LEVIRATO. — The duty of marrying the widow of one’s brother who has died childless. The practice is common among many primitive peoples, and its rationale lies in the fact that two brothers were regarded as a single being. Among the Jews, the brother of the deceased upon whom the duty of L. falls is called jābhlām. The practice is already documented in the patriarchal period (Gen. 38, 8 ff.). The first son born of the widow’s marriage to her brother-in-law bears the name of the woman’s first husband, because the purpose of L. was precisely to ensure descendants for the man who had died in the prime of life, after marriage. Thus the deceased’s inheritance was secured for his direct descendants. In the absence of a second brother, the obligation of L. passed to the third and to the other brothers; the episode in the book of Ruth (4, 3 ff.) shows that, if not the obligation, at least the right and propriety of this practice also applied to more distant relatives.
The law of L. appears in Deuteronomy, where the manner in which the brother-in-law who evades L. is to be treated is described (Deut. 25, 5-10): in the presence of the elders, the widow removes his sandal and spits in his face, saying: « Thus shall it be done to the man who does not rebuild his brother’s house ». The brother-in-law is then called ḥalūṣ haṇṇā'al « he whose sandal has been removed » (removing the sandal signifies renouncing a right).
L. was still practiced in the time of Jesus (Mt. 22, 23-27; Mc. 12, 18-23; Lc. 20, 27-32). In the Miṣnāh, the tractate Jēbhāmāth deals with L. In time, the rabbis themselves, because of changing circumstances of life, forbade marrying the widowed sister-in-law, while retaining as an obligation the ceremony described in the book of Ruth.