Deuteronomy 25:5-10

Evangelical Heritage Version

⁵ When brothers live together and one of them dies without having children, the wife of the deceased brother is not to marry a stranger from outside the family. Her brother-in-law is to come and take her as his wife and perform for her the duty of a brother-in-law. ⁶ The firstborn that she bears will be recognized as a son who carries on the name of his deceased brother, so his name will not be erased from Israel. ⁷ But if a man does not want to marry his sister-in-law, his sister-in-law is to go to the city gate where the elders preside and say, “My brother-in-law refuses to establish a name in Israel for his brother. He does not want to perform the duty of a brother-in-law for me.” ⁸ Then the elders of his city are to call him and talk to him. If he stands firm and says, “I do not want to marry her,” ⁹ his sister-in-law is to approach him in the sight of the elders. She is to pull the sandal off his foot, spit in his face, and testify by saying, “This is what is done to the man who will not build up the house of his brother!” ¹⁰ Then the name that he will go by in Israel is “the house of a man whose sandal was pulled off.”