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Bible Encyclopedias
Affinity
Kitto's Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature
or Affinity is relationship by marriage, as distinguished from consanguinity, which is relationship by blood. Marriages between persons thus related, in various degrees, were forbidden by the law of Moses, which previous usage, in different conditions of society, had allowed. These degrees are enumerated in Leviticus 18:7, sq. The examples before the law are those of Cain and Abel, who, as the necessity of the case required, married their own sisters. Abraham married Sarah, the daughter of his father by another wife, or else, as some suppose, the daughter of his elder brother by a former wife of his father. Jacob also married the two sisters Leah and Rachel. In the first instance, and even in the second, there was an obvious consanguinity, and only the last offered a previous relationship of affinity merely. So also, in the prohibition of the law, a consanguinity can be traced in what are usually set down as degrees of affinity merely. The degrees of real affinity interdicted are, that a man shall not (nor a woman in the corresponding relations) marry his—1. Father's widow (not his own mother); 2. The daughter of his father's wife by another husband; 3. The widow of his paternal uncle; 4. Nor his brother's widow if he has left children by her; but, if not, he was bound to marry her to raise up children to his deceased brother. The other prohibitions are connected with the condition of polygamy, and they prohibited a man from having—1. a mother and her daughter for wives at the same time; 2. or two sisters for wives at the same time. These prohibitions, although founded in Oriental notions, adapted to a particular condition of society, and connected with the peculiarities of the Levitical marriage law, have been imported wholesale into our canon law. The fitness of this is doubted by many: but as, apart from any moral questions, the prohibited marriages are such as few would, in the present condition of European society, desire to contract, and such as would be deemed repugnant to good taste and correct manners, there is little real matter of regret in this adoption of the Levitical law. Indeed, the objections to this adoption have rested chiefly upon one point; and that happens to be a point in which the law itself appears to have been egregiously misunderstood. This is in the injunction which, under permitted polygamy, forbade a man to have two sisters at once; an injunction which has been construed, under the Christian law, which allows but one wife, to apply equally to the case of a man marrying the sister of a deceased wife. The law itself is, however, so plain, that it is difficult to conceive how its true object—concerning which nearly all commentators are agreed—could have been thus interpreted. It is rendered in our version, 'Neither shalt thou take a wife to her sister, to vex her (or rather, perhaps, to rival her), to uncover her nakedness, beside the other in her lifetime.' And the design seems evidently to be to prevent the occurrence of such unseemly jealousies and contentions between sister-wives as embittered the life of Jacob—the father of the twelve tribes. The more recondite sense has been extracted, with rather ungentle violence to the principles of Hebrew construction, by making 'vex her' the antecedent of 'in her lifetime,' instead of take her sister to her, in her lifetime: And it is explained, under this view, that the married sister should not be 'vexed' in her lifetime by the prospect that her sister might succeed her. It may be safely said that such an idea would never have occurred in the East, where unmarried sisters are far more rarely than in Europe brought into such acquaintance with the husband of the married sister as to give occasion for such 'vexation' or 'rivalry' as this. This view of the matter, though completely exploded among real biblical critics, is perhaps not calculated to do much harm, except under peculiar circumstances, and except as it may prove a snare to some sincere but weak consciences.
Public Domain.
Kitto, John, ed. Entry for 'Affinity'. "Kitto's Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature". https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/kbe/a/affinity.html.
