Leviticus; The Law of Holiness and Grace
The Laws of Marriage
Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony
Subject: Pentateuch
Genre: Lessons with Q & A
Lesson: 33
Track: 33
Dictation Name: RR172S33
Date: Early 70s
Let us worship God. Our help is in the name of the Lord who made Heaven and earth. Seeing we have a great high priest who is passed into Heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us therefore come boldly unto the Throne of Grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Let us pray.
We praise Thee, oh God; Father, Son and Holy Ghost, who hast made us Thy people and given us such great privileges and promises. Make us every mindful of Thy kingdom that we may serve Thee with all our heart, mind and being, that we might ever be mindful that we are members one of another, members of Thy people, who are in prison, who are sick, naked and needy. Make us zealous in Thy service and in the welfare of Thy kingdom. In Christ’s name, amen.
Our scripture today is Leviticus 18:6-18, but we shall read one verse of this long passage, verse 6. Leviticus 18:6, “None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him, to uncover their nakedness: I am the Lord.”
The laws in Leviticus 18:6-18 govern marriage. It is a list of the forbidden degrees of marriage. Some commentators have said this deals with illicit sex, but that’s hardly tenable. All non-marital sex is illicit in scripture, but not all unions of male and female are permitted. Not all people are eligible as marital partners.
Now early in mankind’s history, beginning with Adam and Eve, marriage was a necessity between close relatives because mankind began with one family. However, in the early days of mankind, marriages between relatives (because of the broad genetic pool that began with Adam and Eve), represented a very diverse strain. In other words, because all human races and nationalities were genetically in Adam and in Eve, their children were less closely related than two Irishmen and two Germans would be today. After early years in the history of the human race, closely related unions were barred by God. They did persist in certain elements of society and indeed have to the modern time—to this century—mostly among royalty, nobility, the aristocracy and the very wealthy. There was a reason for this; in order to consolidate power and property.
Years ago, when I was a student at Berkley, a professor described his trip to Europe. In fact, he did this every year and it was (he thought) a marvelous bit of humor on his part. He described going into this English cathedral and, seeing this was fifty years or –sixty years ago when he was there, on a pillar, the forbidden degrees of marriage. And one of them really broke him up. It read, “Thou shalt not marry thy grandmother.” And this professor would ask his class each year, “And who would want to do so?” And then proceed to comment on the stupidity of the medieval era. What he did was to reveal his ignorance; because until the modern era, marriages by and large were not contracted in terms of romantic notions, but in terms of power and property. As a result, in many societies, a compelling reason for all incestuous unions was precisely this kind of consolidation. The medieval church, to prevent inbreeding, went beyond the forbidden degrees of Leviticus in its rules of marriage in order to break up precisely this kind of tendency. But, despite the Church’s efforts, the nobility, and especially the royalty of Europe furthered its own death by inbreeding, especially after the latter part of the medieval era, less and less attention was paid by Catholic monarchs to these rules, and after the Reformation, by neither Catholic nor Protestant monarchs. They created, finally, idiots, warped and deformed people.
The second thing we must say about these laws is that they are addressed to men. The guilt of woman is never denied in the Bible, but it describes men as the primary offenders. The only instances where a woman is seen as the primary offender is when she has broken with her family, as with prostitutes. The promiscuous woman, for example, is seen in Proverbs 7:1-27 as the aggressor, as the primary offender. But normally, the primary guilt is man’s because the man is the head of the household, and he is the one who exercises, or should exercise the responsibility because headship is his; and headship means greater responsibility and greater culpability and guilt. Moreover, the establishment of a family comes from the man’s initiative. It is the man who takes the initiative in marriage, and therefore the laws speak to men.
