and not having money, paid for them in labor—­seven years a piece.  Gen. xxix. 15-29.  Moses probably bought his wife in the same way, and paid for her by his labor, as the servant of her father.  Exod. ii. 21.  Shechem, when negotiating with Jacob and his sons for Dinah, says, “What ye shall say unto me, I will give.  Ask me never so much dowry and gift, and I will give according as ye shall say unto me.”  Gen. xxxiv. 11, 12.  David purchased Michal, Saul’s daughter, and Othniel, Achsab, the daughter of Caleb, by performing perilous services for the benefit of their fathers-in-law. 1 Sam. xviii. 25-27; Judges i. 12, 13.  That the purchase of wives, either with money or by service was the general practice, is plain from such passages as Exod. xxii. 17, and 1 Sam. xviii. 25.  Among the Jews of the present day this usage exists, though it is now a mere form, there being no real purchase.  Yet among their marriage ceremonies, is one called “marrying by the penny.”  The coincidences, not only in the methods of procuring wives and servants, and in the terms employed in describing the transactions, but in the prices paid for each, are worthy of notice.  The highest price of wives (virgins) and servants was the same.  Compare Deut. xxii. 28, 29, and Exod. xxii. 17, with Lev. xxvii. 2-8.  The medium price of wives and servants was the same.  Compare Hosea iii. 2, with Exod. xxi. 2.  Hosea appears to have paid one half in money and the other in grain.  Further, the Israelitish female bought-servants were wives, their husbands and their masters being the same persons.  Exod. xxi. 8, and Judges xix. 3, 27.  If buying servants among the Jews shows that they were property, then buying wives shows that they were property.  The words in the original used to describe the one, describe the other.  Why not contend that the wives of the ancient fathers of the faithful were their chattels, and used as ready change at a pinch?  And thence deduce the rights of modern husbands.  How far gone is the Church from primitive purity!  How slow to emulate illustrious examples!  Alas!  Patriarchs and prophets are followed afar off!  When will pious husbands live up to their Bible privileges, and become partakers with Old Testament worthies in the blessedness of a husband’s rightful immunities!  Surely professors of religion now, are bound to buy and hold their wives as property!  Refusing so to do, is to question the morality of those “good old” wife-trading “patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” with the prophets, and a host of whom the world was not worthy.

The use of the word buy, to describe the procuring of wives, is not peculiar to the Hebrew.  In the Syriac language, the common expression for “the married,” or “the espoused,” is “the bought.”  Even so late as the 16th century, the common record of marriages in the old German Chronicles was “A.  BOUGHT B.”