Bible -- Commentaries; Bible -- Feminist criticism; Women in the Bible
9 If For every one that curseth his father or his mother shall be
surely put to death: he hath cursed his father or his mother; his blood
shall be upon him.
21 And if a man shall take his brother's wife, it is an unclean thing:
he hath uncovered his brother's nakedness; they shall be childless.
27 A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a
wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with
stones; their blood shall be upon them.
Clarke remarks that all language that tends to lessen respect for
father or mother, is included in this judgment. In this chapter we have
still further directions for race and family purity. I suppose in the
21st verse we have that stumbling-block in the British Parliament
whenever the deceased wife's sister's bill comes up for passage. Here,
too, those who in times past have persecuted witches, will find
justification for their cruelties. The actors in one of the blackest
pages in human history, claim Scripture authority for their infernal
deeds. Far into the eighteenth century in England, the clergy dragged
innocent women into the courts as witches, and learned judges
pronounced on them the sentence of torture and death. The chapter on
witchcraft in Lecky's History of Rationalism, contains the most
heartrending facts in human history. It is unsafe to put unquestioned
confidence in all the vagaries of mortal man. While women were
tortured, drowned and burned by the thousands, scarce one wizard to a
hundred was ever condemned. The marked distinction in the treatment of
the sexes, all through the Jewish dispensation, is curious and
depressing, especially as we see the trail of the serpent all through
history, wherever their form of religion has made its impress. In the
old common law of our Saxon fathers, the Jewish code is essentially
reproduced. This same distinction of sex appears in our own day. One
code of morals for men, another for women. All the opportunities and
advantages of life for education, self-support and self-development
freely accorded boys, have, in a small measure, been reluctantly
conceded to women after long and persevering struggles.
Leviticus xxii.
12 If the priest's daughter also be married unto a stranger, she may
not eat of an offering of the holy things.
13 But if the priest's daughter be a widow, or divorced, and have no
child, and is returned unto her father's house, as in her youth, she
shall eat of her father's meat: but there shall no stranger eat thereof.
These restrictions on the priests' daughters would never be tolerated
by the priests' sons should they marry strangers. The individuality of
a woman, the little she ever possessed, is obliterated by marriage.
Leviticus xxiv.
10 And the son of an Israelitish woman, whose father was an
Egyptian, went out among the children of Israel: and this son of the
Israelitish woman and a man of Israel strove together in the camp;
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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