John Calvin Commentary Leviticus 18:16

"Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy brother`s wife: it is thy brother`s nakedness." — Leviticus 18:16 (ASV)

You shall not uncover the nakedness of your brother’s wife.⁹² They are bad interpreters who raise a controversy on this passage and interpret it to mean that a brother’s wife must not be taken from his bed, or, if she is divorced, that marriage with her would be unlawful while her husband was still alive. For it is inconsistent to twist declarations made in the same place and with the same words into different meanings.

God forbids the uncovering of the turpitude of the wife of a father, an uncle, and a son. When He lays down the same rule regarding a brother’s wife in the very same words, it is absurd to invent a different meaning for them. Therefore, if it is not lawful to marry the wife of a father, a son, an uncle, or a nephew, we must hold precisely the same opinion regarding a brother’s wife, concerning whom an exactly similar law is enacted in the same passage and context.

I am not, however, ignorant of the source from where those who think otherwise have derived their mistake. For since God gives a command in another place that if a man has died without issue, his surviving brother shall take his widow as his wife, so that he may raise up seed from her for the departed (Deuteronomy 25:5), they have incorrectly and ignorantly restricted this to own-brothers, although God actually designates other degrees of relationship. It is a well-known Hebrew idiom to include all near kinsmen in general under the term "brother"; and the Latins also formerly called first cousins by this name.⁹³

The law we are now considering, then, regarding marriage with a deceased brother’s wife, is only addressed to those relatives who are not otherwise prohibited from such a marriage, since it was not God’s purpose to prevent the loss of a deceased person’s name by permitting those incestuous marriages, which He had elsewhere condemned. Therefore, these two points agree perfectly well: an own-brother was prohibited from marrying his brother’s widow, while the next of kin were obliged to raise up seed for the dead, by the right of their relationship, wherever their marriage was otherwise permissible by the enactments of the law.

On this ground, Boaz married Ruth, who had previously been married to his near kinsman; and it is abundantly clear from the history that the law applied to all the near kinsmen.

But if anyone still contends that own-brothers were included in the number of these, then on the same grounds the daughter-in-law would have to be married by her father-in-law, the nephew’s wife by the uncle, and even the mother-in-law by the son-in-law—which is an abomination even to speak of.

If anyone objects that Er, Onan, and Shelah, the sons of Judah, were own-brothers, and yet Tamar married two of them, the difficulty is easily solved: namely, that Judah, following the common and accepted practice of the Gentiles, acted improperly in permitting it. It is plain enough from the histories of all ages that there were disgusting and shameless mixtures in the marriages of Oriental nations. By evil communications, then, as is always the case, Judah was led into giving the same wife to his second son who had previously been married to the eldest. And, in fact, God expressly says that this offense was widespread among the Gentiles, where He condemns incestuous connections.

This, therefore, I still hold to be unquestionable: that by the law of Moses, marriage with the widow of an own-brother is forbidden.

⁹² In Willet this exposition is attributed to Radulph., Blesensis, and Borrhaus.

⁹³ Thus Augustine (De Civit. Dei. 15:16. Section 2,) says, — “quod fiebat cum consobrina, pene cum sorore fieri videbatur: quia et ipsi inter se propter tam propinquam consanguinitatem fratres vocantur, et pene germani sunt.”