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When brothers live together and one of them dies without having children, the wife of the deceased brother is not to marry a stranger from outside the family. Her brother-in-law is to come and take her as his wife and perform for her the duty of a brother-in-law. The firstborn that she bears will be recognized as a son who carries on the name of his deceased brother, so his name will not be erased from Israel. But if a man does not want to marry his sister-in-law, his sister-in-law is to go to the city gate where the elders preside and say, “My brother-in-law refuses to establish a name in Israel for his brother. He does not want to perform the duty of a brother-in-law for me.”

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