Leviticus 18 - Concluding Notes

CONCLUDING NOTES.

(1.) That portion of the Levitical law which prohibits incestuous marriages is either still in force or we have no divine legislation on this important subject. All Christian nations, by incorporating into their laws this prohibitory code, declare that it has never been repealed. The inference that it is now a law demanding universal obedience is strongly confirmed by that moral, if not instinctive, abhorrence of incest widely prevalent in the pagan world. See 1 Corinthians 5:1, and Sophocles’s OEdipus, Rex. This harmonizes with Luther’s method of eliminating the local and transient precepts of the Mosaic law. He says: “Moses is dead. He lived for the Jewish people, and his laws do not bind us unless they are approved by our laws, both natural and statutory.” 

(2.) There are two schools of interpreters of this code, 1.) the restrictive or exclusive, which limits the prohibitions to the classes specified, and 2.) the broad or inclusive interpreters, who extend the prohibition to all within the same degree with those specifically forbidden, as the positive exclusion of a man’s aunt from marriage with him implies the exclusion of his niece, since she is in the same degree of consanguinity.

The degree is always found by reckoning through the common progenitor.

• Parent and child are in the first degree.
• Brothers are in the second degree.
• Cousins are in the fourth degree.
• Second cousins are in the sixth degree.

The highest prohibited class is in the third degree. Since the restrictive interpretation must admit the marriage of an uncle and his niece and a father and his daughter, we prefer the inclusive interpretation. Relationship by affinity or marriage is reckoned in the same way as blood relationship, since a man and his wife are one flesh. Hence a brother’s wife and a wife’s sister are in the second degree of affinity, and an uncle’s wife is in the third degree of affinity, because he is in the third degree of consanguinity. The following table contains the kindred forbidden to any man in marriage, either expressly or by implication, with their punishments. Of course, the corresponding male relations are forbidden to a woman: 

[ * Kindred forbidden by implication are in italics.]

[ ‡ Punished with death.]

[ ° Punished with childlessness.]

[ ¶ Shall bear their iniquity.] [ † Except a childless widow.]

[ § Forbidden by the canon law of England. In 1835 past marriages of such were legalized and future marriages were prohibited by an act of Parliament. Legal elsewhere in Christendom, except that the Roman Church requires a permit from the pope, which is never refused.]

[ || Permitted by some Christian States, as Massachusetts.]

[ ¶ Pronounced accursed in Deuteronomy 27:23.]

We have italicised the wife’s sister because the express prohibition in verse 18 is disputed. The argument derived from the nearness of affinity would lead us to the conclusion that marriage in this case is unlawful on the principle of interpretation which extends the prohibition to all within the same degree with any who are forbidden. But in the case of relationship by affinity merely, it must be confessed that marriage with a sister of the deceased wife is just as lawful as it is with a wife’s sister-in-law, or for two brothers to marry sisters, or for the father and son to marry mother and daughter, or for the child of a widow to marry the child of a widower after the intermarriage of their widowed parents, or for a marriage required by the Levirate law, that of a brother to the childless widow of his brother.

The state of opinion among English scholars and divines may be inferred from the fact that the House of Commons voted to legalize this kind of marriage in 1850, 1855, 1858, 1859, 1870, 1871, 1873, and in 1883 by large but diminishing majorities. The House of Lords rejected the bill against the vote of several bishops, under the lead of Archbishop Tait. But in 1861, 1862, 1866, and 1875 the bill was defeated by the Commons. The following authorities are quoted in favour of such marriages: John Wesley, Adam Clarke, Joseph Parker, C.H. Spurgeon, Drs. Chalmers, N. MacLeod, and Moffatt, Dr. Adler, the chief rabbi of England, Archbishop Whately, Cardinal Cullen, and the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, as well as the whole Roman Catholic hierarchy of Dublin and London. According to the civil law of every Christian State in the world, except certain parts of the British Empire, marriage with the sister of the deceased wife is legal. Until the fourth century the prohibition of it had never been heard of in the Christian Church. The same Council which first prohibited marriage with the sister of a deceased wife also prohibited the marriage of the clergy. The marriage of cousins was about the same time prohibited under pain of death by fire.

(3.) The ground of this prohibition of wedlock within the fourth degree exclusive is not arbitrary, but a beneficent regard for the well-being of mankind. 1.) Maladies both physical and mental, such as insanity and idiocy, arise from consanguineous marriages. 2.) If marriage between near kindred were lawful, it would be a great restraint upon that social freedom in which blood kindred can now indulge without peril or suspicion. There is, moreover, a difference in kind between the love of blood kindred and the love uniting husband and wife. The amalgamation of these affections cannot take place without a serious detriment to one or the other; hence the desirableness of drawing a distinct line between them by stating definitely where the matrimonial affection may legitimately take root. 3.) The prohibition tends to break up the intense clannishness to which men are prone, and to link all mankind together in the bonds of brotherhood. 4.) In the purpose of Jehovah to make Israel a peculiar people, the laws in this chapter constitute a striking difference between them and all the heathen nations.

(4.) After the captivity of Israel in Babylon, the scribes added to the fifteen proscribed relatives enumerated in the Levitical law twenty other prohibitions, called secondary, four of which were infinite, including an endless series, such as the mother’s mother’s mother, back to the wife of our father Jacob, and the son’s son’s son’s wife, descending to the end of the world.

(5.) The rabbinic law adds seven prohibitions relating to the marriage of a divorced woman to a man with whom she has committed adultery; of a widow to a man who attests the death of her former husband; of a widow who has lost two husbands; of a young girl to an old man, and vice versa; together with several limitations of time within which widows, widowers, and divorced women may not marry.

(6.) The marriage of an uncle to his niece, which is strictly forbidden by the English law, and inferentially so by the Levitical law, has been considered by the Jews from time immemorial as something specially meritorious. The Talmud says that the promise given in Isaiah 58:9, 10, refers especially to him “who loves his neighbours, befriends his relations, marries his brother’s daughter, and lends his money to the poor in the hour of need.”

(7.) Much ingenuity has been exercised in harmonizing the apparent sanction of human sacrifices with the stringent prohibitions in this chapter and in chapter 22. It is evident that God’s design in the command to Abraham to offer up Isaac was not to secure that outward act, but to develop the spirit of obedience through entire consecration; “the principle,” says Dr. Thomas Arnold, “which has been applied to every age.” Hengstenberg shows “that satisfaction was rendered to the Lord’s command when the spiritual sacrifice was completed.” Thus Bush, Lange, Keil, Kurtz, Murphy, and many others. The burning of Achan’s children was probably the burning of their corpses to render their punishment more impressive. See Joshua 7:24, 25, notes. There is no proof that Jephthah ever executed his vow by actually making a holocaust of his daughter. The authorities for holding that she was devoted to perpetual virginity are Auberlen, Bush, Cassel, Delitzsch, Grotius, Hengstenberg, Houbigant, Keil, the Kimchis, Lange, LeClerk, and many others. See Judges 11:30-40, extended notes. The seven descendants of Saul were not delivered to the Gibeonites as a religious sacrifice, but as a demand of justice, so considered. See 2 Samuel 21, note.