WOMEN UNDER POLYGAMY
Church to readers under thirty years of age, on account of its amatory character. The outspokenness of certain passages merely reveals the ordinary Eastern conception of women and love.
The fair damsel of Shulam, who speaks in the Song of Solomon, is an instance of a Hebrew woman's recoil against enforced polygamy. She had been captured and taken to the king's harem, and a place of honour was offered to her. But the Shulamite maid loved a shepherd youth of her native country. The monarch tries all the arts of wooing, and promises precious gifts; but the girl bears in her heart a deep love for her shepherd swain. Even when the king offers to make her the chiefest of "three score queens and four score concubines and virgins without number," the daughter of Shulam still pines for her own land and the caresses of her chosen lover.
In this story we have one of the few Old Testament instances of a preference for the single love-union, and an illustration of the constancy of a woman to her humble suitor, whom she values more than all the privileges and delights of the royal harem.
Four wives were permitted to each man by the old Hebrew teachers. A king might marry eighteen women. Divorce was easily obtained by men, one of the grounds being ugliness in a wife.
Among the Jews professing the faith of Islam,
53
