xt7k9882p098 https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7k9882p098/data/mets.xml Henry, Josephine K., author Hughes, James E., printer 1905 32 pages, 19 cm. Call Number: HQ1395 .H46 1905 Tray RB-0006 books HQ1395 .H46 1905 Tray RB-0006 English James E. Hughes, Printer Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection Women in the Bible Bible and feminism Women's rights Women -- Legal status, laws, etc Kentucky author: Henry, Josephine K Kentucky printer: James E. Hughes Woman and the Bible, 1905 text Woman and the Bible, 1905 1905 1905 2024 true xt7k9882p098 section xt7k9882p098 WOMAN
AND THE BEBLE

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 DEDICATION

TO

NATHAN F. GRISWOLD

OF MERIDEN, CONNECTICUT

«3‘
IN ADMIRA'I‘ION
For his splendid service, loyalty and generosity to

the cause of Free Thought against religious supersti-
tion, ignorance, and intolerance. In recognition of
which a garland of gratitude is placed upon his ven-
erable brow by

JOSEPHINE K. HENRY.
Versailles, Kentucky.

 

  

 ,’-an-

WOMAN AND THE BIBLE

A LANCE BROKEN ON BEHALF OF WOMAN.

“All the wisdom of Vedas, and all that has been writ-
ten in books, is to be found concealed In the heart of a
woman.”—Vedas.

“When women are honored the d‘lvinities are content.”
—Parsee Bible.

The object of this pamphlet is to arouse the latent
power of thought in the minds of women, that they
may read the Bible for themselves, put their own in—
terpretation upon it, have the courage to express
their opinions about its teachings, regarding their
sex, without any interference, influence, or interpre-
tation from the clergy—Save a few texts that are
worn thread bare the Bible is a sealed book to
woman kind. ,

If the Bible says what it means, and means what it
says, the woman of ordinary mentality will discover
that in the part of the Holy Book which is devoted
to her sex, she will find horrors, terrors and obsceni—
ties that she had never dreamed of which her clerical
teachers had never told her of, and that much of
the teaching from the pulpit regarding: women is
not true.

Women are a very small factor in Holy \Vrit, as
but one—eleventh of the Bible refers to them at all,
and in the interest of justice and good morals it is a
pity much of that was ever written.

The Bible estimate of woman is summed up in the

 

 

     

4

words of the President of a Presbyterian Theologi-
cal Senimary in his address to a, class of young
preacher. He said: “My Bible commands the sub—
jection of women forever;” that man had searched
the scriptures and found out what they taught.

The Bible says: “A tree is known by its fruit,”
yet this tree is carefully pruned, watered, and tend—
ed as the “tree of life” whose fruit in the word of
Archdeacon Farrar “alone elevates woman, and
shrouds as with a halo of sacred innocence the ten-
der years of the child.” As the world is swarming
with miserable women, who are robbed of their
human rights, bearing children against their
will, who are filling our reform schools, poor houses,
and prisons, the “elevation” for women and the
“sacred halo” for children not having arrived yet
after being on the way for 2,000 years, has so far
proved to be a mere pipe—dream of this eleric.

The Bible records that God created woman by a
method different from that employed in bringing
into life, any other creature, then cursed her for
seeking knowledge, yet the Scriptures say, “My
people are destroyed for lack of knowledge,” be-
cause thou hast rejected knowledge. I will also re-
ject thee ‘Hosea 4-6.’ ‘Add to your faith virtue and
to virtue knowledge,” “2nd Peter 1—5, yet we have
the injustice and inconsistency of God cursing Eve,”
and through her the race for seeking knowledge.
Ever since Eve was cursed, the priest with the Bible
in his hands has pronounced woman the most unnat-
Eral, untrustworthy and dangerous creature of

0d.

In the tenth commandment Exodus 20-17, she is
classed with the ox and the ass; she is “given away”
as a sheep at the marriage altar, and cursed in mat-
ernity. Psalms 51-5 says, “Behold, I was shapen
in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.”
Surely there is nothing elevating about that to wo-

    

A4 - kw

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5

man. This declaration puts the brand of infamy
upon every woman that ever bore a child.

