The penalties for violation of the forbidden degrees were proportioned to the gravity of the case. In Dt those forming the three types of in- cestuous union there specified (27° *+*) have a curse laid upon them. In Ly 20 capital punish- ment is decreed against the partners in three cases of incestuous intercourse or marriage, viz. with a stepmother (v."), a daughter-in-law (v.™), and with a woman whose daughter has already been taken by the man as his wife (v.14). The same may be assumed in the possible cases of still deeper guilt. The mode of death was probably stoning, and in the case of the last group of ofienders it is provided that their corpses shall be burned. The penalty for marriage with a half-sister was excom- munication (v.!7). In another group of cases, viz. intercourse or marriage with an aunt (v.’*), an
MARRIAGE
uncle’s wife (v.”), and a sister-in-law (v.™), the culprits are left to the vengeance of Heaven, with the added menace in the last two cases that ‘they shall be childless.’
(c) Official Restrictions.—In OT certain restric- tions are imposed upon the sacerdotal class. A priest was forbidden to marry a harlot, or a fallen woman, or a divorced person (Lv 21’); the high priest was not even allowed to marry a widow (v.44), It was not, however, held by the Talmudists that the latter enactment required a high priest, on his elevation, to divorce a widow whom he might have previously married or betrothed (Selden, Ux. Heb. p. 46).
To this closer fencing of married life in the case of the OT priesthood there is a certain analogy in the NT provision that the bishop shall be the husband of one wife (1 Ti 33), and likewise the deacons (ν.}3). The interpretations of this much disputed enactment are as follows: (1) It provides that the bishops and deacons shall be monogamists. But, even if it be assumed that polygyny was still practised among the Jews, it is unlike y that it was re iueeited among the Jewish Christians; and 1 Ti 5° is decisive, as, similarly interpreted, it would mean that no woman living in polyandry was to be enrolled among the widows. (2) It dis- qualifies for office a man who has been more than once married, and prohibits him after his appoint- ment from contracting a second marriage. This view derives strong support from the fact that it was embodied in the current opinion of the patristic Church, and was reinforced by the decision of Councils (Plummer, Cath. Epp. in ‘Expos. Bible’), and it would doubtless have been more generally adopted but for the prejudice created by existing practice. At the same time it is right to observe that the admission of this interpretation does not involve the permanent condemnation of second marriage on the part of the clergy, as the reason for the apostolic prohibition might be Bocwliey to the apostolic age. (3) The regulation
isqualifies for office those who had availed them- selves of the rights of divorce which Christ sought to curtail, or (according to some authorities) who had in another way (concubinage, licentiousness) sinned against the marriage law. The suggestion that it was designed to support our Lord’s con- demnation of capricious divorce has lately grown in favour, and must be regarded as at least a possible interpretation.
(d) Natal Disability.—On the score of a taint of birth, a class of person known as 1122 was debarred from marriage with Israelites. ‘A bastard shall not enter into the assembly of the Lord, even unto the tenth generation’ (Dt 285). By ‘bastard’ is to be understood, not a person born out of wedlock,— illegitimacy did not entail any serious penalties under Jewish law,—but one born of an unlawful eee (Driver, in loc.). Such at least is the plausible interpretation given in the Mishna in a passage which determines the status of children (Kiddushin iii. 12). In a lawful marriage, it is held, the child follows the father ; in an unlawful marriage, e.g. of a high priest with a widow, or of an Israelitish woman with one of the Nethinim, the child follows the party by whom the marriage is vitiated. The offspring of such illegal marriage, it is added, is mop.
(e) Additional marriage-bars that fall to be noted are (1) the physical disqualification of certain mutilated or injured persons (Dt 231); (2) the hereditary disqualification of the heiress who was not allowed to marry into another tribe (Nu 36°°) ; (3) the retributive disqualification, which disallowed remarriage under certain circumstances with a wife who had previously been divorced (see below, Divorce).
MARRIAGE
2. The Levirate Marriage of the OT (levir, brother-in-law, 03; husband’s brother; o2: to per- form the marriage obligation of a husband’s brother ; Talm. m3 the type οὗ marriage ; Gr. ἐπιγαμβρεύω, Mt 22%), formerly treated as a curious anomaly, has been shown by modern research to be widely peel at certain stages of civilization.* ‘The
ndamental character of this type of marriage,’ Eile Post (Studien, p. 248), ‘is that a widow is inherited in accordance with the system of kinship dominant among a people, and is married by the heir—whence there then arises the obligation to provide for her and her children.’ In the narrower sense it is defined (as by Starcke, Prim. Fam. p. 141) as ‘the custom which enjoins a man to m the widow of his brother, if he die childless, in order to raise up children to the dead man, to whom the children produced by such a marriage were supposed to Belaaes Obviously, the custom is one which is capable of large modification in detail, and it would seem that even within the limits of OT times there was some shifting of view as to the object of the levirate marriage, and the range of the obligation.