Preserving Family Property

Preserving Family Property

This strange law made perfect sense within the economy of ancient Israel.

Deuteronomy 25:5-10

“‘If brothers dwell together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the dead man shall not be married outside the family to a stranger. Her husband’s brother shall go in to her and take her as his wife and perform the duty of a husband’s brother to her. And the first son whom she bears shall succeed to the name of his dead brother, that his name may not be blotted out of Israel. And if the man does not wish to take his brother’s wife, then his brother’s wife shall go up to the gate to the elders and say, “My husband’s brother refuses to perpetuate his brother’s name in Israel; he will not perform the duty of a husband’s brother to me.” Then the elders of his city shall call him and speak to him, and if he persists, saying, “I do not wish to take her,” then his brother’s wife shall go up to him in the presence of the elders and pull his sandal off his foot and spit in his face. And she shall answer and say, “So shall it be done to the man who does not build up his brother’s house.” And the name of his house shall be called in Israel, “The house of him who had his sandal pulled off.”’”

Ruth 4

This is a difficult statute for us to understand in our time and culture. However, keeping it helped to maintain order and justice in the communities of ancient Israel, as we see in Ruth 4. When this law of inheritance, which included marriage to the wife of the deceased by his nearest unmarried kin, was properly observed, all questions about property were taken care of in a single stroke.

Any man who refused to marry his deceased relative’s wife thus put in jeopardy both her purity and the stewardship of the family’s property. He was free to do so, if he chose, but he would have to bear the consequences of shame in the eyes of the community which such a decision would entail. Again, this may not make sense to us, but in ancient Israel it was an essential rule for maintaining order and justice in communities.

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In the Gates is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T. M. Moore, editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001, 2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.