Deen Show or Christian Prince-Part 2

Sam Shamoun Mosaic Law

Moses Father’s Marriage with his own Aunt
By: Omar Hussain

It’s Funny to know that Sam Shamoun and some other Christian claims when it comes to debating If Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) a true Prophet that Mosaic law is unchangeable but when it comes to Christianity claims that they are not under the Mosaic Law. This irrational union of thoughts can be easily understood if one knows little bit about Christianity. If Sam claims that Mosaic Law is unchanged than they should follow it as commanded by Jesus in Mathew 5. They should also observe Sabbath and kill those Christian who don’t. They should also stone the women if they are not found virgin on the wedding night. But to claims that these law is not applicable for Christian is a change init self.

In this article we will prove that regardless of Sam illogical approach, the law given to Moses was a exception in itself because according to Mosaic Law, Mosses PBUH himself not qualified to give the law. Thus God made an exception for Moses. For example Leviticus 18:12 forbade anyone to marry his own aunt.( some Rabbi the law is for someone’s maternal aunt not paternal aunt) and Deuteronomy 23:2 forbade any child of forbittin union to enter the assembly of the Lord But what is more intressting to know is that Mosses own father was married to his father's sister(aunt) and thus Moses PBUH himself is not allowed to enter the assembly of the Lord as one of the commandement in the Torah.

According to the Torah and Jewish sources Mosses father (Amram) married his father’s sister (Jochebed). The most explicit statement can be found in Exodus 6:20.

Exodus 6:20 (New International Version)
“Amram married his father's sister Jochebed, who bore him Aaron and Moses. Amram lived 137 years.”[1]

The further confirmation can be made through the earliest Jewish sources like Talmud that is second sources of knowledge after the Torah. Here is one example from Babylonian Talmud: Tractate Sanhedrin: Folio 58b

“And Amram took him Jochebed his father's sister to wife. Does it not [presumably] mean his father's sister on her mother's side [too]? — No. It means his father's paternal sister. And yet indeed she is my sister; she is the daughter of my father, but not of my mother. Does not this prove that his mother's daughter is forbidden?— Now, is this logical: was she then his sister? She was his brother's daughter, and therefore, whether by his father or mother, permitted to him. But Abram declared to him [i.e., Abimelech] thus: I am fraternally related to her, [i.e., she is my brother's daughter] on my father's side [i.e., my brother by my father] but not on my mother's side.”[2]

So according to Jewish Talmud: Jochebed was not Amran father’s maternal sister (from the same mother) but she was his father paternal sister (Half sister). As later the rabbi explain the Abram marriage to his sister in Genesis.(According to Talmud Abraham didn’t marry his sister but his niece -brother’s daughter[3]).

Mathew Henry, a renound scholor of 17th Century writes in his popular commentary:

"It must not be omitted that Moses has recorded the marriage of his father Amram with Jochebed his own aunt (v. 20); and it appears by Num. 26:59 that it must be taken strictly for his father’s own sister, at least by the half blood. This marriage was afterwards forbidden as incestuous (Lev. 18:12), which might be looked upon as a blot upon his family, though before that law; yet Moses does not conceal it, for he sought not his own praise, but wrote with a sincere regard to truth, whether it smiled or frowned upon him"

John Dyneley Prince, PhD [Professor of Semitic Languages, New York University] and Kaufmann Kohler, Ph.D. [President of the Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati, Ohio] writes in Jewish Encyclopedia:

“A son of Kohath, and grandson of Levi. He married his own aunt, Jochebed, Kohath's sister, by whom he became the father of Moses, Aaron, and Miriam (Ex. vi. 18-20; Num. iii. 19, xxvi. 58; I Chron. vi. 2, 3, 18). From him were descended the Amramites, a Kohathite branch of the tribe of Levi. This family is mentioned in the record of the Mosaic census (Num. iii. 27) and in I Chron. xxvi. 23, where is given the account of the organization of the Levites in David's time”[4]

Reb Claim HaQoton explains this situation in the articles “Marriage and Divorce in Egypt” January 25, 2007 quoting Midrash.

