The Bible

The Bible › Deuteronomy

Deuteronomy 25

1If there is a dispute between men and they come before the court, the judges must judge them, acquitting the innocent and condemning the guilty. 2If the guilty man deserves a beating, the judge must have him lie down and be beaten in his presence, with a number of blows appropriate to his wrongdoing. 3He may receive forty blows, but no more. Otherwise, if he is beaten beyond these with many blows, your brother will be degraded in your eyes.

4Do not muzzle an ox while it is threshing.

5If brothers live together and one of them dies without a son, the dead man’s wife must not marry a stranger outside the family. Her husband’s brother must go in to her, take her as his wife, and perform a brother-in-law’s duty to her. 6The firstborn she bears must carry on the name of his dead brother, so that his name is not wiped out of Israel. 7But if the man does not want to take his brother’s widow, his brother’s widow must go up to the elders at the gate and say, “My husband’s brother refuses to establish a name for his brother in Israel. He is unwilling to perform a brother-in-law’s duty to me.” 8The elders of his city must summon him and speak to him. If he stands firm and says, “I do not want to take her,” 9his brother’s widow must approach him in the sight of the elders, pull his sandal off his foot, spit in his face, and declare, “This is what is done to the man who will not build up his brother’s house.” 10His family will be known in Israel as “the house of the man whose sandal was pulled off.”

11If two men are fighting, a man and his brother, and the wife of one approaches to rescue her husband from the hand of the man striking him, and she reaches out her hand and grabs his genitals, 12you must cut off her hand. Your eye must not pity her.

13Do not have two different weights in your bag, one heavy and one light. 14Do not have two different measures in your house, one large and one small. 15You must have a full and honest weight; you must have a full and honest measure, so that your days may be long on the land Yahweh your God is giving you. 16For everyone who does such things, everyone who acts unjustly, is detestable to Yahweh your God.

17Remember what Amalek did to you on the way when you came out of Egypt: 18how he met you on the way and struck those lagging at your rear, all the stragglers behind you, while you were weary and exhausted. He did not fear God. 19When Yahweh your God gives you rest from all your enemies around you in the land Yahweh your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, you must wipe out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget.

Translation notes 6

25:1–3 — Judicial beating. The judge oversees a measured punishment with an upper limit of forty blows. The repeated family term “your brother” concerns the convicted fellow Israelite, whose degradation the limit restrains.

25:5–10 — The brother-in-law’s duty. This marriage provision seeks to continue the dead brother’s name through a son. The Hebrew says “without a son,” though “without a child” has also been understood. Refusal brings a public procedure and a humiliating family name; the text does not require execution for refusing.

25:9 — Spitting. The Hebrew says “in his face” or “before his face.” The translation retains the direct sense of the action. “Build up his brother’s house” is an image for continuing his family.

25:11–12 — Her hand. The sexual body part and the commanded amputation are explicit. Attempts to understand the penalty as compensation or a different bodily action do not provide the straightforward sense of the received Hebrew wording.

25:13–15 — Weights and measures. The prohibition concerns using unequal standards to one’s advantage in trade. The Hebrew measure is an ephah; its exact modern volume is uncertain and is not needed to understand the prohibition.

25:17–19 — Amalek. The ancestor’s name represents his people. The command to wipe out their memory follows the account of their attack on exhausted stragglers; the destructive command is retained without softening.