You must not take your wife’s sister as a rival wifeThis phrase addresses the practice of polygamy, which was common in ancient Near Eastern cultures. The prohibition against marrying a wife's sister as a rival wife is intended to prevent familial discord and protect the sanctity of the marriage relationship. In biblical context, this law seeks to maintain harmony within the family unit, as seen in the story of Jacob, Leah, and Rachel (Genesis 29-30), where rivalry between sisters led to significant strife. The law reflects a broader biblical principle of monogamy and the ideal of one man and one woman in marriage, as established in
Genesis 2:24.
and have sexual relations with her
This part of the verse emphasizes the prohibition of sexual relations with a wife's sister, reinforcing the idea of sexual exclusivity within marriage. The biblical context underscores the importance of sexual purity and fidelity, as seen in the broader Levitical laws that govern sexual conduct. The prohibition is consistent with the seventh commandment, "You shall not commit adultery" (Exodus 20:14), and reflects the holiness code that calls for Israel to be set apart from surrounding nations.
while your wife is still alive
The phrase "while your wife is still alive" highlights the temporal aspect of the prohibition, indicating that the law applies as long as the wife is living. This underscores the permanence and commitment expected in the marriage covenant. The historical context of this law is significant, as it contrasts with the practices of other ancient cultures where polygamy and concubinage were more freely practiced. The emphasis on the wife's lifetime suggests a respect for her dignity and the enduring nature of the marital bond, aligning with New Testament teachings on marriage, such as inEphesians 5:31-33, which speaks of the profound mystery of Christ and the church reflected in the marital relationship.
Persons / Places / Events
1.
Moses- The author of Leviticus, who received the laws from God to instruct the Israelites.
2.
Israelites- The chosen people of God, to whom the laws in Leviticus were given.
3.
Canaan- The land where the Israelites were headed, which had practices God wanted them to avoid.
4.
Sister-in-law- The specific familial relationship mentioned in this verse, highlighting the importance of family integrity.
5.
God- The ultimate lawgiver, whose holiness and standards are reflected in these commands.
Teaching Points
Sanctity of MarriageThis verse underscores the importance of maintaining the sanctity and exclusivity of the marital relationship.
Avoiding Family StrifeBy prohibiting marriage to a wife's sister, the law seeks to prevent familial discord and rivalry.
God’s Design for RelationshipsThe command reflects God’s design for relationships to be harmonious and respectful.
Cultural DistinctionThe Israelites were called to be distinct from the surrounding nations, who practiced polygamy and other customs contrary to God’s laws.
Holiness in Daily LifeObserving God’s commands in personal relationships is a reflection of living a holy life.
Lists and Questions
Top 10 Lessons from Leviticus 18
Was Solomon's wife his sister too?
What does Leviticus 18:22 mean about male relations?
Leviticus 18:22 condemns same-sex relations; how can this be reconciled with the New Testament emphasis on love (John 13:34-35)?
What does 'uncover the nakedness' mean in the Bible?(18)
A wife to her sister.--That is, a man is here forbidden to take a second sister for a wife to or in addition to the one who is already his wife, and who is still alive. This clause therefore forbids the Jews, who were permitted to have several wives, a particular kind of polygamy, i.e., a plurality of sisters. According to the administrators of the law during the second Temple, the expression "sister" here not only denotes a full sister by the same father and the same mother, but a half-sister either by the same father or the same mother. The marginal rendering in the Authorised Version, "one wife to another," which makes this a prohibition of polygamy, and which was first proposed by Junius and Tremelius in 1575, is (1) contrary to the expressions "wife" and "sister," which, in every verse of these prohibitions (see
Leviticus 18:8-9;
Leviticus 18:11-17), invariably mean wife and sister. (2) Whenever the phrase, "a man to his brother," or "a woman to her sister," is used metaphorically in the sense of "one to" or "one with another" (
Exodus 26:3;
Exodus 26:5-6;
Exodus 26:17;
Ezekiel 1:9;
Ezekiel 1:23;
Ezekiel 3:13, &c.), the words have always a distributive force, and are invariably preceded by a plural verb, and the things themselves to which they refer are mentioned by name. Thus, for instance, in