The wife who places her destiny in the keeping
of the father of her children, bestows upon him the
wealth of her afi'ection, who goes “down into the
valley and shadow of death” to give birth to chil—
dren, who are to bear the blood and name of her
husband to conquests, yet undreamed of, and to gen—
erations unborn, is by divine decree made a. fountain
of iniquity. Would not men and women rather
pluck their tongues out by the roots than thus brand
the mothers who gave them birth?

The law of God given to Moses in the 12th chapter
of Leviticus, clearly pronounces a woman who be-
comes a mother to be unclean and impure. If she had
borne a son she was not allowed to touch any hallow—
ed thing, or enter the sanctuary for three and thirty
days, but if she had borne a daughter she was
doubly impure, and was unhallowed and barred out
of the temple for sixty-six days. This estimate of
woman permeates all Jewish and Christian canons.
Today to bear a son is considered more honorable
and desirable than to bear a. daughter, yet our civ-
ilization swarms with sons who are worthless, or dis-
sipated, 0r dishonest, or who wreck the fortunes and
happiness of the family while daughters are as a
rule, the comfort and mainstay of parents in their
declining years.

The Episcopal prayer-book commands the Church—
ing of W'omen. which service consists of mothers
prostrating themselves at the altar, and giving of—
ferings to the Lord to atone for the crime of having
borne children.

What worse can be said of a book, or a religion.
than that it treats as essentially unclean, the holy
office of motherhood?

This insult includes all women, for even the Virgin

 

     

    

6

Mary had to pass through “the days of her purifi—
cation.”

To say the least, this Christian tenet tends to
throw suspicion on the “Immaculate Conception.”

Place the Bible trinity, “Father, Son and Holy
Ghost, beside the Homeric trinity “Father, Mother,
and child” and prove that the Bible has elevated
woman. The Homeric conception of woman towers
like the Norway pine above the noxious growth of
the Mosaic ideal. .

Compare the women and men of the Bible with the
stately figures culled from the temple of Pagan
antiquity, Zipporah denouncing Moses as a “bloody
husband,” Abraham sending Hagar and his child
into the desert, and pocketing twice over the gains
from his wife’s prostitution. Lot and his daughters,
Judah and his daughter-in-law, Anan, Tamar, the
Levite and his concubine, David and Bathsheba, Sol-
omon in the sewer of sensuality, Jacob, Saul, Rahal),
Aholibah, Mary of Bethlehem, Mary Makdala, and a
host of other Bible figures. Place these beside the
man and woman, Hector and Andromache of the
“Iliad,” who called upon the immortal gods to bless
their child of love. Isis and her son Horus, Devaki
and her divine child, Chrishna, the Vedic Virgin
Indrance, the mother of the Savior god Indra, Pan-
dora, Protogenia, Plotina, Cornelia and Penelope and
a host of the noble and virtuous of Pagan history.

Prove by comparing these with the position of
woman in Christendom, that woman owes all that
she is to the Bible.

There were grand and noble women and men in
the Pagan world, ten centuries before the laws of
Moses or Christ were promulgated.

If women will lay aside their religious bigotry,
they will discover that our boasted Christian civil-
ization literally puts into practice, the crimes, the
Bible records against their sex, and how well it is

 7

being done, the press attests, as never in the history

of the world were such atrocious crimes committed
against maidens, wives, pregnant, insane, and aged
women. As the Bible is said to be the guide for
American civilization no wonder we have a carnival
of blood curdling crimes of every description. The
Bible tells of the incest of a father with his own
daughter, Genesis 19-32, the 34th chapter of Genesis
contains debauchery, female commodity, lying, de-
ceit, murder, theft, hypocrisy and cowardice. If all
this is taught in one chapter of the Christian’s guide
book, is it any wonder that our civilization is over-
flowing with crime? The murdering of women and
the ravishing of little girls is taught in Number 31,
17-18 the treacherous rape of maidens Judges 19-23
and filthy stories about concubinage in Judges 19.
Perhaps the example of the holy men and women in
the Holy Bible accounts for the epidemic of brutality
and moral leprosy in Christendom. There is no use
having a guide book unless you are guided by it.
Bible Christians have no warrant for respecting
womanhood, either as maid or mother, and the claim
that woman owes all she possesses of personal puri-
ty, domestic happiness, and social consideration to
the Bible is false and absurd. There is not a single
Bible character, either woman or man, that is a per-
fect model for the women and men of today to copy
after. Some of them illustrate noble traits of hu-
man character, but even these are so enveloped in -
butality, deception and sensuality they are hard to
discover.

