e daughter of his
father, but not the daughter of his mother. Isaac followed his
father's example in Gerar:

"The man of the place asked him of his wife; and he
said, She is my sister: for he feared to say, My wife;
lest (said he) the men of the place should kill me for
Rebekah; because she was fair to look upon."

Yet we were told that Isaac loved Rebekah. Such is not Christian love.
The actions of Abraham and Isaac remind one of the Blackfoot Indian
tale told on page 631 of this volume. An American army officer would
not only lay down his own life, but shoot his wife with his own pistol
before he would allow her to fall into the enemy's hands, because to
him her honor is, of all things human, the most sacred.

UNCHIVALROUS SLAUGHTER OF WOMEN

Emotions are the product of actions or of ideas about actions.
Inasmuch as Hebrew actions toward women and ideas about them were so
radically different from ours it logically follows that they cannot
have known the emotions of love as we know them. The only symptom of
love referred to in the Hebrew Scriptures is Amnon's getting lean from
day to day and feigning sickness (II. Sam. 13: 1-22); and the story
shows what kind of love that was. It would be contrary to all reason
and psychological consistency to suppose that modern tenderness of
romantic feeling toward women could have existed among a people whose
greatest and wisest man could, for any reason whatever, chide a
returning victorious army, as Moses did (Numbers 31: 9-19), for saving
all the women alive, and could issue this command:

"Now, therefore, kill every male among the living ones,
and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with
him. But all the women children that have not known man
by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves."

The Arabs were the first Asiatics who spared women in war; the Hebrews
had not risen to that chivalrous stage of civilization. Joshua (8:26)
destroyed Ai and slew 12,000, "both of men and women:" and in Judges
(21:10-12) we read how the congregation sent an army of 12,000 men and
commanded them, saying,

"Go and smite the inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead with the
edge of the sword, with the women and the little ones.
And this is the thing ye shall do; ye shall utterly
destroy every male and every woman that hath lain by
man."

And they did so, sparing only the four hundred virgins. These were
given to the trib