It is rather odd to note in passing that he is declared to be cursed who marries “his sister, the daughter of his father, or the daughter of his mother” (Deut. xxvii., 22), when we remember that Abraham said of his wife Sarah: “Indeed she is my sister; she is the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife” (Gen. xx., 12). Thus Abraham, who is so highly blessed in one part of god’s word, is cursed in another.
The book of Joshua is taken up with the bloody wars of the Israelites; it is a mere record of savage butchery; every page reeks with slaughter. “They utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword” (Josh, vi., 21). This, repeated _ad nauseam_, is the book of Joshua. The tale is varied now and then with the record of absurd miracles, as that of the falling down of the walls of Jericho, or the standing still of the sun and moon at the command of Joshua. From its ferocity and absurdity, the book is beneath contempt, yet it is of “divine authority.”
In the Book of Judges we have the record of a number of utterly unimportant victories and defeats in the history of the Hebrew nation. Why should these be accepted as “of divine authority” any more than any corresponding history of some other equally obscure and barbarous people?
Over the barbarous stories of Ehud stabbing Eglon, with its disgusting details (iii., 21, 22); of Jael murdering her guest, in defiance of all desert laws of hospitality, and receiving for her treachery the blessing of the Lord, a blessing shared only with Mary, the mother of Jesus (v. 24, compare Luke i., 28); of Gideon and of Abimelech, with the evil spirit sent by god (Judges ix., 23); of Jephthah and his vow and his sacrifice of his daughter (xi., 29—39), as Agamemnon sacrificed Iphigenia; of Samson with his absurd and brutal conduct (xiv., 19; xv., 4, 5; and 14— 19, etc.); of the Levite and his concubine, and the foul details thereon (xix.)—what can any say of these save that such coarse and brutal stories belong to the childhood of every nation, and that while other peoples look back on their savage history as a thing that is past, these Hebrew stories are preserved in perennial freshness, and are placed as a burden on the consciences of the civilised nations of Europe, and, to our shame, are defended from criticism by the brutal laws of blasphemy invented in savage times and sanctioned in England to-day.