does Dr. Kalisch bring forward to establish his interpolation theory? Let us hear:—" We appeal," he remarks, "to every one familiar with the Hebrew idiom, whether the term in her life time, בחייה which chiefly causes the difficulty, does not read like an addition hardly standing in its right place. In the Koran, the coresponding command is simply, 'you are also forbidden to take to wife two sisters.'" (Com. on Lev. p. 364.)
To these objections of Dr. Kalisch, we answer, if the word בחייה, in her life time," did exclusively relate to the first clause of the verse, its position at the end of the verse would certainly be somewhat isolated- -though there are other examples where the words do not exactly follow in their logical order[1]—but here it refers evidently to all the different constituent parts of the verse, namely, "Thou shalt not take a wife to her sister in her life time, to cause enmity in her life time, to uncover her nakedness, beside her, in her life time," and therefore the word unquestionably stands in its right place. We have precisely a similar construction in Gen. vii. 13: "In the self same day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japhath, the sons of Noah, and Noah's wife, and the three wives of his sons, with them, into the ark." Here the words "into the ark" are rightly placed at the end of the verse, since they do not only refer to Noah, but to all that are mentioned in the verse who came with him.
As regards the corresponding command in the Koran, where the words, "in her life time,' do not occur, we may merely say, that the laws laid down in chapter iv. are by no means a literal transcript of the
- ↑ Compare (in the Hebrew Bible) Gen. xli. 57: "And all the countries came into Egypt to buy corn unto Joseph," instead of "into Egypt to Joseph to buy corn," as given in the Eng. vers. Compare also Lev. xviii. 5; Isa. xxxix. 6.
