The levitate law.
At the root of this law, which obtained widely in the East, we find ideas and feelings such as these—
I. RESPECT FOR THE HONOR OF THE FAMILY. In the East, as is well known, childlessness is reckoned a calamity, almost a disgrace. Hence, as well as for other reasons, the severity of the law in Deuteronomy 25:11. Hence also this custom of marrying a brother's widow, in order to raise up seed to the brother. The motive is plainly to avert disgrace from a brother's house, to wipe out his reproach, to hand down his name in honor. We may respect the feeling while repudiating the form in which it embodied itself. What touches the credit of our families ought to be felt to concern ourselves. Not in the sense, certainly, of leading us to uphold that credit at the expense of truth and of justice to others; but in the sense of doing everything we can with a good conscience to maintain or redeem it.
II. DESIRE FOR A PERPETUATED NAME. The men of the old dispensation, as Matthew Henry says, not having so clear and certain a prospect of living themselves on the other side death as we have now, were the more anxious to live in their posterity. The principle is the same at bottom as that which leads us to wish for personal immortality. What man desires is perpetuated existence, of which existence in one's posterity is a kind of shadow, affording, in contemplation, a like "shadow of satisfaction" to the mind. Positivism, in falling back from a personal to a corporate immortality, is thus a movement in the wrong direction. The exchange it proposes is the substance for the shadow. The desire to exist in the remembrance of posterity, and to be well thought of by them, is, however, a legitimate principle of action. It should operate in leading us to live good and useful lives, which is the secret of the only lasting honor.
"Only the actions of the just
Smell sweet and blossom in the dust."
III. THE DISGRACE ATTACHING TO REFUSAL OF THE DUTIES IMPOSED ON US BY RELATIONSHIP TO THE DEAD. The disgrace in this case was emphatically marked (verses 9, 10). The wishes of the dead should be very sacred to us. The duties which spring from the bond of relationship, or from express request, should, if possible, be faithfully discharged. Aiding in the settlement of affairs, seeing provision made for a widow and children, accepting and fulfilling trusts, etc.—J.O.