Deuteronomy 25

Deuteronomy 25:1

Augustine of Hippo: If there is an altercation between two men, that they come to trial and judge and agree with the righteous. It is assumed that judges are the ones who must judge, not those who are said to have had the altercation. Then he goes on: And they will take it away from the wicked, and it will come to pass that, if he is worthy of stripes, who has done wrong, you will put him before the judges and scourge him according to his impiety. He will be flogged with forty lashes, no more. But if they continue to whip you with many more lashes, your brother will be debased before you. You have to pay attention. Although the Scripture has commanded to punish with scouring the sins that do not deserve to be punished with the death penalty and with so few, nevertheless the one who is scourged called him impious or worker of impiety, so that we know that the Scriptures do not speak as they do Many. We read the Scriptures with little attention, if we think that adultery is not an impiety, because it seems that whoever has committed it has sinned against man, while the law orders that sin be punished with the death penalty (Cf Deuteronomy 22,22) and we say that impiety they are more serious than these sins, because some of them belong to those who are punished with only forty lashes. So, there is a slight impiety worthy of the scourge, and there is another serious impiety that deserves the death penalty. In the same way, the sins that seem to be directed, not against God, but against man, some are worthy of the death penalty, and others, of a correction, which can be by whipping or by an easier forgiveness. It is evident that the Seventy have said the same thing, since they, too, have called impiety the sin of him who is worthy of the punishment of flogging. — QUESTIONS ON DEUTERONOMY, Q. 45 (tr. J. Litteral, draft)

Deuteronomy 25:4

Apostolic Constitutions: Let him use those tenths and first-fruits, which are given according to the command of God, as a man of God; as also let him dispense in a right manner the free-will offerings which are brought in on account of the poor, to the orphans, the widows, the afflicted, and strangers in distress, as having that God for the examiner of his accounts who has committed the disposition to him. Distribute to all those in want with righteousness, and yourselves use the things which belong to the Lord, but do not abuse them; eating of them, but not eating them all up by yourselves: communicate with those that are in want, and thereby show yourselves unblameable before God. For if you shall consume them by yourselves, you will be reproached by God, who says to such unsatiable people, who alone devour all, “You eat up the milk, and clothe yourselves with the wool;” [Ezekiel 34:3] and in another passage, “Must you alone live upon the earth”? [Isaiah 5:8] Upon which account you are commanded in the law, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” [Leviticus 19:18] Now we say these things, not as if you might not partake of the fruits of your labours; for it is written, “You shall not muzzle the mouth of the ox which treads out the grain;” [Deuteronomy 25:4; 1 Corinthians 9:9] but that you should do it with moderation and righteousness. As, therefore, the ox that labours in the threshing-floor without a muzzle eats indeed, but does not eat all up; so do you who labour in the threshing-floor, that is, in the Church of God, eat of the Church: which was also the case of the Levites, who served in the tabernacle of the testimony, which was in all things a type of the Church. — Apostolic Constitutions (Book II), Section 4, XXV

Deuteronomy 25:5

Augustine of Hippo: In the third book, then, when I was solving the question of how it was possible for Joseph to have two fathers, I indeed said that “he was begotten by one and adopted by the other.” But I should have mentioned too the kind of adoption, for what I said sounds as if another living father had adopted him. The law, however, also adopted the children of the deceased by ordering that “a brother marry the wife” of his childless, deceased brother and “raise up seed” by the same woman “for his deceased brother.” In this way the explanation of this matter of the two fathers of one man is indeed made clearer. — RECONSIDERATIONS 2.33.2