Let Christian women and men of today be up to
such tricks as are recorded of Abraham, Sarah, Ja-
cob, Rebecca, Leah, Noah, Lot and his daughters,
David, Solomon and their lady friends, Samson,
Delilah, Sisera, Jael, Abimelech, Naomi, Ruth,
Esther, Martha, all the Marys and even St. Paul, the
premier saint of the Christian calendar, and they

 

     

    

8

would not only be ostracized by society, but many
of them would find themselves behind prison bars.

When woman reasons more and believes less, then,
and not till then, will her charter to liberty be sign-
ed.

The rib doctrine is the tap root of her inferiority
and degradation. The hour is here now, when women
are calling theologians to the bar of reason, and they
will no longer believe the supernatural, miraculous
fables of the Bible that put the brand of inferiority
upon their sex.

“Every Hour Brings Forth Some Grasping Truth.”
—Holmes.

Theology is nothing, if it is not dogmatic. So we-
men have ever been taught that it is their “bounden
duty” to be silent and obedient, and that the women
of the Bible are shining'examples of these so-called
virtues. The dogmatism of the pulpit has outwardly
succeeded in the subjection theory and the poetry ( ”
the pulpit has stimulated women to action and ser
vice, and fed their vanity, always with the para—
mount idea that “woman’s sphere” was bounded by
her duty to do only such things as shall suit man ’s
interest, pleasure or convenience.

All this preaching only shows the utter ignorance.
of the characters of the Bible women and that they
were as great an enigma and as unmanageable as the
women of today, the Bible itself will show.

Woman is today quietly smiling at her masculine
censors, the beings whose swaddling clothes she ad-
justs, and saying to herself “let them babble about a
subject of which they know nothing. It amuses
them, and does not affect women. These men are
neither saints nor heroes, so we refuse to canonizc
them, and go on doing our own way just as the Bible
women did.”

 The truth is, woman has never been obedient.
Eve did not fear or obey either God, angels, or men.
Eve is the greatest character in all history. Adam
was the most obedient husband in the history of the
race. He even forgot God to obey woman. He par—
took of the free lunch furnished him by Eve and
since that hour “free lunches have been demoraliz-
ing men and always will.” When Adam and Eve
were called to account for stealing the apple from
the tree of knowledge the coward Adam skulked be—
hind the woman and said: “The woman tempted me
and I did eat.” Let those who consider woman in-
ferior to man not forget that Eve first discovered the
tree of knowledge and had the courage-to eat the
forbidden fruit, while Adam had not enterprise nor
courage, enough to swallow it, for it stuck in his
throat. But Eve stood her ground and said: “The
serpent did tempt me, ” and she watered the seeds of
deception with her tears, and thus instituted the
crying racket, and ever since that day, women have
gotten themselves out of scrapes by their tears, not
by silence and obedience.

Eve was a born ruler and autocrat, and she has
transmitted this trait of character to all her female
progeny. If woman can not have her own way by
one method, “there are others.”

I make my profoundest salaam of gratitude and
admiration to Mother Eve, the greatest benefactor
of the human race, and a shining example of a. wo-
man who was not silent nor obedient.

It can be conclusively shown by holy writ that the
men of the Bible were always obedient. They obeyed
kings, mothers, wives, sweethearts, concubines and
courtesans. The greatest event in history was Eve’s
arrival in the Garden of Eden, and the next greatest
event was Eve’s establishing the educational system
of the world.

No Eve, no race; no eating of the apple, no knowl-

 

 

     

10

edge. According to the Bible if the daughters of
men were “fair to look upon” they were acceptable
to the “sons of God.” There is not a hint that vir-
tue, industry, intelligence or domesticity were shin-
ing qualities of Bible women.

The first compliment on record is that of Abraham
when he said to Sarah: “Behold now, I know that
thou art a fair woman to look upon,” and thus has
Abraham’s art of flattery descended to his posterity
making falsifiers of men and coqucttcs of women.

