Deuteronomy25chapter 25

Deuteronomy 25:1-3

The court's whole work is put in one clause, justify the righteous and condemn the wicked, and Proverbs 17:15 calls the reverse of it an abomination. The beating is carried out in front of the judge and the count is capped, and the reason given for the cap is that thy brother should not seem vile unto thee, so the man under the rod is still named a brother. Later Jewish practice fixed the number at thirty-nine to stay inside the forty, which is the count Paul gives at 2 Corinthians 11:24 when he says that five times he received forty stripes save one.

Deuteronomy 25:4

The ox treads the grain loose by walking over it, and a muzzle would keep the animal from eating what it walks on. Paul quotes this line twice. At 1 Corinthians 9:9 he asks whether God takes care for oxen and argues from the animal's mouth to a preacher's support, and at 1 Timothy 5:18 he sets it beside the labourer is worthy of his reward and calls both of them scripture. The shortest verse in the chapter is the one the New Testament takes up most.

Deuteronomy 25:5-10

The statute exists so that a dead man's name be not put out of Israel, and Genesis 38 shows the duty already assumed in Judah's house before there was a law for it. A brother who refuses is not compelled but shamed, since the widow looses his shoe before the elders and spits, and his house carries the name of the shoe loosed from then on. Ruth 4:7-8 is the ceremony being performed, though there the shoe passes between the nearer kinsman and Boaz rather than from the widow's own hand. The Sadducees build their resurrection puzzle out of this law at Matthew 22:24, taking seven brothers and one wife in turn.

Deuteronomy 25:11-16

The hand cut off at verse 12 is the one mutilation the law of Moses prescribes on its own account, beside the like for like of Leviticus 24:19-20, and the formula thine eye shall not pity is the one this book keeps for cases it will not let a judge soften, at 13:8 and 19:13 and 19:21. The weights follow, a stone and a stone in the Hebrew, a heavy one to buy with and a light one to sell by. Leviticus 19:35-36 had already required just balances, and the prophets keep coming back to them at Amos 8:5 and Micah 6:10-11. The promise attached to honest scales is length of days in the land, which is the promise attached to honouring father and mother at Exodus 20:12.

Deuteronomy 25:17-19

The charge rests on what Amalek did by the way, striking the stragglers who were faint and weary at the back, and the text adds that he feared not God. Exodus 17:14 had told Moses to write it in a book for a memorial, which is the first command in Scripture to write anything down, and the memorial is discharged here. Remembering and blotting out are commanded in one breath, so Israel keeps the record of a people whose remembrance it is to end. Saul is sent to carry it out at 1 Samuel 15 and spares Agag, and Esther 3:1 brings in Haman the Agagite generations later.