xxii. 24-28), was not that the Seven were all sons of the same parents, but simply that "Seven had her to wife," and that she had a claim to the seven. But the Levirate Law, i. e. respecting a husband's brother, nowhere specifies or contemplates that they must be own-brothers. The book of Tobit, though uncanonical, is a fair reflex of Jewish practices and beliefs, and may perhaps have suggested, as it certainly does explain, the case proposed by the Sadducees. Sara, the daughter of Raguel, of the Captivity in Media, had married seven husbands in succession, to whom she bore no children; and she laments to God, "I am the only daughter of my father, neither hath he any child to he his heir, neither any near kinsman, nor any son of his, alive, to whom I may keep myself for a wife. My seven husbands are already dead; and why should I live! but if it please Thee not that I should die, command some regard to be had of me, and pity taken of me, that I hear no more reproach." Chap. iii.
It was believed that the full extent of her Levirate claim had been exhausted, and she was unwilling to marry a stranger, thereby carrying the inheritance out of her own family; much less would she marry a heathen, and so pollute her name in the land of her captivity. When all the families of all her kindred were supposed to have been exhausted, Tobias, a kinsman, arrives from a distant part, and marries her under the Law which gave her a claim on his hand. Now he was but her father's cousin, c. vii. 2, vi. 11, 12; and there is nothing to shew that the seven were more nearly related to one another, than they were to the eighth, Tobias, and he certainly was not own-brother to any of them.
In truth, the idea that the Levirate Law contemplated own-brothers is wholly baseless, and should be unceremoniously abandoned. It must be, unless we would contradict an absolute enactment: "Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy brother's wife: it is thy brother's nakedness." Lev. xviii. 16. The very terms of the Law in question may serve to show this: "If brethren dwell together, and one of them die, and have no child, the wife of the dead shall not marry without unto a stranger: her husband's brother [margin: "next kinsman"—i.e. brother opposed to stranger, and thus equivalent to "kinsman,"] shall go in unto her, and take her to him to wife, and perform the duty of a husband's brother unto her." Then follows the ceremony of Chalitzah, by which the inheritance was transferred, in case of a man's rejecting the childless widow's claim to him as next kinsman. The shoe was pulled off, for another, as, it were, to step into, as we learn from Ruth iv. 7.
The Levirate Law evidently existed ages before among the nations of Canaan, but, as might be expected from their moral corruption, with no bar on account of any nearness of consanguinity. Gen. xxxviii. 8, 9. The conduct of Judah showed that he more than suspected the unlawfulness of the existing customs, (verses 10, 11, and end of 14). In Moab, as appears from the book of Ruth (i. 11), the same licence existed. Even heathen writers reproached the Asiatics with their dissoluteness: "Such is the whole barbarian race: a father has intercourse with his daughter, a youth with his mother, a maiden with her brother." (Euripides, Androm, 173). The Law of Moses re-established holy limitations of domestic virtue, but not ignoring the civil custom of the time. The Law of inheritance applied first to the husband's next of kin; but he was not only exempt from taking the widow if she were within the prohibited degrees—he dared not take her. Let it be noted