Then third in these laws, we have the repeated use of “to uncover the nakedness,” which as some scholars tell us is a synonym for sexual intercourse. But it is more than that. Because in some cases, it speaks of the nakedness of the woman as being uncovered, and in covering her husband’s nakedness. And in Paul, the use is vice versa as well. Thus, illicit relations with a woman are seen as in part, an aggressive act against the husband or father. So that, as a woman is sexually exploited, the man is shamed. He is degraded. The same is true; the man shames and degrades the woman by his lawlessness. Thus the Bible does not allow us to think atomistically. We must remember the only people who in the sexual sphere who can be thought of atomistically, according to God’s Law, and the only times that they are spoken of as purely individuals with their acts being their act without affecting relatives (but affecting society), are with what the Bible calls ‘harlots’ and ‘dogs’ (prostitutes and sodomites). The focus of the law is on marriage and the family.
Then fourth, the laws concerning marriage are God-centered, not Man-centered. In non-Biblical cultures, marriage is Man-centered. Sexuality is Man-centered. And as we saw earlier, the forbidden degrees are allowable in many pagan societies as a means of attaining power and property. In antiquity, such marriages of half-brothers and half-sisters was common in Egypt and in Persia, and more recently in modern times in Siam, Burma, Ceylon, Uganda, the Pentecost Islands of the New Hebrides, and in the Hawaiian Islands before the Americans organized the laws thereof. Polyandry was another means of marriage: all the brothers marrying one sister to retain ownership of the property in one family. Pagan forms of family life have usually also had ancestor worship, so that the pagan gives ultimate authority to man, to the family. This was seen as having certain advantages, of stabilizing society. Thus in the old family system of China, which still prevails in Taiwan, the family is the basic governmental power; a network of kinship is created to exercise ties on people. Marjorie Wolfe, who worked there with the families studying them, has said, “Wealth cannot make up for this deficiency of a family any more than it can make up for the loss of arms and legs. Money has no past, no future, and no obligations. Relatives do.” Thus the pagan family system gave security but it failed to give moral strength to society. The strength of the family organization, as in old China is no more a moral force than is a totalitarian state. Moral force comes from the God of Hosts.
In a God-centered society, the rites and the ceremonies of marriage make very clear that marriage is under God and His Law—that the family is under God’s Law. This means there is a restraint upon all members, beginning and most of all with the head of the household, the man. This is why adultery is so serious an offense for men; because they set the pattern, therefor their guilt is the greater. Biblical marriage imposes duties and responsibilities. It imposes mature tasks, by marriage, and only the fulfillment of these mature tasks gives self-fulfillment to a man and a woman. As W.M. Foley noted, “We are taught by the Gospel that restraints are imposed, and self-denial demanded not for their own sakes, but as a means to truer and more abiding blessedness. Holy matrimony has been divinely instituted for man’s good and to be a source of blessing. In happy married life, man is to find his truest and most lasting happiness and reach the fullest perfection of which his nature is capable.”
In humanist cultures, and in humanistic marriages, man and wife cannot transcend themselves. They cannot transcend their egocentricity. And as a result, there are continuing and insoluble problems. Now, problems are common to all marriages. They can only be solved, normally, in a Christian marriage, because only there is there government by a power greater than themselves. It should not surprise us that early in the history of the West after the Enlightenment, after Humanism triumphed; men began to see marriage as bondage. It was natural that women, in time (with Feminism), should see marriage as a bondage also. The newest feminine motto is ‘marriage is the best revenge.’ Now, given that kind of outlook, marriage is doomed.
Then, fifth, what we must say, a very important point which has been very commonly neglected, and in fact, Judaism has by and large neglected it. Not every forbidden degree is listed in these verses. That is, nothing is said about father/daughter, mother/son, or cousin unions. But all of these are banned in verse 6. Young, in his literal translation, gives us this, “None of you, unto any relation of his flesh, doth draw near to uncover nakedness. I am Jehovah.” ‘Relation of his flesh’ is translated by some as ‘flesh of his body,’ or ‘flesh of his flesh.’ That is, to any close relative. The family is seen as a physical unity.
Now we are told, laws against certain types of marriage are common in other cultures; that in ancient Babylonian laws and other laws of antiquity there were laws against the forbidden degrees of marriage. But this is an illusion. There were such laws insofar as anyone was a free person. If they were slaves, they were nonpersons, they were legally on the same status as animals and these laws did not apply. This type of thing, of course, has been common in history, certain people as nonpersons according to law. We have that in the Dred Scot Decision in this country, with respect to slavery. We had it in Roe vs. Wade with regard to the unborn child.
