The more children—especially male children—a person had among the Hebrews, the more was he honored, it being considered as a mark of divine favor, while sterile people were, on the contrary, held in contempt (comp. ; ; ; ; , sq.; 128:3; ; ). That children were often taken as bondsmen by a creditor for debts contracted by the father, is evident from ; ; . Among the Hebrews, a father had almost unlimited power over his children, nor do we find any law in the Pentateuch restricting that power to a certain age; it was indeed the parents who even selected wives for their sons (; ; ; ). It would appear, however, that a father's power over his daughters was still greater than that over his sons, since he might even annul a sacred vow made by a daughter, but not one made by a son (; ). Children cursing or assaulting their parents were punished by the Mosaic Law with death (; ; ). Before the time of Moses a father had the right to choose among his male children, and declare one of them (usually the child of his favorite wife) as his first-born, though he was perhaps only the youngest. Properly speaking, the 'firstborn' was he who was first begotten by the father, since polygamy excluded all regard in that respect to the mother. Thus Jacob had sons by all his four wives, while only one of them was called the first-born (); we find, however, instances where that name is applied also to the first-born on the mother's side (; comp. 2:42; ). The privileges of the first-born were considerable, as shown in Birthright.
Fig. 131—Modes of carrying children
The first-born son, if not expressly deprived by the father of his peculiar rights, as was the case with Reuben (Genesis 49), was at liberty to sell them to a younger brother, as happened in the case of Esau and Jacob (, sq.). Considering the many privileges attached to first-birth, we do not wonder that the Apostle called Esau a thoughtless person (). There are some allusions in Scripture to the modes in which children were carried. These appear to be adequately represented by the existing usages, as represented in the following figure, in which #1 represents a Nestorian woman bearing her child bundled at her back, and #2, an Egyptian female bearing her child on her shoulder. The former mode appears to be alluded to in several places, and the latter in . For other matters regarding children, see Adoption, Birth, Birthright.
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John Kitto was an English biblical scholar of Cornish descent.Born in Plymouth, John Kitto was a sickly child, son of a Cornish stonemason. The drunkenness of his father and the poverty of his family meant that much of his childhood was spent in the workhouse. He had no more than three years of erratic and interrupted education. At the age of twelve John Kitto fell on his head from a rooftop, and became totally and permanently deaf. As a young man he suffered further tragedies, disappointments and much loneliness. His height was 4 ft 8 in, and his accident left him with an impaired sense of balance. He found consolation in browsing at bookstalls and reading any books that came his way.
From these hardships he was rescued by friends who became aware of his mental abilities and encouraged him to write topical articles for local newspapers, arranging eventually for him to work as an assistant in a local library. Here he continued to educate himself.
One of his benefactors was the Exeter dentist Anthony Norris Groves, who in 1824 offered him employment as a dental assistant. Living with the Groves family, Kitto was profoundly influenced by the practical Christian faith of his employer. In 1829 he accompanied Groves on his pioneering mission to Baghdad and served as tutor to Groves's two sons. In 1833 Kitto returned to England via Constantinople, accompanied by another member of the Groves mission, Francis William Newman. Shortly afterwards he married, and in due course had several children.
A London publisher asked Kitto to write up his travel journals for a series of articles in the Penny Magazine, a publication read at that time by a million people in Britain, reprinted in America and translated into French, German and Dutch. Other writing projects followed as readers enquired about his experiences in the East amidst people living in circumstances closely resembling those of Bible times.
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