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wife, and permitting the union with a wife's sister, so that it be not in the lifetime of the former. We thus come to what Dr. M'Caul himself considers to be a case of over-riding, where we must determine whether (to use again his own words) "the inferential prohibition from verse 16 is to over-ride the expressed command of verse 18, or the plain letter of this latter verse to over-ride the inference from the former."[1]
Now, what I am anxious to see is, whether there is any need to force upon us this over-riding at all. I think not.
To show what I mean, I ask this—Take the prohibition of the brother's wife first in its plain literal terms, verse 16, and then is there, independently of the 18th verse, any direct exception to it? Certainly there is. When we come to the further explication of the Jewish polity, and God's designs in reference to it, we find a special provision in the law of the Levirate, (that is, the law of raising up seed to the deceased brother), which will clash with that prohibition; for the brother is required to take his brother's wife and raise up seed to a house in danger of becoming extinct in Israel. "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 shall go in unto her, and take her to him to wife, and perform the duty of an husband's brother unto her. And it shall be, that the firstborn which she beareth shall succeed in the name of his brother which is dead, that his name be not put out of Israel. And if the man like not to take his brother's wife, then let his brother's wife go up to the gate unto the elders, and say, My husband's brother refuseth to raise up unto his brother a name in Israel, he will not perform the duty of my husband's brother. Then the elders of his city
- ↑ Letter, p. 55.
