Deuteronomy 25

Limits on Corporal Punishment

1“If there is a dispute between men and they come to judgment, and the judges judge them, acquitting the righteous and condemning the wicked, 2then if the wicked person deserves beating, the judge will make him lie down and be beaten before him according to the measure of his wickedness, by number. 3Forty blows he may give him, but no more, lest he continue to beat him beyond these with many blows and your brother be degraded in your eyes.

Do Not Muzzle the Ox

4“You will not muzzle an ox while it is threshing.

The Duty of a Brother-in-Law

5“If brothers live together and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the dead man will not marry outside the family to a foreign man. Her husband’s brother will go in to her, take her to himself as wife, and perform the duty of a husband’s brother for her. 6The firstborn whom she bears will stand in the name of his dead brother, so that his name is not wiped out from Israel. 7But if the man does not desire to take his brother’s wife, then his brother’s wife will go up to the gate to the elders and say, ‘My husband’s brother refuses to raise up for his brother a name in Israel; he is not willing to perform the duty of a husband’s brother for me.’ 8Then the elders of his city will call him and speak to him. If he stands and says, ‘I do not desire to take her,’ 9then his brother’s wife will approach him before the eyes of the elders, pull his sandal from his foot, spit before his face, and answer and say, ‘Thus will it be done to the man who will not build up his brother’s house.’ 10And his name will be called in Israel, ‘The house of the one whose sandal was removed.’

An Improper Intervention in a Fight

11“If men fight together, a man and his brother, and the wife of one comes near to rescue her husband from the hand of the one striking him and stretches out her hand and seizes his genitals, 12then you will cut off her hand. Your eye will not pity.

Honest Weights and Measures

13“You will not have in your bag differing weights, a large and a small. 14You will not have in your house differing measures, a large and a small. 15A full and righteous weight you will have; a full and righteous measure you will have, so that your days may be prolonged upon the ground that the LORD your God is giving you. 16For everyone who does these things, everyone who does injustice, is detestable to the LORD your God.

Remember Amalek

17“Remember what Amalek did to you on the way when you came out from Egypt, 18how he met you on the way and cut off all the stragglers behind you when you were faint and weary, and he did not fear God. 19So when the LORD your God gives you rest from all your enemies around you in the land that the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, you will wipe out the memory of Amalek from under the heavens. You will not forget.