476 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [1880- 



uterine was allowed. We are therefore justified in con 

 cluding that the conditions of the totem system did exist 

 in Canaan ; and if so, the animal names and their distribu 

 tion are sufficient indication that the system itself prevailed 

 there as in Arabia. In one case indeed the facts are 

 unmistakable. The Shechemites, or at least the aristo 

 cracy of the town (Judges ix. 28), called themselves sons 

 of Hamor, the he-ass, Gen. xxxiii. 19. But how was it 

 among the Israelites ? The laws of incest, as given in 

 Lev. xviii. xx., belong to a part of the Levitical legislation 

 which presents considerable difficulty to critics, but at 

 any rate they are probably later than the code of Deuter 

 onomy, where the only prohibition of the kind is directed 

 against marriage with one s father s wife, xxiii. i. The 

 precept in Deuteronomy abolishes the practice which we 

 found subsisting in heathen Arabia, by which the son 

 inherited his father s wife as well as his estate. 1 To this 

 offence Ezekiel xxii. n adds two others, connection with 

 a daughter-in-law and with a half-sister the daughter of 

 one s father. All three forms of incest, which are put on 

 one line with adultery and connection with a menstruous 

 woman, were, according to the prophet, practised in 

 Jerusalem. And the history seems to show that all three 

 were once recognised customs. The taking of a father s 

 wife was not altogether obsolete in the time of David 

 (see above). Judah s children by Tamar became the 

 heads of his house, being clearly (as Hupfeld long ago 

 showed) the fruit of a legitimate extension of the levirate 

 law. Judah indeed admits that Tamar s conduct was 

 perfectly correct (Gen. xxxviii. 26) ; the rule is the 

 Arab rule in Strabo, yuoixos 6 l a\\ov ytvovs. Finally, a 

 marriage with a sister not uterine was contracted by 

 Abraham, and can hardly have been forbidden in the 

 time of David (2 Sam. xiii. 13; compare ver. 16 LXX.). 



1 In the &quot; framework &quot; of the Deuteronomic code we have three 

 prohibitions: father s wife (xxvii. 20), sister uterine or germane (ver. 

 22), and wife s mother (ver. 23). 



