Deuteronomy15chapter 15

Deuteronomy 15:1-3

The seventh year rests the land in Exodus 23:10-11 and Leviticus 25:2-7, and here the same year releases the loan, so the sabbatical principle reaches from the field to the ledger. Commentators divide over how far the release goes, since Albert Barnes reads it as a suspension of collection for that year while John Gill takes the debt to be forgiven outright. Verse 3 exempts the foreigner, which keeps the statute aimed at a brother's poverty rather than at trade.

Deuteronomy 15:4-6

Verse 4 says there shall be no poor among you and verse 5 attaches the condition, only if thou carefully hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God. The margin of the King James Bible turns verse 4 from an exception into a purpose, to the end that there be no poor among you, while Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read the clause as a qualification limiting verse 3, so that a wealthy borrower could still be pressed. Verse 6 raises the promise to national scale, lending to many nations and borrowing of none.

Deuteronomy 15:7-8

The command reaches the heart and the hand in one clause, and Matthew Henry takes the shut hand as the visible sign of the hardened heart. Open thine hand wide is then measured by the man's case, sufficient for his need, in that which he wanteth, which Adam Clarke reads as the only rule a giver is given. First John 3:17 puts the same two things together, a brother's need seen and the heart shut against it.

Deuteronomy 15:9-10

The statute anticipates a man doing arithmetic, counting the months to the year of release and lending nothing because the debt is about to be cancelled. Adam Clarke renders the Hebrew behind thy wicked heart as a heart of Belial, and reads thine eye be evil as covetousness, the figure Jesus uses at Matthew 6:23 and Matthew 20:15. The refusal is called sin and the poor man's cry goes to the Lord, which is how Exodus 22:22-27 handles the cry of the widow and the pledged garment. Verse 10 asks for the gift without a grieved heart, and 2 Corinthians 9:7 takes up that clause as the cheerful giver.

Deuteronomy 15:11

Verse 4 promised that there shall be no poor among you and verse 11 says the poor shall never cease, with the condition of verse 5 standing between the two and the chapter settling nothing. Jesus quotes this verse at Mark 14:7 over the ointment poured at Bethany, and the same words stand at Matthew 26:11 and John 12:8. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read the permanence of poverty as partly the penalty of disobedience and partly an occasion for mercy, where Adam Clarke reads it as mercy alone. The command attached to the observation is the command already given at verse 8.

Deuteronomy 15:12-14

Exodus 21:2-6 gave this law first and two things move here. The Hebrew woman is placed under the same six years and the same seventh-year freedom, where Exodus 21:7 said a daughter sold as a maidservant shall not go out as the menservants do, and readers have long worked at how the two passages stand together. The second change is the furnishing, out of thy flock, and out of thy floor, and out of thy winepress, which Albert Barnes reads as capital that lets a freed man begin again. Jeremiah 34:8-17 is where Judah keeps this law for a moment, takes the freed servants back, and is answered with a release of another kind.

Deuteronomy 15:15

Remember falls fourteen times in this book and what is to be remembered is always an event rather than a doctrine. The ground of the law is the master's own history, that he was a bondman and the Lord redeemed him, so the man who was let go is the man who lets his servant go. The same clause carries the sabbath at 5:15, the feast of weeks at 16:12, and the gleaning laws at 24:18 and 24:22.

Deuteronomy 15:16-17

Exodus 21:5-6 gave this ceremony and the repetition drops a step, since there the master brought the servant unto the judges and then to the door, and here he takes the aul and the door alone. The reason the servant gives is love, of the master and of the house, so an act that binds a man for life rests on words he says himself. Verse 17 extends the whole provision to the maidservant, which Exodus does not do. Older commentators, John Gill among them, set the bored ear beside Psalm 40:6, mine ears hast thou opened, and read it of the obedience of Christ, and Hebrews 10:5 quotes that psalm in its Septuagint form, a body hast thou prepared me.

Deuteronomy 15:18

The master is told what the six years were worth, a double hired servant, and John Gill gives the arithmetic, that a hired man draws wages on top of his keep and a bondservant draws none. Readers differ over whether double weighs the value of the labour or the length of the term a hired man would have served. The clause names the master's resentment before he feels it and answers it with a blessing on all that thou doest.

Deuteronomy 15:19-20

Exodus 13:2 and 13:12 claimed the firstlings, and Numbers 18:15-18 gave their flesh to the priests, while this chapter has the owner and his household eating the firstling before the Lord year by year. Both accounts stand, and Keil and Delitzsch work at the difference by reading Deuteronomy as the sacrificial meal the offerer shares rather than the priest's portion. Forbidding work with the bullock and shearing of the sheep stops an owner drawing profit from an animal already given away. The place which the Lord shall choose falls fifteen times between chapters 12 and 26 and is never named, and verse 20 is one of the fifteen.

Deuteronomy 15:21-23

Lame and blind is the exact pair Malachi 1:8 throws back at priests who brought such animals to the altar. What cannot be sacrificed is eaten at home as common food, and the unclean and the clean eat it alike, as the roebuck and as the hart, which is the allowance already made at 12:15 and 12:22. The blood is held back and poured upon the ground as water, the rule of Genesis 9:4, Leviticus 17:11-14 and Deuteronomy 12:16, and the one part of the sacrificial law the council at Acts 15:20 lays on Gentile believers.