Deuteronomy 25:1-9 ▼

1 “If there is a dispute between men and they go to court for judgment, and the judges judge their case, and they justify the righteous and condemn the wicked,

2 then it shall be if the wicked man deserves to be struck, the judge shall then make him lie down and be struck in his presence with the number of stripes according to his guilt.

3 He may strike him forty times but no more, lest he strike him with many more stripes than these and your brother be dishonored in your eyes.

4 “You shall not muzzle the ox while it is threshing.

5 “If brothers live together and one of them dies and has no son, then the wife of the one who died shall not be married outside the family to a strange man. Her husband’s brother shall go in to her and take her to himself as wife and perform the duty of a husband’s brother to her.

6 And it will be that the firstborn whom she bears shall assume the name of his dead brother, so that his name will not be blotted out from Israel.

7 But if the man does not desire to take his brother’s wife, then his brother’s wife shall go up to the gate to the elders and say, ‘My husband’s brother refuses to raise up a name for his brother in Israel; he is not willing to perform the duty of a husband’s brother to me.’

8 Then the elders of his city shall summon him and speak to him. And if he stands and says, ‘I do not desire to take her,’

9 then his brother’s wife shall come to him in the sight of the elders and pull his sandal off his foot and spit in his face; and she shall answer and say, ‘Thus it is done to the man who does not build up his brother’s house.’