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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadMatthew Poole Commentary - Numbers 30:3 - 30:3
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If a woman, or a man in the same circumstances, a son or a servant, as plainly appears from hence, because the reason of this law is perfectly the same in both sexes, which is, that such persons have given away what was not their own, but another’s, even their superior’s right, which is against the rule and law of natural reason, and against the word of God, which binds all persons to give to every one their due. He instanceth only in the woman, because that sex is both by creation and sin put into a state of subjection, but under the chief and most unquestionable kind all other subjects in like circumstances are comprehended, as is very usual.
Being in her father’s house, i.e. under his care, power, and government, which she is whilst she continues in her father’s house, being a virgin, as appears by the opposition of a married woman, Num_30:6, and of a widow, and divorced woman, Num_30:9, and by this phrase of being in her father’s house, for when she marries, she is removed into her husband’s house, Rth_1:9. Or, being in, or of her father’s family, the word house being commonly used for family; for when she marries, she is translated and removed into another family.
In her youth; when not only her sex, but her age, disenables her for vowing; and this clause is added not by way of restriction, as if’ virgins in their riper years were freed from their parents’ jurisdiction, and at their own disposal, (which undoubtedly they are not,) but by way of addition, or amplification, q.d. especially (which particle is here to be understood, such defects of particles being frequent in the Hebrew tongue) in her youth, which is commonly reckoned about her twelfth or thirteenth year.