Sarah might have been “fair to look upon,” but
she was not obedient, but on the contrary Abraham
was always “obedient” and “hearkened unto the
voice of his wife.”

Abraham asked his wife Sarah to pass herself of?
as his sister, and she did so, not to be “obedient to
her lord and master,” but in order to have a good
time attracting the attention of kings, courtiers and
nabobs.

Pharoah fell a victim to the fair Sarah’s blandish-
-ments, “and the woman was taken into Pharoah’s
house.” The Bible goes on to say that “Pharoah
entreated Abraham well for Sarah’s sake.” Because
of the king’s attention to Sarah, Pharoah’s senior,
junior and sophomore wives didn’t like it.

Matters grew so serious that the Lord himself had
to interfere to head the “divine Sarah” off, and the
“Lord plagued Pharoh and his house with great
plagues because of Sarah, Abraham’s wife.

The Abraham-Hager case appeared on the court
docket about this time. The book says that Sarah
told Abraham that he could have Hagar for his
heart’s own, and to show how obedient Abraham
was, the Bible says: “And Abraham hearkened unto
the voice of his Wife.”

(I never did believe this in regard to Sarah, and
I don’t believe it now, for when Sarah discovered
Abraham’s attentions to Hagar, she called him into

    

«91$,

 Q. ,‘

11

the tent and made him see Mars, Jupiter, Venus and
a tornado before she got through with him).

Sarah hustled Hagar and her child out into the
wilderness. An angel met poor Hagar and told her
to go back. I never had any respect for that angel.
Now what Sarah should have done, was to see to it
that Abraham, out of his great riches, provided for
his legal wife and concubine, and then have given
him his walking papers. Many modern Sarah’s are
administering a dose of this medicine to the Abra-
hams of today.

Abraham once entertained three angels and he
told Sarah to have some angel cake for the luncheon.
Did Sarah obey? No; she did not feel like baking
cake even for angel visitors, so she followed her own
sweet will, instead of Abraham’s command.

When the angel told Abraham that Sarah would
bear a son, “Sarah laughed, being she was old,” and
the angel was insulted because a woman had laugh-
ed at he. she or it (The sex of angels is to mortals an
unknown quantity). But when Isaac was born Sa—
rah gave peremptory orders to Father Abraham and
he obeyed them instanter, yet apostle Peter holds
Sarah up as an example for all women to follow say-
ing: “Even as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him
Lord.”

Abraham after his experience with Sarah and
Hagar set about to secure a wife for Isaac. He sent
a servant to Nahor to become acquainted with the
maidens that “were fair to look upon.” The society
girls of Nahor had a fashion of congregating at the
well to attract the beans just as United States girls
go today to the matinee, park, boulevard or to
church on a husband hunting expedition.

Along came the fair and festive Rebecca. When
told that a rich young man in a far country wanted
a wife without inquiring as to the character of the
young man Rebecca said: “I will go. ” From all ac-

 

     

    

12
counts, Rebecca was a leader of the “ton” in Israel.
She met a strange young man at a, well and without
any introduction to the strange man, he “adorns her
with earrings and bracelets” and she invited him
home with her.

I never in my life heard a preacher condemn Re—
becca for flirting with a strange man, but they call
her one of the “mothers in Israel.” and Paul calls
Rebecca one of the “holy women of old.”

If a girl in this day should do as Rebecca did, she
would be classed with the “fast set.” and it' the girl
of today should flirt with a strange man, accept
presents from him and go into a “far country” to
marry another strange man, she would be barred out.
of decent society.

Rebecca, it is written, married Isaac and she has
the distinction of being the first woman on record
who presented her husband with a pair of twins.
After this event Rebecca gets in some fine work as a
disobedient wife, a, deceitful. hard hearted. intrigu-
ing woman and one that always had her own way by
hook or by crook. I shudder to think of the domes-
tic pandemonium and cyclones in the home of Isaac
and Rebecca on account of the twins Jacob and
Esau. Rebecca cheated her own son Esau out of his
birthright and gave it to Jacob. then deceived and
deluded her dying husband.

She was an all-round domestic diplomat that man—
aged the men of the family with such skill that she
did as she pleased and made them do as she pleased
too. Rebecca has another distinction. but it is not
silence and submission as the preachers would have
women believe.

