Chapter 25

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.’

11 “If two men, a man and his 1countryman, are struggling together, and the wife of one comes near to deliver her husband from the hand of the one who is striking him, and puts out her hand and seizes his genitals,

12 then you shall cut off her 1hand; 2ayou shall not show pity.

13 “aYou shall not have in your bag 1differing weights, a large and a small.

14 “You shall not have in your house 1differing measures, a large and a small.

15 “You shall have a full and just weight; you shall have a full and just 1measure, athat your days may be prolonged in the 2land which the Lord your God gives you.

16 “For aeveryone who does these things, everyone who acts unjustly is an abomination to the Lord your God.

17 “aRemember what Amalek did to you along the way when you came out from Egypt,

18 how he met you along the way and attacked among you all the stragglers at your rear when you were faint and weary; and he adid not 1fear God.

19 “Therefore it shall come about when the Lord your God has given you arest from all your surrounding enemies, in the land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance to 1possess, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven; you must not forget.