And his name shall be called in Israel, The house of him that hath his shoe loosed.
The verse belongs to a repetition of various laws regarding duties between man and man and between man and God. The law of levirate marriage in the verse did not originate with Moses but existed in patriarchal times in germ and in special form, as already recognized in Genesis 38. It concerns the law requiring a man to marry his deceased childless brother's widow and raise offspring for his brother, and the widow may require the nearest kin to fulfill this duty. The seven-brother case uses that law to frame a challenge about whose wife the woman would be if the dead are raised.
Its purpose was to preserve the dead man's family name and inheritance in the land of Canaan so that no family should perish in Israel and the homestead would not pass into other hands. If a man died without an heir his property would pass into other hands, but if his brother married his widow the firstborn was to be counted as the dead man's son and heir to inherit his land and thus retain the homestead, while later sons belong to the living husband himself. Refusal was treated as supreme failure of the chief obligation to perpetuate the family and its inheritance, punished by public disgrace and insult through the loosing of the shoe and by giving the refusing man a lasting reproachful name in Israel as the house of the one with his shoe loosed.
Fear of marring his own inheritance explains why the nearer kinsman in Ruth 4 refused, because if only one son was born the living husband would be left reckoned childless without an heir to preserve his own name and family. In refusing he received the legal tokens of contempt, the loosing of his shoe. Refusal brings not only human contempt but the displeasure of the Lord, as seen in the death penalty imposed in the case of Onan in Genesis 38. By that law and custom, Tamar's strategy to secure her guaranteed rights after Judah defrauded her was not so reprehensible, and the sons born of that union were reckoned legitimate, with one in the ancestry of the Lord.
The arrangement will be unnecessary in the resurrection, because those accounted worthy of that world and the resurrection from the dead cannot die anymore, so there is no need to keep the inheritance in the family since each person's inheritance in the restored new earth will remain unimpaired throughout eternity. Deuteronomy 25:5-10 is the Mosaic law requiring a surviving brother to marry his deceased brother's childless wife and raise up offspring for him, and the Sadducees use this case to challenge belief in the resurrection by asking which of seven brothers would be the woman's husband in the resurrection.
The verse belongs to a repetition of various laws regarding duties between man and man and between man and God. The law of levirate marriage in the verse did not originate with Moses but existed in patriarchal times in germ and in special form, as already recognized in Genesis 38. It concerns the law requiring a man to marry his deceased childless brother's widow and raise offspring for his brother, and the widow may require the nearest kin to fulfill this duty. The seven-brother case uses that law to frame a challenge about whose wife the woman would be if the dead are raised.
Its purpose was to preserve the dead man's family name and inheritance in the land of Canaan so that no family should perish in Israel and the homestead would not pass into other hands. If a man died without an heir his property would pass into other hands, but if his brother married his widow the firstborn was to be counted as the dead man's son and heir to inherit his land and thus retain the homestead, while later sons belong to the living husband himself. Refusal was treated as supreme failure of the chief obligation to perpetuate the family and its inheritance, punished by public disgrace and insult through the loosing of the shoe and by giving the refusing man a lasting reproachful name in Israel as the house of the one with his shoe loosed.
Fear of marring his own inheritance explains why the nearer kinsman in Ruth 4 refused, because if only one son was born the living husband would be left reckoned childless without an heir to preserve his own name and family. In refusing he received the legal tokens of contempt, the loosing of his shoe. Refusal brings not only human contempt but the displeasure of the Lord, as seen in the death penalty imposed in the case of Onan in Genesis 38. By that law and custom, Tamar's strategy to secure her guaranteed rights after Judah defrauded her was not so reprehensible, and the sons born of that union were reckoned legitimate, with one in the ancestry of the Lord.
The arrangement will be unnecessary in the resurrection, because those accounted worthy of that world and the resurrection from the dead cannot die anymore, so there is no need to keep the inheritance in the family since each person's inheritance in the restored new earth will remain unimpaired throughout eternity. Deuteronomy 25:5-10 is the Mosaic law requiring a surviving brother to marry his deceased brother's childless wife and raise up offspring for him, and the Sadducees use this case to challenge belief in the resurrection by asking which of seven brothers would be the woman's husband in the resurrection.