As a mother, the Jewish woman must be honored by her children. As a daughter, she had rights and an inheritance. If the wife or daughter uttered rash and foolish vows, the husband or father had a right to disannul them, provided he did it from the day it came to his knowledge. Even the Gentile woman taken captive by a young Israelite warrior must have been surprised to receive treatment so strangely different from that received by captives in her own country, or even among modern nations who profess to be civilized. Her captor could not offer her an insult; she must be taken, not to a prison, but to his home, where she must neither be abused nor outraged, but treated with patient consideration; and she could not be taken, even as a wife, until a full month had elapsed, during which he might secure her affections or reconsider his determination. And if after her marriage she was discontented and made herself disagreeable, she could never again be held as a servant, but must be allowed to go free. Widows, who in heathen lands have been degraded and sometimes murdered or burned, were to be treated with the utmost tenderness. They shared in the tithes, and were admitted to the public festivities. They had a right to glean in the fields and gather up the forgotten sheaves, to gather which the owner was not allowed to go back. Injustice against widows was treated with fearful punishment. “Thou shalt not take the widow’s raiment to pledge” (Deut. xxiv, 17), was a benevolent law which can not be paralleled in any modern code. The command to lend to an Israelite in his poverty was imperative, but no pledge of raiment could be exacted from a widow. Thus in a variety of ways was the Lord pleased to manifest his kindness and compassion for the fatherless and the widow, and in consequence womanhood was honored and honorable in the Jewish nation, beyond anything known in the heathen world. From the vile and degrading orgies of heathenism the women of Israel were exempt. They feared the Lord, and at his hand received blessings and mercies without number. Thus it is seen that Hebrew women had rare privileges. They tower like desert palms above the women in pagan lands. In her home she is honored and respected. In India a woman eats her first and last meal with her husband on her wedding day. In the Hebrew home her children are like “olive plants” round her table. In China they may kill their little daughters by the thousands. She has legal rights in her Hebrew home. In all Mohammedan lands a man has the same power over the life of his wife that he has over the life of his horse.