\Vhen her son Esau married, Rebecca is the first
woman on record who hated her daughter-in—law,
but since that day there“ have been others.”

Now, there’s Lot’s Wife. The sacred historian did
not think her worthy of a name of her own. May be

 

 13

Mrs. Lot rejoiced in having her individuality merg—
ed in that of her husband, just as the women of our
day, who parade 1n newspaper society notes as Mrs.
Tom, Mrs. Dick and Mrs Harry, Mrs. Gov“ Mrs.
Gen. and Mrs Dr.

The women of the ages who have been disposed
to he rebellious, have been warned with “Remember
Lot’s Wife,” But it has not warned worth a cent.
The woman with a will of her own and the woman
with “views,” is here in all her glory. (Any married
man will testify to that). And she is here to stay.
When God determined to destroy Sodom and G0—
morrah with fire and brimstone, the angel of the
Lord warned Lot and his family with these words:
“Escape for thy life; look not behind thee.” Mrs.
Lot disobeyed the angel’s command, and woman
like she looked back. If the angel had told her “to
look back” she would have looked straight ahead.
This is the nature of women. The seX systematically
do what they are told not to do, and do not do what
they are told to do.

Now, Mrs. Lot for her disobedience was “turned
into a pillar of salt,” Lot’s wife is the first woman
on record that ever had a monument. and it is said
it is standing “to this day.” And the women of all
ages have had this monument pointed out to them
to make them afraid.

I reverence the memory of Mrs. Lot, because she
looked back to see if her husband and daughters
were safe though, according to holy writ they were
not, worth saving.

Mrs. Lot’ s womanly heart was a battle ground
of love and duty, and I am glad that she secured for
herself a monument that has defied the ravages of
time. She would never have had one any other way.

Well now, as to Rachel. The record says, “Rachel
was beauteous and well favored.”

According to the Bible all the “holy women of

 

     

    

14

old” were beauteous and “fair to look upon,” just
as in our day according to newspaper notices, all
brides are beautiful and all grooms wealthy.

Well, Jacob met Rachel at the well, and after a
short acquaintance the book says “Jacob kissed
Rachel and lifted up his voice and wept.”

What on earth did he weep about? Whoever heard
of a young man setting up a weep because he had
kissed a pretty girl? The young men of this day
do not follow Jacob’s weeping example. It often
happens in our day when a young man wants to be-
stow his attentions and kisses on a pretty girl and
she rejects them, the young man whips out his knife
or pistol and plays the murderous role to perfection.

Jacob asked Rachel’s papa, Laban, for his daugh—
ter, and said he would serve seven years for her.
Laban was a financier and he knew Jacob's service
was the cheapest hired help he could get, so he prom—
ised him Rachel. At the end of the seven years the
wily Laban palmed off his daughter Leah on Jacob
as a bride. After a family jar that shook the region
round about Jacob said he would serve seven years
more for Rachel. Jacob got himself into a. pretty
pickle. We are told that the sisters Leah and Rachel
fired by jealousy, hated each other, that “Jacob
hated Leah, and Jacob’s anger was kindled against
Rachel,” Rachel and Leah in deadly spite, “each
gave her maid to Jacob to wife.” Jacob submis-
sively accepted them and he tacitly became a crea-
ture of barter and sale. Laban and Jacob had a hot
encounter in which they employed some choice lan-
guage, and Laban told Jacob to take the girls and
everything else, but he was “bound to have his
gods.”

Now it turned out that Rachel had stolen her pa-
pa’s gods and was sitting on them, and when he,
came into her tent hunting for them, she denied
knowing anything about them. Rachel was an all

 15

round willful, deceptive, crafty, domineering and
dishonest woman. She is noted for many traits, but
obedience is not one of them.

Dinah, the daughter of Jacob and Leah, was a
combination of her father, mother and Aunt Rachel.
She was a little crafty in her amours and in conse-
quence a. terrible massacre ensued. With Jacob for
a father, to say nothing of the other side of the
house, we can imagine she was equal to anything
but certainly obedience was not one of her traits of
character.

Tamar is one of the prominent ladies of the Bible.
Her father-in-law. Judah attempted to defraud her
of her rights. (This has been a propensity of the
father—in-law ever since). Did she consent? Not at
all. She brought Judah to terms and made him give
her “-his signet and bracelets, and staff as a pledge
of his good fait .”

