17 Be upright in judging the cause of the man from a strange country and of him who has no father; do not take a widow's clothing on account of a debt:
You are not to be moved in your judging by a man's position, you are not to take rewards; for rewards make the eyes of the wise man blind, and the decisions of the upright false.
Cursed is he who gives a wrong decision in the cause of a man from a strange land, or of one without a father, or of a widow. And let all the people say, So be it.
Do no wrong to a man from a strange country, and do not be hard on him; for you yourselves were living in a strange country, in the land of Egypt. Do no wrong to a widow, or to a child whose father is dead.
For when it came to their ears, men said that I was truly happy; and when their eyes saw, they gave witness to me; For I was a saviour to the poor when he was crying for help, to the child with no father, and to him who had no supporter. The blessing of him who was near to destruction came on me, and I put a song of joy into the widow's heart. I put on righteousness as my clothing, and was full of it; right decisions were to me a robe and a head-dress. I was eyes to the blind, and feet to him who had no power of walking. I was a father to the poor, searching out the cause of him who was strange to me. By me the great teeth of the evil-doer were broken, and I made him give up what he had violently taken away.
Do not be hard on the man from a strange country who is living among you; for you have had experience of the feelings of one who is far from the land of his birth, because you yourselves were living in Egypt, in a strange land.
In judging, do not let a man's position have any weight with you; give hearing equally to small and great; have no fear of any man, for it is God who is judge: and any cause in which you are not able to give a decision, you are to put before me and I will give it a hearing.
Your chiefs have gone against the Lord, they have become friends of thieves; every one of them is looking for profit and going after rewards; they do not give right decisions for the child who has no father, and they do not let the cause of the widow come before them.
They have become fat and strong: they have gone far in works of evil: they give no support to the cause of the child without a father, so that they may do well; they do not see that the poor man gets his rights.
Their hands are made ready to do evil; the ruler makes requests for money, and the judge is looking for a reward; and the great man gives decisions at his pleasure, and the right is twisted.
You who make the work of judging a bitter thing, crushing down righteousness to the earth; Go for help to him who makes Orion and the Pleiades, by whom the deep dark is turned into morning, who makes the day black with night; whose voice goes out to the waters of the sea, sending them out over the face of the earth: the Lord is his name; Who sends sudden destruction on the strong, so that destruction comes on the walled town. They have hate for him who makes protest against evil in the public place, and he whose words are upright is disgusting to them. So because the poor man is crushed under your feet, and you take taxes from him of grain: you have made for yourselves houses of cut stone, but you will not take your rest in them; the fair vine-gardens planted by your hands will not give you wine. For I have seen how your evil-doing is increased and how strong are your sins, you troublers of the upright, who take rewards and do wrong to the cause of the poor in the public place.
But you have put the poor man to shame. Are not the men of wealth rulers over you? do they not take you by force before their judges?
And men of the army put questions to him, saying, And what have we to do? And he said to them, Do no violent acts to any man, and do not take anything without right, and let your payment be enough for you.
And I will come near to you for judging; I will quickly be a witness against the wonder-workers, against those who have been untrue in married life, against those who take false oaths; against those who keep back from the servant his payment, and who are hard on the widow and the child without a father, who do not give his rights to the man from a strange country, and have no fear of me, says the Lord of armies.
Do not be hard on the widow, or the child without a father, on the man from a strange country, or on the poor; let there be no evil thought in your heart against your brother.
A curse on the designers of evil, working on their beds! in the morning light they do it, because it is in their power. They have a desire for fields and take them by force; and for houses and take them away: they are cruel to a man and his family, even to a man and his heritage.
For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, strong in power and greatly to be feared, who has no respect for any man's position and takes no rewards: Judging uprightly in the cause of the widow and of the child who has no father, and giving food and clothing in his mercy to the man from a strange country.
No one is to take, on account of a debt, the stones with which grain is crushed: for in doing so he takes a man's living.
Here I am: give witness against me before the Lord and before the man on whom he has put the holy oil: whose ox or ass have I taken? to whom have I been untrue? who has been crushed down by me? from whose hand have I taken a price for the blinding of my eyes? I will give it all back to you. And they said, You have never been untrue to us or cruel to us; you have taken nothing from any man.
