# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1878_S26
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 26 —

what is forbidden to all in the whole chapter is not, after all, forbidden only to the Jews? And that what is permitted to the Jews in this verse is not also permitted to others?

From the following opinion of the theological faculty of Wittenberg of the year 1596 one saw, to be sure, that godly theologians believed that in v. 18 a toleration for the Jews alone lies. But that is only a sign of these theologians' tenacity in holding to God's Word, who meant in any case to save this passage in support of the prohibition of marriage with a sister-in-law. They preferred to give up everything rather than depart from the Word; but they did not consider that in so doing they were in fact pulling all ground and footing from under their feet.

The opinion of the said faculty reads: "We hold that the quoted words 'while she is yet alive' were not put there in vain, but signify a tacitam permissionem [tacit permission] and allowance, namely that a man might marry his wife's sister after his wife's death, yet in such a way and with this proviso, that such concession and Tolerantia [toleration] extends no further than during the Jewish civil government, that no right be made of it, but that it be held that God, out of great forbearance, tolerated the manner of a stiff-necked and wanton people, as St. Paul says in Acts 13; and as God tolerated such a marriage in the patriarchs Abraham and Jacob, which He afterward seriously forbade in His Law; just as likewise our Lord God yielded to the Jews not by right and as though He had approved it, but for the hardness of their hearts, that a man might give his wife a bill of divorce and separate himself from her, so that nothing worse than manslaughter or the like might result from a hostile marriage, Deut. 24; which the Lord Christ, however, contradicts and abrogates, Matthew 19." (Consil. Witeberg. IV, fol. 66 b.)

It was thought that one might perhaps make the matter so clear that the first part: "Neither shalt thou take thy wife's sister beside her, to vex her," is a universal prohibition, in which marriage with a sister-in-law is forbidden, but that the "while she is yet alive" is of a special nature and was said to the Jews on account of the example of the patriarch Jacob.

To this an opinion of Spener was communicated: "Now it might indeed stand against such an explanation and pronouncement that Leviticus 18:18 does forbid the sister-in-law in clear words, but with the addition: 'Beside her, to vex her, while she is yet alive'; from which it cannot be denied that various learned people have not forbidden such marriages, where two sisters were married one after the other, but have rather availed themselves of this evasion: that where the reason for a prohibition ceases, the commandment itself is thereby also abrogated. I do not deny either that such an objection is not without some plausibility, and then that the reasons which are adduced as to why God attached to the general prohibition such a special reason, which seems to restrict it more narrowly,

[“v. 18”: the first figure is a damaged 1 — only a fragment of it printed in the gap before the 8; read 18.]