Deuteronomy 25

If two men have a dispute, they are to bring it to court so the judges can decide the case. The judges must declare the one in the right innocent and find the one in the wrong guilty.

1If there be a controversy between men, and they come unto judgment, that the judges may judge them; then they shall justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked.

2If the guilty man deserves to be beaten, the judge shall make him lie down and be whipped right there in front of the judge. The number of lashes must match how serious his offense was.

2And it shall be, if the wicked man be worthy to be beaten, that the judge shall cause him to lie down, and to be beaten before his face, according to his fault, by a certain number.

3He may be given up to forty lashes, but no more. If more than that were given, and he were beaten with many lashes beyond the limit, your fellow Israelite would be disgraced in your eyes.

3Forty stripes he may give him, and not exceed: lest, if he should exceed, and beat him above these with many stripes, then thy brother should seem vile unto thee.

NoteForty was the ceiling, not the sentence; the judge set the actual number by the offense. Because a miscount would break the law, later Jewish practice fixed the maximum at thirty-nine lashes to leave a margin for error. "Thy brother" in the King James does not mean a blood brother but a fellow Israelite, the man being flogged is still a member of the community, and the limit exists to keep the punishment from stripping him of standing.

4Do not put a muzzle on an ox while it is walking over the grain to separate it from the husks.

4Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn.

Note"Corn" in the King James means grain of any kind, wheat or barley here, not maize, which was unknown in Europe in 1611. Threshing was done by driving oxen in circles over the cut stalks spread on a hard, flat threshing floor, so that their hooves knocked the edible kernels loose from the husks. A muzzled ox would work all day surrounded by food it could not eat.

5If brothers live together and one of them dies without a son, the dead man's widow must not marry someone outside the family. Her husband's brother is to take her as his wife and do for her what a husband's brother owes her.

5If brethren dwell together, and one of them die, and have no child, the wife of the dead shall not marry without unto a stranger: her husband’s brother shall go in unto her, and take her to him to wife, and perform the duty of an husband’s brother unto her.

NoteThis is the custom scholars call levirate marriage, from the Latin *levir*, "husband's brother." A widow with no son had no claim on her dead husband's land and no one to support her in old age, and her husband's share of the family property would pass to his brothers and his name vanish from the records. "Brothers dwell together" points to brothers still holding the family land undivided. The Hebrew word translated "child" in the King James is the ordinary word for a son; whether a daughter would satisfy the law is not spelled out here.

6The first son she gives birth to will carry on the name of the dead brother, so that his name is not wiped out of Israel.

6And it shall be, that the firstborn which she beareth shall succeed in the name of his brother which is dead, that his name be not put out of Israel.

NoteThe first son of this marriage was counted legally as the dead man's son, not the living brother's: he would inherit the dead man's portion of land and carry his name in the family and clan records. To have one's "name put out of Israel" meant the line ending and the ancestral plot passing permanently to someone else.

7But if the man does not want to marry his brother's widow, she is to go to the town gate, where the elders meet, and say, "My husband's brother refuses to keep his brother's name alive in Israel. He will not do for me what a husband's brother owes me."

7And if the man like not to take his brother’s wife, then let his brother’s wife go up to the gate unto the elders, and say, My husband’s brother refuseth to raise up unto his brother a name in Israel, he will not perform the duty of my husband’s brother.

NoteThe open square just inside a town's gate was where legal and commercial business was done: the elders (the heads of the leading families, who served as the local court) sat there, and any transaction needing witnesses happened in public view. A widow bringing her case there was going to court.

8Then the elders of his town shall call him in and talk with him. If he holds to his position and says, "I do not want to marry her,"

8Then the elders of his city shall call him, and speak unto him: and if he stand to it, and say, I like not to take her;

9then his brother's widow shall come up to him in front of the elders, pull his sandal off his foot, spit in his face, and say, "This is what is done to the man who will not build up his brother's family."

9Then shall his brother’s wife come unto him in the presence of the elders, and loose his shoe from off his foot, and spit in his face, and shall answer and say, So shall it be done unto that man that will not build up his brother’s house.