In verse 18, we have a very important law. “Neither shalt thou take a wife to her sister to vex her, to uncover her nakedness, beside the other, in her lifetime.” However, as your marginal note will tell you, that literally reads, “Neither shalt thou take one wife to another.” In other words, it’s a prohibition of polygamy. And two statements are made concerning it.
1. “To vex her,” that is the first wife. The word ‘vex,’ like so many words in every language, has lost its force. We tend to cheapen words. And since most people are careless in their language, they cheapen the meaning of things. In the Hebrew and originally, ‘vex’ in English, had a much stronger meaning. But in the Hebrew it means, “to cramp; to be an enemy of; to afflict; to besiege.” So that it is seen as an act of hostility to the first wife to take a second.
2. And then it says “to uncover her nakedness” which means at the least “to shame her.”
Thus, even as adultery and every kind of illicit sexuality is an act of hostility and of shame for the spouse, so too is polygamy. Holiness is required of godly marriage. But unlawful behavior brings, we are told again and again, shame.
We saw earlier that the forbidden degrees have as their purpose, power and property. Rabbi Hertz has called attention to this, noting, “It was a practice among Easter heirs-apparent to take possession of the father’s wives as an assertion of their right to the throne—that action identifying them with the late ruler’s personality in the eyes of the people. This explains Reuben’s conduct in Genesis 25:22 and Absalom’s in II Samuel 16:20-22.” We should add to that that it also riveted the alliances that had been formed earlier through these marriages.
Then, sixth, Wenham has called attention to the fact that in the Bible, marriage is seen as establishing a new life and new relationships. A marriage makes a girl more than a daughter-in-law. The Bible speaks of her as a daughter to the parents of the groom. Thus, the Bible applies very literally Genesis 2:24 that husband and wife shall be one flesh. As a result, the forbidden degrees include in-laws. Atomistic man feels family ties are trivial and easily severed. Man has often made, on the other hand, ties of blood and of marriage ironclad and irrevocable as in some societies. The Bible says such ties are real, but they are not determinative. So that we can neither have the kind of family system that leads to ancestor worship, and makes the family the law (not God), nor can we have our current Atomistic pattern. The Bible says that man and his marriage are under God’s Law and that faith established the basic relationship. Moreover it establishes a new relationship.
Our Lord tells us, we read in Matthew 12:46-50,
“46 While he yet talked to the people, behold, his mother and his brethren stood without, desiring to speak with him.
47 Then one said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee.
48 But he answered and said unto him that told him, Who is my mother? and who are my brethren?
49 And he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren!
50 For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.”
On another occasion, our Lord goes even further to declare, as in Luke 14:26, 27, “26 If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. 27 And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple.” There is no relationship which we dare not break when the faith requires it. Our supernatural relationship to God and our supernatural family in Christ must take precedence over and govern our relationship to our natural family, even as within the natural family, our every act must be governed by the Law Word of God.
Let us pray.
Thy Word, oh Lord is Truth and Thy Word speaks to the problems of our times and of all times. Give us grace to hear Thy Word and to rejoice in it, to teach it, to understand its meaning so that we can heal our times, heal the Church and the World and the families thereof. Oh Lord our God, make us instruments of Thy justice, Thy righteousness, in Christ’s name. Amen.
Are there any questions now about our lesson?
We have to realize that the modern world is totally at war against Leviticus 18. Consider the fact that the ACLU is moving now to accomplish two things:
1. To legalize homosexual unions
2. To legalize adultery, so that it will no longer affect divorce settlements, be grounds for divorce, or affect property settlements in divorce.
This is a total assault that everything Leviticus 18 represents.
Let us bow our heads now in prayer.
Oh Lord our God, Thy Word is Truth. And Thy Word is given to be life, to be health, to be strength to Thy people. Make us strong in Thy Word and bless us in Thy service. And now, go in peace. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you this day and always. Amen.