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Deuteronomy

About this book
Chapter 25

1 If controversy arises between people, they should go to court for judgment. When the judges hear the case, they shall exonerate the innocent but condemn the guilty.⁠ 2 Then, if the guilty person is sentenced to a beating, the judge shall force him to lie down and be beaten in his presence with the number of blows his wicked behavior deserves. 3 The judge may sentence him to 40 blows, but no more. If he is struck with more than these, you might view your fellow Israelite with contempt.⁠ 4 You must not muzzle your ox when it is treading grain. 5 If brothers live together and one of them dies without having a son, the dead man’s wife must not remarry someone outside the family. Instead, her late husband’s brother must go to her, marry her, and perform the duty of a brother-in-law.⁠ 6 Then the first son she bears will continue the name of the dead brother, thus preventing his name from being blotted out of Israel. 7 But if the man does not want to marry his brother’s widow, then she must go to the elders at the town gate and say, “My husband’s brother refuses to preserve his brother’s name in Israel; he is unwilling to perform the duty of a brother-in-law to me!” 8 Then the elders of his city must summon him and speak to him. If he persists, saying, “I don’t want to marry her,” 9 then his sister-in-law must approach him in view of the elders, remove his sandal from his foot, and spit in his face. She will then respond, “Thus may it be done to any man who does not maintain his brother’s family line!” 10 His family name will be referred to in Israel as “the family of the one whose sandal was removed.” 11 If two men get into a hand-to-hand fight, and the wife of one of them gets involved to help her husband against his attacker, and she reaches out her hand and grabs his private parts, 12 then you must cut off her hand—do not pity her. 13 You must not have in your bag different stone weights, a heavy and a light one. 14 You must not have in your house different measuring containers, a large and a small one. 15 You must have an accurate and correct stone weight and an accurate and correct measuring container, so that your life may be extended in the land the Lord your God is about to give you.⁠ 16 For anyone who acts dishonestly in these ways is abhorrent to the Lord your God. 17 Remember what the Amalekites did to you on your way from Egypt,⁠ 18 how they met you along the way and cut off all your stragglers in the rear of the march when you were exhausted and tired; they were unafraid of God. 19 So when the Lord your God gives you relief from all the enemies who surround you in the land he is giving you as an inheritance, you must wipe out the memory of the Amalekites from under heaven—do not forget!

Texts in conversation

Compare Code of Hammurabi §202 and Deuteronomy 25:3

Ancient Near East, Babylonian · Hebrew Bible

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Summary

Deuteronomy 25 shares the use of public flogging found in the Code of Hammurabi, but limits the blows to protect a fellow Israelite from the lasting humiliation that punishment could impose along with physical pain.

Passages

Code of Hammurabi §202

Ancient Near East, Babylonian · Babylonian Legal Text
199 If he puts out the eye of a man's slave or breaks the bone of a man's slave, he shall pay half the slave's value. 200 If a man knocks out the teeth of his equal, his teeth shall be knocked out. A tooth for a tooth. 201 If he knocks out the teeth of a freed man, he shall pay one-third of a gold mina. 202 If anyone strikes the body of a man of higher rank, he shall receive sixty blows with an ox-whip in public. 203 If a free-born man strikes the body of another free-born man of equal rank, he shall pay one gold mina. 204 If a freed man strikes the body of another freed man, he shall pay ten shekels of silver.
1750 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in the Code of Hammurabi

Deuteronomy 25:3

Hebrew Bible
2 Then, if the guilty person is sentenced to a beating, the judge shall force him to lie down and be beaten in his presence with the number of blows his wicked behavior deserves. 3 The judge may sentence him to 40 blows, but no more. If he is struck with more than these, you might view your fellow Israelite with contempt. 4 You must not muzzle your ox when it is treading grain. 5 If brothers live together and one of them dies without having a son, the dead man’s wife must not remarry someone outside the family. Instead, her late husband’s brother must go to her, marry her, and perform the duty of a brother-in-law.
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Deuteronomy

References

“... 25:2-3. limitation on number of lashes. Ancient Near Eastern law (*Middle Assyrian laws and *Hammurabi) stipulate that both men and women be flogged for various crimes. The number of lashes ranges from twenty to sixty. In Deuteronomy, however, forty lashes serves as the upper limit. This limit may be based on either the symbolic value of forty or the degree of mutilation and personal humiliation permissible for an Israelite to bear without being permanently excluded from social and religious activities. ...”
John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews, and Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2000), 199.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Code of Hammurabi §202 and Deuteronomy 25:3

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