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Obeying the First Part of the Tenth Commandment: Applications from the Levirate Marriage Law

Asbury Theological Seminary, 204 N. Lexington Ave., Wilmore, KY 40390, USA

Within the last thirty years, a handful of scholars have cogently argued on the basis of ancient Near Eastern law codes and literary structure that the legal applications in Deuteronomy 6-26 are structured in roughly the same sequence as the Ten Commandments in ch. 5. Even more pertinent for understanding the meaning of chs. 6-26 and the Decalogue, Dennis Olson argues for a correlative interpretation between the two legal corpora. The present study examines possible correlations between the first part of the tenth commandment (Deut. 5.21a) and the so-labeled ‘levirate marriage’ law (Deut. 25.5-10) to address whether levirate marriage is an institutionalized exception to the tenth commandment against desiring a neighbor’s wife or whether it is more properly viewed as a way to obey the commandment.

Key Words: Tenth Commandment • Deuteronomy 25.5-10 • Deuteronomy • levirate • literary structure • marriage • desire

Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Vol. 31, No. 3, 295-310 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0309089207076359


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