monarchs-an ancient mark of triumph, of which the monuments of Persia and Egypt still afford illustrations. They were then slain, and their bodies hanged on trees until the evening, when, as the law forbade a longer exposure of the dead (Deut. xxi. 23), they were taken down, and cast into the cave, the mouth of which was filled up with large stones, which remained long after (Josh. x. 1-27). The severe treatment of these kings by Joshua has been censured and defended with equal disregard of the real circumstances, which are, that the war was avowedly one of extermination, no quarter being given or expected on either side: and that the war-usages of the Jews were neither worse nor better than those of the people with whom they fought, who would most certainly have treated Joshua and the other Hebrew chiefs in the same manner, had they fallen into their hands.

ADOPTION. The Old Testament does not contain any word equivalent to this; but the act occurs in various forms. The New Testament has the word often (Rom. viii. 15, 23; ix. 4; Gal. iv. 5; Eph. i. 5); but no example of the act occurs. The term signifies the placing as a son of one who is not so by birth.

ADOPTION

right of giving her handmaid Zilpah to Jacob, that she might thus increase their number; and by this means she had Gad and Asher (Gen. xxx. 9-13). In this way the greatest possible approximation to a natural relation was produced. The child was the son of the husband, and, the mother being the property of the wife, the progeny must be her property also; and the act of more particular appropriation seems to have been that, at the time of birth, the handmaid brought forth her child upon the knees of the adoptive mother' (Gen. xxx. 3). A curious fact is elicited by the peculiar circumstances in Sarah's case, which were almost the only circumstances that could have arisen to try the question, whether a mistress retained her power, as such, over a female slave whom she had thus vicariously employed, and over the progeny of that slave, even though by her own husband. The answer is given, rather startlingly, in the affirmative in the words of Sarah, who, when the birth of Isaac had wholly changed her feelings and position, and when she was exasperated by the offensive conduct of Hagar and her son, addressed her husband thus, Cast forth this bondwoman and her son; for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, even with Isaac' (Gen. xxi. 10).

A previous instance of adoption in the history of Abraham, when as yet he had no children, appears to be discoverable in his saying, 'One born in my house is mine heir.' This unquestionably denotes a house-born slave, as distinguished from one bought with money. Abraham had several such; and the one to whom he is supposed here to refer is his faithful and devoted steward Eliezer. This, therefore, is a case in which a slave was adopted as a son-a practice still very common in the East. A boy is often

The practice of adoption had its origin in the desire for male offspring among those who have, in the ordinary course, been denied that blessing, or have been deprived of it by circumstances. This feeling is common to our nature; but its operation is less marked in those countries where the equalizing influences of high civilization lessen the peculiar privileges of the paternal character, and where the security and the wellobserved laws by which estates descend and property is transmitted, withdraw one of the principal inducements to the practice. And thus most of the instances in the Bible occur in the patriarchal period. The law of Moses, by settling the rela-purchased young, adopted by his master, brought tions of families and the rules of descent, and by formally establishing the Levirate law, which in some sort secured a representative posterity even to a man who died without children, appears to have put some check upon this custom. The allusions in the New Testament are mostly to practices of adoption which then existed among the Greeks and Romans, and rather to the latter than to the former; for among the more highly civilized Greeks adoption was less frequent than among the Romans. In the East the practice has always been common, especially among the Semitic races, in whom the love of offspring has at all times been strongly manifested.

It is scarcely necessary to say that adoption was confined to sons. The whole Bible history affords no example of the adoption of a female.

The first instances of adoption which occur in Scripture are less the acts of men than of women, who, being themselves barren, gave their female slaves to their husbands, with the view of adopting the children they might bear. Thus Sarah gave her handmaid Hagar to Abraham; and the son that was born, Ishmael, appears to have been considered as her son as well as Abraham's, until Isaac was born. In like manner Rachel, having no children, gave her handmaid Bilhah to her husband, who had by her Dan and Naphtali (Gen. xxx. 5-9); on which his other wife, Leah, although she had sons of her own, yet fearing that she had left off bearing, claimed the

up in his faith, and educated as his son; or if the owner has a daughter, he adopts him through a marriage with that daughter, and the family which springs from this union is counted as descended from him. But house-born slaves are usually preferred, as these have never had any home but their master's house, are considered members of his family, and are generally the most faithful of his adherents. This practice of slave adoption was very common among the Romans; and, as such, is more than once referred to by St. Paul (Rom. viii. 15; Gal. iv. 5-6), the transition from the condition of a slave to that of a son, and the privilege of applying the tender name of Father' to the former Master,' affording a beautiful illustration of the change which takes place from the bondage of the law to the freedom and privileges of the Christian state.

