We’re going to be spending some time in the next couple of posts talking about Levirate marriage.
This topic is important because it a plays a key role in more than quite a few Biblical stories.
First I’d like to share what the ancient historian Josephus wrote about concerning this subject.
He noted three reasons concerning the purpose of Levirate marriage.
The first reason was to keep a man’s family name from dying out.
The second reason was to prevent the man’s property from being passed on to relatives.
The third reason was so the widow would be properly taken care of in her elder years.
Remember in those days there wasn’t a social security system for the elderly or poor.
Let’s talk a little bit about the first reason which was to keep a man’s family name from being blotted out and how this was connected to the ancient Hebrew beliefs about the afterlife.
This is important to examine because what the Israelites believed about the afterlife in the Biblical era was quite different from what we believe today, especially as promoted by gentile Christianity.
The truth is the idea of dying and going to heaven is nowhere to be found in the Torah, though it is vaguely implied in some of the Psalms.
Instead, a form of ancestor worship was practiced by the Patriarchs.
The universally accepted belief system in those days was that after a person died, his or soul would continue to live some sort of shadowy existence underground and that it was the obligation of their descendants to look after them.
Connected to this idea was the believe that a man’s life essence continued on through his offspring (actually only a male offspring).
Hence, if there were no male offspring, the man’s life essence was terminated and that was just too horrifying of a proposition to even contemplate.
From the perspective of this belief system, I think you can understand more fully now why Levirate marriage was considered so important.
We shall continue on with this topic the next time we meet.
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