1If controversy arises between people, they should go to court for judgment. When the judges hear the case, they shall exonerate the innocent but condemn the guilty. 2Then, if the guilty person is sentenced to a beating, the judge shall force him to lie down and be beaten in his presence with the number of blows his wicked behavior deserves. 3The judge may sentence him to forty blows, but no more. If he is struck with more than these, you might view your fellow Israelite with contempt.

4You must not muzzle your ox when it is treading grain.

Respect for the Sanctity of Others

5If brothers live together and one of them dies without having a son, the dead man’s wife must not remarry someone outside the family. Instead, her late husband’s brother must go to her, marry her, and perform the duty of a brother-in-law. 6Then the first son she bears will continue the name of the dead brother, thus preventing his name from being blotted out of Israel. 7But if the man does not want to marry his brother’s widow, then she must go to the elders at the town gate and say, “My husband’s brother refuses to preserve his brother’s name in Israel; he is unwilling to perform the duty of a brother-in-law to me!” 8Then the elders of his city must summon him and speak to him. If he persists, saying, “I don’t want to marry her,” 9then his sister-in-law must approach him in view of the elders, remove his sandal from his foot, and spit in his face. She will then respond, “Thus may it be done to any man who does not maintain his brother’s family line!” 10His family name will be referred to in Israel as “the family of the one whose sandal was removed.”

11If two men get into a hand-to-hand fight, and the wife of one of them gets involved to help her husband against his attacker, and she reaches out her hand and grabs his genitals, 12then you must cut off her hand – do not pity her.

13You must not have in your bag different stone weights, a heavy and a light one. 14You must not have in your house different measuring containers, a large and a small one. 15You must have an accurate and correct stone weight and an accurate and correct measuring container, so that your life may be extended in the land the Lord your God is about to give you. 16For anyone who acts dishonestly in these ways is abhorrent to the Lord your God.

Treatment of the Amalekites

17Remember what the Amalekites did to you on your way from Egypt, 18how they met you along the way and cut off all your stragglers in the rear of the march when you were exhausted and tired; they were unafraid of God. 19So when the Lord your God gives you relief from all the enemies who surround you in the land he is giving you as an inheritance, you must wipe out the memory of the Amalekites from under heaven – do not forget!