Marriage Customs

In my people group, the Tamils, first cousins marry. But it must be the mother’s brother’s children and not the father’s brother’s children. A father’s brothers are called “older fathers” (peri-appa) when they are older than one’s father and “younger fathers” (chitha-appa) when they are younger than the father. But the mother’s brothers are not called peri or chitha – appa (“father”) but “fathers-in-law” (mama), the same designation given to one’s husband’s father. My sisters’ daughters, for example, call me mama (“father-in-law”); technically, my sons can marry them.

The Hebrews had a similar complicated custom, uncommon today (although Sikhs still practice this). When a brother dies, leaving his widow wife without any children, one of his brothers must marry her and give her a child to bear the name of the deceased brother. This way, the dead brother’s property and wealth would go to the widow and her children. This was called the levirate marriage and was meant to protect the widows.

Sadly, people abused this practice. For example, Judah’s second son, Onan, took his older brother’s widow, Tamar, and had sex with her. But he didn’t want her to conceive and spilled his semen on the ground. The Lord punished him for his familial unfaithfulness (Gen 38:8–10). Similarly, Judah refused to give his third son to Tamar, although the law required it, because he feared his son’s life. But Tamar tricked him into giving him two grand/sons (Gen 38:11–30).

Herod Antipas was the fourth son of Herod the Great with his fourth wife, a Samaritan. With an Idumean father and a Samaritan mother, Antipas wasn’t an Israelite. Yet, he tried to follow the Mosaic law to rule the Hebrews as a tetrarch (“ruler of 1/4th of the region,” i.e., Galilee). Almost!

One of Antipas’s half-brothers, Herod Philip, lived near the Mediterranean Sea en route to Rome from Antipas’s place in Galilee. Philip loved wine, women, and parties, ignoring his legal wife, Herodias (daughter of an uncle, like the Tamil culture), and without political ambition. Antipas and Herodias, on the other hand, had high political aspirations. Antipas wanted to be a king of the entire region like his father, not a ruler of one-fourth of the land (a tetrarch). Herodias wanted to be the wife of a king.

Antipas often passed through the sea villa where Herod Philip lived with Herodias as he went to and returned from Rome. They fell in love. Antipas decided to follow the levirate marriage law and marry his brother’s wife, Herodias. Again, he was almost right in understanding the levirate marriage: he could marry his brother’s wife, provided his brother was dead and left no offspring. Those exceptions didn’t meet Antipas’s situation: his brother, Herod Philip, was still alive, and he and Herodias had a daughter, Salome. Herod Antipas ignored those provisos and married his brother’s wife.

John, the son of Zechariah, knew the levirate law and how Antipas and Herodias were breaking them and spoke against it as “evil” (Luke 3:19). Herod Antipas heard about it, decided to silence John from voicing it in public, and locked him in prison (Luke 3:20).

Antipas and Herodias weren’t alone in wanting to twist the law of Moses and God. Earlier, tax collectors, soldiers, and people approached John for cleansing, and he told them all to walk in justice.

Our default is to find loopholes in laws. But God wants us to uphold the law and do justice.