Leviticus 18:11

18:1-30 Unlawful marriages and fleshly lusts. - Here is a law against all conformity to the corrupt usages of the heathen. Also laws against incest, against brutal lusts, and barbarous idolatries; and the enforcement of these laws from the ruin of the Canaanites. God here gives moral precepts. Close and constant adherence to God's ordinances is the most effectual preservative from gross sin. The grace of God only will secure us; that grace is to be expected only in the use of the means of grace. Nor does He ever leave any to their hearts' lusts, till they have left him and his services.

Either the daughter of his father by another wife, which seems to be countenanced by what follows: begotten of thy father, she is thy sister; but then this coincides with what is prohibited, Leviticus 18:9, "the daughter of thy father"; that is, by another woman than a man's mother, only with this difference, that there is added, or "daughter of thy mother", that is, by another man than a man's own father; so that there is a prohibition of a sister whether by father or mother's side; here only as by the father's side, and so is only a part of that law; and, as some think, is for the confirmation of it, as Aben Ezra observes; or else the sense, as he thinks, is, that if a man marries a woman, and she has a little daughter by a former husband, that daughter may not be given in marriage to his son; and so the Septuagint version finishes this clause first, before it gives the other, which it considers as distinct from it, thus, "the shame of thy father's, wife's daughter thou shalt not uncover"; and then makes a distinct law of the latter; "she that is begotten of thy father is thy sister, thou shalt not uncover her shame"; but then this last falls in with Leviticus 18:9, the Sadducees, as Aben Ezra also observes, by whom he means the Karaites, interpret it not of a mother's daughter, but of one brought up and educated by a man's father, and so is his adopted daughter, whom his son might not marry; and thus with the Romans it is said (g), that adoptive kindred hindered marriage b

Begotten of thy father , or, being akin to thy father . He seems to speak of the daughter of the father’s brother by his wife, whom the father here spoken of, being brother to the deceased person, married by virtue of that law, Deu 25:5 , by which marriage there was a near kindred contracted between the two families, so that the son of the one could not marry the daughter of the other. Thus this law is differing from that Leviticus 18:9 . And that seems more probable, than that in so brief a table of laws the same thing should be forbidden both there and here. Object. The word being the same here and Leviticus 18:9 , must be understood in the same sense, and therefore here must be rendered begotten or born , as it is there. Answ. It may be rendered there as well as here akin, as some render the words there of domestic , or of another, a foreign, kindred ; and if the word had been participially put for begotten or born, it is likely the preposition mem or lamed would have been prefixed to the Hebrew word abicha , as is common in those cases.

6. None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him—Very great laxity prevailed amongst the Egyptians in their sentiments and practice about the conjugal relation, as they not only openly sanctioned marriages between brothers and sisters, but even between parents and children. Such incestuous alliances Moses wisely prohibited, and his laws form the basis upon which the marriage regulations of this and other Christian nations are chiefly founded. This verse contains a general summary of all the particular prohibitions; and the forbidden intercourse is pointed out by the phrase, "to approach to." In the specified prohibitions that follow, all of which are included in this general summary, the prohibited familiarity is indicated by the phrases, to "uncover the nakedness" [Le 18:12-17], to "take" [Le 18:17, 18], and to "lie with" [Le 18:22, 23]. The phrase in this sixth verse, therefore, has the same identical meaning with each of the other three, and the marriages in reference to which it is used are those of consanguinity or too close affinity, amounting to incestuous connections.

(11) Thy father’s wife’s daughter. —If this clause stood alone it would denote the daughter of a man’s stepmother by another or previous husband, since “father’s wife” in Hebrew always denotes stepmother (see Leviticus 18:8 , Leviticus 20:11 ; Deuteronomy 23:1 , Deut. 26:20), in which case the man and the maiden, though no blood relations at all, would be forbidden to each other by virtue of the damsel’s mother having married the man’s father. It would thus differ from Leviticus 18:9 , where the maiden is a half-sister either by the same father or the same mother. Begotten of thy father.—Literally, the birth, or offspring of thy father (see Leviticus 18:9), that is, though the daughter of the stepmother, she is begotten by the same father, and hence is his half-sister on the father’s side, which is exactly the same case already prohibited in the first clause of Leviticus 18:9. Hence to avoid a senseless repetition of the same prohibition we must either regard this clause as having crept into the text from a marginal gloss, or we must correct the first letter of the disjunctive particle in Leviticus 18:9, which would make it “the nakedness of thy sister, the daughter of thy father and the daughter of thy mother.” Accordingly, Leviticus 18:9 prohibits marriage with a full sister, whilst the verse before us forbids it with a half-sister.