“Tamar was the original pawn broker of the
world.”

But trouble rose again between Tamar and her
father-in-law, and Judah in his affection for her, or-
dered her to be burnt. Did Tamar obey? No, she
objected and she wasn’t burnt. Now, along comes
Potiphar’s wife casting goo—goo eyes at Joseph. She
managed her husband and made him cast Joseph
(“who was pure as ice and chaste as snow”) into
prison, and she had her revenge by letting him stay
there for two years.

Potiphar’s wife may be one of the “holy women
of old,” but she was not obedient.

The kings of Egypt issued an order to the Hebrew
midwives to kill all the Jew boy babies, but to save
the girl babies alive. (There is a lot of regret and
disappointment over the birth of girl babies in this
day. Boy babies are at a. premium, as they were in
that day.

Did the midwives obey the king? No indeed. they

 

  

  

16

threw dust in the king’s eyes, kept the boy babies
alive and laughed among themselves at the trick
they had played. But for this, Moses would never
have lived to frame laws, or‘been reproved by Zip-
porah, his wife, with the words,“‘Surely a bloody
husband art thou to me,” or to have “murdered an
Egyptian and hid his body in the sand,” or to have
led the children of Israel, or been a model of meek-
ness.

Think of what the disobedience of women did for
the world in this case.

The daughter of Zelophehad. it seems to me,
'were born before their time. If they were living
today they would doubtless be practicing law in
the supreme court. They demanded their father’s
possessions, became their own lawyers, argued their
own case before Moses and won it; -

The women of the Bible did not care a fig for
Paul’s shall-not-speak-in-meeting command. They
talked when and where they pleased, demanded
what they wanted, and got it.

Paul had evidently never read the Old Testament.
After Thecla jilted him he remained an old bache-
lor and knew about as much about women as he did
about electricity.

Women and electricity are mighty dangerous to
fool with, if you don’t know how to manage them.
‘ A live woman and live wire each have ways of their
own. ,

Deborah and Judith swayed the destinies of the
ancient Hebrews. As such slight reference is made
of their husbands, they don’t count. It is quite evi—
dent these women not only ruled their own house-
holds, but all the households of their nation.

Of all the men in the Bible one would suppose
Samson would have had his own way, but he didn’t.
As he had strength enough to carry away the gates
of Gaza one would think he would have had strength

 

it»?

  

 17

enough to have managed a few poor week women.
But he didn’t. The little Philistine girl, the lady
from Gaza (the less said about her the better), and
Delilah. these three! His obedience to these women
made of him a sorry spectacle before the ages.

What about the witch of Endor? The Bible does
not say whether she was “fair to look upon” or not,
but whether “beauteous to behold” or not. she was
mighty to command. for she commanded Samuel. a
dead man, to come out of his grave, and Samuel
came.

No commander on record except the witch of En-
dor ever issued orders to the living and the dead,
but the inspired word says she did. and they obeyed.
Samuel and Saul could both testify to this.

To my mind “Michal. the daughter of Saul,” is
the most remarkable woman in sacred or any other
kind of history.

She is most remarkable for two things. The Bi-
ble says 1st, Samuel 18-20: “Michal, Saul’s daugh-
ter, loved David.”

This is the first authentic official record we have
of a woman loving a man. The second is to my mind
the greatest miracle in the Bible laying Jonah and
the whale and all others in the shade. The sixth
chapter 23rd verse of 2nd Samuel says? “Therefore
Michal. the daughter of Saul. had no child unto the
day of her death.” Then the 21st chapter and 8th
verse of 2nd Samuel says: “But the king took the
two sons of Rizpah, and the five sons of Michal,
daughter of Saul. and he delivered them into the
hands of the Gibeonites.” If “Michal the daughter
of Saul, had no child unto the day of her death.”
then it is an axiom that the “five sons of Michal,
daughter of Saul, who were delivered to the Gibeon-
ites,” were born after Michals death. The Virgin
Mary having an Immaculate conception and bearing
one son while she was living, pales into insignificance

 

     

18

before Michal, who had five post mortem concep-
tions, and bore five sons after she was dead. There is
precious little consolation in this to the women who
have borne large families in this life, that they will
not escape the pangs of childbirth, even after they
are dead, and started on their journey to their heav-
enly home.

