tact with animals, with his flocks, with plant life, with the soil, with streams, and rivers. The body as a "physical" thing in contradistinction to the mind was never made an object of attention in the Old Testament literature. All life was organized by a controlling moral tradition. David's dancing before Yahweh as the Ark was brought to Zion (II Sam. 6: 14) shows us how thoroughly a moral and religious tradition organized practically the entire field of conduct among the early Hebrew people.

Life after death was to the ancient Hebrews and Greeks a pale shadowy continuation of the bodily life. There is a bodily existence as is seen in the story of the Witch of Endor calling up the departed Samuel. But as the sentiment in the older strata of the Psalms makes clear, life in sheol after the death of the physical body is an existence continued without joy and happiness.

CHAPTER III

THE ANCIENT HEBREW FAMILY

In Genesis 16 we are told that when Sarah bore Abraham no sons she gave unto her husband Hagar her Egyptian maid that he might have a son through her. Sarah regarded herself as dishonored by her barrenness and Hagar was so exalted when she conceived that she despised Sarah.

When later Abraham was informed that Sarah herself was to bear a son he laughed and fell upon his face. Sarah was to be blessed and to become a mother of a nation (Gen. 17: 15-17).

The same ideal is repeated in the story of Rachel and Leah. Rachel is the favorite but her barrenness estranges her from Jacob. She accordingly gives her maid to Jacob to be his wife. "And she said, Behold my maid. . ; she shall bear upon my knees, that I may also have children by her" (Gen. 29: 30, 31; 30: 1-3).

The early Hebrews tell us not of the pain but of the joy of childbirth: "And Sarah said, 'God hath made me to laugh, so that all that hear will laugh with me!' And the child grew and was weaned: and Abraham made a great feast the same day that Isaac was weaned" (Gen. 21: 6, 8).

Modern individualism has taught us today to

think of ourselves as detached units; and we must free ourselves from this point of view if we would understand ancient moral ideals. The individual Hebrew could think of himself as existing only through family and race solidarity. This view is set forth in Deut. 25: 5-10: "If brethren dwell together, and one of them die, the wife of the dead shall not marry without unto a stranger: her husband's brother shall take her . . . to wife . . And . . . the firstborn ... shall succeed in the name of his brother which is dead, that his name be not put out of Israel."

This idea recurs in the fourth chapter of Ruth. In redeeming Elimelech's parcel of land Boaz takes to wife Ruth the widow of his dead kinsman: "So Boaz took Ruth, and she was his wife: and . . . the Lord gave her conception and she bare a son. And the women said unto Naomi, Blessed be the Lord which hath not left thee this day without a kinsman.

And he shall be unto thee a restorer of thy life and a nourisher of thine old age."

It was a custom in Israel for the whole family to demand the life of anyone who slew his brother, "for the life of his brother whom he slew." But when the guilty person was the only son, the carrying out of this sacred law of blood revenge would quench the only coal which was left and would leave "neither name nor remainder upon the earth." "For we must needs die, and are as water spilt on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again." Hence a mother in Israel may expect that David will prevent even the avenger of blood from destroying both her and her son, "out of the inheritance of God" (II Sam. 14: 7, 14, 16).

In II Samuel (chap. 12) we read of the punishment of David for his misconduct in taking the wife of Uriah to be his own wife. This punishment consisted in the death of Bath-sheba's child. But this sad tale culminates in a pæan of joy: "But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? can I bring him back again?

. . And David comforted Bath-sheba his wife, and went in unto her . . and she bare a son and he called his name Solomon: and the Lord loved him" (vv. 23-24). David comforts his wife by enabling her to conceive and bare another son.

In the dramatic account (Judges 11: 30-40) of Jephthah's sacrifice of his daughter we come to the very heart of the morality of the family. Jephthah vows that if Yahweh will give him victory over the children of Ammon that whatever comes forth to meet him from the doors of his house shall be offered to Yahweh as a burnt offering. "And Jephthah came to Mizpeh unto his house, and behold, his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels and with dances: and she was his only child; beside her he had neither son nor daughter. And . he rent his clothes, and said, Alas, my daughter! . . . And she said unto her father, Let . me alone two months, that I may go up and down upon the mountains, and bewail my virginity, I and my fellows. . . And it was a custom in Israel, that the daughters of Israel went yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah, the Gileadite four days in a year.

Here we have the early point of view. The tragedy of the death of Jephthah's daughter is not in the cessation of individual self-consciousness, as the modern

mind sees it and as the portrait of the individual is painted in Browning's Cleon. What this woman mourns is not her death but her virginity! The tragedy is not that her life ends but that it has not been fully lived! She is the only child and with her death the family line, her family tree of life, the blood stream of her father, is cut off from the inheritance of Israel. Not the death of a young girl but the running into the sands of oblivion of a family line which had come from an immemorial past,-this is what the daughters of Israel went to lament four days in a year.

The Psalms express in aphorisms the old Hebrew tradition: "Lo, children are a heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate. Happy shalt thou be that fearest the Lord. Thy wife shall be, as a fruitful vine by the sides of thine house: thy children like olive plants round about thy table. Yea, thou shalt see thy children's children and peace upon Israel" (Psalms 127 and 128; Prov. 17:6; 30: 16).

It was not harshness but reverence which wrote into Israel's earliest code: "And he that smiteth his father, or his mother shall be surely put to death." "And he that curseth his father or his mother shall surely be put to death" (Exodus 21: 15, 17; Prov. 20: 20; 23: 22; 30: 17).

In the evergreen, in the Easter lily, and the Easter egg we see the symbol of the process through which