Sundry Laws

1 “aIf there is a dispute between men and they go to 1court, and 2the judges decide their case, band they justify the righteous and condemn the wicked,

2 then it shall be if the wicked man 1adeserves to be beaten, the judge shall then make him lie down and be beaten in his presence with the number of stripes according to his 2guilt.

3 “aHe may beat him forty times but no more, so that he does not beat him with many more stripes than these and your brother is not bdegraded in your eyes.

4 “aYou shall not muzzle the ox while he 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. aHer husband’s brother shall go in to her and take her to himself as wife and perform the duty of a husband’s brother to her.

6 “It shall be that the firstborn whom she bears shall 1assume the name of his dead brother, so that ahis name will not be blotted out from Israel.

7 “aBut if the man does not desire to take his brother’s wife, then his brother’s wife 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.’

8 “Then 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,’

9 athen his brother’s wife shall come to him in the sight of the elders, and pull his sandal off his foot and bspit in his face; and she shall 1declare, ‘Thus it is done to the man who does not build up his brother’s house.’

10 “In Israel his name shall be called, ‘The house of him whose sandal is removed.’