Wonderful Michal! She has been overlooked in
making up the list of canonized Bible saints. In my
opinion her name should head the list. A woman
who bore five sons after she was dead, discounts all
the exploits of warriors, patriarchs. prophets, priests
and kings recorded in the Holy Bible. Another Bible
miracle that has been overlooked is recorded in the
4th chapter of 2nd Kings, where “Elisha made a
dead boy sneeze seven times.” The old woman lad-
en with Abrahamic faith said she would rather be-
lieve the Bible, than the truth any day. and she has
plenty of company of the female persuasion.

One of Saul ’s wives, who was the mother of Johna-
than. must have been a lady with a will of her own,
for Saul said to his son Jonathan. “Thou son of the
perverse rebellious woman.” The Bible says that
“there was a woman whose name was Bathsheba——
and as King David was walking on the roof
of his palace he saw Bathsheba taking a bath and
fell in love with her. It always seemed a
queer proceedingr to me for a man to take a walk
on the roof of his house, and a woman to take a. bath
in public. There were some queer proceedings in
Bible days. David is the only man on record who
ever fell in love with a woman while she was taking
her bath, and Bath-she—ba was quite an appropriate
name for her.

Bathsheba must have been very attractive, for she
had a husband, Uriah by name, when David fell in
love with her, and Bath-she-ba reciprocated.

David sent Uriah to the front of the battle and

    

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had him killed, so he could marry his wife, and the
submission and obedience of the wife was manifested
by her helping David put Uriah out of the way. It
was the fashion in those days for one man to kill an-
other in order to get possession of his wife, and
“David, the man after God’s own heart,” indulged
in this pastime.

The history of Abigail shows that she was a ruler
in the domestic dominion, and the warm hearted
and godly David seemed to have bestowed some of
his attentions on her, for he said to Abigail, “See, 1
have hearkened to thy voice, and have accepted thy
person.”

In ten days from that time, “The Lord smote
Nabal that he died.” Nabal was Abigail’s husband.
David was an expert at putting men with pretty
wives out of the way and who knows but he might
have had some help from the women as there were
no detectives in those days.

Naomi and Ruth loom up in scripture, and the
preacher holds them 11p as models and the discourag-
ing thing about it is that women accept such
preaching without a protest '

The truth is, Naomi was an Old widow who was a
designing, wire pulling matchmaker. and Ruth was
a gay young widow that wanted a rich husband and
as one did not present himself, she went after him.

Naomi and Ruth had experience in the art of trap-
ping husbands. Boaz was rich, and old enough to
have reached the years of discretion. Naomi had
one eye on him and Ruth had two. How could Boaz
escape? Ruth went into his field to glean to make
him believe that she was industrious. This may have
been a suggestion of Naomi’s, but it captured the old
man, and Ruth became Mrs. Boaz. I never believed
that Ruth was as madly in love with her mother~in—
law as we are taught to believe, for the reason that
when she had nowhere else to go as a penniless

 

     

    

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widow, Ruth said to Naomi, “Entreat me not to
leave thee, or return from following: after thee; for
whither thou goest, I will go; where thou lodgcst,
I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy
God my God.”

As soon as Ruth got a. rich husband she did not
follow after Naomi any more, and she got a new
lodging place and a new god.

If Ruth was madly infatuated with her mother-in-
law it is the only case in ancient or modern record,
for ever since the wedding of Adam and Eve One
prominent feature of the marriage system has been
for the husband to hate the wife’s people, and the
wife to return the compliment.

The bad traits of children, the father says are in-
herited from the mother, and the mother says they
are inherited from the father.

Bible men and women started this fashion, and it
has been kept up to this very day.

Of course, the match of Ruth and Boaz was made
in heaven. The Bible says that Naomi grave Ruth
some instructions that we cannot record here. Naomi
was doubtless selected by heaven to help on the
matchmaking business.

From the number of misfits in holy wedlock, the
heavenly matchmaker must have sublet the match-
makingr contract to earthly incompetents.

If these women with their questionable methods
of obtaining a husband are held up to women as
models, the sooner they are deposed, the