Note (return) — Replies.

It appears from Our Lord's remarks, Matt. xix. 8., Mark x. 5., that the consuetudinary law of marriage was not wholly abrogated, but was accommodated to the Jews by the Mosaic code. To understand this subject, therefore, the ancient usages and existing practices must be weighed, as well from ancient authors as from modern travellers. Whence it appears that the contract of marriage, whereby a man received a wife in consideration of a certain sum of money paid to her father, contemplated progeny as its special object.[5] In default of an heir the Jew took a second wife, it being assumed that the physical defect was on the wife's part. If the second had no child he took a third, and in like default a fourth, which was the limit as understood by the rabbins, and is now the limit assigned by the Mahometan doctors. But the Mosaic law proceeded even beyond this, and allowed, on the husband's death, the right of Iboom, usually called the Levirate law, so that in case of there being no child, some one of the deceased's brothers had a right to take some one of the deceased's wives: and their progeny was deemed by the Mosaic code to be his deceased brother's, whose property indeed devolved in the line of such progeniture. It would appear that it was usual for the eldest brothers to marry, the younger brothers remaining single. This was a remnant, as modified by Moses, of the custom of polyandry, several brothers taking one wife,—a sort of necessary result of polygamy, since the number of males and females born is equal in all countries, within certain limits of variation. The best authorities on this subject are the Mishna, Selden, Du Halde, Niebuhr, Süsmilch, and Michälis, the last in Dr. Smith's translation, at the beginning of the 2nd volume.