Deuteronomy 25:1-6 ▼

1 “When there is a strife between men, and they have come near to the judgment, and they have judged, and declared righteous the righteous, and declared wrong the wrongdoer,

2 then it has come to pass, if the wrongdoer is to be struck, that the judge has caused him to fall down, and [one] has struck him in his presence, according to the sufficiency of his wrongdoing, by number;

3 he strikes him forty [times]; he is not adding, lest he is adding to strike him above these many stripes, and your brother be lightly esteemed in your eyes.

4 You do not muzzle an ox in its threshing.

5 When brothers dwell together, and one of them has died and has no son, the wife of the dead is not given to a strange man; her husband’s brother goes in to her, and has taken her to him for a wife, and performs the duty of her husband’s brother;

6 and it has been, the firstborn which she bears rises for the name of his dead brother, and his name is not wiped away out of Israel.