As in most cases the adopted son was to be considered dead to the family from which he sprung, the separation of natural ties and connections was avoided by this preference of slaves, who were mostly foreigners or of foreign descent. For the same reason the Chinese make their adoptions from children in the hospitals, who have been abandoned by their parents. The Tartars are the only people we know who prefer to adopt their near relatives-nephews or cousins, or, failing them, a Tartar of their own banner. The only Scriptural example of this

36

ADULTERY

ADULTERY, TRIAL OF

of Judah and the sea; and from its place in the with a woman who was not his wife, his conculists of names (especially 2 Chron. xi. 7), it bine, or his slave, he was guilty of unchastity, appears not to have been far from the Philistine but committed no offence which gave a wife city of Gath. It is probable, however, that the reason to complain that her legal rights had been 'cave of Adullam' (1 Sam. xxii. 1) was not in infringed. If, however, the woman with whom the vicinity of the city, where no such cave has he associated was the wife of another, he was been found, but in the mountainous wilderness guilty of adultery, not by infringing his own in the west of Judah towards the Dead Sea. marriage covenant, but by causing a breach of This conjecture is favoured by the fact that the that which existed between that woman and her usual haunts of David were in this quarter; husband. By thus excluding from the name whence he moved into the land of Moab, which and punishment of adultery the offence which was quite contiguous, whereas he must have did not involve the enormous wrong of imposing crossed the whole breadth of the land, if the upon a man a supposititious offspring, in a nation cave of Adullam had been near the city of that where the succession to landed property went name. The particular cave, usually pointed out entirely by birth, so that a father could not by as the cave of Adullam,' is about six miles his testament alienate it from any one who was south-west of Bethlehem, in the side of a deep regarded as his son-the law was enabled, with ravine which passes below the Frank's mountain less severity than if the inferior offence had been on the south. It is an immense natural cavern, included, to punish the crime with death. It is with numerous passages, the mouth of which still so punished wherever the practice of pocan be approached only on foot along the sidelygamy has similarly operated in limiting the of the cliff. It seems probable that David, as a crime-not, perhaps, that the law expressly asnative of Bethlehem, must have been well ac- signs that punishment, but it recognises the right quainted with this remarkable spot, and had pro- of the injured party to inflict it, and, in fact, bably often availed himself of its shelter when leaves it, in a great degree, in his hands. Now out with his father's flocks. It would therefore death was the punishment of adultery before the naturally occur to him as a place of refuge when time of Moses; and if he had assigned a less he fled from Gath; and his purpose of forming punishment, his law would have been inoperative, a band of followers was much more likely to be for private vengeance, sanctioned by usage, would realized here, in the neighbourhood of his native still have inflicted death. But by adopting it place, than in the westward plain, where the city into the law, those restrictions were imposed of Adullam lay. upon its operation which necessarily arise when the calm inquiry of public justice is substituted for the impulsive action of excited hands. Thus, death would be less frequently inflicted; and that this effect followed seems to be implied in the fact that the whole biblical history offers no example of capital punishment for the crime. Eventually, divorce superseded all other punish

ADULTERY. In the common acceptation of the word, adultery denotes the sexual intercourse of a married woman with any other man than her husband, or of a married man with any other woman than his wife. But the crime is not understood in this extent among Eastern nations, nor was it so understood by the Jews. With them, adultery was the act whereby any married man was exposed to the risk of having a spurious offspring imposed upon him. An adulterer was, therefore, any man who had illicit intercourse with a married or betrothed woman; and an adulteress was a betrothed or married woman who had intercourse with any other man than her husband. An intercourse between a married man and an unmarried woman was not, as with us, deemed adultery, but fornication; a great sin, but not, like adultery, involving the contingency of polluting a descent, of turning aside an inheritance, or of imposing upon a man a charge which did not belong to him. Adultery was thus considered a great social wrong, against which society protected itself by much severer penalties than attended an unchaste act not involving the same contingencies.

