1. “Suppose there is a dispute between people and they approach the court, the judges hear their case, and declare one righteous and the other guilty.
2. Now if the guilty one deserves to be flogged, the judge is to make him lie down and be flogged before him, with the number of lashes in proportion to his guilt.
3. He may strike him 40 times but no more. Otherwise he would beat him with too many a wound beyond these, and your brother would be degraded in your eyes.
4. “You are not to muzzle the ox while it is threshing.
5. “If brothers dwell together and one of them dies and has no son, the dead man’s wife is not to be married outside to a stranger. Her husband’s brother is to go to her and take her as his wife, and perform the duty of a brother-in-law.
6. Now the firstborn that she bears is to carry on the name of his dead brother, so that his name will not be blotted out of Israel.
7. But if the man does not want to take his brother’s widow, his brother’s widow is to go to the elders at the gate and say, ‘My brother-in-law refuses to carry on his brother’s name in Israel—he is unwilling to perform a brother-in-law’s duty for me.’
8. Then the elders of his town are to summon him and speak to him. And if he stands firm and says, ‘I do not desire to take her,’