Deuteronomy 25

Laws on Fair Punishment, Honest Business Practices, and Levirate Marriage

3 min read

1 If there be a controversy between men, and they come to judgment, that the judges may judge them; then they shall justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked.
2 And it shall be, if the wicked man be worthy to be beaten, that the judge shall cause him to lie down, and to be beaten before his face, according to his fault, by a certain number.
3 Forty stripes he may give him, and not exceed: lest, if he should exceed, and beat him above these with many stripes, then your brother should seem vile to you. ¶
4 You shall not muzzle the ox when he treads out the corn. ¶
5 If brothers dwell together, and one of them die, and have no child, the wife of the dead shall not marry without to a stranger: her husband’s brother shall go in to her, and take her to him to wife, and perform the duty of an husband’s brother to her.
6 And it shall be, that the firstborn which she bears shall succeed in the name of his brother which is dead, that his name be not put out of Israel.
7 And if the man like not to take his brother’s wife, then let his brother’s wife go up to the gate to the elders, and say, My husband’s brother refuses to raise up to his brother a name in Israel, he will not perform the duty of my husband’s brother.
8 Then the elders of his city shall call him, and speak to him: and if he stand to it, and say, I like not to take her;
9 Then shall his brother’s wife come to him in the presence of the elders, and loose his shoe from off his foot, and spit in his face, and shall answer and say, So shall it be done to that man that will not build up his brother’s house.
10 And his name shall be called in Israel, The house of him that has his shoe loosed. ¶
11 When men strive together one with another, and the wife of the one draws near for to deliver her husband out of the hand of him that smites him, and puts forth her hand, and takes him by the secrets:
12 Then you shall cut off her hand, your eye shall not pity her. ¶
13 You shall not have in your bag divers weights, a great and a small.
14 You shall not have in your house divers measures, a great and a small.
15 But you shall have a perfect and just weight, a perfect and just measure shall you have: that your days may be lengthened in the land which the LORD your God gives you.
16 For all that do such things, and all that do unrighteously, are an abomination to the LORD your God. ¶
17 Remember what Amalek did to you by the way, when you were come forth out of Egypt;
18 How he met you by the way, and smote the hindmost of you, even all that were feeble behind you, when you were faint and weary; and he feared not God.
19 Therefore it shall be, when the LORD your God has given you rest from all your enemies round about, in the land which the LORD your God gives you for an inheritance to possess it, that you shall blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; you shall not forget it.
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