Note 8 — CHAP. II.

The Hebrew words in the text are: בקרת תהיה the Greek words for these, in the LXX. are, ἐπισκοπὴ ἔσται αὐτοῖς.—As I do not understand Hebrew, I shall not try to make any remark on the above Hebrew words, but trust for that to the sagaciousness of the reader; however, with respect to the Greek words that follow them, I think I should be greatly wanting in my duty to the Public, in my capacity of Commentator, if I did not communicate to them an observation with which those words supply me, which is, that there is a material error in the passage above recited, in our common translation of the Bible; for the Reader may see that the punishment of scourging, in case of fornication, is confined, in that passage, to the Woman solely; whereas the word αὐτοῖς, which is a plural word, shews that both the Man and Woman were to be punished alike; and instead of she shall, as our Bible is worded in that passage, it ought to be, they shall be scourged. This remark on the above singular alteration of the true sense of the Bible, to the prejudice of Women (supposing it is not an error of the press) naturally leads me to take notice here of the unjust disposition of Men towards Women in general, in all that relates to the mutual intercourse of the Sexes: a disposition that has induced them in modern times to impose humiliating penalties on such Women as are guilty of sins which the Men themselves commit with the utmost freedom, and thus to establish a mortifying difference, in that respect, between the two sexes, instead of that amiable equality which obtained between them under the Jewish law, according to which the Man and Woman who had committed together the sin of Fornication, were lashed with equal numbers of stripes.