Deuteronomy 25:1-9 ▼

1 If there is a dispute between men, and they come to the court, they are to be judged, and the righteous shall be declared righteous, and the wicked condemned.

2 And it shall come to pass, if a son—the wicked man—deserves to be beaten, that the judge will cause him to lie down and to be struck in his presence according to his wrongdoing, by number.

3 Forty times he shall strike him—no more, lest he should exceed this and beat him above these with many blows, and your brother be humiliated in your eyes.

4 You shall not muzzle an ox in its threshing.

5 If brothers dwell together and one of them dies without a son to him, the widow of the dead man shall not be outside to a sojourner. Her husband’s brother shall go in to her, and take her as his wife, and perform the duty of her husband's brother.

6 And it shall come to pass that the firstborn son that she bears will rise up upon the name of the dead brother, that his name may not be blotted out from Israel.

7 But if the man does not want to take his brother’s widow, let his brother’s widow 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 will not perform the duty of my brother-in-law.”

8 And the elders of his city shall call him and speak to him. And if he stands firm and says, “I do not want to take her,”

9 his brother’s widow shall come to him before the eyes of the elders, and remove his sandal from his foot, and spit in his face, and answer and say, “So shall it be done to the man who will not build up the house of his brother.”