Ulangan 21:3-4

21:3 Then the elders of the city nearest to the corpse ¹  must take from the herd a heifer that has not been worked – that has never pulled with the yoke – 21:4 and bring the heifer down to a wadi with flowing water, ²  to a valley that is neither plowed nor sown. ³  There at the wadi they are to break the heifer’s neck.

Ulangan 25:7

25:7 But if the man does not want to marry his brother’s widow, then she ⁴  must go to the elders at the town gate and say, “My husband’s brother refuses to preserve his brother’s name in Israel; he is unwilling to perform the duty of a brother-in-law to me!”

Ulangan 25:9

25:9 then his sister-in-law must approach him in view of the elders, remove his sandal from his foot, and spit in his face. ⁵  She will then respond, “Thus may it be done to any man who does not maintain his brother’s family line!” ⁶ 

Ulangan 31:9

The Deposit of the Covenant Text

31:9 Then Moses wrote down this law and gave it to the Levitical priests, who carry the ark of the Lord’s covenant, and to all Israel’s elders.

[21:3]  ¹ tn Heb “slain [one].”

[21:4]  ² tn The combination “a wadi with flowing water” is necessary because a wadi (נַחַל, nakhal) was ordinarily a dry stream or riverbed. For this ritual, however, a perennial stream must be chosen so that there would be fresh, rushing water.

[21:4]  ³ sn The unworked heifer, fresh stream, and uncultivated valley speak of ritual purity – of freedom from human contamination.

[25:7]  ⁴ tn Heb “want to take his sister-in-law, then his sister in law.” In the second instance the pronoun (“she”) has been used in the translation to avoid redundancy.

[25:9]  ⁵ sn The removal of the sandal was likely symbolic of the relinquishment by the man of any claim to his dead brother’s estate since the sandal was associated with the soil or land (cf. Ruth 4:7-8). Spitting in the face was a sign of utmost disgust or disdain, an emotion the rejected widow would feel toward her uncooperative brother-in-law (cf. Num 12:14; Lev 15:8). See W. Bailey, NIDOTTE 2:544.

[25:9]  ⁶ tn Heb “build the house of his brother”; TEV “refuses to give his brother a descendant”; NLT “refuses to raise up a son for his brother.”