For it was the man with power who had the land, and the man with an honoured name who was living in it. You have sent widows away without hearing their cause, and you have taken away the support of the child who has no father.
<A Psalm. Of Asaph.> God is in the meeting-place of God; he is judging among the gods. How long will you go on judging falsely, having respect for the persons of evil-doers? (Selah.) Give ear to the cause of the poor and the children without fathers; let those who are troubled and in need have their rights. Be the saviour of the poor and those who have nothing: take them out of the hand of the evil-doers. They have no knowledge or sense; they go about in the dark: all the bases of the earth are moved.
How long will sinners, O Lord, how long will sinners have joy over us? Words of pride come from their lips; all the workers of evil say great things of themselves. Your people are crushed by them, O Lord, your heritage is troubled, They put to death the widow and the guest, they take the lives of children who have no father;
What part with you has the seat of sin, which makes evil into a law? They are banded together against the soul of the upright, to give decisions against those who have done no wrong.
If ever you take your neighbour's clothing in exchange for the use of your money, let him have it back before the sun goes down: For it is the only thing he has for covering his skin; what is he to go to sleep in? and when his cry comes up to me, I will give ear, for my mercy is great.
For fear that through drinking they may come to have no respect for the law, wrongly judging the cause of those who are in trouble.
It is good generally for a country where the land is worked to have a king.
He whose ways are true, and whose words are upright; he who gives no thought to the profits of false acts, whose hands have not taken rewards, who will have no part in putting men to death, and whose eyes are shut against evil;
This is what the Lord has said: Do what is right, judging uprightly, and make free from the hands of the cruel one him whose goods have been violently taken away: do no wrong and be not violent to the man from a strange country and the child without a father and the widow, and let not those who have done no wrong be put to death in this place.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Keil & Delitzsch Commentary » Commentary on Deuteronomy 24
Commentary on Deuteronomy 24 Keil & Delitzsch Commentary
Deuteronomy 24:1-5 contain two laws concerning the relation of a man to his wife. The first (Deuteronomy 24:1-4) has reference to divorce. In these verses, however, divorce is not established as a right; all that is done is, that in case of a divorce a reunion with the divorced wife is forbidden, if in the meantime she had married another man, even though the second husband had also put her away, or had died. The four verses form a period, in which Deuteronomy 24:1-3 are the clauses of the protasis, which describe the matter treated about; and Deuteronomy 24:4 contains the apodosis, with the law concerning the point in question. If a man married a wife, and he put her away with a letter of divorce, because she did not please him any longer, and the divorced woman married another man, and he either put her away in the same manner or died, the first husband could not take her as his wife again. The putting away (divorce) of a wife with a letter of divorce, which the husband gave to the wife whom he put away, is assumed as a custom founded upon tradition. This tradition left the question of divorce entirely at the will of the husband: “ if the wife does not find favour in his eyes (i.e., does not please him), because he has found in her something shameful ” (Deuteronomy 23:15). ערוה , nakedness, shame, disgrace (Isaiah 20:4; 1 Samuel 20:30); in connection with דּבר , the shame of a thing, i.e., a shameful thing (lxx ἄσχημον πρᾶγμα ; Vulg . aliquam faetiditatem ). The meaning of this expression as a ground of divorce was disputed even among the Rabbins. Hillel's school interpret it in the widest and most lax manner possible, according to the explanation of the Pharisees in Matthew 19:3, “for every cause.” They no doubt followed the rendering of Onkelos , פתגם עבירת , the transgression of a thing; but this is contrary to the use of the word ערוה , to which the interpretation given by Shammai adhered more strictly. His explanation of דּבר ערות is “ rem impudicam, libidinem, lasciviam, impudicitiam .” Adultery, to which some of the Rabbins would restrict the expression, is certainly not to be thought of, because this was to be punished with death.
