1. court of justice. The single Hebrew word mishpat can mean “law,” “judgment,” “justice,” “the institution or court of justice,” besides several non-judicial senses.

2. deserves blows. The corporal punishment would be either lashes or blows delivered with a rod or cane. Biblical law is reticent about what infractions merited this punishment, mentioning only the instance of a man who defames his wife (22:18).

3. Forty blows. Rabbinic law stipulates thirty-nine lashes in order to avert the possibility that the executor of the punishment might inadvertently exceed the limit of forty. It also stipulates that if the guilty person is in any way infirm or shows signs of losing physical control during the lashing, the number of blows shall be reduced accordingly.

a great many blows. Literally, “a multitudinous blow.”

4. You shall not muzzle an ox when it threshes. The humanitarian motive of this law is obvious. Threshing was done by oxen either with their hooves or pulling a threshing sledge. In either case, the ox is not to be prevented from nibbling during the work.

5. Should brothers dwell together. Although this might mean in the same extended household, the probable reference is to contiguous properties or properties in close proximity.

carry out a brother-in-law’s duty toward her. This is a single verb in the Hebrew weyibmah, derived from yabam, “brother-in-law.” The institution assumed here is the socalled levirate marriage (from the Latin levir, “brother-in-law”). The continuity provided by male offspring in this patrilineal society was the sole form of “immortality” a man could expect, which would also have the economic ramification of bequeathing one’s property to a son. A man who dies without having begotten a son is thus cut off, his “name wiped out from Israel.” His brother serves as a kind of proxy for the dead man, and the son he begets with the widow is to bear the name—that is, the patronymic—of the dead brother. The practice of the levirate marriage seems to have shifted at different points in the biblical period. In the Book of Ruth, “brother” is clearly extended to cover the nearest available kinsman, even a distant cousin.

6. established. The literal meaning of the verb is “to arise.”

8. if he stands. Some interpreters understand this ordinary verb of physical position to mean “persist” here.

9. slip his sandal from his foot. There are differing opinions about the symbolism of this gesture. Some understand it as a gesture of severance: as the widow removes the sandal, she removes herself from obligatory connection with the brother-in-law and is free to marry someone else. But calling his house the House of the Slipped-off Sandal clearly is a shaming act. Perhaps because only the indigent would go about barefoot, slipping off the man’s sandal in public is a ritual of disgrace (especially since the law seems to assume that he and his deceased brother are men who have property).

spit in his face. Abraham ibn Ezra, Rashi, and many modern commentators interpret this as “before him,” i.e., on the ground in front of him, which the Hebrew preposition could definitely mean. But a more shocking gesture of humiliation may be more in keeping with the harsh tenor of her declaration “So shall be done to the man . . .”

11. Should men brawl together. Ibn Ezra shrewdly identifies this as an antithetical echo of “Should brothers dwell together” (verse 5).

pudenda. The Hebrew term mevushim, like the Latinate English term, is derived from the root that means “shame.”

12. you shall cut off her hand. Once again, the draconian severity of this law led the rabbis to reinterpret it to mean monetary compensation. The law may register a vehement response to a breach of modesty on the part of the woman, but a Middle Assyrian parallel suggests that the case in mind is one where the woman inflicts serious injury on the man by seizing his testicles. If an impairment of reproductive function is involved, this would be grave, and would link this law to the concern for the continuation of man’s name in the levirate marriage.

13. weight-stones. The Hebrew says simply “stones,” but the meaning is unambiguous, and weight-stones were abundantly used for commercial transactions.

14. ephah measures. The Hebrew says simply “ephah,” a unit of dry measure equal to about 19 liters, though some think it might have been bigger.

17. Remember what Amalek did to you. It is not entirely clear why Amalek (compare Exodus 17:8–16) is singled out as the archenemy of Israel. In historical terms, the Amalekites, a seminomadic people of the Negeb and southern trans-Jordan region, carried out frequent and brutal marauding raids against Israelite settlements (see the story about the Amalekite raid against David’s town of Ziklag in 1 Samuel 30). Deuteronomy here offers an explanation for the opprobrium of Amalek not mentioned in Exodus—that the Amalekites attacked the Israelite stragglers, who would have been the old, the infirm, and women and children, and slaughtered them.

18. he fell upon you . . . and he did not fear God. This language suggests an ambush of the stragglers. S. D. Luzatto, the nineteenth-century Italian Hebrew exegete, proposes that this injunction is connected to the previous one about false weights and measures through the idea of deception.

19. when the LORD your God grants you respite from all your enemies. Historically, a campaign to wipe out the Amalekites was undertaken in the time of Hezekiah, in the late eighth century B.C.E.

you shall wipe out the remembrance of Amalek. The noun zekher, which is also used in the parallel verse in Exodus 17:14, means “name” but derives from the root meaning “remembrance.” Etymologically, a name is the remembrance a man leaves after him, and zekher, “remembrance,” is strongly linked with zakhar, “male.” (Compare the necessity of male offspring to prevent a name from being wiped out in the levirate marriage.) But it is important to retain the idea of remembering in translation because the writer is pointedly playing with “remembrance . . . do not forget.”