Chapter XI

Summary

In the fearful epochs of misery and war which followed, we find no further mention of woman individually; but, as an important evidence of the care which the Jewish religion took of females, we find Josephus, in his character of general (which he fulfilled infinitely better than that of historian), labouring with zeal and earnestness to protect the females from insult or outrage. In lawless nations, in times of such terrible evil, this would not have been thought of; whereas with the Hebrew patriot, surrounded as he was with many heavy cares and imminent dangers, it was the first consideration, and was never lost sight of throughout the whole of his career.

In glancing back over the period, which has detained us much longer than we anticipated, from the return from Babylon to the war, we cannot find a single evidence of the veracity or foundation of the charge of Jewish female degradation, nor in fact the workings of a single statute contradictory to the beautiful spirit of the law of Moses. All we have read, every female character brought forward, marks the superior social elevation and individual intellect of the Hebrew females, to the women of any of the surrounding nations. Nay, we see them occupying positions as wives and sisters—of kings, higher and far more influential than they ever did, or do, in any Gentile land.