Walter Matthew Gallichan

“ Purchase-marriage was the custom; the Hebrew parent was allowed to sell his daughter as a wife, concubine, or maid-servant. The purchaser could dismiss the wife or handmaiden at will. Plurality of wives was also maintained, as in Babylon and Egypt, by the capture of women in warfare.
When Moses conquered the Midianites, he commanded: "Now, therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children that hath not known man by lying with him keep alive for yourselves." ”

“ 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, polygamy is still practised in Jerusalem.* The conditions of harem life are like those prevailing in Turkey and Egypt. There is a tendency to adopt Western fashions in dress, and the women are clad in Parisian gowns. ”

“ The poem abounds in sensuous images and rapturous delight in the physical charm of women. This fine relic of ancient Oriental literature was forbidden by the Jewish 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. ”