Deuteronomy 25

¹If there be a controversy between some, & they call upon the judges: whom they shall perceive to be just, to him they shall give the prize of justice: whom impious, him they shall condemn of impiety.

²And if they see that the offender be worthy of stripes, they shall cast him down, & shall cause him to be beaten before them. According to the measure of the sin shall the measure also of the stripes be:

³yet so, that they exceed not the number of forty: lest thy brother depart foully torn before thine eyes.

⁴Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the oxe that treadeth out thy corn in the floor.

⁵When brethren shall dwell together, and one of them die without children, the wife of the deceased shall not marry to another: But his brother shall take her, & raise up the seed of his brother:

⁶& the first born son of her he shall call by his name, that his name be not abolished out of Israel.

⁷But if he will not take his brother's wife, that by law is due to him, the woman shall go to the gate of the city, and call upon the ancients, and say: My husband's brother will not raise up his brother's seed in Israel: nor take me to his wife.

⁸And forthwith they shall cause him to be sent for, and shall ask him. If he answer: I will not take her to wife:

⁹the woman shall come to him before the ancients, and shall take off his shoe from his foot, and spit in his face, and say: So shall it be done to the man, that buildeth not his brother's house.

¹⁰And his name shall be called in Israel The house of the unshod.

¹¹If two men fall at words betwixt themselves, and one begin to brawl against the other, and the wife of the one willing to deliver her husband out of the hand of the stronger, put forth her hand, and take his privities:

¹²thou shalt cut off her hand, neither shalt thou be moved with any pity upon her.

¹³Thou shalt not have diverse weights in thy bag, a greater and a less:

¹⁴neither shall there be in thy house a greater bushel and a less.

¹⁵Thou shalt have a weight just and true, and thy bushel shall be equal and true: that thou mayest live a long time upon the Land, which our Lord thy God shall give thee.

¹⁶For thy Lord abhorreth him, that doth these things, and detesteth all injustice.

¹⁷Remember what Amalec did to thee in the way when thou camest out of Ægypt:

¹⁸how he met thee, & struck the hindmost of thy army, which being weary rested themselves, when thou wast spent with famine and labour, and he feared not God.

¹⁹Therefore when our Lord thy God shall give thee rest, and subdue all nations round about in the Land, which he hath promised thee, thou shalt destroy his name under heaven. Beware thou forget it not.