Deuteronomy 25:1-8

Sundry Laws

1 "¹If there is a dispute between men and they go to court, and the judges decide their case, ²and they justify the righteous and condemn the wicked,

2 then it shall be if the wicked man ³deserves to be beaten, the judge shall then make him lie down and be beaten in his presence with the number of stripes according to his guilt.

3 "⁴He may beat him forty times but no more, so that he does not beat him with many more stripes than these and your brother is not ⁵degraded in your eyes.

4 "⁶You shall not muzzle the ox while he is threshing.

5 "When brothers live together and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the deceased shall not be married outside the family to a strange man. ⁷Her husband's brother shall go in to her and take her to himself as wife and perform the duty of a husband's brother to her.

6 "It shall be that the firstborn whom she bears shall assume the name of his dead brother, so that ⁸his name will not be blotted out from Israel.

7 "⁹But if the man does not desire to take his brother's wife, then his brother's wife shall go up to the gate to the elders and say, 'My husband's brother refuses to establish a name for his brother in Israel; he is not willing to perform the duty of a husband's brother to me.'

8 "Then the elders of his city shall summon him and speak to him. And if he persists and says, 'I do not desire to take her,'

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Deuteronomy 25:1-8 Meaning and Commentary

INTRODUCTION TO DEUTERONOMY 25

Several laws are contained in this chapter, as concerning beating such whose crimes required it, De 25:1-3; of not muzzling the ox in treading out the corn, De 25:4; of marrying a deceased brother's wife, when there was no issue, and of the disgrace of such that refused it, De 25:5-10; of the punishment of an immodest woman, De 25:11,12; and against bad weights and measures, De 25:13-16; and for the utter destruction of Amalek, De 25:17-19.

Taken from John Gill's Exposition of the Bible

Cross References 9

1. Deuteronomy 17:8-13; Deuteronomy 19:17
2. Deuteronomy 1:16, 17
3. Proverbs 19:29; Luke 12:48
4. 2 Corinthians 11:24
5. Job 18:3
6. Proverbs 12:10; 1 Corinthians 9:9; 1 Timothy 5:18
7. Matthew 22:24; Mark 12:19; Luke 20:28
8. Ruth 4:5, 10
9. Ruth 4:5, 6

Footnotes 5

[a]. Lit "the judgment"
[b]. Lit "they judge them"
[c]. Lit "is a son of beating"
[d]. Or "wickedness"
[e]. Lit "stand on"