Deuteronomy 25:8

Moses gave these laws on the plains of Moab, as Israel waited to enter the land. This one belongs to a long collection of laws for daily life in Deuteronomy 22–25, covering property, fair dealing and the life of families. The custom itself was older than Moses. When Judah’s son Er died, Judah told Onan to go in unto his brother’s wife and raise up seed to his brother (Genesis 38:8–10). The law of Moses takes up that custom as a command of God, shapes it by his justice and compassion, and adds a public way of dealing with a brother who refuses it.

Verse 6 gives the purpose: “the firstborn which she beareth shall succeed in the name of his brother which is dead, that his name be not put out of Israel.” The firstborn, bᵉkôwr, belongs in law to the dead man. By birth he is the son of the living brother, yet he is counted as the dead man’s son and heir, and he carries on his name and inherits his property.

“Shall succeed” translates qûwm, to rise or to stand. The son rises up in the dead man’s place and stands in his name. The word shêm, name, holds a man’s whole identity in Scripture: his reputation, his memory, his line and his place among God’s people. The verb behind “put out” is mâchâh, which means to wipe away or erase. A man who died childless would be wiped out of Israel in that sense, his line ended and his share in the land passed to others. God made a way for his name to go on.

Name and land belonged together. God promised Abraham a great nation and a land for his seed (Genesis 12:1–3, Genesis 12:7), and the land was God’s gift to Israel, an inheritance to be handed down (Deuteronomy 1:8). Other laws guard the same inheritance, such as the law given for the daughters of Zelophehad (Numbers 27:1–11) and the law for the redemption of land (Leviticus 25:25). A son raised up for the dead brother kept that portion in his line.

The law also cared for the widow. A childless widow in Israel was among the most vulnerable of people, often with little means of her own and little standing outside a husband’s household. This law kept her within her husband’s family, provided for and protected. The LORD who gave it is the God whose justice reaches the fatherless and the widow (Deuteronomy 10:18), and James later says that pure religion visits the fatherless and widows in their affliction (James 1:27). So one law served the dead man, his family and his widow at once.

Verse 7 allows that a brother might refuse: “if the man like not to take his brother’s wife.” The verb, châphêts, means to like, to be pleased with or to desire, so the brother has no desire for her. The widow is called “his brother’s wife”, Yᵉbêmeth, which means a sister-in-law. The law gives her a way to be heard. She is to “go up to the gate unto the elders”. The word for gate, shaʻar, means an opening, a door or a gate. In Israel’s towns the gate was where legal cases were heard, business was done and the people met, so her complaint would be made in public before the town’s leaders. The elders, zâqên, are the old men of the town, and they acted as its judges.

The widow speaks for herself: “My husband’s brother refuseth to raise up unto his brother a name in Israel.” “To raise up” uses qûwm again, here in its causative sense of raising or setting up, joined with shêm, name. “Refuseth” is mâʼên, the plain word for refusing, and “he will not perform the duty” uses ʼâbâh, to be willing or to consent, so she is saying he is unwilling. She closes with yâbam, the very verb of verse 5. Her words show what is at stake. The name is a name “in Israel”, which makes this a matter for the whole people of God as well as for one family.

In verse 8 the elders act: “Then the elders of his city shall call him, and speak unto him.” They summon him and speak with him, and dâbar is the ordinary word for speaking. The setting before the town’s judges gives their words weight, and it gives him the chance to change his mind. If he “stand to it”, holding to his refusal, and says, “I like not to take her,” his own mouth settles the matter before witnesses. His words use châphêts, the verb of verse 7, so the man confirms what the widow said of him.

The law leaves the brother free to refuse, and it makes the cost of refusing plain. That cost is spelled out in the next two verses.

Verse 9 describes what follows “in the presence of the elders”. The widow comes near to him and does three things. She is to “loose his shoe from off his foot”. The verb châlats means to pull off, and the shoe, naʻal, is a sandal. Then she is to “spit in his face”, and yârâq simply means to spit. Last, she declares, “So shall it be done unto that man that will not build up his brother’s house.”

Spitting in the face was an act of open contempt. When the LORD dealt with Miriam, he said to Moses, “If her father had but spit in her face, should she not be ashamed seven days?” (Numbers 12:14). The widow’s spitting, done before the elders, put the brother to public shame for refusing his duty.

Her words name his fault. “Build up” is bânâh, to build, and “house” is bayith, which means a dwelling and also a household and family line. To build up his brother’s house was to give him a son, and the phrase fits the word for son, bên, the “builder of the family name”. The brother refused to build, and so he was shamed.

In Israel a shoe could stand for a man’s rights and possessions, and pulling one off was tied to giving up a right or passing on property. The book of Ruth tells of this custom in a matter of redeeming (Ruth 4:7–12). So when the widow pulled off this brother’s shoe, all could see that he had given up his right and his duty toward his brother’s house and widow, and had refused to step into his brother’s place. In later Jewish practice this act became the heart of a ceremony called halitzah, by which the widow was formally released from the bond.

Verse 10 ends the law with a new name: “And his name shall be called in Israel, The house of him that hath his shoe loosed.” He would not raise up a shêm for his dead brother, so he receives a name of his own, and it is a name of shame. He would not build his brother’s bayith, so his own house is called by his refusal. The word “loosed” is châlats again, the pulling off of verse 9. “In Israel” means the name would be known among the people at large, far beyond his own family. Proverbs says, “A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches” (Proverbs 22:1), and this man traded his good name for his own preference.

The law belonged to Israel’s life in the land under the old covenant, and believers are under no command to practise levirate marriage or the ceremony of the shoe. What the law teaches lasts: faithfulness to what we owe our families, the worth of a good name, and God’s care for widows and for all who have no one to stand up for them.