Deuteronomy 25

Various Laws

1“1If there is a dispute between people and they go to 2court, and 3the judges decide their case, 4and they declare the righteous innocent and pronounce the wicked guilty, 2then it shall be if the wicked person 56deserves to be beaten, the judge shall then make him lie down and have him beaten in his presence with the number of lashes according to his 7wrongful act. 38He may have him beaten forty times, but not more, so that he does not have him beaten with many more lashes than these, and that your brother does not 9become contemptible in your eyes.

4“10You shall not muzzle the ox while it is threshing.

5“When brothers live together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the deceased shall not be married outside the family to a strange man. 11Her husband’s brother shall have relations with her and take her to himself as his wife, and perform the duty of a husband’s brother to her. 6It shall then be that the firstborn to whom she gives birth shall 12assume the name of his father’s deceased brother, so that 13his name will not be wiped out from Israel. 714But if the man does not desire to take his brother’s widow, then his brother’s widow shall go up to the gate to the elders, and say, ‘My husband’s brother refuses to establish a name for his brother in Israel; he is not willing to perform the duty of a husband’s brother to me.’ 8Then the elders of his city shall summon him and speak to him. And if he persists and says, ‘I do not desire to take her,’ 915then his brother’s widow shall come up to him in the sight of the elders, and pull his sandal off his foot and 16spit in his face; and she shall 17declare, ‘This is what is done to the man who does not build up his brother’s house!’ 10And in Israel 18his family shall be called by the name, ‘The house of him whose sandal was removed.’

11“If two men, a man and his countryman, have a fight 19with each other, and the wife of one comes up to save her husband from the hand of the one who is hitting him, and she reaches out with her hand and grasps 20that man’s genitals, 12then you shall cut off her 21hand; 2223you shall not show pity.

13“24You shall not have in your bag 25differing weights, a large and a small. 14You shall not have in your house 26differing measures, a large and a small. 15You shall have a correct and honest 27weight; you shall have a correct and honest 28measure, 29so that your days may be prolonged 30in the land which the Lord your God is giving you. 16For 31everyone who does these things, everyone who acts unjustly is an abomination to the Lord your God.

17“32Remember what Amalek did to you on the way when you came out of Egypt, 18how he confronted you on the way and attacked among you all the stragglers at your rear when you were tired and weary; and he 33did not 34fear God. 19So it shall come about, when the Lord your God has given you 35rest from all your surrounding enemies in the land which the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to 36possess, that you shall wipe out the mention of the name Amalek from under heaven; you must not forget.