All the Old Testament heroes, from Lamech downwards, were polygamists. Indeed, both polygamy and concubinage were practised by those Hebrew saints who were most distinguished by their piety, faith, and communion with Jahveh. Abraham not only took Hagar as a secondary wife, but turned her adrift in the wilderness when it suited his own goodwill and pleasure. Jacob, who lived under the special guidance of God, married two sisters at the same time, and each of them presented him with concubines. David, the man after God's own heart, had many wives and concubines (2 Samuel iii. 2-5, v. 13), while Solomon, who was wiser than all men, boasted of seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines (1 Kings xi. 5). Jahveh, while denouncing intermarriage with women of foreign races, never says a word against either polygamy or concubinage. On the contrary, both are sanctioned and regulated by the Mosaic law (Deut. xxi. 10-15). More than this, God himself is said to have married two sisters, Aholah and Aholibah (Ezekiel xxiii.), and although this is figurative, the figure would never have been used had the fact been considered sinful. A Hebrew father might sell his daughter to be a wife, concubine, or maid-servant to an Israelite, and her master might put her away if she pleased him not (Exodus xxi. 7-11). Women taken captives in war might be used as wives and dismissed at pleasure (Deut. xxi. 10-14). In the case of the Midianites only virgins were preserved. Moses indignantly asked, Have ye saved all the women alive? "Now therefore kill every male among the little ones and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that hath not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves." And the Lord took shares in this maiden tribute (Numb, xxxi.) Woman in the Bible is treated as merchandise. In Jacob's time she was bought by seven years' service, but in the time of the prophet Hosea she was valued only at fifteen pieces of silver and a homer and a half of barley. In the Decalogue it is prohibited to covet a man's wife on the same ground as his man slave, his maid slave, his ox, or his ass, or anything that is his. Her lord and master could say with Petruchio: She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house, My household stuff, my field, my barn, My horse, my ox, my ass, my anything.