Commentaria in Deuteronomium
Chapter the Twenty-fifth. Synopsis of the Chapter
First, God ordains that judges judge justly; secondly, vers. 4, that they muzzle not the ox that treadeth out the corn, that a brother raise up seed to his dead brother, and that a woman in a quarrel seize not the private parts of a man; thirdly, vers. 13, that they have just weights, and that they blot out the name of Amalec.
1. If there be a controversy between men, and they call upon the judges, they shall give the palm of justice to him whom they perceive to be just, and shall condemn the wicked of wickedness. 2. But if they see that the offender be worthy of stripes, they shall lay him down, and shall cause him to be beaten before them. According to the measure of the sin shall the measure also of the stripes be: 3. yet so that they exceed not the number of forty, lest thy brother depart foully torn before thy eyes. 4. Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out thy corn on the floor. 5. When brethren dwell together, and one of them dieth without children, the wife of the deceased shall not marry to another: but his brother shall take her, and raise up seed for his brother, 6. and the first son he shall have of her he shall call by his name, that his name be not abolished out of Israel. 7. But if he will not take his brother’s wife, who by the law falleth to him, the woman shall go to the gate of the city, and call upon the ancients, and say: My husband’s brother refuseth to raise up his brother’s name in Israel, and will not take me to wife. 8. And they shall cause him to be sent for immediately, and shall ask him. If he answer: I will not take her to wife: 9. the woman shall come to him before the ancients, and shall take off his shoe from his foot, and spit in his face, and say: So shall it be done to the man that buildeth not up his brother’s house. 10. And his name shall be called in Israel, The house of the unshod. 11. If two men have a quarrel among themselves, and one begin to fight against the other, and the other’s wife, willing to deliver her husband out of the hand of the stronger, put forth her hand and take him by the secrets, 12. thou shalt cut off her hand, neither shalt thou be moved with any pity over her. 13. Thou shalt not have divers weights in thy bag, a greater and a less: 14. neither shall there be in thy house a greater bushel and a less. 15. Thou shalt have a just and a true weight, and thy bushel shall be equal and true: that thou mayest live a long time upon the land which the Lord thy God shall give thee; 16. for the Lord thy God abhorreth him that doeth these things, and he hateth all injustice. 17. Remember what Amalec did to thee in the way, when thou camest out of Egypt: 18. how he met thee, and slew the hindmost of thy army, who sat down weary, when thou wast spent with hunger and labour, and he feared not God. 19. Therefore when the Lord thy God shall give thee rest, and subdue all the nations round about, in the land which he hath promised thee, thou shalt blot out his name from under heaven. Beware thou forget it not.
Vers. 3.—3. YET SO THAT THEY EXCEED NOT THE NUMBER OF FORTY (the reason is added): LEST THY BROTHER DEPART FOULLY TORN BEFORE THINE EYES.—So Paul: “Five times,” he says, “did I receive forty stripes save one,”
4. THOU SHALT NOT MUZZLE THE OX THAT TREADETH OUT THE CORN ON THE FLOOR,—because it is fitting that labouring animals should eat: wherefore I forbid the mouths of those that thresh to be shut with a halter, that in Judea they may eat of their own threshing. For they were wont in Palestine, as is still done in the Canaries and in some other regions, to shake out the grain by oxen, which, driven round, trod out the corn with the hooves of their feet.
Hence the Poet: “And they thresh with oxen.” That this is the literal sense is plain from the very words, which inculcate this law on the hard-hearted Jews.
Thou wilt say: in 1 Corinthians ix, 9, the Apostle seems to exclude this sense, for he says: “Doth God take care for oxen?”