It will be seen that this Oriental limitation of adultery is intimately connected with the existence of polygamy. If adultery be defined as a breach of the marriage covenant, then, where the contract is between one man and one woman, as in Christian countries, the man as much as the woman infringes the covenant, or commits adultery, by every act of intercourse with any other woman: but where polygamy is allowed, where the husband may marry other wives, and take to himself concubines and slaves, the marriage contract cannot and does not convey to the woman a legal title that the man should belong to her alone. If, therefore, a Jew associated

ment.

It seems that the Roman law made the same important distinction with the Hebrew, between the infidelity of the husband and of the wife. Adultery' was defined by the civilians to be the violation of another man's bed, so that the infidelity of the husband to his own wife could not alone constitute the offence.

It is understood that the crime was punished among the Assyrians and Chaldeans by cutting off the nose and the ears; and this brings to mind the passage in which the prophet Ezekiel (xxiii. 25), after, in the name of the Lord, reproving Israel and Judah for their adulteries (i.e. idolatries) with the Assyrians and Chaldeans, threatens the punishment, they shall take away thy nose and thy ears.' One or both of these mutilations, most generally that of the nose, were also inflicted by other nations, as the Persians and Egyptians, and even the Romans; but we suspect that among the former, as with the latter, it was less a judicial punishment than a summary infliction by the aggrieved party. It would also seem that these mutilations were more usually inflicted on the male than the female adulterer. In Egypt, however, cutting off the nose was the female punishment, and the man was beaten terribly with rods. The respect with which the conjugal union was treated in that country in the earliest times is manifested in the history of Abraham (Gen. xii. 19).

ADULTERY, TRIAL OF. It would be

ADULTERY, TRIAL OF

tion.

ÆGYPT

37

unjust to the spirit of the Mosaical legislation | By an application of the same figure, An adulto suppose that the trial of the suspected wife terous generation' (Matt. xii. 39; xvi. 4; Mark by the bitter water, called the Water of Jeal- vii. 38) means a faithless and impious generausy, was by it first produced. It is to be regarded as an attempt to mitigate the evils of, and to bring under legal control, an old custom which could not be entirely abrogated.

The original usage, which it was designed to mitigate, was probably of the kind which we still find in Western Africa, where, when a party is accused of murder, adultery, or witchcraft, if he denies the crime, he is required to drink the red water, and on refusing is deemed guilty of the offence. But in Africa the drink is highly poisonous in itself, and, if rightly prepared, the only chance of escape is the rejection of it by the stomach, whereas, among the Hebrews, the water of jealousy,' however unpleasant, was prepared in a prescribed manner with ingrediens known to all to be perfectly innocent. It cald not therefore injure the innocent, and its action upon the guilty must have resulted, not from the effects of the drink itself, but from the consciousness of having committed a horrible perjury. As regulated, then, by the law of Moses, the trial for suspected adultery by the bitter water amounted to this, that a woman Suspected of adultery by her husband was allowed to repel the charge by a public oath of purgation, which oath was designedly made so solemn in itself, and was attended by such awful circumstances, that it was in the highest degree unlikely that it would be dared by any woman not supported by the consciousness of innocence. And the fact that no instance of the actual application of the ordeal occurs in Scripture, affords some countenance to the assertion of the Jewish writers, that the trial was so much dreaded by the women, that those who were really guilty generally avoided it by confession; and that thus the trial itself early fell into disuse. And if, as we have supposed, this mode of trial was only talerated by Moses, the ultimate neglect of it st have been desired and intended by him. la later times, indeed, it was disputed in the Jewish schools, whether the husband was bound to prosecute his wife to this extremity, or whether was not lawful for him to connive at and pardon her act, if he were so inclined. There Were some who held that he was bound by his daty to prosecute, while others maintained that it was left to his pleasure.