NoteBoth acts are public shaming, and the sandal carries a further sense: in the ancient Near East, handing over or removing a sandal marked the surrender of a claim to property or of a right one held (the same gesture appears in Ruth 4:7-8, where it is explicitly described as the customary way of confirming a transaction). By pulling off his sandal the widow strips him of the claim he refused to exercise. Spitting in the face was among the sharpest insults available.

10And from then on his family will be known in Israel as "The House of the Man Whose Sandal Was Pulled Off."

10And his name shall be called in Israel, The house of him that hath his shoe loosed.

NoteThe insult attaches not just to him but to his household, as a permanent nickname carried by his descendants. The refusal was legal, the law does not compel him, but it came at the cost of public contempt.

11If two men are fighting each other, and the wife of one of them comes close to rescue her husband from the man hitting him, and she reaches out her hand and grabs the other man's genitals,

11When men strive together one with another, and the wife of the one draweth near for to deliver her husband out of the hand of him that smiteth him, and putteth forth her hand, and taketh him by the secrets:

NoteThe concern behind the law is almost certainly injury that would leave the man unable to father children, which in a society organized around inherited land and family lines was a permanent loss to his whole household, not only to him.

12then you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity.

12Then thou shalt cut off her hand, thine eye shall not pity her.

NoteThis is the only law in the five books of Moses that prescribes cutting off a part of the body as a penalty, and it has been read two ways since antiquity. Taken at face value it is literal mutilation. Many interpreters, ancient and modern, take it instead as a set formula for a fixed compensation payment, on the analogy of other laws in the surrounding chapters. The Hebrew leaves both readings open. "Thine eye shall not pity" is a stock legal phrase meaning the court must not reduce the penalty out of sympathy.

13Do not carry two different sets of weights in your bag, one heavy and one light.

13Thou shalt not have in thy bag divers weights, a great and a small.

NoteMerchants carried a set of shaped stone weights in a pouch and weighed goods against them on a balance scale. The Hebrew reads literally "a stone and a stone", the fraud is keeping two sets, using the heavier stones when buying (so you receive more) and the lighter ones when selling (so you hand over less). There were no standard sealed weights issued by an authority to check them against.

14Do not keep two different measuring containers in your house, one large and one small.

14Thou shalt not have in thine house divers measures, a great and a small.

NoteDry goods like grain were sold by volume, poured into a container of fixed size, the common ones were the ephah, roughly half a bushel or about twenty liters, and its smaller divisions. The Hebrew again reads "an ephah and an ephah": a large container for taking payment in kind, a small one for paying out.

15Instead, you must have weights that are accurate and honest, and measuring containers that are accurate and honest. Then you will live a long time in the land the LORD your God is giving you.

15But thou shalt have a perfect and just weight, a perfect and just measure shalt thou have: that thy days may be lengthened in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

16For everyone who does such things, everyone who cheats, is detestable to the LORD your God.

16For all that do such things, and all that do unrighteously, are an abomination unto the LORD thy God.

17Remember what the people of Amalek did to you on the road when you came out of Egypt.

17Remember what Amalek did unto thee by the way, when ye were come forth out of Egypt;

NoteThe Amalekites were a nomadic people ranging over the dry country south of Canaan, in the Negev and Sinai. The attack referred to here is the one described in Exodus 17, shortly after Israel left Egypt.

18They met you along the way and attacked the ones at the back, all the weak people trailing behind, when you were worn out and exhausted. They had no fear of God.

18How he met thee by the way, and smote the hindmost of thee, even all that were feeble behind thee, when thou wast faint and weary; and he feared not God.

Note"The hindmost" are the stragglers at the tail of a migrating column, the exhausted, the sick, the old, those who could not keep pace and had no fighting men around them. The point of the description is that Amalek struck the defenseless rather than meeting the column head-on.

19So when the LORD your God has given you rest from all the enemies around you, in the land the LORD your God is giving you to own as your inheritance, you must wipe out the memory of Amalek from under the sky. Do not forget.

19Therefore it shall be, when the LORD thy God hath given thee rest from all thine enemies round about, in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance to possess it, that thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; thou shalt not forget it.

Note"Rest from all thine enemies" means the point at which the land is secure and the fighting over, the command is deferred until then, not for immediate action. To "blot out the remembrance" of a people meant erasing the name itself: no descendants, no memorial, nothing left to be remembered by. "From under heaven" is an idiom for "anywhere on earth."