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Could not the brother, as the nearest heir of his deceased, brother, have assumed his name, and entered upon the inheritance of his property, and pensioned his sister-in-law, or widow of his brother, during her lifetime? This simple arrangement, which is so natural as to be almost a universal law of nations, would have secured the same end, and would have avoided the somewhat strange marriage—a, marriage which, if we are to look upon the marriage of a sister of a deceased wife as an incestuous thing, then must we regard this marriage as more incestuous still. Certainly, if the Confession’s view of such marriages be correct, we may infer that Moses—the wisest of legislators—would have adopted this or some other method of meeting the difficulty.
There is no getting rid of the conclusion that if the marrying of the sister of a deceased wife be an incestuous and sinful act, then the marrying of the widow of a deceased brother by his next brother is a more incestuous and sinful deed; for, if there be a difference, the indelicacy is greater in the latter than in the former, especially if it be the marrying of a deceased brother's widow, not by one, but by six brothers, as in the case referred to our Lord by the Sadducees; for whatever objections there be to the widower of a deceased wife marrying her sister, there, is a far greater objection to six brothers marrying the widow of their elder deceased brother. And it is most noticeable that our Divine Lord, in whom dwelt all wisdom — (who, when He said, “Ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery," immediately added these words—“But I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart”)—when He decided on the case brought forward by these Sadducees, never dropped a hint or breathed a word implying immorality or incest in such marriages.
Are we, then, to be forced into the belief that Moses, or rather God by Moses, to secure a trifle—nay, a nonenity (for in the case referred to our Lord by the Sadducees it turned out to be such) — went out of His way to command an incestuous deed, to enjoin the commission of a gross sin? There was no principle in morals, no law of religion, requiring one brother to marry the widow of the other that had died childless. And if, as in the case referred to by the Sadducees, the childlessness of the deceased brother was traceable, not to him, but to his wife, there was no perpetuation of his name, there was nothing but an incestuous connection and sinful life secured by the command given in the twenty-fifth chapter of Deuteronomy. Are we, then, to believe that God would have commanded six—nay, it might have been ten, twelve, or more—brothers to enter upon and to live incestuous lives with one and the same woman for no object whatever. And yet such is the absurdity to which a blind adherence to the tradition of their fathers drives some.
Such a method of treating the Word of God does violence to
