Deuteronomy 25:1-9 ▼

1 “If there is a dispute between people and they go to court, and the judges decide their case, and they declare the righteous innocent and pronounce the wicked guilty,

2 then it shall be if the wicked person deserves to be beaten, the judge shall then make him lie down and have him beaten in his presence with the number of lashes according to his wrongful act.

3 He may have him beaten forty times, but not more, so that he does not have him beaten with many more lashes than these, and that your brother does not become contemptible in your eyes.

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

5 “When brothers live together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the deceased shall not be married outside the family to a strange man. Her husband’s brother shall have relations with her and take her to himself as his wife, and perform the duty of a husband’s brother to her.

6 It shall then be that the firstborn to whom she gives birth shall assume the name of his father’s deceased brother, so that his name will not be wiped out from Israel.

7 But if the man does not desire to take his brother’s widow, then his brother’s widow shall go up to the gate to the elders, and say, ‘My husband’s brother refuses to establish 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 persists and says, ‘I do not desire to take her,’

9 then his brother’s widow shall come up to him in the sight of the elders, and pull his sandal off his foot and spit in his face; and she shall declare, ‘This is what is done to the man who does not build up his brother’s house!’