, who depended for his successes more upon military prowess than upon the skill of diplomacy. The third King of Israel fell heir to a nation made by the master hand of his father. The Hebrews were now recognized by contemporary peoples as a great nation, and, being respected for their power, peace reigned in Palestine. Solomon, a man of peaceful temperament, resolved to sway the sceptre and enhance his influence by the arts of diplomacy rather than by the instruments of war. Among these arts was that of knowing how to be wisely and numerously wed. He it was who introduced the harem, in the modern meaning of the word, into Palestine.

The living wives--in number seven hundred--that are said to have been possessed by King Solomon shows that the prayer made by the people when first they sought a king "like all the nations" had been answered. Here was the beginning, as some of the prophets thought, of Israel's subsequent disaster and final undoing as a kingdom. To them Jehovah was the one unifying cause, the great power that was to preserve their national integrity, their very existence as a people. To admit foreign wives into the palace, bringing with them their gods, and becoming perchance the mothers of their future kings was to defile the religion of the realm at its heart, to undermine the worship of Jehovah in the house of him who should be its main defender. In the life and reign of King Solomon we have the strange contradiction which is not infrequently discovered between theoretical wisdom and practical folly, between private life and public conduct. No man of ancient days appears to have understood woman better than Solomon, nor said more wise things concerning them. His dealing with the rival claimants of a certain baby, his wisdom in answering the hard questions of the Queen of Sheba have made his name famous. And yet it was his lack of practical wisdom in arranging his own household that sowed the seed of discord and dissolution which were later to cause great distress and at last disruption.

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