32
"constrained to give up the argument drawn from the Hebrew idiom, and to admit that the connexion here forbidden is marriage with a wife's sister." And again, on p. 196, col. i. : "If, then, polygamy is not forbidden in this passage, what is? We answer, that it was designed to discountenance the practice, which is implied in the plain and literal terms of the text the taking simultaneously of two sisters to wife." (Comm. in Levit. New York, 1857.)
The latest, and one of the most careful and learned commentators on Leviticus, Dr. Knobel (Leipzig, 1858), says on xviii. 18: "Endlich soil man nicht nehmen ein Weib zu ihrer Schwester, urn zu entblössen ihre Scham bei ihrem Leben, d. i., nicht die Schwester seines Weibes, so lange das letztere noch lebet, zur Frau nehmen, nicht zwei Schwestern zugleich zu Weibern haben. . . . Eine nach der andern, nach dem Tode der andern zu heirathen wird nicht verboten." [1]
I could add the names of other distinguished interpreters of the Old Testament, whose opinions I know, but have confined myself to those whose works I have myself inspected, omitting all to which I have not had immediate access. But these, comprising Romanists and Protestants, Lutherans and Calvinists, Orthodox and Rationalist, as well as learned Jews, men of different countries and habits of thought, are sufficient to show that many, competent to form a just judgment, have rejected the new version, and adhered to the ancient, as the obvious and correct translation of the sacred original.
Having shown that the interpretation received in the Church for more than 1,500 years, is also that adopted
- ↑ "Finally, a man shall not take a wife to her sister, to uncover her shame during her life, i. e., not to marry the sister of his wife, as long as the latter is still alive, not to have two sisters as wives at once. ... To marry one after the other, after the death of the other, is not forbidden."