From the same source we learn that this form of trial was finally abrogated about forty years before the destruction of Jerusalem. The reason assigned is, that the men themselves were at that tane generally adulterous; and that God would to fulfil the imprecations of the ordeal oath pon the wife while the husband was guilty of the same crime (John viii. 1-8).

ADUM'MIM, a place which is only twice named in Scripture. Once (Josh. xv. 7), where, from the context, it seems to indicate the border between Judah and Benjamin, and that it was an ascending road between Gilgal (and also Jericho) and Jerusalem. The second notice (Josh. xviii. 17) adds no further information, but repeats the ascent to Adummim.' Most commentators take the name to mean the place of blood, and follow Jerome, who finds the place in the dangerous or mountainous part of the road between Jerusalem and Jericho, and supposes that it was so called from the frequent effusion of blood by the robbers, by whom it was much infested. These are curious interpretations of the original word, which merely denotes the redness of the soil or rock. However, as a difficult pass in a desolate rocky region, between important cities, the part of the road indicated by Jerome, and all after him, was as likely to be infested by robbers in earlier times as in those of Jerome and at the present day. Indeed, the character of the road was so notorious, that Christ lays the scene of the parable of the good Samaritan (Luke x.) upon it; and Jerome informs us that Adummim or Adommim was believed to be the place where the traveller (taken as a real person) fell among thieves.' He adds that a fort and garrison was maintained here for the safeguard of travellers. The travellers of the present century mention the spot and neighbourhood nearly in the same terms as those of older date. They all represent the road as still infested by robbers, from whom some of them have not escaped without danger. The place thus indicated is about eight miles from Jerusalem, and four from Jericho.

ADVOCATE, one who pleads the cause of another; also one who exhorts, defends, comforts, prays for another. It is an appellation given to the Holy Spirit by Christ (John xiv. 16; xv. 26; xvi. 7), and to Christ himself by an apostle (1 John ii. 1; see also Rom. viii. 34; Heb. vii. 25).

In the forensic sense, advocates or pleaders were not known to the Jews until they came under the dominion of the Romans, and were obliged to transact their law affairs after the Roman manner. Being then little conversant with the Roman laws, and with the forms of the jurists, it was necessary for them, in pleading a cause before the Roman magistrates, to obtain the assistance of a Roman lawyer or advocate, who was well versed in the Greek and Latin languages. In all the Roman provinces such men were found, who devoted their time and labour to the pleading of causes and the transacting of other legal business in the provincial courts. It also appears that many Roman youths who had devoted themselves to forensic business

ADULTERY, in the symbolical language of the Old Testament, means idolatry and apostacy from the worship of the true God (Jer. iii. 8, 9; Ezek. xvi, 32; xxiii. 37; also Rev. ii. 22). Hence an Adulteress meant an apostate church or city, par- used to repair to the provinces with the consuls ticularly the daughter of Jerusalem,' or the and prætors, in order, by managing the causes Jewish church and people (Isa. i. 21; Jer. iii. 6, of the provincials, to fit themselves for more im&9; Ezek. xvi. 22; xxiii. 7). This figure re-portant ones at Rome. Such an advocate was salted from the primary one, which describes Tertullus, whom the Jews employed to accuse the connection between God and his separated Paul before Felix (Acts xxiv. 1) [ACCUSER]. people as a marriage between him and them. Æ'GYPT. [Egypt.]

of Judah and the sea; and from its place in the lists of names (especially Chron. xi. 7), it appears not to have been far from the Philistine city of Gath. It is probable, however, that the 'cave of Adullam' (1 Sam. xxii. 1) was not in the vicinity of the city, where no such cave has been found, but in the mountainous wilderness in the west of Judah towards the Dead Sea. This conjecture is favoured by the fact that the usual haunts of David were in this quarter; whence he moved into the land of Moab, which was quite contiguous, whereas he must have crossed the whole breadth of the land, if the cave of Adullam had been near the city of that name. The particular cave, usually pointed out as the cave of Adullam,' is about six miles south-west of Bethlehem, in the side of a deep ravine which passes below the Frank's mountain on the south. It is an immense natural cavern, with numerous passages, the mouth of which can be approached only on foot along the side of the cliff. It seems probable that David, as a native of Bethlehem, must have been well acquainted with this remarkable spot, and had probably often availed himself of its shelter when out with his father's flocks. It would therefore naturally occur to him as a place of refuge when he fled from Gath; and his purpose of forming a band of followers was much more likely to be realized here, in the neighbourhood of his native place, than in the westward plain, where the city of Adullam lay.

