Deuteronomy 25:5-10--Laws Concerning Levirate Marriage

Deuteronomy 25:5-10
English Standard Version
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Laws Concerning Levirate Marriage
5 “If brothers dwell together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the dead man shall not be married outside the family 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. 6 And the first son whom she bears shall succeed to the name of his dead brother, that his name may not be blotted out of Israel. 7 And if the man does not wish to take his brother's wife, then his brother's wife shall go up to the gate to the elders and say, ‘My husband's brother refuses to perpetuate his brother's name in Israel; he will not perform the duty of a husband's brother to me.’ 8 Then the elders of his city shall call him and speak to him, and if he persists, saying, ‘I do not wish to take her,’ 9 then his brother's wife shall go up to him in the presence of the elders and pull his sandal off his foot and spit in his face. And she shall answer and say, ‘So shall it be done to the man who does not build up his brother's house.’ 10 And the name of his house shall be called in Israel, ‘The house of him who had his sandal pulled off.’

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This is a very unique situation.  It would seem that the brother that lives with the brother who died is probably also unmarried, for if he was married then they would have their own places.  It seems that by the time of Jesus this qualifier was either forgotten or ignored because the Sadducees asked Jesus the question about marriage and if people remain married in heaven and how that would work for people who were married to more than one person here on earth and tried to cite this passage as their basis for the question (they really had no interest in the answer though as they were just trying to ask Jesus a question that they thought no one could answer and trying to make Him look bad).  Here's a link to the passage I'm referring to if you'd like to read it today as well:  https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+12%3A18-27&version=ESV.

Notice this arrangement is specifically if the first husband did not bear any sons with the woman and it is the obligation of the other brother to attempt to try to give his brother's wife a son so that the could inherit his family's estate and it would not need to be transferred to a relative and so that the family name will live on.

It's a little hard to understand the idioms that are being, so I'll do my best to explain what I think it means (maybe with the help of some trusted commentaries).  This was an obligation that the brother was to fulfill, and if he refused to do so, the city's elders would talk to him to explain this to him, but if he refused still after they had spoken to him then he was to be publicly called out and humiliated by the widow of the the brother who died because the living brother would not build up the house of his brother as he ought to.

We know spitting in someone's face is a sign of disrespect, but it's the removing of the sandal that may be confusing.  I'll quote part of the commentary for this passage from the Keil and Delitzsch Bible Commentary on the Old Testament.

The taking off of the shoe was an ancient custom in Israel, adopted, according to Ruth 4:7, in cases of redemption and exchange, for the purpose of confirming commercial transactions. The usage arose from the fact, that when any one took possession of landed property he did so by treading upon the soil, and asserting his right of possession by standing upon it in his shoes. In this way the taking off of the shoe and handing it to another became a symbol of the renunciation of a man's position and property, - a symbol which was also common among the Indians and the ancient Germans (see my Archologie, ii. p. 66). But the custom was an ignominious one in such a case as this, when the shoe was publicly taken off the foot of the brother-in-law by the widow whom he refused to marry. He was thus deprived of the position which he ought to have occupied in relation to her and to his deceased brother, or to his paternal house; and the disgrace involved in this was still further heightened by the fact that his sister-in-law spat in his face. This is the meaning of the words (cf. Numbers 12:14), and not merely spit on the ground before his eyes, as Saalschtz and others as well as the Talmudists (tr. Jebam. xii. 6) render it, for the purpose of diminishing the disgrace. "Build up his brother's house," i.e., lay the foundation of a family or posterity for him (cf. Genesis 16:2). - In addition to this, the unwilling brother-in-law was to receive a name of ridicule in Israel: "House of the shoe taken off" (הנּעל חלוּץ, taken off as to his shoe; cf. Ewald, 288, b.), i.e., of the barefooted man, equivalent to "the miserable fellow;" for it was only in miserable circumstances that the Hebrews went barefoot (vid., Isaiah 20:2-3;

I was also going to reference the passage in Ruth as well as the story of the Prodigal Son and the father putting shoes on the son's feet to show that his right to possess and inherit property had been restored and that he was not to be one of the hired men as the son was going to request.  I think the above commentary lays it out pretty well though.  The man was forfeiting his right to be the kinsman redeemer and the one removal of his shoe was a symbol of this and the spitting in his face was a sign that the woman was not obligated to marry him and could choose someone else.

Next time we'll come back to another list of various laws.  I believe it will be one of the last such lists in Deuteronomy if not the last because after this we'll move towards the people accepting the covenant and repeating the blessings and curses of the covenant before they enter the Land and the passing of the mantle from Moses to Joshua (remember that Moses is about to die and this is his final sermon and God has told Moses to call Joshua up on the mountain with him because Joshua will be the next leader, even though God also told the people that they would get to have an "election" of sorts, but the election was rigged by God so that Joshua was sure to win).  We still have much of the book of Deuteronomy to go, but the tone is going to switch as we're moving away from the lists of Laws to the admonishment for the people to do everything written in the Book of the Law (this book) so that they will be blessed and not cursed.