AFFINITY is relationship by marriage, as distinguished from consanguinity, which is relation ship by blood. Marriages between persons thus related, in various degrees, which previous usage, in different conditions of society, had allowed, were forbidden by the Law of Moses. These degrees are enumerated in Lev. xviii. 7, sq. The examples before the law are those of Cain and Abel, who, as the case required, married their sisters. Abraham married Sarah, the daughter or grand-daughter of his father by another wife ; and Jacob married the two sisters Leah and Rachel. In the first instance, and even in the second, there was an obvious consanguinity, and only the last offered a previous relationship of affinity merely. So also, in the prohibition of the law, a consan guinity can be traced in what are usually set down as degrees of affinity merely. The degrees of real affinity interdicted are, that a man shall not (nor a woman in the corresponding relations) marry—I. his father's widow (not his own mother) ; 2. the daughter of his father's wife by another hus band ; 3. the widow of his paternal uncle ; 4. nor his brother's widow if he has left children by her ; but, if not, he was bound to marry her to raise up children to his deceased brother [MARRIAGE]. The other restrictions are connected with the condition of polygamy, and they prohibit a man from having —1. a mother and her daughter for wives at the same time ; 2. or two sisters for wives at the same time. These prohibitions have been imported into our canon law. [The passage, Lev. xviii. IS, in which the last of these prohibitions is contained, has been the subject of much discussion in modern times, very different views having been taken of its meaning and intention. By the Canonists it is re garded as forbidding the marrying of two sisters successively, the one after the death of the other ; in accordance with their fundamental principle quoto gradu aliquis junctus est marito, eodem adfinitatis gradu ent junctus ejus uxori, et contra.' By others it is looked on as designed merely to prohibit the marrying of two sisters at the same time ; whilst it implicitly allows the marrying of a wife's sister after her decease. Others, again, re
gard the injunction as prohibiting polygamy alto gether, translating the verse thus, Thou shalt not take one wife to another to vex her,' etc., according to a well-known Hebrew idiom by which one thing to another of the same kind is denoted by calling it a man to his brother,' or a woman to her sister,' comp. Exod. xvi. 15 ; xxvi. 3, etc. Thus the law, which some regard as expressly forbidding polygamy, is held by others as implicitly sanctioning it ; and the law which some regard as prohibiting the marrying of a deceased wife's sister is held by others as implicitly permitting it. This is a strange uncertainty to belong to a law, the first condition of which should be clearness and precision ; but the fault rests very much with those who refuse to take the passage in its obvious meaning. Most com mentators are agreed in giving it the second of the meanings above stated ; indeed, not one of any note, Jewish or Christian, has assigned to it any other meaning.] The sense given by the Canonists has been extracted, by connecting the words vex her' with the words in her lifetime,' instead of reading take her sister to her, in her lifetime.' Under this view it is explained, that the married sister should not be vexed' in her lifetime by the prospect that her sister might succeed her. It may be safely said that such an idea would never have occurred in the East, where unmarried sisters are far more rarely than in Europe brought into such acquaintance with the husband of the married sister as to give occasion for such 'vexation' or rivalry' as this. It may be remarked, that in those codes of law which most resemble that of Moses on the general subject, no prohibition of the marriage of two sisters in succession can be found. (Dwight, The Hebrew Wife, Glas. 1837 ; Robinson, Bib. Sac. p. 283; Edin. Rev. 97, 315.)—J. K.