Scripture Daily

Context No. 867 of 4322 · Deuteronomy

Context · Reflection

Deuteronomy 25:1-6: in context

1If there is a controversy between men, and they come to judgment and the judges judge them, then they shall justify the righteous and condemn the wicked. 2It shall be, if the wicked man is worthy to be beaten, that the judge shall cause him to lie down and to be beaten before his face, according to his wickedness, by number. 3He may sentence him to no more than forty stripes. He shall not give more, lest if he should give more and beat him more than that many stripes, then your brother will be degraded in your sight. 4You shall not muzzle the ox when he treads out the grain. 5If brothers dwell together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the dead shall not be married outside to a stranger. Her husband’s brother shall go in to her, and take her as his wife, and perform the duty of a husband’s brother to her. 6It shall be that the firstborn whom she bears shall succeed in the name of his brother who is dead, that his name not be blotted out of Israel.

This is Moses in Deuteronomy laying out case law for life in the land. Three seemingly unrelated statutes sit side by side: a flogging is capped at forty stripes so a guilty brother is not degraded past a certain line; an ox treading out grain is not to be muzzled; and if a man dies childless, his brother is to marry the widow and raise up a son in the dead man's name.

What holds these together is a concern that runs under the whole law: even in punishment, even in labor, even in death, a person is not to be erased. The flogged man is still called your brother, and the number of blows is limited precisely so he is not degraded in your sight; justice has a floor of dignity it will not go below. The ox is fed from the very grain it treads, because the worker shares in the work. And the childless widow is not left to vanish, nor is the dead man's name blotted out of Israel. Paul later reaches for the ox to argue that those who labor in the gospel deserve their bread, and the levirate law is exactly what the crowd invokes to test Jesus about the resurrection. Small rules, but they guard something large: God does not let people be treated as disposable.

Is there someone I have quietly written off, treating as beyond dignity, whom the law of God would still call my brother?

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