Ezekiel 1:23, it is, "their wings were straight one toward the other," which is not the case in the passage before us. (3) This rendering is at variance with the Mosaic code, which bases its legislation upon the existence of polygamy, and thus authorises it, as will be seen from the following facts. It permits a father, who had given his son a bond-woman for a wife, to give him a second wife of "freer birth," and prescribes how the first is to be treated under such circumstances (
Exodus 21:9-10). It ordains that a king "shall not multiply wives unto himself" (
Deuteronomy 17:17), which, as Bishop Patrick rightly remarks, "is not a prohibition to take more wives than one, but not to have an excessive number"; thus, in fact, legalising a moderate number. The law of primogeniture presupposes the case of a man having two wives (
Deuteronomy 21:15-17), and the Levitical law expressly enjoins that a man, though having a wife already, is to marry his deceased brother's widow (
Deuteronomy 25:17). Hence we find that the judges and kings of Israel had many wives (
Judges 10:4,
Judges 12:9;
1Samuel 1:2;
2Samuel 3:7). David, the royal singer of Israel, "their best king," as Bishop Patrick remarks, "who read God's word day and night and could not but understand it, took many wives without reproof; nay, God gave him more than he had before by delivering his master's wives to him" (
2Samuel 12:8), and the case adduced in the previous verse plainly shows that polygamy continued among the Jews after the destruction of the second Temple (
Leviticus 18:10). (4) The Jews to whom this law was given to be observed in their every day life, and to whom the right understanding of its import was of the utmost importance, inasmuch as it involved the happiness of their families, the transgression of it being visited with capital punishment, have, as far as we can trace it, always interpreted this precept as referring to marriage with two sisters together. Hence the ancient canonical interpretation of it is embodied in the Chaldee Version, "a woman in the lifetime of her sister thou shalt not take," in the LXX., Vulg., the Syriac, and all the ancient versions. . . .
Verse 18. -
Neither shalt thou take a wife to her sister, to vex her, to uncover her nakedness, beside the other in her life time. Do these words refer to the marriage of two sisters or not? It has been passionately affirmed that they do, by those who are opposed to permission being granted for marriage with a deceased wife's sister, and by those who are in favour of that measure, each party striving to derive from the text an argument for the side which they are maintaining. But Holy Scripture ought not to be made a quarry whence partisans hew arguments for views which they have already adopted, nor is that the light in which a commentator can allow himself to regard it. A reverent and profound study of the passage before us, with its context, leads to the conclusion that the words have no bearing at all on the question of marriage with a deceased wife's sister, and thus it may be removed from the area and atmosphere of angry polemics. It is certain that the words translated
a wife to her sister may be translated, in accordance with the marginal rendering,
one wife to another. The objections made to such a version are arbitrary and unconvincing. It is in accordance with the genius of the Hebrew language to take "father," "son, brother," "sister," in a much wider acceptation than is the case in the Western tongues. Anything that produces or causes is metaphorically a "father;" anything produced or caused is a "son;" any things akin to each other in form, shape, character, or nature, are "brothers" and "sisters." This is the name given to the loops of the curtains of the tabernacle (
Exodus 26:3, 5, 6), the tenons of the boards (
Exodus 26:17), and the wings of the cherubim (
Ezekiel 1:11, 23). Indeed, wherever the expression, "a man to his brother," or "a woman to her sister," is used (and it is used very frequently) in the Hebrew Scriptures, it means not two brothers or two sisters, but two things or persons similar in kind. This does more than raise a presumption - it creates a high probability - that the expression should be understood in the same way here. But a difficulty then arises. If the right reading is,
Neither shalt thou take one wife to another, does not the verse forbid polygamy altogether, and is not polygamy permitted by
Exodus 21:7-11;
Deuteronomy 21:15-17;
Deuteronomy 17:17? Certainly, if so important a restriction was to be made, we should expect it to be made directly, and in a manner which could not be disputed. Is there any way out of the difficulty? Let us examine each word of the Law.
