It Takes Two To Covet (25:5-19)
Neal Pollard
Keeping with the prevailing view that this sermon of Moses, recorded in Deuteronomy 19-26, is an expounding on all the horizontal commands in the ten commandments, this section deals with the unlawful longings captured by the tenth commandment: “You shall not covet.” The examples addressed are composed of “two”–two brothers (5-6), two in-laws (7-10), two men (11-12), two weights (13-16), and two enemies (17-19)(cf. Smith, 523). In coveting, there are two parties–the one coveting and the one coveted. God wants Israel to keep their envy and greed in check, knowing it will both break down society and destroy man’s relationship with God. God wants men to find their sufficiency and satisfaction in Him rather than things of this earth.
Moses wrote, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife” (Ex. 20:17). Here in verses 5-6, the law deals with how to handle when a man dies and leaves a wife without having borne an heir. Later, this law became known as the “levirate (lit., brother-in-law) marriage.” Eugene Merrill says that it “prescribed that a widow whose deceased husband had died without male heir marry one of his brothers, presumably the next eldest one who was himself unmarried. The first son born of that relationship would take the name of the first husband, thus assuring the latter of an ongoing remembrance by the community. For this reason the widow was to marry within the family” (NAC, 327). That is precisely what is prescribed here.
The levirate process is described in verses 7-10. We see one Old Testament example of this law being played out, during the period of the judges. It is how Boaz and Ruth come to be married (see Ruth 1:5, 2:8, 3:12, 4:6,17 to watch the process unfold). There is huge stigma attached to refusing this right in Deuteronomy, though mostly lacking by the time of Ruth. The spitting (9) and label (10) are a lasting shame to the man who refuses to humble himself and allow his older brother’s name to live on through his participation in the levirate marriage.
The strongest connection between 25:11-12 and the previous verses is the mention of two men and a woman. Kaufman suggests another tie, that of the threat to future childbearing by the man (“The Structure Of The Deuteronomic Law,” 143). The wife of a man engaged in a physical fight with another man was not to seize his genitals. If she did, it would cost her her hand (12). Moses sums up, “You shall not pity.” These laws are meant to preserve community peace, and extreme measures like these were divinely-given deterrents.
Perhaps the most obvious tie to the tenth commandment, in this context, are verses 13-16. They take in “you shall not covet your neighbor’s house…his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor” (Ex. 20:17). The Israelites were to have a full and just weight and full and just measure (15). “The dishonest merchant would put a heavier weight in one of the plates of the scales, so as to get more produce on the other plate; in selling, he would use a lighter weight, thereby decreasing the amount of produce the buyer was getting” (Bratcher and Hatton, UBS, 415). To do otherwise was to cheat and practice dishonesty (16).
The appendage to the text here about Amalek is simply a reminder of the justice and vengeance of God to be executed on His and their enemies as they conquer Canaan (see Ex. 17:8ff). The dictate, “You shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven” (cf. 1 Sam. 15:33). To be God’s enemy, one is choosing the route of destruction and death.
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