Chapter Twenty-Five

Laws: on justice in court; on the corporal punishment of the guilty; on humane treatment of working animals; on levirate marriage; on techniques of fighting harmful to a man’s health and his offspring; on the accuracy of weights and measures; the command to destroy the Amalekites.

Deuteronomy 25:1. If there is a dispute between people, let them come to court and be judged; let the innocent be acquitted and the guilty be condemned; On the organization of courts, see Deut 16:18-20.

Deuteronomy 25:3. Forty stripes may be given him, but no more, lest your brother be degraded in your eyes because of many blows. To guard against the executioner being carried away by zeal, the rabbis of later times decreed that the maximum corporal punishment should be thirty-nine stripes. On this basis the Apostle Paul, having been sentenced multiple times by Jewish courts to corporal punishment, was subjected to “forty stripes minus one” (2 Cor 11:24).

Deuteronomy 25:4. Do not muzzle an ox while it is threshing. “The higher meaning of this has been clearly shown to us by the divine apostle (1 Cor 9:9-11). But the meaning that presents itself at first glance is also pious. For it is unjust that one who has tilled the ground and laboriously threshes the sheaves should not taste of the fruit” (Theodoret, Commentary on Deut., question 31). See the note to Deut 14:21.

Deuteronomy 25:5. If brothers live together and one of them dies without a son, the wife of the deceased shall not be married outside the family to a stranger; her brother-in-law shall go in to her, take her as his wife, and live with her — Deuteronomy 25:6. and the firstborn son that she bears shall carry on the name of the deceased brother, so that his name will not be blotted out in Israel. Deuteronomy 25:7. But if the man does not wish to take his sister-in-law, then his sister-in-law shall go to the gate, to the elders, and say: “My brother-in-law refuses to preserve his brother’s name in Israel; he is not willing to marry me”; Deuteronomy 25:8. then the elders of his city shall summon him and reason with him, and if he stands firm and says, “I do not wish to take her, Deuteronomy 25:9. then his sister-in-law shall approach him in the presence of the elders, remove his sandal from his foot, and spit in his face, and say: “This is what is done to the man who does not build up his brother’s house in Israel”; Deuteronomy 25:10. and his name shall be called in Israel: “the house of the man whose sandal was removed. An exception to the prohibited marriages within close degrees of kinship is marriage with the wife of a brother who has died childless — the so-called levirate (levir = brother-in-law) marriage, whose purpose was the preservation of the “name of the deceased in Israel.” In the absence of a brother, the nearest relative was obliged to take the childless widow. In instituting the levirate regulation, Moses was not introducing a new law but merely giving legal force to the ancient custom that existed among the Hebrews and certain other peoples. The first biblical example of levirate marriage is found in the family of Judah, son of the patriarch Jacob (Gen 38:1). It is true that Moses somewhat weakens the binding nature of the ancient custom, but he surrounds this deviation with such formalities that they serve as an indirect inducement to prevent such deviations from being too frequent (cf. Theodoret, question 32 on Deut.).

Deuteronomy 25:11. If men are fighting with each other and the wife of one of them comes near to rescue her husband from the hand of the man striking him, and she reaches out her hand and seizes him by his private parts, Deuteronomy 25:12. cut off her hand; let your eye show no pity. Apart from its indecency, the prohibited fighting technique is dangerous to health and may prove harmful to the offspring of the injured man.

Deuteronomy 25:13. You shall not have in your bag two kinds of weights, a heavier and a lighter; Deuteronomy 25:14. you shall not have in your house two kinds of measures, a larger and a smaller; Deuteronomy 25:15. you shall have a full and accurate weight, and a full and accurate measure, so that your days may be prolonged in the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance; Deuteronomy 25:16. for everyone who acts dishonestly is an abomination before the Lord your God. The nominal weight and the nominal volume of a measure must correspond to their actual size.

Deuteronomy 25:17. Remember what the Amalekites did to you on the road when you were coming out of Egypt: Deuteronomy 25:18. how they met you on the road and attacked all the stragglers in your rear when you were exhausted and weary, and did not fear God; Deuteronomy 25:19. Therefore, when the Lord your God gives you rest from all your enemies on every side, in the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, you shall wipe out the memory of the Amalekites from under heaven; do not forget. See Exod 17:8-16. Later the Amalekites were defeated by Saul (1 Sam 15:1-8) and finally destroyed in the time of Hezekiah (1 Chr 4:41-43).