Deuteronomy23chapter 23

Deuteronomy 23:9-14

Verse 9 puts the army in the field under the law it keeps at home, and what follows is bodily rather than moral. A man unclean at night goes outside until evening, as Leviticus 15:16 required, and each man carries a digging tool. Verse 14 gives the reason, “the LORD your God walks throughout your camp”, and Clarke adds that the rules also kept an army from disease.

A man at home needed only to wash, and Matthew Henry notes that the army asked more of him: he had to leave the camp itself. Service at the front earned no exemption.

The uncleanness came on the man without his choice, and still he had to leave the camp. Henry reads the trouble and shame of it as training in dread of every fleshly lust. Water and evening closed the matter.

Every camp needed a place outside for the soldiers to relieve themselves, and the Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan, cited by Gill, render it a place prepared for the purpose. No man could relieve himself wherever he chose. Order reached even this.

Wesley gives three reasons to dig a hole and cover the excrement: to spare others, to keep modesty, and chiefly to teach reverence for the LORD. Clean ground outside trained the soldier to guard against uncleanness of heart. A tool in the equipment became a lesson.

Spurgeon preached on this verse in Camp Law and Camp Life, and he marvelled that the holy God would stoop to make laws for such things. The camp was kept holy for the LORD who walks through it. His presence was the army's defense.

Deuteronomy 23:15-18

The runaway is not returned, which reverses the codes around Israel, since the laws of Hammurabi put to death the man who hid a fugitive slave. Barnes and Keil read the case as a slave fleeing a foreign master into Israel. Verses 17 and 18 bar the shrine prostitute and her wages from the LORD's house, and Gill notes that the Hebrew word means a consecrated woman.

A runaway slave could live in any town he chose, and the townspeople were forbidden to oppress him. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown picture a slave fleeing a cruel master or seeking Israel's God, and Wesley grounds the law in the LORD who hates tyranny and shelters the oppressed. Psalm 9:9 calls the LORD their refuge.

Barnes places the practice in the worship of Ashtoreth, where a prostitute served at the shrine as part of the rite. It names sons as well as daughters. Such male prostitutes stood in the land at 1 Kings 14:24, and Josiah tore down their quarters at 2 Kings 23:7.

Where the Berean reads female or male, the Hebrew names a prostitute and a dog, and Wesley takes the dog for a male prostitute, as at Revelation 22:15. Clarke notes that pagan prostitutes brought part of their wages to the house of their gods. Neither gift was fit for a vow.

Deuteronomy 23:19-23

Interest may be charged a foreigner and not a brother, the line Exodus 22:25 and Leviticus 25:35-37 draw. Henry reads the permission as evidence that interest is not oppressive in itself, while Ambrose and the canonists after him took the passage as a bar on all lending at interest. Verse 22 frees the man who makes no vow, though a spoken vow binds, as Ecclesiastes 5:4-5 repeats.

Wesley explains the line by the loan itself. An Israelite borrowed money or food to feed his house in a hard season, and a foreigner in trade borrowed to enlarge his business and could share the gain. The LORD's blessing rests on the free loan to a brother.

Calvin places the vow under the third commandment: a vow unpaid takes God's name in vain and defrauds Him of His right. Wesley warns that delay makes a man both unable and unwilling to pay. Ambrose calls the delay ingratitude.

Henry reads the vow here as a promise of an offering beyond what the law required, and a man was free to refrain from making it. Calvin warns against stretching verse 21 to every vow men invent, and he limits it to vows of thanks made freely to the LORD. Such vows were gifts.

Wesley puts the turn plainly: a vow made freely leaves a man bound once it has passed his lips. Bonaventure names the breach this verse forbids, a man who promises God something and later regrets it. Freedom ends at the spoken word.

Deuteronomy 23:24-25

A man passing through a neighbour's vineyard may eat his fill and carry nothing away, and in the grainfield the hand is allowed and the sickle is not. Clarke points out that the disciples were keeping this law when they plucked grain at Matthew 12:1, so the complaint was about the day. Henry passes on the Jewish reading that the rule was framed for the hired harvest labourer.

The grainfield and the vineyard stood unfenced, so a neighbor on the road could pluck grain or eat grapes by hand. Henry draws from the law a warning against pressing a claim to property over small things. The owner lost little and the poor ate.