“ One Midrash says that Levi married a great-granddaughter of Eber named Adina, however another Midrash says based on Numbers 26:29 that Levi's wife was named Osah. Based on this, the Tosafists concluded that Levi had two wives; Adina was the mother of Kohath while Osah was the mother of Jochebed. Therefore, Amram, the son of Kohath, was only the paternal nephew of Jochebed” [5]


“Rabbi Meir Don Plotzky of Ostrova (a pre-World War One Rabbinic figure) writes that just like the death of one's husband is not enough to consider a married Noachide woman unmarried anymore, so too a Noachide divorcee is also still considered married. He explains that the source of Noachide marriage is Genesis 2:24, which says that a man should "cling to his wife", which excludes a woman who is married to another man, and it says "they shall become one flesh", which implies that once man and wife join together in holy matrimony, they become inseparable, even after death and/or divorce. He writes that this explains why when the Torah said "Amram took his aunt, Jochebed, as a wife" Onkelos[Targum Onkelos to Exodus 6:20 and quoted by Rashi ibid.] changes "aunt" to "father's sister." This is because one's father's sister is the only type of aunt that a Noachide male can ever marry, because one's father's brother's wife is still considered one's aunt even after one's father's brother's death because death does not break the bond of Noachidic marriage”[6]

However some rabbi disagree with the explanation of Leviticus 18:12 as the same article quoted

“Rabbi Chaim Volozhiner (1749-1821) writes [Nefesh HaChaim 1:21] that Amram knew that there were deep metaphysical Kabbalistic reasons for him to have had to marry Jochebed, even though it should have really been forbidden according to Torah Law. It was for this reason that the Torah was not given to Amram himself, but rather to his son, Moses.”[7]


However the shocking point as discussed in Talmud and pointed out in the article is when Amran divorce his wife after the fulfillment of God’ command but later re-married when his daughter (mariam) prophecy and than Moses was born. According to Rabbi Yonason ben Uziel Elzaphan, a son of Amram's brother Uziel, married Jochebed between the time that Amram divorced Jochebed and the time that he remarried her. Here is a quotation from the article

“Amram was allowed to divorce his wife because he had already fulfilled his commandment of procreation by fathering Aaron and Miriam. In imitating their leader, all the Jewish men also divorced their wives. Rabbi Aharon Rotter [Sha'arei Aharon to Exodus 6:20] points out that only those men, who had already fulfilled the commandment of "being fruitful and multiplying", like Amram, divorced their wives, but the others did not. According to this, Rabbi Yonason ben Uziel writes that Elzaphan, a son of Amram's brother Uziel, married Jochebed between the time that Amram divorced Jochebed and the time that he remarried her. However, this statement is difficult to understand because the Torah explicitly forbids remarrying one's divorcee if she marries someone else in the interim lest one think that women are mere objects of lust, which can be traded back and forth between husbands .The son of the Gerrer Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Alter (1877-1942), explains that Amram was only given the commandments of marriage and divorce, but had not yet received the prohibition of remarrying one's divorcee who married since the divorce. Others explain that Jochebed only married Elzaphan after the death of Amram, and then birthed Eldad and Meidad. Still others explain that she was not even their mother, but Amram was their father”[8]

Biblical Commentator Rabbi Moshe Reiss explain the whole situation in his article “Moses”:

“The first we hear of Moses is that a man of the tribe of Levi marries a woman of the same tribe. This may the only time that the Torah mention that both parents are of the same tribe. In this to emphasis that despite Moses growing up as an Egyptian he is a Hebrew? They have a son. From this it would appear that Moses is a firstborn, but he has an older brother Aaron and an older sister Miriam. Thus Moses appears to be an oldest and a youngest. The Midrash has a different explanation. In Egypt a prophecy was made by Bilaam, the evil prophet of the Book of Numbers that a Hebrew boy would be born who would overthrow the kingdom. Thus the edict to drown all male children, a rather irrational edict since the boys were the workers (as the Talmud notes). The Pentateuch then tells us that man from the house of the tribe of Levi married a woman, the daughter of Levi (Ex. 2:1). We later discover that the man is Amram, the son of Kohath, the son of Levi. She, Yocheved is the daughter of Levi, thus Moses father married his Aunt, an illegal marriage per Leviticus. Prior to this Amram, the leader of the Hebrews, decided that since all boys were to be drowned, all the men should divorce their wives and give up sexual relations. His daughter, Miriam told her father that his decree was worse that Pharaoh’s, since Pharaoh wanted kill all the boys and he, her father agreed to eliminate even the girls. He accepted her statement and remarried Yocheved. Thus despite it appearing that they (Amram and Yocheved) were just married and she gave birth to Moses, in fact they remarried. Moses had an older sister and bother (Aaron) from his parents previous marriage to each other. Thus Moses was saved from infanticide, first by the Pharaonic decree and then by the decree of his own father.”[9]

Thus Moses father’s marriage was not only against the law given in Torah [Leviticus 18:12] but his later divorce was also against the commandment of the God [Deuteronomy 24:4]. According to Torah

Deuteronomy 23:2 (New Living Translation)“If a person is illegitimate by birth, neither he nor his descendants for ten generations may be admitted to the assembly of the Lord”[10]

However the translation we find in NAB says:
Deuteronomy 23:3 “No child of an incestuous union may be admitted into the community of the LORD, nor any descendant of his even to the tenth generation.”[11]

When though the law given by God is a subject of debate considering the fact that how come a child of first, second, third or later generation could be responsible for the sins committed by their forefathers. But there are many example in the Bible where children of sinners where executed (Isaiah 14:21). One might wonder how come a God who is not accepting children of incestuous relationship into His assembly even to the tenth generation and the person who God given this law is infact the child of such unions according to Bible and Jewish sources. Christian apologetic who criticize the marriage of Prophet Muhammad PBUH with Zayneb (His slave/adopted son’s ex-wife) even though Zaid wasn’t prophet’s either Maternal or Paternal child and claims that Muhammad PBUH change the law even though no law was broken should explain why did their own God of OT make change the Law. Allah know best.

May Allah Guide us and help our Christian /Jew brother come to the right path.
Amen

[1] Exodus 6:20 :
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ex%206:20;&version=31;

[2] Babylonian Talmud: Tractate Sanhedrin: Folio 58b :
http://www.come-and-hear.com/sanhedrin/#58b_9

[3] Babylonian Talmud: Tractate Sanhedrin: Folio 69b :
http://www.come-and-hear.com/sanhedrin/sanhedrin_69.html#69b

[4] Jewish Encyclopedia :
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=1427&letter=A

[5] Reb Claim HaQoton :“Marriage and Divorce in Egypt” January 25, 2007.
http://rchaimqoton.blogspot.com/2007/01/marriage-and-divorce-in-egypt.html

[6] Reb Claim HaQoton :“Marriage and Divorce in Egypt” January 25, 2007.
http://rchaimqoton.blogspot.com/2007/01/marriage-and-divorce-in-egypt.html

[7] Reb Claim HaQoton :“Marriage and Divorce in Egypt” January 25, 2007.
http://rchaimqoton.blogspot.com/2007/01/marriage-and-divorce-in-egypt.html

[8] Reb Claim HaQoton :“Marriage and Divorce in Egypt” January 25, 2007.
http://rchaimqoton.blogspot.com/2007/01/marriage-and-divorce-in-egypt.html

[9] Moses by Rabbi Moshe Reiss:
http://www.moshereiss.org/messenger/06_moses/06_moses.html

[10] http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy%2023%20;&version=51;

[11] http://www.usccb.org/nab/bible/deuteronomy/deuteronomy23.htm