ADULTERY. In the common acceptation of the word, adultery denotes the sexual intercourse of a married woman with any other man than her husband, or of a married man with any other woman than his wife. But the crime is not understood in this extent among Eastern nations, nor was it so understood by the Jews. With them, adultery was the act whereby any married man was exposed to the risk of having a spurious offspring imposed upon him. An adulterer was, therefore, any man who had illicit intercourse with a married or betrothed woman; and an adulteress was a betrothed or married woman who had intercourse with any other man than her husband. An intercourse between a married man and an unmarried woman was not, as with us, deemed adultery, but fornication; a great sin, but not, like adultery, involving the contingency of polluting a descent, of turning aside an inheritance, or of imposing upon a man a charge which did not belong to him. Adultery was thus considered a great social wrong, against which society protected itself by much severer penalties than attended an unchaste act not involving the same contingencies.

ADULTERY, TRIAL OF

with a woman who was not his wife, his concubine, or his slave, he was guilty of unchastity, but committed no offence which gave a wife reason to complain that her legal rights had been infringed. If, however, the woman with whom he associated was the wife of another, he was guilty of adultery, not by infringing his own marriage covenant, but by causing a breach of that which existed between that woman and her husband. By thus excluding from the name and punishment of adultery the offence which did not involve the enormous wrong of imposing upon a man a supposititious offspring, in a nation where the succession to landed property went entirely by birth, so that a father could not by his testament alienate it from any one who was regarded as his son-the law was enabled, with less severity than if the inferior offence had been included, to punish the crime with death. It is still so punished wherever the practice of polygamy has similarly operated in limiting the crime-not, perhaps, that the law expressly as signs that punishment, but it recognises the right of the injured party to inflict it, and, in fact, leaves it, in a great degree, in his hands. Now death was the punishment of adultery before the time of Moses; and if he had assigned a less punishment, his law would have been inoperative, for private vengeance, sanctioned by usage, would still have inflicted death. But by adopting it into the law, those restrictions were imposed upon its operation which necessarily arise when the calm inquiry of public justice is substituted for the impulsive action of excited hands. Thus, death would be less frequently inflicted; and that this effect followed seems to be implied in the fact that the whole biblical history offers no example of capital punishment for the crime. Eventually, divorce superseded all other punish

ment.

It seems that the Roman law made the same important distinction with the Hebrew, between the infidelity of the husband and of the wife.

Adultery' was defined by the civilians to be the violation of another man's bed, so that the infidelity of the husband to his own wife could not alone constitute the offence.

It is understood that the crime was punished among the Assyrians and Chaldeans by cutting off the nose and the ears; and this brings to mind the passage in which the prophet Ezekiel (xxiii. 25), after, in the name of the Lord, reproving Israel and Judah for their adulteries (i.e. idolatries) with the Assyrians and Chaldeans, threatens the punishment, they shall take away thy nose and thy ears.' One or both of these mutilations, most generally that of the It will be seen that this Oriental limitation of nose, were also inflicted by other nations, as the adultery is intimately connected with the exist- Persians and Egyptians, and even the Romans; ence of polygamy. If adultery be defined as a but we suspect that among the former, as with breach of the marriage covenant, then, where the the latter, it was less a judicial punishment than contract is between one man and one woman, as a summary infliction by the aggrieved party. It in Christian countries, the man as much as the would also seem that these mutilations were woman infringes the covenant, or commits adul- more usually inflicted on the male than the tery, by every act of intercourse with any other female adulterer. In Egypt, however, cutting woman: but where polygamy is allowed, where off the nose was the female punishment, and the the husband may marry other wives, and take man was beaten terribly with rods. The respect to himself concubines and slaves, the marriage with which the conjugal union was treated in contract cannot and does not convey to the that country in the earliest times is manifested woman a legal title that the man should belong in the history of Abraham (Gen. xii. 19). to her alone. If, therefore, a Jew associated ADULTERY, TRIAL OF. It would be