(Note: For the different views of the Rabbins upon this subject, see Mishnah tract. Gittin ix. 10; Buxtorf, de sponsal. et divort. pp. 88ff.; Selden, uxor ebr. l. iii. c. 18 and 20; and Lightfoot, horae ebr. et talm. ad Matth. v. 31f.)
כּריתת ספר , βιβλίον ἀποστασίου , a letter of divorce; כּריתת , hewing off, cutting off, sc., from the man, with whom the wife was to be one flesh (Genesis 2:24). The custom of giving letters of divorce was probably adopted by the Israelites in Egypt, where the practice of writing had already found its way into all the relations of life.
(Note: The rabbinical rules on the grounds of divorce and the letter of divorce, according to Maimonides , have been collected by Surenhusius, ad Mishn. tr. Gittin, c. 1 (T. iii. pp. 322f. of the Mishnah of Sur. ), where different specimens of letters of divorce are given; the latter also in Lightfoot, l.c. )
The law that the first husband could not take his divorced wife back again, if she had married another husband in the meantime, even supposing that the second husband was dead, would necessarily put a check upon frivolous divorces. Moses could not entirely abolish the traditional custom, if only “because of the hardness of the people's hearts” ( Matthew 19:8). The thought, therefore, of the impossibility of reunion with the first husband, after the wife had contracted a second marriage, would put some restraint upon a frivolous rupture of the marriage tie: it would have this effect, that whilst, on the one hand, the man would reflect when inducements to divorce his wife presented themselves, and would recall a rash act if it had been performed, before the wife he had put away had married another husband; on the other hand, the wife would yield more readily to the will of her husband, and seek to avoid furnishing him with an inducement for divorce. But this effect would be still more readily produced by the reason assigned by Moses, namely, that the divorced woman was defiled ( הטּמּאה , Hothpael , as in Numbers 1:47) by her marriage with a second husband. The second marriage of a woman who had been divorced is designated by Moses a defilement of the woman, primarily no doubt with reference to the fact that the emissio seminis in sexual intercourse rendered unclean, though not merely in the sense of such a defilement as was removed in the evening by simple washing, but as a moral defilement, i.e., blemishing, desecration of the sexual communion with was sanctified by marriage, in the same sense in which adultery is called a defilement in Leviticus 18:20 and Numbers 5:13-14. Thus the second marriage of a divorced woman was placed implicite upon a par with adultery, and some approach made towards the teaching of Christ concerning marriage: “Whosoever shall marry her that is divorced, committeth adultery” (Matthew 5:32). - But if the second marriage of a divorced woman was a moral defilement, of course the wife could not marry the first again even after the death of her second husband, not only because such a reunion would lower the dignity of the woman, and the woman would appear too much like property, which could be disposed of at one time and reclaimed at another ( Schultz ), but because the defilement of the wife would be thereby repeated, and even increased, as the moral defilement which the divorced wife acquired through the second marriage was not removed by a divorce from the second husband, nor yet by his death. Such defilement was an abomination before Jehovah, by which they would cause the land to sin, i.e., stain it with sin, as much as by the sins of incest and unnatural licentiousness (Leviticus 18:25).
Attached to this law, which is intended to prevent a frivolous severance of the marriage tie, there is another in Deuteronomy 24:5, which was of a more positive character, and adapted to fortify the marriage bond. The newly married man was not required to perform military service for a whole year; “ and there shall not come (anything) upon him with regard to any matter .” The meaning of this last clause is to be found in what follows: “ Free shall he be for his house for a year ,” i.e., they shall put no public burdens upon him, that he may devote himself entirely to his newly established domestic relations, and be able to gladden his wife (compare Deuteronomy 20:7).
Various Prohibitions . - Deuteronomy 24:6. “ No man shall take in pledge the handmill and millstone, for he (who does this) is pawning life .” רחים , the handmill; רכב , lit., the runner, i.e., the upper millstone. Neither the whole mill nor the upper millstone was to be asked for as a pledge, by which the mill would be rendered useless, since the handmill was indispensable for preparing the daily food for the house; so that whoever took them away injured life itself, by withdrawing what was indispensable to the preservation of life. The mill is mentioned as one specimen of articles of this kind, like the clothing in Exodus 22:25-26, which served the poor man as bed-clothes also. Breaches of this commandment are reproved in Amos 2:8; Job 22:6; Proverbs 20:16; Proverbs 22:27; Proverbs 27:13.
