Note 92 — Chapter XXIX · THE RIGHT OF PROPERTY (concluded)
Reading edition
Deuteronomy, xxi. 17. Gans, op. cit. i. 148. Benzinger, in Cheyne and Black, Encyclopædia Biblica, iii. 2729. Mr. Jacobs suggests (Studies in Biblical Archæology, p. 49 sqq.) that ultimogeniture was once the rule in early Hebrew society, and was succeeded by primogeniture only when the Israelites exchanged their roving life for one in which sons became more stay-at-home.