Cancelling debts
15
📚At the end of every seven years you must make a cancellation of debts. 2 📚And the cancellation should be like this: every creditor who lends anything to his neighbour must cancel it; he must not require it from his neighbour, or from his brother, because it is called the LORD’s cancellation. 3 📚You may require repayment from a foreigner, but your hand must cancel what is yours with your brother. 15:3 Deut 23:20. Those who did not worship the God of Israel were not to receive the benefits that Israel did.⚜
4 📚However there should be no poor among you, for the LORD will greatly bless you in the land which the LORD your God gives you as an inheritance to possess, 5 📚if only you will listen obediently to the voice of the LORD your God, to be careful to do all these commandments which I command you this day. 6 📚For the LORD your God will bless you, just as he promised you; and you will lend to many nations but you will not borrow, and you will reign over many nations but they will not reign over you.
7 📚If there is among you a poor man of one of your brethren inside any of your gates in your land which the LORD your God gives you, you shall not harden your heart, or close up your hand from your poor brother, 8 📚but you must open your hand wide to him and must lend him sufficient for his need, for that which he lacks. 9 📚Watch out so that there will not be an evil thought in your heart, saying, “The seventh year, the year of cancellation, is at hand”, and your eye becomes hostile against your poor brother and you give him nothing, and he cries out to the LORD against you, and you become guilty of sin. 10 📚You must give to him, and your heart must not be grieved when you give to him, because for this thing the LORD your God will bless you in all your works, and in all to which you put your hand. 11 📚For the poor shall never cease to be in the land. Therefore I command you, saying, You must open your hand wide to your brother, to your poor and to your needy, in your land.
15:4-11 The promise of the elimination of poverty was based on a condition – “if you obey”. However God knew they would not fully obey, so He gives directions for the support of the poor (Lev 25:35. Compare Matt 5:42; Luke 6:34; Gal 2:10; 1 John 3:17).⚜
Freeing servants or slaves
12 📚And if your brother, a Hebrew man, or a Hebrew woman, is sold to you, and serves you for six years, then in the seventh year you must set him free from you. 13 📚And when you set him free from you, you must not let him go away empty-handed. 14 📚You must supply him liberally from your flock and from your threshing floor and from your winepress. You must give to him from what the LORD your God has blessed you with. 15 📚And you must remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God redeemed you. Therefore I command you this thing today.
15:12-15 Note at Ex 21:2-6. This was almost like payment for services they had given during the time of their slavery.⚜
16 📚And if he says to you, “I will not go away from you”, because he loves you and your household, because he is well off with you, 17 📚then you shall take an awl and pierce it through his ear into the door, and he shall be your slave forever. And you shall do the same to your female slave also.
18 📚It must not seem hard to you when you set him free from you, for by serving you for six years he has been worth double the service of a hired servant to you. And the LORD your God will bless you in all that you do.
19 📚You must set apart for the LORD your God all the firstborn males that come from your herd and from your flock; you must do no work with the firstborn of your bull, or shear the firstborn of your sheep. 20 📚You must eat it in the presence of the LORD your God year by year in the place which the LORD chooses, you and your household. 21 📚And if there is any blemish in it, if it is lame or blind or has any serious blemish, you must not sacrifice it to the LORD your God. 22 📚You must eat it inside your gates. The unclean and the clean person alike may eat it, as a gazelle or a deer. 23 📚But you must not eat its blood; you must pour it on the ground like water.