ι8 HEBREW LIFE AND CUSTOM
thirty-six,1 but this is obviously impossible ; he cannot
therefore have been twenty-five years old at the time of his
accession, and is more likely to have been a mere child.2
Ahaziah, son of Jehoram of Judah, was bom when his
father was about eighteen,’ and Joash when his father was
sixteen.4 In any case, however, we can scarcely take the
age of royal princes at the time of their marriage as a sure
indication of the age at marriage of the average peasant.
In the fifth century b.c.s twenty was regarded as the lowest
age for military service.
Since in ordinary cases a man purchased his wife from
her father,6 the age of marriage would doubtless depend
upon the time when the prospective bridegroom could
raise the purchase money. Happily it is clear that marriage
was not so sordid a business as might appear from the
custom of buying the bride, and we have examples, not
only of married love,7 but also of love at first sight.8
In the matter of marriage generally there was evidently
a wide diversity of custom. While polygamy and concu-
binage were taken for granted in the narrative of the
Hebrew Bible,’ and the former at all events is definitely
recognized in law,10 there is no passage in the canonical
Prophets which so much as hints at the recognition of
such practices, and there are several which apparently
presuppose monogamy.1 ɪ Here as in much else we may
doubtless trace the higher ideal to the Mosaic Hebrews,
* 2 Kings xviii. 2, compared with xvi. 2t
* Cf. Isa. iii. 4, 12. 3 Compare 2 Kings viii. 16, 26.
4 2 Kings xi. 2i, compared with viii. 26. 5 See Num. i. 3 (P).
6 Cf. Gen. xxix. 18, 27 ; ɪ Sam. xviii. 25.
7 ɪ Sam. i. 8 ; Ezek. xxiv. ι6, ι8.
8 Gen. xxix. ɪɪ, 20; i Sam. xviii. 20, 2i.
’ Gen. xvi. ɪ, 2, xxix. 26,28, xxx. 3,4, 9, 10 ; ɪ Sam. i. 2 ; 2 Sam.
iii. 2, 5, 7.
*0 Deut. xxi. 15; Lev. xviii. 18. The prohibition in Lev. xviii. ι8
concerns only sisters.
“ Cf. Isa. viii. 3, liv. 5 ; Ezek. xxiv. 16-18; Hos. ii. ι6, 19; Mal.
ii. 14 ff.
MARRIAGE AND CONCUBINAGE ι9
and the lower to the Canaanite elements. It is some-
what remarkable, however, that nowhere is polygamy
regarded with more complacency than by certain late
writers,1 the author of the book of Esther, for example,
and the Chronicler.
In the more primitive strata of Hebrew literature we find
distinct traces of forms of marriage of which there is no evi-
dence at a later date. Thus the statement in connexion with
Adam and Eve that a man is to leave father and mother
and cleave to his wife and that they are to become one
flesh, or, as we should put it, blood relations,2 is directed
against an obsolescent custom of certain exogamous clans,
and it is implied, in the words of Robertson Smith, that
* the husband is conceived as adopted into his wife’s kin—
at any rate he goes to live with her people ’.3 This, which
from our point of view is not a very satisfactory arrange-
ment, is at least a great improvement on the sort of
marriage which Samson contracted, in which his wife re-
mained with her people and he visited her from time to
time.4 In this sort of marriage kinship was of necessity
reckoned not with the father’s but with the mother’s people;
and traces of mother kinship are found, even when the
form of marriage on which it was based was probably
obsolete, in the fact that a man could marry his half-sister
on his father’s side,® but not on his mother’s side. The Law
of Holiness, it is true, forbids marriage with the daughter
of either father or mother,6 but from the contradiction
between the marriage laws in Deuteronomy as compared
with the Law of Holiness,7 it may well be that the pro-
hibited degrees as stated in the latter were not at first
generally accepted. The transition from the reckoning of
’ Esther iɪ ; ɪ Chron. iii. 1-9, xiv. 3, xxviii. 5 ; 2 Chron. xi. 18-21,
xiii. 2i. ’ Gen. ii. 24.
3 W. Robertson Smith, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, p. 176.
« Judges xiv, xv. 1-6. 5 Gen. xx. 12 ; cf. 2 Sam. xiii. 13.
6 Lev. xviii. 9.
7 Deut. xxv. 5 ff., contrasted with Lev. xviii. ι6.