MARRIAGE AMONG THE ANCIENT ISRAELITES. 335 



Huldah, a prophetess, is mentioned in II Kings, xxii, 14, and II 

 Chronicles, xxxiv, 12, as being consulted by the high priest and 

 others. After the captivity we do not find women holding any 

 such positions. 



We may now claim to have shown that the Israelites passed 

 through our fifth phase, and had a system of descent through 

 mothers before they had one through fathers. We have shown 

 that they had marriage by capture, and marriage in the form of 

 capture, from which we must believe them to have been exoga- 

 mous. They were certainly not endogamous, for they married for- 

 eigners. If they were exogamous, they could not have married 

 in the recognized blood-stock, and we can not find that they mar- 

 ried into the maternal blood, though there is abundant evidence 

 that they married into the paternal blood. We find a much 

 stronger tie between brothers and sisters uterine than between 

 brothers and sisters gerrnan ; some cases in which men are styled 

 the sons of their mothers, and others in which kinship and na- 

 tionality are distinctly traced through the mother exclusively. 

 It is only after the captivity that it is necessary to show the pa- 

 ternal descent. The system of kinship through females being the 

 simplest, is naturally the first that is established ; for kinship de- 

 pends upon a perception of the unity of blood, and the most obvi- 

 ous and unmistakable case is that between mother and child. 

 Once established, it lingers on, through custom, even after the tie 

 between father and child has been recognized ; and in the case of 

 the Israelites it appears to have lasted till about the days of 

 David, at which time they appear to have been in a state of tran- 

 sition,* as the Polynesians are now ; and, finally, after contact 

 with the Babylonians and Greeks, they effected a change to de- 

 scent in the male line. 



The Hebrew books are stated to have been restored by Esdras, 

 when they had been destroyed by the Chaldeans (II Esdras, xiv, 

 21, 47), and, according to Eusebius, it is solely to his recollection 

 that we are indebted for the books of the Old Testament. Now, 

 at that time it was necessary for a man who claimed to be of 

 Israel to show his father's house ; Esdras was one of those who 

 made this a sine qua non. The change to this system had, as we 



* The normal course seems to be that the female system of descents is changed for one 

 under which relationships are traced on both sides of the house, and this in turn is re- 

 placed by one through males. In the reign of David, relationship was certainly traced on 

 both sides, for we read in II Samuel, xxi, that when it was considered necessary to sacrifice 

 a number of members of Saul's family in order to stay a famine, the persons selected were 

 two sons of Saul and five grandsons. The latter were the sons of Merab, daughter of 

 Saul, by her husband Adriel the Meholathite. The sacrifice of the sons of Saul shows that 

 descent was traced from father to son, and that of Merab's children, that it was also traced 

 from mother to son. 