Abulensis answers that the Apostle brings another literal sense of this place, and that the chief one, with which, however, our sense here about oxen, which is the less chief, can stand; as if the Apostle said: God’s care is less for oxen, but chiefly for the preachers of the word of God. But that these are not two literal senses is plain; for “ox” literally does not signify the preacher, but only a real ox, while the preacher it signifies only typically: because the ox, born for labour, is a type of the preacher, who labours in the field of the Lord as an ox. Since, then, this sentence is literally understood of real oxen treading out the corn, it cannot be taken literally of preachers, but only typically; otherwise every allegory would be the literal sense, which is plainly false. For the literal sense is that which is first signified by a sentence; the allegorical or typical is that which is signified secondarily, or by means of the literal sense; as therefore the shadow of a body is not the body, so the typical sense cannot be literal, but is only adumbrated by the literal sense. I say therefore: The literal sense is of oxen, as I said;
but the typical is of preachers, which the Apostle gives, namely that sustenance is to be given them, and that they can live by the Gospel, as the ox is fed by its threshing; and because the chief care of God is for these, so that God in this law chiefly intended to signify typically that preachers are to be nourished by the people, therefore the Apostle says: “Doth God take care for oxen?” as if to say: The chief care of God in this law was not for oxen, but he looked to something higher, namely that I, and the like heralds of the Gospel, can live by it. The Apostle here, therefore, as elsewhere often, argues not from the literal sense but from the allegorical; or rather from the literal sense he argues from the greater to the less, to the allegorical, as if to say: If the ox lives by threshing, much more the preacher by his preaching. So Tertullian, book v Against Marcion, chap. vi, and Theodoret here, Question xxxi. Where note, though the literal sense in Scripture is first, yet the allegorical can be the primary and chief, or the more intended by the Holy Ghost, as is done here; whence an efficacious argument can be drawn from it, when it is certain that it is truly the allegorical or mystical sense.
5. WHEN BRETHREN DWELL TOGETHER—not in the same house or place: for this matters little to the point, says Abulensis; but as if to say: When brethren have lived together, so that one being dead, another survives. It is a catachresis; for brethren are wont to dwell together in the same house, or city, or at least province.
AND ONE OF THEM DIETH WITHOUT CHILDREN, THE WIFE OF THE DECEASED SHALL NOT MARRY TO ANOTHER: BUT HIS BROTHER SHALL TAKE HER, AND RAISE UP SEED FOR HIS BROTHER.—Tertullian, book iv Against Marcion, xxxiv, renders: If any brother die childless, let seed be prepared (that is, substituted) for him by his brother; or, as Cajetan renders literally from the Hebrew: the brother-in-law (levir) shall take her to himself to wife, and shall perform the levirate for her. For the office of the levir was to marry his brother’s wife, and from her to raise up seed to the dead brother, which Cajetan from the Hebrew calls “to levirate.” To raise up the seed of a brother is therefore to beget offspring for a brother, or such as may be reckoned the dead brother’s offspring, and be ascribed to him. Note “brother”: for although Calvin understands by brother a kinsman, because, he says, Leviticus xviii, 16, it is forbidden that a brother marry his brother’s wife; yet because here no mention is made of a kinsman, and the name of brother is repeatedly insisted on, Abulensis, Cajetan and others everywhere take “brother” here in the proper sense, and so the Hebrews have interpreted it.
Genesis xxxviii, 8 and 11. Whence it is plain that this law is an exception to that of Leviticus xviii, as I said there. Hence it follows that this law bound only the brothers of the deceased, not the kinsmen. Brothers, I say, singly, each in his order; so that if the second brother, like the first, died childless, the third brother ought to marry her; and if he died childless, the fourth ought to marry her, and so on to the last, as is plain from Matthew xxii, 25. The other kinsmen, each in his order after the brothers, had indeed the right of nearness of blood to the wife of the deceased, and consequently to his inheritance; but if they would not marry her, and chose to give up the inheritance, they were not branded with the infamy of this law, as is plain from Ruth iv, 6; but the widow was bound to marry no other than a brother or kinsman of her deceased husband, if he wished to marry her. So Abulensis.
Thou wilt ask what if the deceased brother had left a daughter, not a son; must not the surviving brother raise up seed? I answer: To raise up seed is to raise up male offspring, who may propagate the name and stock of the deceased brother; for females never bear the name of the father or grandfather, but of the husband; if, however, on the brother’s death a daughter survived, and no brother survived who could raise up seed to the dead brother, then that daughter received her father’s inheritance, and he who married her raised up seed to her dead father, as is plain from Numbers chap. xxvii.
