# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_November 1855_S321
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Lehre und Wehre.

Volume I. November 1855. No. 11.

On Matrimonial Matters.
(Submitted by Pastor O. Fürbringer.)
(Conclusion.)

2. Let us now look more closely at the passages of Holy Scripture bearing on this matter, and we find the prohibition of marriage with a brother's widow clearly expressed in Leviticus 18:16 and 20:21. The former passage some wish to supplement from the following, the 18th verse, by adding: "because he is yet alive" *) — but for this neither the preceding verses nor the verse that follows give any warrant, the 18th excepted, to which these words are appended with particular reference to the example of the Israelite patriarch Jacob; likewise, chapter 20, verse 21 is appended, without any restriction, to the preceding verse 20, with a similar threat of punishment. Those who sin in this way shall be visited with barrenness, or at least their children shall not outlive their parents. The Hebrew word Niddah has been quite rightly rendered by Luther as "a shameful deed"; compare Zech. 13:1, 2 Chron. 29:5, Ezra 9:11, Lamentations 1:17. The exception made in Deuteronomy 25:5 — which belongs to him alone who gave the Law, and which may appear the less contradictory since marriages within the two collateral lines are, unlike those in the direct ascending and descending line of kinship, not absolute but relative, being contrary to the divine law of nature only in respect of the propagation, further development, and wider union of the human race arising from the earliest generations — (see more on this in "Der Lutheraner," vol. 6, no. 8, theological supplement, 1849, p. 5) — took place only under the stated conditions, when brothers dwelt together and one died without children. There was no other means available of attaining God's twofold purpose, that the brother's

*) Note. Appeal is also made here to Mark 6:17-18. But this passage is, in fact, directly opposed to such an arbitrary interpretation. For although the Jewish historian Josephus reports that Herod had married Philip's wife while the latter was still alive, yet this same Philip soon afterward died; and John rebukes him not for adultery, but rather, "because he has his brother's wife."

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