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POSTSCRIPT.
In the Letter I have confined myself to authority to prove the right interpretation of Lev. xviii. 18; but it may be well here to add briefly the reasons why the marginal translation must be rejected as incorrect, and the version in the text of our Authorized Bible received as the only correct translation of the Hebrew words.
I. The translation, "Neither shalt thou take one wife to another," is contrary to the usage of the Hebrew language. When the words, "a woman to her sister," or in the masculine form, "a man to his brother," are used idiomatically to signify "one to another," they always have a plural antecedent of the things or persons spoken of.[1] Here is no such antecedent; consequently, here they cannot be so translated.[2]
- ↑ See all the instances, both masculine and feminine, given in Bush's commentary in loc.
- ↑ Professor Robinson gives this reason at length, in these words:—"The phrase, 'a woman to her sister,' does indeed occur no less than eight times elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, in the general meaning, 'one to another,' but only of inanimate objects in the feminine gender—viz., of the curtains, loops, and tenons of the tabernacle.—Exod. xxvi. 3, bis, 5, 6, 17; and of the wings of the living creatures, Ezek. i. 9, 23; iii. 13. The like phrase, 'a man to his brother,' occurs in all about twenty times; mostly of men, but also in a few instances of inanimate objects or insects, as Exod. xxv. 20; Joel ii. 8. But it is to be remarked, that in every such instance, this phrase, whether masculine or feminine, has a reciprocal distributive power—that is, a number of persons or things are said to do, or be so, one to another. A plural nominative invariably precedes, connected with a plural verb; and then the action or relation of this verb is by this phrase marked as reciprocal and mutual among the individuals comprised in the plural nominative. Thus: 'The children of Israel said one to another.' Exod. xiv. 15, and often. So Abraham and Lot 'separated themselves one from the other.' Gen. xiii. 11; Neh. iv. 19; Isa. ix. 19. In the Hebrew: 'They shall not spare one another.' Hag. ii. 22: 'And the horses and their riders shall come down, each by the sword of the other'—i.e., they shall destroy one another. So of the other examples. The only apparent exception as to form is Ezek. xxxviii. 21, 'Every man's sword shall be against his brother;' but here, too, the idea of multitude and of reciprocal and mutual action among the individuals is fully preserved. This, then, is the idiom; and to this idiom the passage in Lev. xviii. 18 has no relation. There is nothing distributive nor reciprocal implied in it. The phrase here refers only to the object of the verb; upon which object no
