Deuteronomy 25 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.
Time Period
~1406 BC, in the closing weeks of Moses' leadership
Location
The plains of Moab, east of the Jordan, before the entry into Canaan
Audience
The second generation of Israelites, receiving the last of the detailed case laws
Situation
A limit of forty lashes in corporal punishment, a ban on muzzling an ox while it treads out grain, the duty of a brother to marry a childless widow and raise up an heir for the dead man, a penalty for an indecent intervention in a fight, honest weights and measures, and the command to blot out Amalek.
Key Background
The lash limit is framed as protecting the offender's dignity, since a beating without a ceiling could kill or maim and would leave a fellow Israelite degraded in public. The brother-in-law marriage, known as levirate marriage, existed because a widow without a son had no claim on land and no support in old age, and the ceremony for a brother who refuses, involving a removed sandal and spitting, made the refusal a matter of public shame rather than a private choice. Merchants carried stone weights in a pouch, and keeping a heavy set for buying and a light set for selling was the standard fraud of the day, which is why the law targets the bag itself.
When there's a between people and they go to court, the will decide the case — they'll declare the one in the as in the and the one in the wrong as in the wrong.
If the one in the wrong deserves to be the judge will have him lie face down and be struck in his presence — the number of blows matching the severity of what he did.
He may receive up to blows, but no more. If they go beyond that and beat him excessively, your fellow Israelite would be in front of you.
Don't an ox while it's treading out the grain.
When live near each other and one of them dies without a son, the dead man's wife must not marry an outsider. Her husband's brother is to go to her and take her as his wife, fulfilling the of a
The first son she has will carry on the dead brother's so that his won't be wiped out from Israel.
But if the man doesn't want to marry his brother's widow, she should go to the elders at the and say, 'My brother-in-law refuses to preserve his brother's name in Israel. He won't fulfill his duty as a brother-in-law for me.'
Then the elders of his town will summon him and talk to him. If he still insists, saying, 'I don't want to marry her,'
brother's widow will go up to him in front of the elders, foot, in and declare, 'This is what happens to the man who won't build up brother's family line.'
And his family will be known in Israel as 'The of the
If two men are fighting each other and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from the man hitting him, and she reaches out and grabs the other man's
you must Show no pity.
Don't keep two different sets of in your bag — one heavy and one light.
Don't keep two different in your house — one large and one small.
Use only and weights. Use only and measures. Do this so that you'll live long in the land that your God is giving you.
Because everyone who does these things — everyone who deals dishonestly — is to Yahweh your God.
Remember what did to you on the road as you were coming out of Egypt —
how they met you on the road and attacked all the trailing behind you when you were exhausted and worn out. They had no of
So when Yahweh your God gives you from all the enemies around you in the land he's giving you to possess as your — wipe out the of Amalek from under the sky. Don't forget.