Deuteronomy 24:7-9
Repetition of the law against man-stealing (Exodus 21:16). - Deuteronomy 24:8, Deuteronomy 24:9. The command, “ Take heed by the plague of leprosy to observe diligently and to do according to all that the priests teach thee ,” etc., does not mean, that when they saw signs of leprosy they were to be upon their guard, to observe everything that the priests directed them, as Knobel and many others suppose. For, in the first place, the reference to the punishment of Miriam with leprosy is by no means appropriate to such a thought as this, since Miriam did not act in opposition to the priests after she had been smitten with leprosy, but brought leprosy upon herself as a punishment, by her rebellion against Moses (Numbers 12:10.). And in the second place, this view cannot be reconciled with בּנגע השּׁמר , since השּׁמר with בּ , either to be upon one's guard against (before) anything (2 Samuel 20:10), or when taken in connection with בּנפשׁ , to beware by the soul, i.e., for the sake of the worth of the soul ( Jeremiah 17:21). The thought here, therefore, is, “Be on thy guard because of the plague of leprosy,” i.e., that thou dost not get it, have to bear it, as the reward for thy rebellion against what the priests teach according to the commandment of the Lord. “Watch diligently, that thou do not incur the plague of leprosy” ( Vulgate ); or, “that thou do not sin, so as to be punished with leprosy” ( J. H. Michaelis ).
Warning against oppressing the Poor . - Deuteronomy 24:10, Deuteronomy 24:11. If a loan of any kind was lent to a neighbour, the lender was not to go into his house to pledge (take) a pledge, but was to let the borrower bring the pledge out. The meaning is, that they were to leave it to the borrower to give a pledge, and not compel him to give up something as a pledge that might be indispensable to him.
And if the man was in distress ( עני ), the lender was not to lie (sleep) upon his pledge, since the poor man had very often nothing but his upper garment, in which he slept, to give as a pledge. This was to be returned to him in the evening. (A repetition of Exodus 22:25-26.) On the expression, “It shall be righteousness unto thee,” see Deuteronomy 6:25.
They were not to oppress a poor and distressed labourer, by withholding his wages. This command is repeated here from Leviticus 19:13, with special reference to the distress of the poor man. “ And to it (his wages) he lifts up his soul: ” i.e., he feels a longing for it. “Lifts up his soul:” as in Psalms 24:4; Hosea 4:8; Jeremiah 22:27. On Deuteronomy 24:15 , see Deuteronomy 15:9 and James 5:4.
Warning against Injustice . - Deuteronomy 24:16. Fathers were not to be put to death upon (along with) their sons, nor sons upon (along with) their fathers, i.e., they were not to suffer the punishment of death with them for crimes in which they had no share; but every one was to be punished simply for his own sin. This command was important, to prevent an unwarrantable and abusive application of the law which is manifest in the movements of divine justice to the criminal jurisprudence of the lane (Exodus 20:5), since it was a common thing among the heathen nations - e.g., the Persians, Macedonians, and others - for the children and families of criminals to be also put to death (cf. Esther 9:13-14; Herod . iii. 19; Ammian Marcell . xxiii. 6; Curtius , vi. 11, 20, etc.). An example of the carrying out of this law is to be found in 2 Kings 14:6; 2 Chronicles 25:4. In Deuteronomy 24:17, Deuteronomy 24:18, the law against perverting the right of strangers, orphans, and widows, is repeated from Exodus 22:20-21, and Exodus 23:9; and an addition is made, namely, that they were not to take a widow's raiment in pledge (cf. Leviticus 19:33-34).
Directions to allow strangers, widows, and orphans to glean in time of harvest (as in Leviticus 19:9-10, and Leviticus 23:22). The reason is given in Deuteronomy 24:22, viz., the same as in Deuteronomy 24:18 and Deuteronomy 15:15.