Deuteronomy 25

Berean Standard Bible

Chapter summary

Deuteronomy 25 outlines legal and social regulations for the community of Israel. It begins with guidelines for judicial disputes, limiting corporal punishment to forty lashes, and commands that an ox must not be muzzled while treading grain. The chapter details the levirate marriage law for a childless widow and prescribes a public procedure involving the city elders if the brother-in-law refuses. It also establishes a strict penalty for a woman who seizes a combatant improperly during a fight, mandates honest weights and measures in trade, and concludes with a command to eventually blot out the memory of the Amalekites for their attack during the exodus from Egypt.

Summary automatically generated from the Bible text.

Words of Jesus in red

¹If there is a dispute between men, they are to go to court to be judged, so that the innocent may be acquitted and the guilty condemned. ²If the guilty man deserves to be beaten, the judge shall have him lie down and be flogged in his presence with the number of lashes his crime warrants. ³He may receive no more than forty lashes, lest your brother be beaten any more than that and be degraded in your sight. ⁴Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain. ⁵When brothers dwell together and one of them dies without a son, the widow must not marry outside the family. Her husband’s brother is to take her as his wife and fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law for her. ⁶The first son she bears will carry on the name of the dead brother, so that his name will not be blotted out from Israel. ⁷But if the man does not want to marry his brother’s widow, she is to go to the elders at the city gate and say, “My husband’s brother refuses to preserve his brother’s name in Israel. He is not willing to perform the duty of a brother-in-law for me.” ⁸Then the elders of his city shall summon him and speak with him. If he persists and says, “I do not want to marry her,” ⁹his brother’s widow shall go up to him in the presence of the elders, remove his sandal, spit in his face, and declare, “This is what is done to the man who will not maintain his brother’s line.” ¹⁰And his family name in Israel will be called “The House of the Unsandaled.” ¹¹If two men are fighting, and the wife of one comes to rescue her husband from the one striking him, and she reaches out her hand and grabs his genitals, ¹²you are to cut off her hand. You must show her no pity. ¹³You shall not have two differing weights in your bag, one heavy and one light. ¹⁴You shall not have two differing measures in your house, one large and one small. ¹⁵You must maintain accurate and honest weights and measures, so that you may live long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you. ¹⁶For everyone who behaves dishonestly in regard to these things is detestable to the LORD your God. ¹⁷Remember what the Amalekites did to you along your way from Egypt, ¹⁸how they met you on your journey when you were tired and weary, and they attacked all your stragglers; they had no fear of God. ¹⁹When the LORD your God gives you rest from the enemies around you in the land that He is giving you to possess as an inheritance, you are to blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!

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Louis Segond 1910 and Berean Standard Bible: public domain. Cross references: open-cross-ref, Creative Commons BY 4.0.