this as a matter of course; but so far is he, on his part, from being in love with Ruth, that he offers her first to the other relative, and on his refusal, buys her for himself, without the least show of emotion indicating that he was doing anything but his duty.  He was simply fulfilling the law of the Levirate, as written in Deuteronomy (25:5), ordaining that if a husband die without leaving a son his brother shall take the widow to him to wife and perform the duty of an husband’s brother unto her; that is, to beget a son (the first-born) who shall succeed in the name of his dead brother, “that his name be not blotted out of Israel.”  How very seriously the Hebrews took this law is shown by the further injunction that if a brother refuses thus to perform his duty,

“then the elders of his city shall call him, and speak unto him:  and if he stand and say, I like not to take her; then shall his brother’s wife come into him in the presence of the elders, and loose his shoe off his foot, and spit in his face; and she shall answer and say, so shall it be done unto the man that doth not build up his brother’s house.  And his name shall be called in Israel, the house of him that hath his shoe loosed.”

Onan was even slain for thus refusing to do his duty (Gen. 38:8-10).

NO SYMPATHY OR SENTIMENT

The three R’s of Hebrew love thus show how these people arranged their marriages with reference to social and religious customs or utilitarian considerations, buying their wives by service or otherwise, without any thought of sentimental preferences and sympathies, such as underlie modern Christian marriages of the higher order.  It might be argued that the ingredients of romantic love existed, but simply are not dwelt on in the old Hebrew stories.  But it is impossible to believe that the Bible, that truly inspired and wonderfully realistic transcript of life, which records the minutest details, should have neglected in its thirty-nine books, making over seven hundred pages of fine print, to describe at least one case of sentimental infatuation, romantic adoration, and self-sacrificing devotion in pre-matrimonial love, had such love existed.  Why should it have neglected to describe the manifestations of sentimental love, since it dwells so often on the symptoms and results of sensual passion?  Stories of lust abound in the Hebrew Scriptures; Genesis alone has five.  The Lord repented that he had made man on earth and destroyed even his chosen people, all but Noah, because every imagination in the thoughts of man’s heart “was only evil continually.”  But the flood did not cure the evil, nor did the destruction of Sodom, as a warning example.  It is after those events that the stories are related of Lot’s incestuous daughters, the seduction of Dinah, the crime of Judah and Tamar, the lust of Potiphar’s wife, of David and Bath-sheba, of Amnon and Tamar, of Absalom on the roof, with many other references to such crimes.[288]