Justice at the Gate
A beating is capped at forty lashes so a brother is not degraded before your eyes. An ox is not muzzled while it treads grain. A widow's dead husband's name is preserved by his brother, or the brother is shamed at the gate. Weights and measures must be honest.
25 1If men have a dispute and go to court, the judges deciding between them clear the innocent and condemn the guilty, 2if the guilty man deserves a beating, the judge will make him lie down and be beaten before him, lashes numbered to fit his crime. 3Forty lashes, no more; if he beats him beyond these, your brother is degraded before your eyes.
4You shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain.
5If brothers live together and one dies without a son, the dead man's wife must not marry an outsider. Her husband's brother must take her as his wife, sleep with her, and do a brother-in-law's duty to her. 6The firstborn she bears takes the dead brother's name, so his name is not erased from Israel.
7If the man doesn't want to take his brother's wife, she goes up to the elders at the gate and says, "My husband's brother refuses to raise up his brother's name in Israel; he's unwilling to act as my brother-in-law." 8Then his town's elders summon and address him. If he stands firm, saying, "I don't want to take her," 9his brother's wife will approach him before the elders, pull his sandal off his foot, spit in his face, and say, "So it is done to the man who won't build his brother's house." 10And his family will be called in Israel "The house of him whose sandal was pulled off."
11If two men fight and one's wife comes to rescue her husband from his attacker, and she reaches out and grabs his private parts, 12then you are to cut off her hand. Show no pity.
13You shall not have in your bag two kinds of weights, a large and a small. 14You shall not have in your house two kinds of measures, a large and a small. 15Have a full, honest weight; have a full, honest measure, so your days may be long on the land your Father is giving you. 16For everyone who does such things, everyone who acts dishonestly, is detestable to your Father.
17Remember what Amalek did to you on the way as you came out of Egypt, 18how he met you on the road, cut down all your stragglers behind you when you were faint and weary, and had no fear of our Father. 19When your Father gives you rest from all your enemies around you, in the land your Father is giving you as an inheritance to possess, wipe out Amalek's memory from under heaven. Don't forget.
