Deuteronomy 25
1 If 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. 2 If 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. 3 He may receive no more than forty lashes, lest your brother be beaten any more than that and be degraded in your sight. 4 Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain. Widowhood and Marriage 5 When 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. 6 The first son she bears will carry on the name of the dead brother, so that his name will not be blotted out from Israel. 7 But 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.” 8 Then the elders of his city shall summon him and speak with him. If he persists and says, “ I do not want to marry her,” 9 his 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.” 10 And his family name in Israel will be called “ The House of the Unsandaled.” 11 If two men are fighting, and the wife of one steps in to rescue her husband from the one striking him, and she reaches out her hand and grabs his genitals, 12 you are to cut off her hand. You must show her no pity. Standard Weights and Measures (Proverbs 11:1–3; Ezekiel 45:10–12) 13 You shall not have two differing weights in your bag, one heavy and one light. 14 You shall not have two differing measures in your house, one large and one small. 15 You 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. 16 For everyone who behaves dishonestly in regard to these things is detestable to the LORD your God. Revenge on the Amalekites 17 Remember what the Amalekites did to you along your way from Egypt, 18 how they met you on your journey when you were tired and weary, and they attacked all your stragglers; they had no fear of God. 19 When 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!
✦ What the text says
## Summary
Deuteronomy 25 gathers several distinct legal cases: proper judicial procedure and flogging limits (vv. 1–3), a prohibition on muzzling a threshing ox (v. 4), levirate marriage duties and the sandal-removal ceremony for refusal (vv. 5–10), a penalty for a woman who seizes a man's genitals in a fight (vv. 11–12), honest weights and measures (vv. 13–16), and a command to remember and blot out Amalek (vv. 17–19).
## Key words
- *mishpat* ("place of judgment", H4941G) — used in v.1 for the location/institution where disputes are settled, distinct from the verb "to judge" (*shafat*, H8199) used in the same verse.
- *yavam* / *yibbem* ("husband's brother" / "act as a husband's brother", H2993/H2992) — the piel verb *yibbem* (v.5, v.7) names the specific levirate duty, distinguishing it from ordinary marriage terms.
- *chalatz* ("draw off", H2502A) — the qal verb (v.9) for removing the sandal, echoed in the passive participle *chalutz* ("one drawn off of", H2502A) in v.10, which becomes part of the man's new name, "house of the one whose sandal was drawn off."
- *tzedek* ("righteousness", H6664G) — paired with *shelemah* ("full", H8003) in v.15 to describe weights and measures, applying an ethical term to commercial accuracy.
- *zakhor* ("remember", H2142) — an absolute infinitive in v.17, a grammatical form that intensifies the command rather than merely stating a future action.
## What the text says
The chapter's cases are structured with the conditional particle *ki* ("if", H3588A) opening several units (vv.1, 5, 11), each followed by a chain of sequential perfect verbs (vav + perfect) that narrate what happens step by step once the condition is met — this is the standard Hebrew case-law pattern, distinct from simple narrative. In vv.1–3, the hiphil verbs *hitzdiku* ("they will declare righteous", H6663) and *hirshi'u* ("they will condemn as guilty", H7561) are causative forms: the judges are not merely observing but actively producing a legal verdict. The levirate law (vv.5–10) uses the construct noun *ben* ("son", H1121G) with a negated existential particle *ein* ("not", H0369) to state the precise triggering condition — a dead brother with no son, not simply no children. The public ceremony in v.9 stacks four sequential-perfect verbs (draw near, draw off, spit, answer) enacting a formal legal shaming, sealed by the direct-speech formula *kakhah ye'aseh* ("thus let it be done").
## Differences between versions
The LXX renders v.11's Hebrew *mevushav* ("his genitals", H4016) with the classical/euphemistic Greek term for testicles, matching the Hebrew's directness, while the Vulgate uses *verenda* ("private parts"), a similarly euphemistic Latin term. In v.9, the LXX omits explicit mention of the woman spitting "in his face" with the same emphasis found in the Hebrew *be-fanav*, though the core action is preserved across all three versions.
This explanation describes the text using linguistic data; it adds no doctrine or confessional interpretation.