1. If two people have an argument and go to court, the judges will decide the case. They will declare one person right and the other guilty.
2. If the guilty person has to be punished with a beating, the judge will make that person lie down and be beaten in front of him. The number of lashes should match the crime.
3. But don’t hit a person more than forty times, because more than that would disgrace him before others.
4. When an ox is working in the grain, do not cover its mouth to keep it from eating.
5. If two brothers are living together, and one of them dies without having a son, his widow must not marry someone outside her husband’s family. Her husband’s brother must marry her, which is his duty to her as a brother-in-law.
6. The first son she has counts as the son of the dead brother so that his name will not be forgotten in Israel.
7. But if a man does not want to marry his brother’s widow, she should go to the elders at the town gate. She should say, “My brother-in-law will not carry on his brother’s name in Israel. He refuses to do his duty for me.”
8. Then the elders of the town must call for the man and talk to him. But if he is stubborn and says, “I don’t want to marry her,”