Deuteronomy 25

Evangelical Heritage Version

25 When there is a dispute between men and they go to court and a verdict is reached, and they have acquitted the innocent person and convicted the guilty one, ² if the guilty one is to be flogged, the judge is to make him lie down, and he will order him to be flogged in his presence with the number of blows that is proportionate to his guilt. ³ He may have him struck forty times, but no more, so that your brother does not become degraded in your eyes by receiving a severe beating that goes beyond this number.

⁴ You are not to muzzle an ox when it is threshing.

⁵ When brothers live together and one of them dies without having children, the wife of the deceased brother is not to marry a stranger from outside the family. Her brother-in-law is to come and take her as his wife and perform for her the duty of a brother-in-law. ⁶ The firstborn that she bears will be recognized as a son who carries on the name of his deceased brother, so his name will not be erased from Israel. ⁷ But if a man does not want to marry his sister-in-law, his sister-in-law is to go to the city gate where the elders preside and say, “My brother-in-law refuses to establish a name in Israel for his brother. He does not want to perform the duty of a brother-in-law for me.” ⁸ Then the elders of his city are to call him and talk to him. If he stands firm and says, “I do not want to marry her,” ⁹ his sister-in-law is to approach him in the sight of the elders. She is to pull the sandal off his foot, spit in his face, and testify by saying, “This is what is done to the man who will not build up the house of his brother!” ¹⁰ Then the name that he will go by in Israel is “the house of a man whose sandal was pulled off.”

¹¹ If two men are fighting each other, a man and his neighbor, and the wife of one comes up to rescue her husband from the hands of the one striking him, and she reaches out her hand and she grabs hold of his testicles, ¹² you are to cut off her hand. Your eye is not to look on her with compassion.

¹³ Do not have two alternate sets of stone weights in your bag, larger and smaller. ¹⁴ Do not have alternate measures in your house, larger and smaller. ¹⁵ You must have a full and honest set of weights. You must have a full and honest set of measures, so that you may have a long life in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. ¹⁶ For anyone doing such things, anyone who acts dishonestly, is detestable to the Lord your God.

¹⁷ Remember what the Amalekites, without any fear of God, did to you on your journey after you came out of Egypt. ¹⁸ Remember how they confronted you on the way, when you were weak and tired, and they cut off all the stragglers among you, the ones who were lagging behind. ¹⁹ When the Lord your God gives you rest from all your enemies that are around you in the land the Lord your God is giving you to possess as an inheritance, wipe away the memory of Amalek from under the heavens. Do not forget!