Deuteronomy 24 – 25

Restrictions on Divorce

Deuteronomy 24

¹ When a man takes a woman and marries her, if she is not pleasing to him because he has found something indecent about her, and he writes her a divorce document and hands it to her and sends her out of his house, ² and she leaves and moves on and becomes the wife of another man, ³ and then that second man hates her and writes her a divorce document and hands it to her and sends her out of his house, or perhaps the second man that took her as a wife dies, ⁴ in these circumstances her first husband, who sent her away, cannot take her again as his wife after she was stigmatized as impure, because that would be detestable to the Lord. You must not attach guilt to the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance.

More Miscellaneous Laws

⁵ When a man takes a new wife, he must not go out with the army, and no one is to impose any duty on him. He is to be freed from duty for one year for the sake of his homelife so that he may make the woman whom he has married happy.

⁶ No person is to hold as security a mill or an upper millstone, because he would be holding someone’s livelihood as security.

⁷ If a man is caught kidnapping a fellow Israelite and enslaving him or selling him, that kidnapper must die, and you will purge the evil from among you.

⁸ Be careful during an outbreak of an impure skin disease ^[1] by being very conscientious about doing everything that the priests, who are Levites, instruct you to do. Take care to do exactly as I have commanded them. ⁹ Remember what the Lord your God did to Miriam on your journey after coming out of Egypt.

¹⁰ When you make a loan to your neighbor, a loan of any kind, do not go into his house to take his security pledge. ¹¹ Stand outside, and the man to whom you are making the loan will bring the pledged object out to you. ¹² If he is a poor man, do not sleep in a garment he has pledged as security. ¹³ You are certainly to return the pledged object to him at sundown so he can sleep in his garment and bless you. Righteousness will be yours before the Lord your God.

¹⁴ Do not oppress a hired person who is poor and needy, whether he is one of your brother Israelites or one of the aliens who reside in your land inside your gates. ¹⁵ Each day, before the sun goes down, pay him his wages, because he is poor and his life depends on it. If you do not, he will cry out against you, and you will be guilty of sin.

¹⁶ Fathers are not to be put to death because of their sons, and sons are not to be put to death because of their fathers. Each man is to be put to death because of his own crime.

¹⁷ Do not neglect justice for an alien who lives among you or for a fatherless child, and do not take the clothing of a widow as a pledge.

¹⁸ Remember that you were a slave in Egypt, but the Lord your God redeemed you from there. Therefore I am commanding you to do this.

¹⁹ When you harvest the crops in your field and you forget a bundle in the field, do not return to get it. It will be for the benefit of the resident alien, the fatherless, and the widow, so that the Lord your God may bless you in everything your hands do.

²⁰ When you beat your olives off the tree, do not strip the boughs clean of olives. Some are to be left for the benefit of the alien, the fatherless, and the widow.

²¹ When you cut grapes from your vineyard, do not go over it again. Leave some for the benefit of the alien, the fatherless, and the widow.

²² Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt. That is why I am commanding you to do this.

Deuteronomy 25

¹ When there is a dispute between men and they go to court and a verdict is reached, and they have acquitted the innocent person and convicted the guilty one, ² if the guilty one is to be flogged, the judge is to make him lie down, and he will order him to be flogged in his presence with the number of blows that is proportionate to his guilt. ³ He may have him struck forty times, but no more, so that your brother does not become degraded in your eyes by receiving a severe beating that goes beyond this number.

⁴ You are not to muzzle an ox when it is threshing.

⁵ When brothers live together and one of them dies without having children, the wife of the deceased brother is not to marry a stranger from outside the family. Her brother-in-law is to come and take her as his wife and perform for her the duty of a brother-in-law. ⁶ The firstborn that she bears will be recognized as a son who carries on the name of his deceased brother, so his name will not be erased from Israel. ⁷ But if a man does not want to marry his sister-in-law, his sister-in-law is to go to the city gate where the elders preside and say, “My brother-in-law refuses to establish a name in Israel for his brother. He does not want to perform the duty of a brother-in-law for me.” ⁸ Then the elders of his city are to call him and talk to him. If he stands firm and says, “I do not want to marry her,” ⁹ his sister-in-law is to approach him in the sight of the elders. She is to pull the sandal off his foot, spit in his face, and testify by saying, “This is what is done to the man who will not build up the house of his brother!” ¹⁰ Then the name that he will go by in Israel is “the house of a man whose sandal was pulled off.”

¹¹ If two men are fighting each other, a man and his neighbor, and the wife of one comes up to rescue her husband from the hands of the one striking him, and she reaches out her hand and she grabs hold of his testicles, ¹² you are to cut off her hand. Your eye is not to look on her with compassion.

¹³ Do not have two alternate sets of stone weights in your bag, larger and smaller. ¹⁴ Do not have alternate measures in your house, larger and smaller. ¹⁵ You must have a full and honest set of weights. You must have a full and honest set of measures, so that you may have a long life in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. ¹⁶ For anyone doing such things, anyone who acts dishonestly, is detestable to the Lord your God.

¹⁷ Remember what the Amalekites, without any fear of God, did to you on your journey after you came out of Egypt. ¹⁸ Remember how they confronted you on the way, when you were weak and tired, and they cut off all the stragglers among you, the ones who were lagging behind. ¹⁹ When the Lord your God gives you rest from all your enemies that are around you in the land the Lord your God is giving you to possess as an inheritance, wipe away the memory of Amalek from under the heavens. Do not forget!