"6 None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him, to uncover their nakedness: I am the LORD. 7 The nakedness of thy father, or the nakedness of thy mother, shalt thou not uncover: she is thy mother; thou shalt not uncover her nakedness. 8 The nakedness of thy father’s wife shalt thou not uncover: it is thy father’s nakedness. 9 The nakedness of thy sister, the daughter of thy father, or daughter of thy mother, whether she be born at home, or born abroad, even their nakedness thou shalt not uncover. 10 The nakedness of thy son’s daughter, or of thy daughter’s daughter, even their nakedness thou shalt not uncover: for theirs is thine own nakedness. 11 The nakedness of thy father’s wife’s daughter, begotten of thy father, she is thy sister, thou shalt not uncover her nakedness. 12 Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy father’s sister: she is thy father’s near kinswoman. 13 Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy mother’s sister: for she is thy mother’s near kinswoman. 14 Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy father’s brother, thou shalt not approach to his wife: she is thine aunt. 15 Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy daughter in law: she is thy son’s wife; thou shalt not uncover her nakedness. 16 Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy brother’s wife: it is thy brother’s nakedness. 17 Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of a woman and her daughter, neither shalt thou take her son’s daughter, or her daughter’s daughter, to uncover her nakedness; for they are her near kinswomen: it is wickedness. 18 Neither shalt thou take a wife to her sister, to vex her, to uncover her nakedness, beside the other in her life time." — Leviticus 18:6-18 KJV.
These fall into three classes: 1.) blood-relationships proper, 7-13; 2.) the wives of blood-relations, 14-16; 3.) the blood relations of the wife. This prohibition is not grounded on the eternal principles of absolute morality, since the command to “multiply and replenish the earth” must have involved the marriage of brothers and sisters in the family of Adam, and since, also, Abraham married his half sister, Jacob two sisters at a time, Amram his aunt Jochebed, and Judah married Tamar, the widow of his own son, with no indication of the divine disapproval; and by the commandment of the Levitical law the brother must marry the wife of his deceased childless brother. Still it must be confessed that the horror naturalis, or revulsion of feeling at the thought of marrying one’s mother or daughter is very closely allied to the abhorrence of the violation of the seventh commandment.
6. Near of kin — Hebrew, the flesh of his flesh, or his blood kindred. In Leviticus 25:49, the same words are equivalent to “family,” and they are applicable to marriage relationship, since in verses 17, 18 they include the near blood relations of the wife. Uncover… nakedness — This is the customary expression in the Pentateuch for the cohabitation of persons married or unmarried, though the former are chiefly referred to. This prohibition is addressed to males; the exceptions in verses 7 and 14 are only apparent, not real.
7. Nakedness of thy father — Here the “father” is grammatically the possessor. It is the wife’s nakedness, as the Hebrew properly rendered shows, where the “or” is rendered “even;” thus “the nakedness of thy father, even the nakedness of thy mother.” Since the husband and wife are one flesh, what is predicated of the wife may be predicated of him. The last clause of the verse implies that the command is directed only to a son, and refers only to his mother.
8. Father’s wife — His stepmother is especially intended.
9. Thy sister — The half-sister is here described; born at home, or born abroad — This has generally been understood as equivalent to “in or out of wedlock,” that is, the daughter of the father’s former wife or concubine; or it may amplify the preceding words, and signify one born to either parent in a former marriage. The Athenians were allowed to marry half-sisters by the father’s side; the Spartans married half-sisters by the same mother.
11. Father’s wife’s daughter — Knobel finds this distinction between this and verse 9, namely, that the words “father’s wife” include the mother as well as the stepmother, and thus specifically state the full sister. Others find no prohibition of the marriage of a full sister, as there is none of the marriage of a daughter, simply because such unions, like parricide, were regarded as crimes so unnatural that they never could occur. But the Assyrians, and especially the Egyptians, against whose customs Israel was warned in verse 3, married full sisters. This fact sustains Knobel.
16. Brother’s wife — This is supposed to refer either to a brother’s widow who has children, or to a woman put away from the brother by divorce, whose bill of divorcement permitted her to “go and be another man’s wife.” Deuteronomy 24:1, 2. Keil advocates the first, and Haley the second theory.
