Let’s take a look at a snippet from the New Testament involving Levirate marriage.
Read the following:
That same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question.“Rabbi,” they said, “Moses told us that if a man dies without having children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for him. Now there were seven brothers among us. The first one married and died, and since he had no children, he left his wife to his brother. The same thing happened to the second and third brother, right on down to the seventh. Finally, the woman died. Now then, at the resurrection, whose wife will she be of the seven, since all of them were married to her?”-Matthew 22:23-28
How did Yeshua respond?
Read on to find out.
Yeshua replied, “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God. At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. But about the resurrection of the dead—have you not read what God said to you, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.”-Matthew 22:29-32
What can we gather from all this?
Well, a couple of things.
For starters, it’s obvious that Levirate marriage was quite common in the NT era and we can see here that Yeshua did not dispute its validity.
The Sadducees were using the law of Levirate marriage to show that after the resurrection, Jewish tradition would be carried forward exactly as it existed then into the new world to come ruled by a physical Jewish Kingdom.
The Sadducees were focused only on the earthly, physical and political aspects of the resurrection and assumed the laws governing Levirate marriage would have the same application in the kingdom of heaven.
They were totally overlooking the heavenly or spiritual elements and transformation that would occur after the resurrection.
They were using Levirate marriage to argue against Yeshua’s stance by presenting the highly unlikely example of a man dying minus having any children and then afterwards a succession of all his brothers one after the other marrying the widow but each one dying before being able to provide the widow with any children.
In this unlikely scenario, the question thrown at Yeshua was when the widow died, “Whose wife would she be after the resurrection?”.
Understand that the entire foundation of this argument was based on the primary purpose of Levirate marriage which was NOT that the widow become a wife but that she become a mother by giving birth to a child who would be raised under the name of her first husband who passed away.
Well, how did Yeshua answer them?
His response was that their argument was absolutely pointless.
Why?
Because not just Levirate marriage but marriage itself would become a non-issue in the world to come after the resurrection.
The world to come would be fully spiritual in nature as opposed to the physical limitations defined by sickness, old age, poverty and death in our current earthly world.
Yeshua was saying siring children and providing a deceased man with a son would be meaningless then.
The Torah laws dealing with widows and Levirate marriage were established to prevent social injustices but were only relevant to the present physical world, NOT to the coming spiritual kingdom to come.
Yeshua then went on to add that there won’t even be any marriage in the world to come because we will all be like the angels in heaven.
Because of this, Yeshua concluded that the binding together of spirits in faithfulness to HASHEM will no longer be needed.
If this is true, why does Ezekiel 44 say that the priests will marry? The vision of the temple clearly happens after the Name of HaShem is residing in the temple, and a river of life is flowing from the sanctuary. This all is after the battle of Har Megiddo, making it necessarily after the Messiah comes.
I understand from the blog that the Richoka was talking about post Millennium era when God establishes the New earth and New heaven. Ezekiel 44 is referring to the Millennial kingdom which is physical in nature where Yeshua rules. Hope it clarifies your question.
Good god almighty you don’t have a clue about the kingdom. It’s a literal kingdom, not some ethereal nonsense. Be very careful spreading these lies as Paul warns those that teach a false gospel of the kingdom are to be cursed. Walk a fine line here.