Chapter I

Summary

We are now to commence a period in the History of the Women of Israel, completely and even painfully distinct from any which had gone before it. Indeed, so complicated, so amalgamated with the histories of other nations, so little purely national is Israel, and so few and far between are the notices of women, in the history of the nation, from the death of Nehemiah to the dispersion,—that there is very very little which we can claim our own, or from which we can glean the consolation and lessons for individual social guidance, which are presented in the word of God. So little is there, in fact, of woman, that we may be censured, for dwelling so long on a period which has so little to do with a work entitled “The Women of Israel,” as almost to contradict its name. Yet where there are so very few works relative to our history in the vernacular idiom, and still fewer in which the Hebrew himself comes forward, with an attempt to fill up the void in national literature, and give the youth of his nation some assistance, distinct trom the peculiar tenets, which must pervade the writings of the most liberal of other creeds; we trust, that to linger a little while on our general history and thus explain away some of the errors and prejudices which have unconsciously gathered round us from unanswered accusations, may not be considered unnecessary, or even irrelevant to the subject on which we professed to treat.