PUBER1Y CUSTOMS. 233

CHAPTER XVI.
Puberty customs.
Menstruation and its Consequences in Antiquity.

“The woman who, at the return of the month, hath her issue of blood,
shall be separated seven days. Every one that toucheth her, shall be unclean
until the evening. And every thine that she sleepeth on, or that she sitteth
on in the days of her separation, shall be defiled. He that toucheth her bed
shall wash his clothes: and being himself washed with water, shall be unclean
until the evening. Whosoever shall touch any vessel on which she sitteth,
shall wash his clothes; and himself being washed with water, shall be defiled
until the evening.” } :

These stringent prescriptions of the Mosaical Law are well known, and
that they were strictly observed among the posterity of Jacob there can be
no reasonable doubt. But, apart from the well understood sanitary consider-
ations that prompted them, the fidelity with which they were followed was,
in part at least, consequent on the fact that they were apparently but an
official consecration of sentiments and customs which prevailed long before
Moses’ time. The state of a menstruating woman must, indeed, have been
extremely repulsive to the inhabitants of Mesopotamia, since when Laban,
furious at the disappearance of his family idols, was looking for the same
among the goods of his daughters, one of whom, Rachel, had taken them away,
it sufficed for her to sit upon them and say quietly: “it has now happened
to me according to the custom of women’? to send her father away, and
avert from her head the sentence of death which had implicitly been pronounced
against her by her husband.

Among the Jews of old, puberty gave rise to at least five distinct ob-
servances. First, the woman in her menses was legally impure, and all contact
with her entailed defilement. Second, she was sequestered from the company
of men. Third, even at the expiration of her menstrual discharges, she remained
in a state of mitigated seclusion until the time of her marriage. Fourth, she
had then to wear a special costume whenever she went out; and, lastly, she
was under the guardianship of a close relative, who was responsible for her
conduct and whose duty it was to avenge any wrong done her.

The first two points are so clearly mentioned in the above quoted texts
from Leviticus that we need not insist thereon.

That, independently from her menstrual periods, the Jewish maiden
remained till her marriage a being apart, who must associate only with persons

1 Levit., XV, 19—23.
2 Gen., XXXI, 35.