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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
The word
sister is here understood, either,
1. Properly, so some; whence others infer that it is lawful to marry one’s wife’s sister after the wife’s death. Or,
2. Improperly for any other woman, as not only persons, but things, of the same kind are oft called sisters and brethren, of which see plain examples, Exo_26:3 32:27,29 Eze 1:9 3:13 16:45,48,49. So the sense is, thou shalt not take one woman to another. And this sense may seem more probable,
1. Because else here were a tautology, the marriage of a man with his wife’s sister being sufficiently forbidden, Lev_18:16, where marriage with his brother’s wife is forbidden; as also Lev_18:9,11, where he forbids the marriage of one’s own sister, and cousequently the marriage of one’s wife’s sister, it being manifest and confessed that affinity and consanguinity are of the same consideration and obligation in these matters. Nor can this be added for explication, for then the comment would be darker than the text, nay, it would destroy the text; for then what was simply, and absolutely, and universally forbidden before, is here forbidden doubtfully and restrainedly, and might at least seem to be allowed after the wife’s death; which is rejected by those who own the former interpretation.
2. Because the reason of this prohibition, which is lest he should vex her thereby, is much more proper and effectual against marrying any other woman, than against marrying the wife’s sister, so near and dear a relation being most commonly and probably a means to induce them rather to love and please and serve, than to vex one another in such a relation. And therefore to take her natural sister to vex her, would seem a course unsuitable to his end or design.
3. Some add another reason, that polygamy, which Christ condemns, Mat_19:5 is either forbidden here or no where in the law. But this may admit of great dispute. And it is observable, that Christ confutes polygamy and divorces, not by any of Moses’s laws, (which probably he would not have omitted, if they had been to his purpose,) but by the first institution of marriage, Gen_2:23; whence also Malachi seems to fetch his argument, Lev_2:14,15. And that law, Deu_21:15,16, may seem to intimate that God did then, in consideration of the hard-heartedness of the Jewish nation, dispense with that first and primitive law, especially if we consider the practice of divers holy men amongst the Jews, not only before the law, as Abraham and Jacob, but also after it, as Elkanah and David, who would never have lived in the violation of a known law, or, if they had, would have been blamed for it; whereas on the contrary God mentions it as one of his layouts vouchsafed to David, that he gave him his master’s wives into his bosom, 2Sa_12:8; and affirms, that David turned not aside from any thing that he commanded him all the days of his life, save only in the matter of Uriah, 1Ki_15:5. Peradventure therefore it may deserve some consideration, which a learned man in part suggests, that this text doth not simply forbid the taking of one wife to another, but the doing of it in such a manner, or for such an end, that he may vex, or punish, or revenge himself of the former; which probably was a common motive amongst that hard-hearted people to do so, and therefore the forbidding hereof might give a great check to the practice of polygamy amongst them. In her lifetime: this clause is added to signify God’s allowance to marry one wife after another, when she is dead, and thereby to intimate how the word sister is to be understood.