Does the Old Testament levirate marriage law still apply today?
Robert Sungenis answers that the levirate law no longer applies, because we no longer live under the Old Testament civil code. He explains it existed because small close-knit communities had no insurance pool to provide for a widow, so the family took it on, and that modern life insurance now does that work.
A viewer asks Robert's thoughts on the Old Testament levirate marriage law.
Answer
That does not apply anymore. We do not take up our brother's wife if he dies; we have a thing called life insurance. In those close-knit communities, which were sometimes no more than a thousand people, you did not have a life-insurance pool you could pay premiums into to provide for a wife after her husband died; the family took it over. But that is not modern times, and it is not required, because we no longer live in the Old Testament under that set of civil laws; we live under a whole new set.