Deuteronomy 25:1-9 ▼

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.

7 And if the man does not delight to take his brother’s wife, then his brother’s wife has gone up to the gate, to the elderly, and said, My husband’s brother is refusing to raise up a name for his brother in Israel; he has not been willing to perform the duty of my husband’s brother;

8 and [the] elderly of his city have called for him, and spoken to him, and he has stood and said, I have no desire to take her.

9 Then his brother’s wife has drawn near to him before the eyes of the elderly, and drawn his shoe from off his foot, and spat in his face, and answered and said, Thus it is done to the man who does not build up the house of his brother;