Literal Translation
9. The nakedness of your sister, the daughter of your father or the daughter of your mother, born in the house or born outside, you shall not uncover their nakedness.
10. The nakedness of the daughter of your son or the daughter of your daughter, you shall not uncover their nakedness; for they are your nakedness.
11. The nakedness of the daughter of the wife of your father, born of your father, your sister she is. You shall not uncover her nakedness.
The key term here is moledet, which I have translated as “born.” In the twenty or so occurrences of this word in the Old Testament, it appears to have two distinct senses. The first is roughly equivalent to the English “kin,” as for example in Gen 12:1, “Go from your land, and from your kin (moledet), and from the house of your father.” Thus moledet is something between immediate family and the larger group land or people (see also Esther
The text does not seem to include a situation where man A, who has son a, marries woman B who has daughter b, with b being utterly unrelated to A. However, if the ESV rendering is correct, then the passage does address this situation. The problem is that the ESV rendering implies that what makes a and b effectively brother and sister is the fact that they were reared together. That is not true with the case under consideration. In the case under consideration, the children were raised apart, and did not enter into the same family until they were both of marriageable age.
My conclusion is that on the basis of a strict exegesis, the text at most can be read to imply that the marriage of a and b is prohibited. But it does not clearly so state. There may be other considerations that would oppose the marriage of the two, but I don’t see how it can be done on the basis of this text. There may be family considerations and dynamics involved in this particular case that would make the marriage of the two unwise, but on reconsideration, I don’t think Morecraft has an airtight case.
1 comment:
I've been thinking about lev 18 recently, and I can't find a good answer as to why daughter and grandmother are left out. Could you please point me in the right direction if you possibly could?
(I would have to add niece to that list, too.)
Thanks in advance,
Nathan
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