1“If there is a case between persons, and they apply to the judges, they shall give the palm of justice to the one whom they perceive to be just, and they shall condemn of impiety the one who is impious.
2But if they see that the one who has sinned is worthy of stripes, they shall prostrate him and cause him to be beaten before them. According to the measure of the sin, so shall the measure of the stripes be.
3Even so, these shall not exceed the number of forty. Otherwise, your brother may depart, having been wounded shamefully before your eyes.
4You shall not muzzle an ox as it is treading out your crops in the field.
5When brothers are living together, and one of them dies without children, the wife of the deceased shall not marry another. Instead, his brother shall take her, and he shall raise up offspring for his brother.
6And the first son from her, he shall call by his brother’s name, so that his name will not be abolished from Israel.
7But if he is not willing to take his brother’s wife, who by law must go to him, the woman shall go to the gate of the city, and she shall call upon those greater by birth, and she shall say: ‘The brother of my husband is not willing to raise up his brother’s name in Israel; nor will he join with me.’
8And immediately, they shall summon him to be sent, and they shall question him. If he responds, ‘I am not willing to accept her as a wife,’
9then the woman shall approach him in the sight of the elders, and she shall remove his shoe from his foot, and she shall spit in his face, and she shall say: ‘So shall it be done to the man who was not willing to build up his brother’s house.’
10And his name shall be called in Israel: The House of the Unshod.
11If two men have a conflict between themselves, and one begins to do violence to the other, and if the other’s wife, wanting to rescue her husband from the hand of the stronger one, extends her hand and grasps him by his private parts,
12then you shall cut off her hand. Neither shall you weep over her with any mercy.
13You shall not have differing weights, greater and lesser, in your bag.
14Neither shall there be in your house a greater and a lesser measure.
15You shall have a just and a true weight, and your measure shall be equal and true, so that you may live for a long time upon the land, which the Lord your God will give to you.
16For the Lord your God abominates him who does these things, and he loathes all injustice.
17Remember what Amalek did to you, along the way, when you were departing from Egypt:
18how he met you and cut down the stragglers of the troops, who were sitting down, exhausted, when you were consumed by hunger and hardship, and how he did not fear God.
19Therefore, when the Lord your God will give you rest, and you will have subdued all the surrounding nations, in the land which he has promised to you, you shall delete his name from under heaven. Take care not to forget this.”
Verse 4
Not muzzle: St. Paul understands this of the spiritual labourer in the church of God, who is not to be denied his maintenance. 1 Cor. 9. 8, 9, 10.
Let him use those tenths and first-fruits, which are given according to the command of God, as a man of God; as also let him dispense in a right manner the free-will offerings which are brought in on account of the poor, to the orphans, the widows, the afflicted, and strangers in distress, as having that God for the examiner of his accounts who has committed the disposition to him. Distribute to all those in want with righteousness, and yourselves use the things which belong to the Lord, but do not abuse them; eating of them, but not eating them all up by yourselves: communicate with those that are in want, and thereby show yourselves unblameable before God. For if you shall consume them by yourselves, you will be reproached by God, who says to such unsatiable people, who alone devour all, "You eat up the milk, and clothe yourselves with the wool;" [Ezekiel 34:3] and in another passage, "Must you alone live upon the earth"? [Isaiah 5:8] Upon which account you are commanded in the law, "You shall love your neighbour as yourself." [Leviticus 19:18] Now we say these things, not as if you might not partake of the fruits of your labours; for it is written, "You shall not muzzle the mouth of the ox which treads out the grain;" [Deuteronomy 25:4; 1 Corinthians 9:9] but that you should do it with moderation and righteousness. As, therefore, the ox that labours in the threshing-floor without a muzzle eats indeed, but does not eat all up; so do you who labour in the threshing-floor, that is, in the Church of God, eat of the Church: which was also the case of the Levites, who served in the tabernacle of the testimony, which was in all things a type of the Church.
Verse 5
In the third book, then, when I was solving the question of how it was possible for Joseph to have two fathers, I indeed said that “he was begotten by one and adopted by the other.” But I should have mentioned too the kind of adoption, for what I said sounds as if another living father had adopted him. The law, however, also adopted the children of the deceased by ordering that “a brother marry the wife” of his childless, deceased brother and “raise up seed” by the same woman “for his deceased brother.” In this way the explanation of this matter of the two fathers of one man is indeed made clearer.
Verse 9
The role of holy women was different in the times of the prophets. Obedience, not concupiscence, impelled women to marry for the propagation of the people of God, among whom the forerunners of Christ were sent in advance. For this people, by the things that happened to them as a type, whether they recognized these types or not, were indeed prophetic of Christ, from whom Christ was to take flesh. Hence, in order that this race might be multiplied, the man who did not raise up seed in Israel was held accursed by sentence of the law. That is why holy women were animated by the pious desire of offspring rather than by desire. We may rightly believe that they would not have sought the marriage union if children could have been obtained in any other way.
Verse 17
Amalec: This order for destroying the Amalecites, in the mystical sense, showeth how hateful they are to God, and what punishments they are to look for from his justice, who attack and discourage his servants when they are but just come out, as it were, of the Egypt of this wicked world and being yet weak and fainthearted, are but beginning their journey to the land of promise.