Mayow Wynell Mayow

“ The case of the objector who would make the law of the Levirate a dispensation for Christians, is just as if Claudius king of Denmark had pleaded that law, though his brother had not died childless (for no modern legislation proposes to regard this limitation) , as a reason for taking to wife his brother’s widow;—or, as if, yet further, had Queen Gertrude died, leaving a sister, he should plead again that same law (for all modern legislation proposes to go to this extent) , to sanction his afterward taking her also to wife. ”

“ M’Caul’s view, and the view of the promoters of the alteration of our law of marriage correct, we should at least have the anomaly of a permissive precept foisted in, if I may so say, among the prohibitory sentences of this chapter, dealing in all else with prohibitions only. For, it is plain, to read the verse as meaning a man may marry two sisters, if it be not simultaneously, is a permission upon the previous restriction; whilst to say a man may not marry two sisters simultaneously, even when the law of the Levirate would seem to demand it, is a prohibition. ”

“ I add, therefore:—Let it be well observed that a time beyond that expressed by the words "in her life-time," must be understood to be of the essence of all the prohibitions. That is to say (and the awful importance of the matter requires it to be stated plainly) , that it is incest and not adultery which is the subject of the prohibitions throughout. A man is prohibited from marrying his Mother not merely during his Father's lifetime, but always—his Sister, not merely, if she be married, and, if so, during her husband's life-time, but always. ”

“ And this is certainly true, because the question which I have been considering is not whether, if a wife’s sister be forbidden at all she is forbidden for ever by both being alive together at a certain time but simply whether the whole matter involved in the words “in her life-time” be not explained and accounted for by its being a prohibition, narrowing the requirements of the law of the Levirate, and nothing more. ”

“ If brethren dwell together, and one of them die, and have no child, the wife of the dead shall not marry without unto a stranger: her husband’s brother shall go in unto her, and take her to him to wife, and perform the duty of an husband’s brother unto her. And it shall be, that the firstborn which she beareth shall succeed in the name of his brother which is dead, that his name be not put out of Israel. ”

“ There is no reason why we should not be tried just as much as to difficulties put before our intellect, as by temptations appealing to our passions; and, as Bishop Butler has remarked, there are some men who, but for the former, might be found to have hardly any trial at all. (Analogy, Part ii., chapter 6.) If the particular objection here advanced be analyzed, it will be found to be but this:—Why should there have been an omission of this law of the Levirate in Leviticus, when, in the same place, there is the record of a prohibitory exception to it? ”

“ Would not every clause and section have its own plain and intelligible sense? Especially would not the last clause or section have a full and sufficient both sense and application without any man's dreaming for a single moment of there being contained in it a repeal of any portion of the table or schedule of degrees? ”

“ After declaring emphatically, in the first five verses, the importance of keeping God’s law, and warning the people against falling into the sins of the Egyptians and the Canaanites, the matter itself is opened in the 6th verse—“None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him to uncover their nakedness: I am the Lord.” “This,” as you, my lord, observed at the meeting at Willis’s Rooms, (February 1st, 1860,) “is the key-note to all that follows. The law then shows who are near of kin to us, and proceeds to mention more cases of affinity than of relationship by blood.” ”

“ If the brother had died childless, he would be enjoined to take her, irrespectively of his own wife being alive. If not childless, he could never take her at all. And this moral reason is not perhaps wholly unworthy of consideration as applying to the general question of marriage with a wife’s sister in a state of things in which polygamy is forbidden. ”

“ Nay, is it not, indeed, very probable that terms, which in their ordinary usage would refer simply to blood relationship, are here chosen by Divine inspiration to include also relationship by affinity, for the very purpose of showing that a man and his wife being one flesh, the nearness of kin here contemplated, and illustrated by the instances which follow, was to embrace both relationships alike? ”

“ Dr. M'Caul quotes these words, with a distinct approval of their statement, though with exactly the converse of their application. "You believe," he says, "that a very clear verse and a very clear interpretation might over-ride a command, even though it be distinct and precise, and you are right."
He goes on, "Lev. xviii. 16, the verse on which you chiefly rest your Scriptural arguments, is, so far as relates to marriage with a brother's wife, distinct and precise, and enunciates a command absolutely and without any limitation; and yet it is over-ridden by Deut. xxv. 5." ”

“ Now look at v. 16; which, being expressed in such English as we now commonly talk, would run, I suppose, as follows: 'Thou shalt not marry thy brother's widow: she is one flesh with thy brother, and is therefore thine own sister.' Can any other interpretation be put upon it? and if this be the right interpretation, are not marriages with a brother's widow plainly forbidden among the Canaanitish abominations? ”

“ Next, a brother’s wife, v. 16. Next, a wife’s daughter, mother, or grand-daughter, v. 17.
“Here are thirteen cases in all: six of kindred by blood, and seven of kindred by marriage: and neither by the order in which they follow one another, nor by any difference of expression regarding them, is any hint given, that the one sort of profanation is less heinous in God’s sight than the other. The world may have come to think there is a difference, because the world will not believe that man and wife are really one flesh. But the written law of God apparently deals with both alike.” [7] ”

“ If things are not made more plain to us than they are, or even are less plain than they might have been, let us remember our state of trial, and acknowledge that all such may be, for ought we know, exactly so revealed as they are, and so placed as they are, for our trial. ”

“ Suppose, then, God's law as to these marriages to stand in the statute-book of a Jewish Parliament, imagining for the moment such to have existed. Might not the principal enactments stand something in this way? It will be understood that a permission or tacit sanction of polygamy must be assumed, as part of the common law of the community. ”

“ And the only palliation of such a startling discrepancy in Holy Scripture is, we are to understand, that it is inadmissible to draw the inference from the woman being forbidden to marry two brothers, that the man is forbidden to marry two sisters. ”

“ It is simply this: that nearness of kin not being affected by sex, what is forbidden to a man is forbidden to a woman in the same degree of kindred or affinity, though it be not set down in words. For instance, in v. 7, a man is forbidden to marry his mother: then, by the same rule, a woman is forbidden to marry her father, though the prohibition is not expressed. ”

“ There is, I suppose, no room for reasonable doubt that the case of the advocates of a change in our law which may sanction the marriage of a man with his deceased wife’s sister, rests mainly, so far as the Scriptural argument is concerned, upon the 18th verse of the xviii. ”