ADOPTION, is an action whereby a Man takes a Stranger into his family, in order to make him part of it, acknowledge him for his Son, and design him for the heir of his Estate. I do not find that Gen. xlviii. 1.Adoption, properly speaking, was in use among the Hebrews. Moses says nothing of it in his Laws, and Jacob’s Adoption of his two Grandsons Ephraim and Manasseh, is not properly such, but a kind of Substitution, whereby he intended that the two Sons of Joseph should have each their lot in Israel, as if they were his own Sons. Thy two Sons, says he, Ephraim and Manasseh, are mine, as Reuben and Simeon they shall be mine. But as he gives no inheritance to their Father Joseph, all the favour he does him is, that instead of one part which he would have had to divide between Ephraim and Manasseh, he gives him two: The effect of this Adoption related only to the increase of fortune and inheritance between the Sons of Joseph.
Deut. xxv. 5. Ruth iv. Mat. xxii. 24. Gen. xxviii. 8.Another kind of Adoption in use among the Israelites consisted in the obligation one Brother was under to marry the Widow of another who died without Children; so that the Children born of this marriage were look’d upon as belonging to the deceas’d Brother, and went by his name, a practice which was customary before the Law, as we see in the History of Tamar; but neither was this the manner of adopting so well known among the Greeks and Romans.
Exod. ii. 10. Esther ii. 7, 15.Pharaoh’s Daughter adopted young Moses, and Mordecai Esther. We are not acquainted with the Ceremonies observed on these occasions, nor how far the Privileges of Adoption extended, but it is to be presumed that they were the same with those we meet with in the Roman Laws; that adopted Children shared in the estate with the natural Children; that they assumed the name of the Person who adopted them, and became subject to his paternal Power who received them into his Family.
By the passion of our Saviour, and the communication of the Merits of his death, which are applied to us by Baptism, we become the adopted Children of God, and have a part in the inheritance of Heaven. This is what St. Paul teaches us in several Rom. viii. 15.places; Ye have not received the Spirit of bondage again to fear, but ye have received the Spirit of Adoption, whereby we cry Ver. 23.Abba Father. And, We wait for the Adoption of the Children of God. And again, God Gal. iv. 4, 5.sent forth his Son to redeem them that were under the Law, that we might receive the Adoption of Sons.
Among the Mahometans 1 the ceremony of Adoption is performed by obliging him who is adopted to pass through the shirt of the Person who is adopting him. For this reason, to adopt among the Turks is expressed by saying to draw any one through one’s shirt, and an adopted Son is called by 1 D’Herbelot Bibl. Orient. p. 47. by them Akietogli, the Son of another life, because he was not begotten in this. Something like this is observable among the Hebrews: Elijah adopts the Prophet Elisha, 1 Kings xix. 19.and communicates the gift of Prophecy to him by putting his mantle upon him, Elias misit pallium suum super illum; and when Elijah was carried away in a fiery Chariot, 2 Kings ii. 15.he let fall his mantle, which was taken up by Elisha his disciple, his spiritual Son, and Successor in the office of a Prophet.
Moses dress’d Eleazar in Aaron’s sacred Num. xx. 26.vestments, when this High-priest was upon the point of being gather’d to his Fathers, to shew thereby that Eleazar succeeded him in the functions of the Priesthood, and in some sort adopted him for the exercise of this Dignity. The Lord told Shebna, the Captain of the Temple, that he would deprive him of this honourable station, and substitute Eliakim, the Son of Hilkiah, in If. xxii. 21.his room. I will cloath him with thy robe, saith the Lord, and strengthen him with thy girdle, and I will commit thy Government into his hand. St. Paul in several places Rom. xiii. 14. Gal. iii. 27. Ephes. iv. 24. Col. iii. 10.says, that Christians put on the Lord Jesus, that they put on the new Man, to denote the Adoption of the Sons of God, wherewith they are invested by Baptism.