6. AND THE FIRST SON HE SHALL HAVE OF HER HE SHALL CALL BY HIS (the dead brother’s) NAME.—The Hebrew is: the firstborn shall stand in the name of his brother; that is, the firstborn shall be called the son, not of his father, but of his dead uncle, and shall enter on his inheritance; the other sons, whom he shall beget, shall be reckoned the begetting brother’s, and shall be called by his name, so that he too may leave behind him his stock and family. Thou wilt ask, what was the cause of this law? I answer:
Vers. 6. The first was to multiply families; for the brother raising up seed to his brother, first, restored his brother’s family; then his own; secondly, that the widow might be helped; thirdly, because in that age the desire of children was the greatest, and the greatest sadness was to die without offspring: this law therefore served to soothe it, whence also before this law, in the state of the law of nature, the same was the custom, as is plain of Thamar, Genesis xxxviii, 8 and following; fourthly, lest the inheritance of tribes and families be confounded; for if widows had married strangers, they would have carried their goods over to foreign families. Whence the Jews since the Babylonian captivity, by which their possessions were taken away or confused, do not keep this law, and say that, the cause having ceased, it has ceased and been abolished. But this was not the only cause, but there were several others of this law, which can still have place among them, so that on this ground alone this law is not abolished; fifthly, that the office of brotherly charity and love might be established, since each was commanded to care for the other’s posterity as his own; sixthly, that the survivors might be admonished of their duty toward their dead, lest, namely, they forget them, but follow them with honour and love together; seventhly, Procopius and Julius Africanus in Eusebius, book i History, chap. vii, give a cause: “Because,” he says, “the sure and indubitable hope of the resurrection was not yet fully seated in the minds of the Jews, therefore they shadowed forth by a certain imitation the future promise of the resurrection, in this mortal and fleeting hope of the resurrection, that the name of him who had exchanged life for death might not be wholly blotted out from all memory.” For the dead brother in a manner rose again through the seed raised up by his brother.
St. Augustine gives the allegorical cause, book xxii Against Faustus, chap. x, and from him Rupert: Each preacher of the Gospel, he says, ought so to labour in the Church that he raise up seed to his dead brother, that is, to Christ, who died for us; and that what is raised up may take his name, so that it be called Christian, not of Peter, nor of Paul; but he who profits himself and the Church is rightly understood as shod on both feet; but he who shirks the care of gaining others will not signify the unshod man of the law figuratively, but will bear in himself fulfilled the reproach, that he be called The house of the unshod: so also St. Gregory, part i Pastoral, chap. v.
9. IF HE WILL NOT TAKE HER, THE WOMAN SHALL COME TO HIM, ETC., AND TAKE OFF HIS SHOE FROM HIS FOOT, AND SPIT IN HIS FACE,—as if to say: She shall brand him with infamy; for these are marks of servile condition: for we scarcely spit in the face of any but base men. The same is signified by the unshoeing: for slaves went barefoot, without shoes, as if to say: Such a one is unworthy to wear a shoe, that is, to move among the freeborn, because he, through his brother’s wife, and so of the inheritance and family, has abdicated himself:
for this is the part of an illiberal and mean mind.
Again, such a one is spat upon in the face, and stripped of his shoes, that the highest and lowest part of the man may be visited with contumely, and so the whole man branded with infamy, to signify that such a one is stripped of all honour, from the head to the shoes. So Abulensis, Oleaster and Fevardentius on Ruth chap. iv.
Thirdly, a shoe is as it were the house of the foot: because therefore this man wishes to build a house, that is, a family, for himself only, not for his brother, he keeps one shoe, but loses the other. More symbols of the shoe I have explained on Ephesians vi, 15.
THAT BUILDETH NOT UP THE HOUSE,—that is, the family, that is, who raises not up offspring to his brother. So Lia and Rachel are said to have built the house, that is, the family, of Israel, Ruth iv, 11. See what is said on Exodus 11 and 12. IF, ETC., THE WIFE TAKE HIM BY THE SECRETS (of the man quarrelling with her husband), THOU SHALT CUT OFF HER HAND,—first, because this touch is shameful. So Vatablus and Cajetan, who says: “The law shrinks from the woman daring to hurt the members of the man, which are directed straight to the work of the female sex.” For this seizing, done to check the quarrel and fight, was violent and injurious.
Secondly, because in the violent seizing of the privy parts the pain is so great that the man becomes immovable, and can most easily be killed by the other with whom he quarrels and fights; as if to say: This wife, by seizing the private parts of the man, was the occasion or cause of his slaughter; let her therefore lose the hand with which she seized them. For this woman, wishing in the quarrel to help her husband, seized the private parts of the man with whom he quarrelled, to render him unwarlike and enervated, and so expose him to be beaten and laid low by her husband: she therefore cooperated in the quarrel and slaughter; hence she is justly mulcted of the hand. So Abulensis.
19. THOU SHALT BLOT OUT HIS (Amalec’s) NAME FROM UNDER HEAVEN,—as if to say: So shalt thou smite the Amalecites that no memory of them remain on earth among men, as we now see none remains. So are blotted out those who persecute the faithful and the holy.