# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1878_S23
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 23 —

But now, besides those already mentioned, there are the following important reasons, which indicate that v. 18 must rather be taken together with what follows. For one thing, vv. 18-24 all begin with the same connecting particle וְ (and), which is not the case in the preceding prohibitions of marriage, vv. 6-17, which are strung together without such a particle. In addition there is the division of the Hebrew original text. Whereas the individual prohibitions of marriage in vv. 6-17 are each separated from one another by the sign of the so-called closed section division (Sethumah), this sign is not found after v. 18 until the end of the chapter, which indicates that v. 18 belongs with what follows in content and is to be read together with it without a longer interruption. The age of these division signs in the Hebrew original text is undisputed, and it is probable that they derive from the earliest times of the public reading aloud of the Holy Scriptures, if not indeed from the authors of the Old Testament books themselves. If, now, the condition of the text itself indicates that the prohibition of v. 18 is to be separated from the preceding prohibitions of too-close marriages, then the chief objection to the correctness of Hafenreffer's explanation of this verse is removed.

To this it was replied: Leviticus 18:18 does not deal with polygamy. This is evident, first, from the context. The prohibition of marriage on account of close kinship is given in v. 6 in general form and carried out in the following verses in particular, in individual examples. That v. 18 contains the last in this series of the particular prohibitions of marriage on account of close kinship is shown by the close connection in which this verse stands with the preceding v. 17. For in v. 17 the Israelite is forbidden to take to his wife also her daughter or granddaughter, that is, her blood relations in the descending line, in marriage, and in v. 18 he is forbidden to marry to his wife also her sister, that is, her blood relation in the collateral line. Thus v. 18 forms with v. 17 a unified whole: the prohibition of marriage with blood relations of the wife in the descending line and in the collateral line. That this understanding of the context of v. 18 is alone correct, and that the verse is not to be drawn to what follows in such a way that it would contain the first in the series of prohibitions of other abominations against the sixth commandment, which are set out up to v. 23, is evident already from the fact that in vv. 19-23 no reference at all is made any longer to marriage and impediments to marriage, and they therefore form a group of their own. If then v. 18 belongs to the section beginning with v. 6, it can contain only a prohibition of marriage on account of close kinship, not of polygamy. — This passage, it was said, could, secondly, also not deal with polygamy for this reason, that otherwise all Israelites who lived in marriage with more than one wife would, according to v. 29, have lived in mortal sin. But nowhere