Deuteronomy 25:1-10
New English Translation
25 If controversy arises between people,[a] they should go to court for judgment. When the judges[b] hear the case, they shall exonerate[c] the innocent but condemn[d] the guilty. 2 Then,[e] if the guilty person is sentenced to a beating,[f] the judge shall force him to lie down and be beaten in his presence with the number of blows his wicked behavior deserves.[g] 3 The judge[h] may sentence him to forty blows,[i] but no more. If he is struck with more than these, you might view your fellow Israelite[j] with contempt.
4 You must not muzzle your[k] ox when it is treading grain.
Respect for the Sanctity of Others
5 If brothers live together and one of them dies without having a son, the dead man’s wife must not remarry someone outside the family. Instead, her late husband’s brother must go to her, marry her,[l] and perform the duty of a brother-in-law.[m] 6 Then[n] the first son[o] she bears will continue the name of the dead brother, thus preventing his name from being blotted out of Israel. 7 But if the man does not want to marry his brother’s widow, then she[p] must go to the elders at the town gate and say, “My husband’s brother refuses to preserve his brother’s name in Israel; he is unwilling to perform the duty of a brother-in-law to me!” 8 Then the elders of his city must summon him and speak to him. If he persists, saying, “I don’t want to marry her,” 9 then his sister-in-law must approach him in view of the elders, remove his sandal from his foot, and spit in his face.[q] She will then respond, “Thus may it be done to any man who does not maintain his brother’s family line!”[r] 10 His family name will be referred to[s] in Israel as “the family[t] of the one whose sandal was removed.”[u]
Read full chapterFootnotes
- Deuteronomy 25:1 tn Heb “men.”
- Deuteronomy 25:1 tn Heb “they”; the referent (the judges) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
- Deuteronomy 25:1 tn Heb “declare to be just”; KJV, NASB “justify the righteous”; NAB, NIV “acquitting the innocent.”
- Deuteronomy 25:1 tn Heb “declare to be evil”; NIV “condemning the guilty (+ party NAB).”
- Deuteronomy 25:2 tn Heb “and it will be.”
- Deuteronomy 25:2 tn Heb “if the evil one is a son of smiting.”
- Deuteronomy 25:2 tn Heb “according to his wickedness, by number.”
- Deuteronomy 25:3 tn Heb “he”; the referent (the judge) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
- Deuteronomy 25:3 tn Heb “Forty blows he may strike him”; however, since the judge is to witness the punishment (v. 2) it is unlikely the judge himself administered it.
- Deuteronomy 25:3 tn Heb “your brothers” but not limited only to an actual sibling; cf. NAB) “your kinsman”; NRSV, NLT “your neighbor.”
- Deuteronomy 25:4 tn Heb “an.” By implication this is one’s own animal.
- Deuteronomy 25:5 tn Heb “take her as wife”; NRSV “taking her in marriage.”
- Deuteronomy 25:5 sn This is the so-called “levirate” custom (from the Latin term levir, “brother-in-law”), an ancient provision whereby a man who died without male descendants to carry on his name could have a son by proxy, that is, through a surviving brother who would marry his widow and whose first son would then be attributed to the brother who had died. This is the only reference to this practice in an OT legal text but it is illustrated in the story of Judah and his sons (Gen 38) and possibly in the account of Ruth and Boaz (Ruth 2:8; 3:12; 4:6).
- Deuteronomy 25:6 tn Heb “and it will be that.”
- Deuteronomy 25:6 tn Heb “the firstborn.” This refers to the oldest male child.
- Deuteronomy 25:7 tn Heb “want to take his sister-in-law, then his sister in law.” In the second instance the pronoun (“she”) has been used in the translation to avoid redundancy.
- Deuteronomy 25:9 sn The removal of the sandal was likely symbolic of the relinquishment by the man of any claim to his dead brother’s estate since the sandal was associated with the soil or land (cf. Ruth 4:7-8). Spitting in the face was a sign of utmost disgust or disdain, an emotion the rejected widow would feel toward her uncooperative brother-in-law (cf. Num 12:14; Lev 15:8). See W. Bailey, NIDOTTE 2:544.
- Deuteronomy 25:9 tn Heb “build the house of his brother”; TEV “refuses to give his brother a descendant”; NLT “refuses to raise up a son for his brother.”
- Deuteronomy 25:10 tn Heb “called,” i.e., “known as.”
- Deuteronomy 25:10 tn Heb “house.”
- Deuteronomy 25:10 tn Cf. NIV, NCV “The Family of the Unsandaled.”
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