⁵“When brothers dwell together and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the deceased shall not become the wife of a man of another family;^j her brother-in-law shall have sex with her,^k and he shall take her to himself^l as a wife, and he shall perform his duty as a brother-in-law with respect to her. ⁶And then the firstborn that she bears shall represent his dead brother,^m so that his name is not blotted out from Israel. ⁷But if the man does not want to take his sister-in-law, then his sister-in-law shall go up to the gate, to the elders, and she shall say, ‘My brother-in-law refused to perpetuate his brother’s nameⁿ in Israel, for he is not willing to marry me.’^o ⁸Then the elders of his town shall summon him and speak to him, and if he persists and says, ‘I do not desire to^p marry her’ ⁹then his sister-in-law shall go near him before the eyes of the elders, and she shall pull off his sandal from his foot, and she shall spit in his face, and she shall declare^q and she shall say, ‘This is how it is done to the man who does not build the house of his brother.’ ¹⁰And his family^r shall be called in Israel, ‘The house where the sandal was pulled off.’^s

Read in Logos

Footnotes

jOthers: “strange man,” “man outside the family” (NEB)
kLiterally “shall go to her”
lLiterally “to/for him”
mLiterally “he shall stand upon the name of his brother the deceased”
nLiterally “to cause a name to stand for his brother”
oLiterally “to consummate the marriage with the widow of a his brother”
pLiterally “I do not delight in”
qLiterally “respond/answer”
rLiterally “name”
sOr “the house of the man whose sandal was pulled off”