Deuteronomy - Chapter 25

¹ 'If people fall out, they must go to court for judgement; the judges must declare the one who is right to be in the right, the one who is wrong to be in the wrong.

² If the one who is in the wrong deserves a flogging, the judge must have him laid on the ground and flogged in his presence, the number of strokes proportionate to his offence.

³ He may impose forty strokes but no more; otherwise, by the infliction of more, serious injury may be caused and your brother be humiliated before you.

⁴ 'You must not muzzle an ox when it is treading out the corn.

⁵ 'If brothers live together and one of them dies childless, the dead man's wife may not marry a stranger outside the family. Her husband's brother must come to her and, exercising his duty as brother, make her his wife,

⁶ and the first son she bears must assume the dead brother's name; by this means his name will not be obliterated from Israel.

⁷ But if the man declines to take his brother's wife, she must go to the elders at the gate and say, "I have no brother-in-law willing to perpetuate his brother's name in Israel; he declines to exercise his duty as brother in my favour."

⁸ The elders of the town must summon the man and talk to him. If, on appearing before them, he says, "I refuse to take her,"

⁹ then the woman to whom he owes duty as brother must go up to him in the presence of the elders, take the sandal off his foot, spit in his face, and pronounce the following words, "This is what is done to the man who refuses to restore his brother's house,"

¹⁰ and his family must henceforth be known in Israel as House of the Unshod.

¹¹ 'If, when two men are fighting, the wife of one intervenes to protect her husband from the other's blows by reaching out and seizing the other by his private parts,

¹² you must cut off her hand and show no pity.

¹³ 'You must not keep two different weights in your bag, one heavy, one light.

¹⁴ You must not keep two different measures in your house, one large, one small.

¹⁵ You must keep one weight, full and accurate, so that you may have long life in the country given you by Yahweh your God.

¹⁶ For anyone who does things of this kind and acts dishonestly is detestable to Yahweh your God.

¹⁷ 'Remember how Amalek treated you when you were on your way out of Egypt.

¹⁸ He met you on your way and, after you had gone by, he fell on you from the rear and cut off the stragglers; when you were faint and weary, he had no fear of God.

¹⁹ When Yahweh your God has granted you peace from all the enemies surrounding you, in the country given you by Yahweh your God to own as your heritage, you must blot out the memory of Amalek under heaven. Do not forget.'

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