Here seems to be an illustration of cutting the covenant of blood-brotherhood, by sharing the life of a substitute human victim. It is much the same in the wild West as in the primitive East. So simple a matter as the clasping of hands in token of covenant fidelity, is explicable, in its universality, only as a vestige of the primitive custom of joining pierced hands in the covenant of blood-friendship. Hand-clasping is not, by any means, a universal, nor is it even the commonest, mode of friendly and fraternal salutation among primitive peoples. Prostrations, embracings, kissings, nose-rubbings, slappings of one’s own body, jumpings up and down, the snappings of one’s fingers, the blowing of one’s breath, and even the rolling upon one’s back, are all among the many methods of primitive man’s salutations and obeisances (See, e. g., Spencer’s _Principles of Sociology_, II., 16-19). But, even where hand clasping is unknown in salutation, it is recognized as a symbol of the closest friendship. Thus, for example, among tribes of North American Indians where nose-rubbing is the mode of salutation, there is, in their widely diffused sign language, the sign of clasped, or inter-locked, hands, as indicative of friendship and union. (_First An. Rep. of Bureau of Ethnol._, pp. 385 f., 521, 534 f.) So again, similarly, in Australia (_Ibid._, citation from Smith’s _Aborigines of Victoria_, II., 308). In the Society Islands, the clasping of hands marks the marriage union, and marks a loving union between two brothers in arms; although it has no place in ordinary greetings (Ellis’s _Polyn. Res._, II., 11, 492, 569). And so, again, in other primitive lands. There seems, indeed, to be a gleam of this thought in Job 17 : 3: “Give now a pledge, be surety for me with thyself; Who is there that will strike hands with me?” The Hebrew word _taq’a_[763] (תָּקַע) here translated “strike,” has also the meaning “to pierce” (Judg. 4 : 21) and “to blow through,” or “to drive through” (Num. 10 : 3); and Job’s question might be freely rendered; Who is there that will pierce [or that will clasp pierced] hands with me, in blood-friendship? Thus, suretyship grew out of blood-covenanting. Again, in Zechariah 13 : 6, where the prophet foretells the moral reformation of Judah, there is a seeming reference to the pierced hands of blood-friendship. When one is suspected of being a professional prophet, by certain marks of cuttings between his hands, he declares that these are marks of his blood-covenant with his friends. “And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds [these cuttings] between thine hands? Then he shall answer, [They are] these [cuttings] with which I was wounded [or stricken, or pierced] in the house of my friends [in the covenant of friendship].” If, indeed, the translation of the Revisers, “between thine arms,” were justified, the cuttings would still seem to be the cuttings of the blood-covenant (See pages 13, 45, _supra_).