Fair Punishment, Family Duty, Honest Weights, and Amalek

A guilty man may be beaten "according to his fault, by a certain number. Forty stripes he may give him, and not exceed: lest, if he should exceed… then thy brother should seem vile unto thee." "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn."

"If brethren dwell together, and one of them die, and have no child, the wife of the dead shall not marry without unto a stranger: her husband's brother shall go in unto her… that his name be not put out of Israel." If he refuses, she goes to the elders at the gate, "and loose his shoe from off his foot, and spit in his face… So shall it be done unto that man that will not build up his brother's house." If a woman, defending her husband in a fight, seizes the other man's genitals, "thou shalt cut off her hand."

"Thou shalt not have in thy bag divers weights, a great and a small… But thou shalt have a perfect and just weight." "Remember what Amalek did unto thee by the way, when ye were come forth out of Egypt; How he met thee by the way, and smote the hindmost of thee, even all that were feeble behind thee… Therefore… thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven; thou shalt not forget it."

Forty stripes

The rabbis gave thirty-nine, to avoid exceeding forty by mistake (Mishnah Makkot 3:10). Paul says, "Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one" (2 Corinthians 11:24). Middle Assyrian laws prescribe up to fifty or a hundred blows for some offenses; the limit and its reason, the dignity of the punished, are distinctive.

Levirate marriage

Brother-in-law marriage (yibbum) is found among Hittites and at Nuzi and Ugarit, and appears in Genesis 38 (Judah and Tamar). The refusal ceremony (halitzah) is still a ritual in Jewish law, which today prefers it to yibbum. Ruth 4 involves a related but different practice: a more distant kinsman, the redemption of land, and a sandal given in a legal transfer. It should not be treated as the same law. Jesus is asked about levirate marriage by the Sadducees (Mark 12:18–27).

Honest weights

Hundreds of inscribed stone weights from Judah (the shekel and its fractions: nesef, pim, beqa) survive from the 8th–7th centuries BC. Studies show they were made to a fairly consistent standard, though actual weights vary. They illustrate the economy the law addresses; they do not show the law being enforced. Proverbs repeats the command: "A false balance is abomination to the LORD" (11:1).

Amalek

The command recalls Exodus 17:8–16. Saul is condemned for sparing King Agag (1 Samuel 15), and the book of Esther makes Haman "the Agagite." Jewish tradition reads this passage on the Sabbath before Purim. Later readers, Jewish and Christian, have treated "Amalek" as a symbol of evil; the command to destroy a people is subject to the same ethical scrutiny as Deuteronomy 7 and 20. No identifiable people called Amalek exists today.

Paul uses the ox verse to argue that those who preach should be supported (1 Corinthians 9:9–10; 1 Timothy 5:18).