What is the context?
A millstone may not be taken as security because that would remove a livelihood, and kidnapping a fellow Israelite for enslavement or sale carries a capital penalty. Skin-disease cases must follow the priestly instructions, with Miriam recalled as a warning to take them seriously.
The creditor must wait outside the debtor’s home and return an essential cloak by sunset. Poor workers, including foreign residents, must be paid promptly because they depend on the wages. The law forbids executing parents for children’s offenses or children for parents’ offenses, and forbids denying justice to foreigners and orphans or taking a widow’s cloak.
Forgotten sheaves and what remains after harvesting olives and grapes are to be left for foreigners, orphans, and widows. The repeated reason is remembered redemption from slavery in Egypt. The people must use their own freedom and resources in ways that protect the vulnerable.
How is this passage commonly understood?
Wesley reads the millstone rule as protecting the means by which someone lives and can repay, and the creditor’s restraint as guarding the debtor’s dignity. The passage’s own rules extend that concern to wages, judgment, and harvest provision. They should not be reduced to a general feeling of kindness while omitting the actual restrictions on creditors, employers, and judges.
What is our position?
We don't have a position on this passage yet. When our study reaches a conclusion the text supports, it will appear here.
Where can I study this further?
No deeper study linked yet.