MARRIAGE AMONG THE ANCIENT ISRAELITES. 327 



companions to be with him " — that is to say, they brought thirty 

 men to represent the party of the bridegroom in the form of cap- 

 ture, the bringing being necessary in Samson's case because he 

 had none of his own people with him. One of these thirty acted 

 as leader, or best man, and Samson's wife was afterward given to 

 him (verse 20) — a proceeding quite in accordance with existing 

 practices among some people who marry with the form of cap- 

 ture. 



We find a clear case of marriage with the form of capture in 

 connection with the civil war with the tribe of Benjamin. The 

 remnant of Benjamin, six hundred in number, who survived the 

 war, were all men. There were no women left, and as the other 

 tribes had sworn that they would not give their daughters in 

 marriage to the men of Benjamin, there was a prospect of that 

 tribe becoming extinct. In this dilemma the tribes attacked Ja- 

 besh-gilead and captured four hundred women, who were handed 

 over to Benjamin ; but, as this left two hundred men still unpro- 

 vided for, they contrived the following plan : A yearly festival 

 was held at Shiloh, at which it was customary for the girls to 

 come out and dance. So they instructed the men of Benjamin 

 to lie hid in the vineyards, and when the girls appeared each 

 man was to seize one and carry her off. So it was done, and 

 in this way the tribes kept the letter of their oath and evaded 

 the spirit. They did not give their daughters to Benjamin, but 

 they connived at their being carried off with the form of capture 

 (Judges, xxi). 



The Israelites thus had both marriage by capture de facto and 

 marriage with the form of capture, and in the former article we 

 showed that they had once been polyandrous. Now we know that 

 marriage by capture is in its origin due to a scarcity of women, 

 though it is persevered in through custom after that scarcity has 

 ceased to exist. Likewise, polyandry, the marriage of one woman 

 to two or more men, only exists where women are less numerous 

 than men. Consequently, since the Israelites had both these prac- 

 tices, there must have been a period in their history when women 

 were fewer in number than men, and experience and observation 

 all over the world have shown that such a disparity can only be 

 brought about by female infanticide. We conclude, therefore, 

 that the Israelites passed through our second, third, and fourth 

 phases, and will now proceed to see if they also passed through 

 the fifth. 



From the fact of their having been polyandrous and having 

 married by capture, we should infer that they must, at the period 

 when these were the normal types of marriage, have had a system 

 of kinship through females. If there were two or more husbands 

 to one wife, the father of a given child could not be determined ; 