Neither shalt thou take one wife to another, to vex, to uncover her nakedness upon her in her life time. The two words,
to vex, have not been sufficiently dwelt on. The Hebrew,
tsarar, means to distress by packing closely together, and so, to vex, or to annoy in any way. Here is to be found the ground of the prohibition contained in the law before us. A man is not to take for a second wife a woman who is likely, from spiteful temper or for other reasons, to vex the first wife. Rachel vexed Leah; Peninnah vexed Hannah; the first pair were blood relations, the second were not; but under the present law the second marriage would in both cases have been equally forbidden, if the probability of the provocation had been foreseen. It follows that polygamy is not prohibited by the text before us, but that the liberty of the polygamist is somewhat circumscribed by the application of the law of charity. It follows, too, that the law has no bearing on the question of marriage with a deceased wife's sister, which is neither forbidden nor allowed by it. Are we then to conclude that the Law of Moses leaves the case of the wife's sister untouched? Not so, for the general principle has been laid down, None
of you shall approach to any, that is near of kin to him, to uncover his nakedness, and, as we have seen, the expression,
near of kin, includes relations by affinity equally with blood relations; as therefore the wife's sister is in the canonists' first degree of affinity (and in the second according to the civilians), it is reasonably inferred that marriage with her is forbidden under the above law, and this inference is confirmed by marriage with the other sister-in-law - the brother's wife - being, as the rule, prohibited. It can hardly be doubted that marriage with the grandmother and with the niece - both in the second degree of consanguinity according to the canonists, and the third degree according to the civilians - and incest with a daughter are forbidden under the same clause. The present verse completes the Levitical code of prohibited degrees. The Roman code of restrictions on marriage was almost identical with the Mosaic tables. It only differed from them by specifically naming the grandmother and the niece among the blood relations with whom a marriage might not be contracted, and omitting the brother's wife among relatives by affinity. In the time of Claudius, a change was introduced into it, for the purpose of gratifying the emperor's passion for Agrippina, which legalized marriage with a brother's daughter. This legalization con-tinned in force until the time of Constantius, who made marriage with a niece a capital crime. The imperial code and the canon law were framed upon the Mosaic and the Roman tables, and under them no question arose, except as to the marriage of the niece, the decreased wife's sister, and the first cousin. Marriage with the niece was forbidden by Constantius, as we have said, in the year 355, on penalty of capital punishment for committing the offense, and marriage with a deceased wife's sister was declared by the same emperor to be null. The canons of Councils and the declarations of the chief Church teachers are in full accordance with the imperial legislation, condemning these marriages without a dissentient voice. The only ease in which no consensus is found is that of the marriage of first cousins. By the earliest Roman law these marriages had been disallowed (Tacitus, 'Annal.,' 12:6), but in the
second century B.C. they had become common (Livy, 42:34), and they continued to be lawful till the year A.D. or 385, when Theodosius condemned them, and made them punishable by the severest penalties possible. This enactment lasted only twenty years, when it was repealed by Arcadius, A.D. 404 or 405. No adverse judgment respecting the marriage of first cousins was pronounced by the Church until after the legislation of Theodosius, but it appears that that legislation was promoted at her instance, and from that time forward the tendency to condemn these marriages became more and more pronounced. See the canons of the Councils of Agde, Epaone, Auvergne, Orleans, Tours, Auxerre, in the sixth century, and of the Council in Trullo in the seventh century. The reformers of the sixteenth century in England, entrenching themselves, as usual, behind the letter of Scripture and the practice of the primitive Church, forbade marriages of consanguinity and affinity in the first, second, and third degrees according to the reckoning of the civil law, and in the first and second degrees according to the reckoning of the canon law, excepting those of first cousins, on which the early Christians pronounced no decisive judgment.
Parallel Commentaries ...
Hebrew
You must notלֹ֣א(lō)Adverb - Negative particle
Strong's 3808:Not, notakeתִקָּ֑ח(ṯiq·qāḥ)Verb - Qal - Imperfect - second person masculine singular
Strong's 3947:To takeyour wife’sוְאִשָּׁ֥ה(wə·’iš·šāh)Conjunctive waw | Noun - feminine singular
Strong's 802:Woman, wife, femalesisterאֲחֹתָ֖הּ(’ă·ḥō·ṯāh)Noun - feminine singular construct | third person feminine singular
Strong's 269:Sister -- a sisteras a rival wifeלִצְרֹ֗ר(liṣ·rōr)Preposition-l | Verb - Qal - Infinitive construct
Strong's 6887:To bind, tie up, be restricted, narrow, scant, or crampedand have sexual relationsלְגַלּ֧וֹת(lə·ḡal·lō·wṯ)Preposition-l | Verb - Piel - Infinitive construct
Strong's 1540:To denude, to exile, to revealwith herעָלֶ֖יהָ(‘ā·le·hā)Preposition | third person feminine singular
Strong's 5921:Above, over, upon, againstwhile your wife is still alive.בְּחַיֶּֽיהָ׃(bə·ḥay·ye·hā)Preposition-b | Noun - masculine plural construct | third person feminine singular
Strong's 2416:Alive, raw, fresh, strong, life
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OT Law: Leviticus 18:18 You shall not take a wife (Le Lv Lev.) 
