Introduction[ xviii ]house! And he shall go in Israel by the name of “the family of the
unsandaled one.”^4This passage from Deuteronomy walks us through the unraveling of a
family. The opening words, “when brothers dwell together,” offer an
idyllic vision of family life, recalling the words of the Psalmist, “How
good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together.”^5 In contrast to
the brothers described in the narratives of Genesis, the brothers of Deu-
teronomy 25 : 5 live together in harmony. Then, suddenly, “one of them
dies.” we are left with a brother — the passage focuses on a scenario in
which there is only one surviving brother — bereft of his sibling. The
next words, “and leaves no son,” compound the tragedy; the deceased
has no son to carry on his lineage or inherit his property.^6
But the deceased did leave a wife. The presence of the widow inspires
in the text a discussion about the possibility of rebuilding and restor-
ing this broken family. rather than accept the fact that the death of a
childless man leaves his family broken beyond repair, with the widow
leaving her husband’s family to marry a “stranger, outside the family,”
Deuteronomy 25 proposes a union between the deceased’s widow and
his brother. The widow remains a part of her family-by-marriage, with
her brother-in-law in a sense taking his dead brother’s place. And, when
t he woma n g ives bi r t h, t he resu lt i ng ch i ld ca n be “accou nted to t he dead
brother” guaranteeing him a “name in Israel.” A man’s name, lost when
he dies without children, can be restored through the actions of his sur-
viving kin: his widow and his brother. These verses offer the possibility
of a happy ending to a family tragedy.
However, Deuteronomy warns us, this happy ending may not be
achievable. The surviving brother may not want to marry his broth-
er ’s w idow.^7 while the leaders of the community can intervene, there
is apparently no way to force a man to “perform his duty.” The most a
scorned widow can hope for is to humiliate her brother-in-law, remov-
ing his sandal, spitting at him, and decrying his unwillingness to “build
up his brother’s house.” The family remains broken; the deceased has
no one to carry on his name; the childless widow is left to find her way
in the world — the Bible offers no information about the choices open to
her if she is rejected by her brother-in-law — and the brother is revealed,
and reviled, as a man with no family loyalty. The two possibilities of