The twenty-second chapter of Deuteronomy relates the law concerning a portion of the relations incident to a married state; but we find the idea always advanced in the singular number. There was no direction concerning his _wives_. Had the decalogue announced, “Thou shalt have but one wife,” the language of these explanations and directions, to be in unison therewith, need not have been changed. The subject is continued through the first five verses of the twenty-fourth chapter, but we find the idea _wife_ still expressed in the same careful language, conveying the idea, as appropriated to one man, in the person of one female only. The term “new wife,” here used, does not imply that she is an addition to others in like condition, but that her condition of being a wife is _new_, as is most clearly shown by the word חֲדָשָׁ֔ה _hadasha_, from which it is translated. The sentiment or condition explained in this passage is illustrated by our Saviour in _Luke_ xiv. 20: “I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come,”—that is, until the expiration of the year,—having reference to this very passage in Deuteronomy for authority. But this passage is made very plain by a direct command of God: see _Deut._ xx. 7: “And what man is there that hath betrothed a wife, and hath not taken her? Let him go and return unto his house, lest he die in the battle, and another man take her.” But the institution of marriage was established, before the fall of man, by the appropriation of one woman to one man. Now, that this fact, this example, stands as a command, is clear from the words of Jesus Christ, in _Matt._ xix. 4, 5: “And he answered and said, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning, made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother and shall cleave unto his wife; and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore, they are no more twain, but one flesh.” We trust, “at this age of the world,” there is a sufficiency of light, among even the most unlearned of us, whereby we shall be enabled to interpret these scriptures, not to license polygamy, but to discountenance and forbid it, by showing that they teach a contrary doctrine. But, perhaps, the explanation is more decided in _Mark_ x. 8–11: And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh.” “And he saith unto them, whoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her.” Surely, if a man commit adultery by marrying the second when he has turned off the previous, it may be a stronger case of adultery to marry a second wife _without turning off the first one_! We think St. Paul interprets the Scriptures in the old-fashioned way, _Eph._ v. 31: “For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they _two_ shall be _one flesh_.”