17. A woman and her daughter — This verse prohibits the successive marriage of a man with a woman and her daughter or granddaughter on account of their near blood relationship. Wickedness — This word זִמָּ֥ה (zimmah) is elsewhere generally translated lewdness, and signifies a gross violation of decency or principle.
18. A wife to her sister — This is a much disputed verse in the debate about marriage with a deceased wife’s sister. Our English version is supported by a whole chain of authorities of the first rank. Some contend for the marginal translation, “one wife to another,” and argue that this prohibition is directed against polygamy. The Seventy render it γυναῖκα ἐπὶ ἀδελφῇ αὐτῆς, a wife in addition to her sister; and the Vulgate, sororem uxoris tuae, a sister of thy wife. But it is objected that the same Hebrew expression in seven other places can have only the translation “one to another.” See Exodus 26:3, 5, 6, 17; Ezekiel 1:9, 23; 3:13. The fact that all these have a preceding noun in the plural, which is lacking in this verse, is fatal to the marginal rendering, as well as the violent change in the meaning of “wife” and “sister” from their meaning in the previous verses. The Targums sustain our English version. Moreover, polygamy was recognised, though not expressly approved, by the Mosaic law, (Exodus 21:10; Deuteronomy 21:15,) and therefore cannot be forbidden in this passage, especially in view of the fact that in verse 29 the death penalty is denounced against the abominations specified in this chapter. If polygamy is prohibited in this passage, we have the following legislative contradiction and absurdity: 1.) Polygamy is pronounced an abomination which must be punished by death; and 2.) A law is enacted conserving the rights of the first wife after the marriage of the second, and another statute entitling the children of the hated wife to inherit with those of the favourite. Thus the second law supposes that the man put to death under the first law has begotten a family of children, and in advanced age is sitting down to make his will. As there can be no such collision of laws emanating from the same legislator, we are constrained to reject the marginal rendering which makes this verse a prohibition of polygamy, and to say that it forbids the simultaneous marriage of two sisters. The jealousies and rivalries incident to the polygamous household arising between sisters tenderly bound by the ties of blood when thus thrown into an unnatural and hostile attitude toward each other, turning the gentle amenities of domestic life into fiendish hate, the merciful lawgiver would prevent by this law. To vex her — This little word vex — R.V., “to be a rival to” — speaks volumes concerning the bickering broils and heart burnings of polygamy, especially when intensified by the soured sweetness of sisterhood. No hate is so bitter as that of angered love. In 1 Samuel 1:6, Peninnah is called “the adversary,” or vexer, of devout Hannah, provoking her” year by year;” therefore she wept and did not eat. The households of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob exhibit the same bellum domesticum, the brand of the divine disapproval of the attempt to improve the paradisaical perfection of monogamic marriage. In her life — This means as long as she lives. The inference that marriage with a sister after the death of the first wife is legal would seem to be conclusive, as the Talmudists taught. But the Karaites and others denounced it as an abomination. “It is directly against the scope of all these laws,” says Selden, “which prohibit men to marry at all with such persons as are here mentioned, either in their wives’ lifetime or after. And there being a prohibition (verse 16) to marry a brother’s wife, it is unreasonable to think Moses gave them leave to marry their wife’s sister. These words, therefore, ‘in her life,’ are to be referred, not to the first words, ‘neither shalt thou take,’ but to the next, ‘to vex her,’ as long as she lives.” On the contrary, it is stoutly alleged that this prohibition refers expressly only to the time when the wife is living, as in the case of Jacob, and that all the arguments brought to prove that marriage with the sister of a dead wife is, according to Mosaism, a sin, and the analogies on which this conclusion is based, are quite worthless. In the year 1882 Lord Dalhousie asked the opinions of the professors of Hebrew and of Greek in all the universities of Europe, their attention being specially directed to the Levitical law and to Ephesians 5:31. Those of one hundred professors were received. One, a professor of Greek, declines to express an opinion on what he regards as a question of Hebrew, and another is ambiguous, while the late Dr. Pusey alone states that the marriage of a man with the sister of his deceased wife is forbidden by Leviticus chap. 18. All the other professors declare either that such a marriage is not forbidden by the portions of the Bible referred to, or that there is no prohibition of it either in the Old or the New Testament. See Concluding Note.
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