Levirate Marriage

Biblical Text and Content

Levirate marriage is an institution in which the brother of a man who died without a son takes the widow as his wife. The first son born of this marriage carries on the name, that is, the line, of the deceased. The regulation appears in Deuteronomy 25:5-10.

• If brothers dwell together and one of them dies without a son, the widow is not to marry a man outside the family but is to marry her husband's brother.
• The firstborn son succeeds to the name of the deceased, so that his name is not put out of Israel.
• If the brother refuses, the widow removes his shoe before the elders at the city gate and spits in his face. His house is then called "The house of him that hath his shoe loosed."

The custom appears in two narratives.

• Genesis 38: When Er, Judah's firstborn, died, the second son, Onan, took his brother's widow, Tamar. But Onan refused to raise up offspring for his brother and died, and Judah withheld his third son, Shelah, from Tamar. Tamar eventually bore Perez and Zerah to Judah.
• Ruth 3–4: Boaz married Ruth so that the inheritance (the land passed down within the family) would continue in the name of the deceased Mahlon (Ruth 4:4-10). Obed was born of this marriage.

Background and Terminology

The Korean term gyedae (繼代) means "continuing the line." The Hebrew text expresses this obligation with a verb from the same root as yabam, meaning "husband's brother." The English term "levirate marriage" derives from the Latin levir, also meaning "husband's brother."

The institution was bound up with three purposes: continuing the family line, keeping land from passing outside the family, and protecting a widow who had no one else to depend on. Similar provisions are known from other ancient Near Eastern law codes. Later rabbinic Judaism addressed the matter in the Mishnah tractate Yevamot, and the shoe-removal ceremony is understood to have gradually replaced the marriage itself.

In the New Testament

The Sadducees, who denied the resurrection, put a question to Jesus: if seven brothers in turn took the same woman as wife, whose wife would she be in the resurrection (Matthew 22:23-33; Mark 12:18-27; Luke 20:27-40)? Jesus answered, "For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven" (Matthew 22:30).

The genealogy in Matthew 1 names both Tamar and Ruth. Through it, the two levirate marriage narratives are linked, by way of David, to the lineage of Jesus.

Interpretation and Issues

• The marriage in Ruth: Boaz was not the brother of Ruth's deceased husband but a kinsman. Some interpreters therefore regard this marriage as a combination of Deuteronomic levirate marriage and the kinsman-redeemer institution, while others distinguish it from levirate marriage in the strict sense. Ruth 4:7 explains the handing over of a shoe as a customary confirmation of the transfer of rights, which differs in character from the shaming ceremony in Deuteronomy.
• Relationship to Leviticus: Leviticus 18:16 and 20:21 prohibit relations with a brother's wife. Levirate marriage is generally understood as an exception permitted only when the brother has died without a son.
• Onan's act: Some strands of Christian tradition have used Genesis 38:9-10 as a basis for prohibiting contraception or masturbation. Another widely held interpretation, however, sees the focus of the text as Onan's refusal to fulfill his duty of continuing his brother's line.
• Typological interpretation: Many preachers interpret Boaz, who redeemed the inheritance and took Ruth as his wife, as a figure foreshadowing Christ. This reading belongs to the interpretive tradition rather than to what the text states directly.

In the Korean Church

No denomination in the Korean church practices this institution literally. It is addressed mainly in sermons on Ruth, when explaining Boaz's marriage and the birth of Obed.