Augustine of Hippo: From the law on Levirate. “If two brothers live together, and one of them die without children; the wife of the dead will not be to another who is not near to him; her husband’s brother will go to her, take her for a wife, and live with her. And the child who will be born will be admitted in the name of the deceased, and his name will not be erased from Israel. In wanting the widow to be married by her husband’s brother, the Law seems to have had no other purpose than to raise a posterity to the one who died without children. Now, these words: “The child shall be admitted in the name of the deceased, and his name,” that of the deceased, “shall not be removed from Israel,” appear to mean that by taking the name borne by the deceased, the child will in a way form his posterity. Also, in the question raised by the Gospel, about the two fathers of St. Joseph, one of whom, quoted by St. Matthew, begot Joseph, and whose other, named by St. Luke, had Joseph as son, we have admitted adoption as the most plausible solution of this apparent contradiction (Accord des Evang. liv II, c. 3; Matt.I, 16; Luc, III, 23); since St. Joseph did not name either of them. But perhaps these words: “He will be admitted” in the name of the deceased, “do not they mean that he will take his name, but that he will be established by this heir, that is to say, as a son, not of him who begat him, but of the dead, to whom were raised children. Indeed, these expressions: “And his name will not be erased” from Israel, “may mean, not that the child will be required to bear the name of the deceased, but that the latter will seem not to be dead without posterity and that his name, that is to say, his memory will thus be saved from oblivion. Without a doubt,. if he had had a son himself, he would not have needed to give him his name, to render him imperishable in Israel; but by this alone that he would not have died without posterity, his name would not have perished: now, which was not in his power, the Law commands him to his brother, ordering him to marry the widow of the deceased. For the rest, in the absence of the brother, the nearest relative married the woman of the dead Israelite without children, in order to raise him a posterity: this is how Booz married Ruth, in order to raise children to a close relative, she had been the wife, without having children from him; the son who was born of her was admitted in the name of the deceased, since his son was called; and thus the memory of the deceased did not perish in Israel, though the child did not bear his name. Continuation. The two genealogies of Saint Matthew and Saint Luke. - If this is true, then we have a second way of resolving the objection from the Gospel: one of the two fathers of St. Joseph, named by St. Matthew and St. Luke, would have been close relative of the another, whose widow he married, to such a degree that both could have ascendants and different ancestors. Indeed, if they had been children of two brothers, they would have had only one common ancestor; which is not: for according to Matthew, Mathan is Joseph’s grandfather; and according to Luke, it is not Nathan, but Mathath. What if, by reason of the similarity of the names, we claim to see here a mistake of copyist, too small and too futile for it to be taken into account, what will be said about the names of their fathers? In fact, according to St. Luke, Mathath was the son of Levi; According to Matthew, Mathan had Eleazar as his father; and thus, going back, the names of the fathers and grandfathers vary; then the names of the ancestors to Zerubbabel, which is, according to St. Luke, almost the twentieth ancestor of Joseph, and according to St. Matthew, the eleventh only. What leads us to believe that there is here one and the same personage, quoted by the two Gospels, is cheerful, the one and the other lai give to father Salathiel; but it may happen that two persons bear the same name, and that their fathers are in the same case. In ascending above, indeed, the names differ again as follows St. Luke, Zerubbabel is grandson of Neri; following St. Matthew, of Jechonias. This diversity continues until we reach David, passing through Solomon, in Matthew, and in Luke, by Nathan. Now, it is very difficult to admit that, in order to marry the widow of a brother, there was no closer relative than the one who was descended from David in a degree so remote and had no contact with him. dead husband other related; since David, in St. Luke, is almost the fortieth ancestor of Joseph, and in St. Matthew, about the twenty-seventh. However, if relatives on the women’s side were called to marry the widows of their brethren, it could have been that a relative on this side would have begotten Joseph from his union with the wife of his near relative who died without children; in this way, Joseph would have had a natural father and a legal father, which would explain the absence of kinship in fathers, ancestors and ancestors, because kinship would come from the side of women and not from men. But in this hypothesis, David would not be the only father of Joseph. If it is claimed that this hypothesis is not unacceptable, have we not noticed somewhere that Scripture does not have the custom of placing women in the genealogies instead of men, as well as can we see it by the Evangelists? There, indeed, where we find the names of the mothers, it is never except by the name of the fathers (II Rétr. c. 55, n. 3). As a result, one must go back to David to establish kinship, in default of a next of kin who married the wife of the deceased, where the adoption gave Joseph a second father. — QUESTIONS ON DEUTERONOMY, Q. 46 (tr. J. Litteral, draft)

Deuteronomy 25:9

Augustine of Hippo: The role of holy women was different in the times of the prophets. Obedience, not concupiscence, impelled women to marry for the propagation of the people of God, among whom the forerunners of Christ were sent in advance. For this people, by the things that happened to them as a type, whether they recognized these types or not, were indeed prophetic of Christ, from whom Christ was to take flesh. Hence, in order that this race might be multiplied, the man who did not raise up seed in Israel was held accursed by sentence of the law. That is why holy women were animated by the pious desire of offspring rather than by desire. We may rightly believe that they would not have sought the marriage union if children could have been obtained in any other way. — ON THE GOOD OF WIDOWHOOD 6.10

Origen of Alexandria: But that the injury of spittings is taken as the extreme injury, is manifest also in the law, in which it is written that the wife of a deceased man, if the brother of her husband will not take her, going to him who refused to take her to himself as wife, in the presence of the elders shall unshoe “one of his sandals from his feet and shall spit in his face and shall say: so shall it be done to the man who has not built up the house of his brother”. Therefore Christ did not turn away his face “from the confusion of spittings”, that his countenance might be more glorified than the countenance of Moses was glorified, with so great and such glory that (by comparison with this glorification) the glorification of that countenance is done away, just as in the sight of the sun the light of a lamp is done away, and just as the knowledge which is in part is done away “when that which is perfect has come”. — COMMENTARY ON Matthew 113