Charles Hodge · 48 of 90

11. The Seventh Commandment. · Part 5

It is in this as in many other cases. The Mosaic law discountenanced and discouraged intermarriage between the chosen people and their heathen neighbours. With regard to the Canaanites, such intermarriages were absolutely forbidden; with other heathen nations, although discountenanced, they were tolerated. Joseph married an Egyptian; Moses, a Midianite; Solomon married Pharaoh’s daughter. Such marriages, in the settled state of the Jewish nation, may have been wrong, but they were valid. Even now under the Christian dispensation, believers are forbidden to be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. It does not follow from this that every marriage between a believer and an unbeliever is invalid. These remarks are not out of place. The truth suffers from being misapprehended. If the Bible is made to teach what is contrary to the common sense, or the intuitive judgments of men, it suffers great injustice. No man can force himself to believe that a man’s marrying the sister of a deceased wife is the same kind of offence as a father’s marrying his own daughter. The Bible teaches no such doctrine; and it is a slander so to represent it.

Concluding Remarks.

The laws of God are sacred. They are founded, not only on his infinite wisdom, but also on the nature of his creatures, and, therefore, should be sedulously observed. There may, in some cases, be honest difference of opinion as to what the law or will of God is, but when ascertained, it is our wisdom and duty to make it the rule of our conduct. This is so obvious that the statement of it may seem entirely superfluous. It is so common. however, for men professing to be Christians to make their own feelings, opinions, and views of expediency, the rule of action for themselves and others, that it is by no means a work of supererogation, to reiterate on all proper occasions the truism that there is no wisdom like God’s wisdom, and that men are never wise except when they follow the wisdom of God as revealed in his Word, even when they have to do it blindly.

There are certain principles which underlie the marriage laws of the Bible, which all men in their private capacity and when acting as legislators, would do well to respect, —

1. The first is, that marriage is not a mere external union; it is not simply a mutual compact; it is not merely a civil contract. It is a real, physical, vital, and spiritual union, in virtue of which man and wife become, not merely in a figurative sense, but really, although in a mysterious sense, one flesh. This is not only expressly declared by Christ himself to be the nature of marriage, but it is the doctrine which underlies the whole Levitical law on this subject. Nearness of kin is expressed constantly by saying that one is “flesh of the flesh” of the other, שְׁאֵר בְשָׂרוֹ, “Carnem carnis suæ s. corporis sui esse cognatam propinquam, quæ est ut caro ejusdem corporis.” According to the Scriptures, therefore, husband and wife are the nearest of all relations to each other. According to the spirit, and most of the legislation of the present age, they are no relations at all. They are simply partners. If one member of a business firm die, his property does no; go to his partner, but to his own family; so if a wife die, without children, her property does not go to her husband, but to her third or fourth cousins. They, in the eye of the law, are more nearly related to her than her husband. This is not the light in which God looks upon marriage.

2. The second principle which underlies these marriage-laws is, that affinity is as real a bond of relationship as consanguinity. Fully one half of the marriages specified in Leviticus are prohibited on the ground of affinity. The same form of expression is used to designate both kinds of relationship. Those related to each other by affinity are said to be “flesh of the flesh,” one of the other, just as blood relations; because all the specifications contained in the eighteenth chapter of Leviticus are included under the general prohibition contained in the sixth verse, “None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him;” under this head are included step-mothers; mothers-in-law; step-daughters; sisters-in-law (as when a man is forbidden to marry the widow of his brother); uncle’s wife, etc. These relationships are traced out in the line of affinity, just as far as they are in that of consanguinity. The declaration, therefore, contained in the Westminster Confession, “The man may not marry any of his wife’s kindred nearer in blood than he may of his own, nor the woman of her husband’s kindred nearer in blood than of her own,” is a simple and comprehensive statement of the law as laid down in Leviticus. In saying that affinity is as real a bond of relationship as consanguinity, it is not meant that it is as strong. A daughter is a nearer relation than a step-daughter, or daughter-in-law; a mother than a step-mother; a sister than a sister-in-law. This, as we have seen, is recognized in the law itself. The Bible asserts nothing inconsistent with fact or nature. In making affinity a real bond of kindred, it is meant that it is no merely nominal, or conventional, or arbitrary. It has its foundation in nature and fact.

Mr. Bishop, in his elaborate work on “Marriage and Divorce,” says, ” A truly enlightened view will doubtless discard altogether affinity as an impediment, while it will extend somewhat the degrees of consanguinity within which marriages will be forbidden.” He also teaches that “the relationship by affinity” ceases “with the dissolution which death brings to the marriage. . . . . If, when a man’s wife dies, she is still his wife, then, of course, her sister is still his sister. . . . . If, on the other hand, the wife is no more the wife after her death, then is her sister no more the sister of the husband. And though men who have no other idea of religion than to regard it as a bundle of absurd and loathed forms, may not be able to see how the termination of the relationship by the death of the wife is of any consequence in the case, yet men who discern differently and more wisely, will discover nothing unseemly in practically acting upon a fact which everybody knows to exist.”

It is very evident that Mr. Bishop never asked himself what, in the present connection, the word “relationship” means. Had he had any clear idea of the meaning of the word, he never could have written the above sentences. By relationship is here meant the relation in which parties stand to each other; and that, in the case supposed, is a matter of feeling, affection, and intimacy. This relationship is not dissolved by the death of the person through whom it arose. A wife’s sister continues to cherish to her widowed brother-in-law the same sisterly affection after, as before her sister’s death. She can live with him, guide his house, and take charge of his children, without the slightest violation of her self-respect, and without fear of incurring the disrespect of others.

Besides, if relationship by affinity is dissolved by death, then a son may, on the death of his father, marry his step-mother, which Paul says (1 Cor. v. 1) was not tolerated among the heathen. We have not come to that yet. On the principle of Mr. Bishop, a man may marry his mother-in-law, his daughter-in-law, and, on the death of the mother, his step-daughter. All this the Bible forbids; and whatever religion in some of its manifestations may be, the Bible, surely, is not “a bundle of absurd and loathed forms.” It is the wisdom of God, in the presence of which the wisdom of man is foolishness.

3. The great truth contained in these laws is, that it is the will of God, the dictate of his infinite and benevolent wisdom that the affections which belong to the relation in which kindred (whether by consanguinity or affinity) stand to each other, should not be disturbed, perverted, or corrupted by that essentially different kind of love which is appropriate and holy in the conjugal relation; and that a protecting halo should be shed around the family circle.