Deuteronomy 25 Study Notes

25:11-12 Interpreters differ over the meaning of this passage. One possibility is that the woman who forcefully grabbed her husband’s opponent by his genitals during a fight was to be punished so severely because her act risked emasculating the assailant to the point that he might be unable to sire children.

25:13-16 Differing weights and measures in this case would constitute theft, the violation of one of the Ten Commandments (5:19).

25:17-19 The Amalekites had attacked Israel in the Sinai Desert and consequently had come under God’s judgment (Ex 17:8-16). There would be a time of reckoning when Amalek, like all of the Lord’s unrepentant enemies, would come under the destruction of holy war (1Sm 15; cp. Dt 7:1-6).