< Deuteronomy 25 >
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;
10 and his name has been called in Israel, The house of him whose shoe is drawn off.
11 When men strive together with one another, and the wife of one has drawn near to deliver her husband out of the hand of his striker, and has put forth her hand, and laid hold on his private parts,
12 then you have cut off her hand; your eye does not spare.
13 You do not have [both] a great stone and a small stone in your bag.
14 You do not have a great ephah and a small ephah in your house.
15 You have a complete and just stone, [and] you have a complete and just ephah, so that they prolong your days on the ground which your God YHWH is giving to you;
16 for anyone doing these things, anyone doing iniquity, [is] an abomination [to] your God YHWH.
17 Remember that which Amalek has done to you in the way in your going out from Egypt,
18 that he has met you in the way, and strikes among you all those feeble behind you (when you [were] weary and fatigued), and is not fearing God.
19 And it has been, in your God YHWH giving rest to you from all your surrounding enemies, in the land which your God YHWH is giving to you [for] an inheritance to possess it, you blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under the heavens—you do not forget.”
