Deuteronomy 15
ButlerDe. 15 : 1. At the end of every seven
years thou shalt make a release. The year of release is no doubt identical with the Sabbatical year of the earlier legislation; the word “release” of this passage being indeed fundamentally the same word as is used in reference to the land. Espin.—2. The Lord’s release. The beautiful name given here—“the Lord’s release”—suggests Gospel ideas. It finds its higher counterpart in that “acceptable year of the Lord” (Luke 4:19), which is the true “Lord’s release.” Orr.—The scope of the entire ordinance seems to imply an absolute release of hopelessly impoverished debtors as well as a continuance of needful help for their support. Where there was a possibility of subsequent payment the remission of indebtedness was only temporary. B.
De. 15:3. Foreigners could hold no property in the soil of Palestine. Their income was drawn from other sources, and they were therefore under an uninterrupted obligation to discharge their debts. Milligan.—4-6. There shall be no poor with thee. This ordinance is not intended to prevent creditors seeking the payment of their just debts, but only to prevent there being poor in the land. The reason assigned is that the Lord would greatly bless them in the land which he had given them, so that the creditor would be no loser by refraining from exacting his debt from his brother in the seventh year.
7-11. The reference to the release leads to a prescription regarding readiness to lend to the poor. They were not to harden their hearts against their poorer brethren, nor were they, in the prospect of the year of release, to refuse to lend them what was necessary for their uses, but were to open their heart and their hand to them according to their need, lest the poor should appeal against them to God and sin should lie upon them. W. L. A.—We have here what we may call the “poor law” of Palestine. The poor were to be regarded as “brethren.” Loans were to be acts of generosity, and the idea was distinctly to be kept in view that a person should sometimes lend, “expecting nothing again.” With foreigners—that is, those not of “the household of faith,” it might be different; the debt need not in this case be cancelled; the year of release was a Divine institution for the people of God. Edgar.—There is in this law no encouragement to mendicancy, but rather such a check on pressure by the rich and such an inculcation of regard for the poor that beggary may be a thing unknown among them. “The spirit of this law is the same as that of the weekly Sabbath.
Both have a beneficent tendency, limiting the rights and checking the sense of property; the one puts in God’s claims on time, the other on the land. The land shall keep a Sabbath unto the Lord.” C. C.
9. This very provision of God, that at the end of the septennial period release should be afforded to all debtors, might become very prejudicial to the interests of the poor. The approach of the Sabbatical year might make the Hebrew capitalists parsimonious and close-fisted. “Beware of this!” saith God. “Such an act will be an act of unfaithfulness to me.” Jehovah has constituted himself the Guardian of the poor. And if his stewards fail to fulfil their mission, to them it will be accounted sin. D. D.
10. Here is a command to give cheerfully whatever we give in charity. Thine heart shall not be grieved when thou givest. Be not loath to part with thy money on so good an account; grudge not a kindness to thy brother; and distrust not the Providence of God, as if thou shouldest want that thyself which thou givest in charity; but let it be a pleasure and a satisfaction of soul to thee to think that thou art honoring God with thy substance, doing good, making thy brother easy, and laying up for thyself a good security for the time to come. For this thing the Lord thy God shall bless thee. Covetous people say, “Giving undoes us;” no, giving cheerfully in charity will fill the barns with plenty (Prov. 3:10) and the soul with true comfort (Is. 58:10, 11). H.—Open-handedness for God’s sake is sure of its reward. The Lord showeth in both dispensations how “he loveth a cheerful giver.” When a religious man, acting on principle, lives an open-handed life, he has the finest business stimulus. He works that he may have the more to give, and thus be the more God-like. There is nothing so hallows business as this desire to be able to help those in need. Edgar.—A blessing is attached to all obedience when the obedience is rendered to law Divine and gracious. The reward is in the man’s own heart. None can forestall God, or outrun God, or confer upon God an obligation which he cannot repay; he takes the moisture from the earth only that he may return it in copious showers. No man can serve God for nought. J. P.
11. The poor shall never cease out of the land.** This phrase is not to be regarded as indicating a Divine appointment that it should be so, but as a Divine declaration that it would be so. As long as men are what they are, and the varied features of temperament and ability continue as they are, so long will there be abundant scope for the exercise of sympathy and of kindly help. C. C.
The world has never seen institutions like these. No lawgiver ever proposed the like. Here was a picture, a type, a suggestion of what the unchallenged government of men by God, under his covenant of grace, would be. It was indeed justice, with benevolence between man and man. No oppression, no outwitting! The covetous restrained! The keen and ambitious turned aside! The drudge awakened to meditation, and the stupid aroused to hope! The fallen lifted up to essay a new starting! The unfortunate restored to earlier comfort! The whole population made free to consume the fruit of the land wherever it grew, not as the reward of toil, but as God’s free, unearned gift! At last they would surely be able to read this legend over all the land: “Ye and your possessions are not your own.” Grey.
The constant neglect of this Sabbatic year from the very first was one of the national sins that were punished by the Babylonian captivity. Moses warned Israel of the retribution, that their land should be desolate till it had enjoyed its Sabbaths; and the warning was fulfilled in the seventy years’ duration of the captivity. P. S.—When the captivity actually came, the years of its continuance corresponded with the number of the neglected Sabbatic years; and as these were seventy, this would carry us back about five hundred years to the commencement of the kingly government, as the time at which the observance was discontinued. After the captivity it was more scrupulously observed. Bush.
Return of Every Man to his Land.
These enactments had respect to the quality of the sacrifices which were to be offered by the congregation. All sacrifices by way of free-will offering to God, made either by Israelite or proselyte, for thanksgiving for former mercies or by way of vow for procuring blessings desired, should be perfect in their kind. No beast that was marked by any apparent defect, superfluity, excrescence, deformity, or disease was permitted to come upon the altar. Bush.
All defective sacrifices were rejected, that the Israelites might learn to consecrate themselves entirely to God. Two things are required for legitimate worship; first, that he who approaches God should be purged from every stain, and secondly, that he should offer nothing except what is pure and free from all imperfection. Calv.—God is to be served with our best. He rejects the blemished for his service. He is entitled to our best. He requires it of us. Withholding it argues unworthy views of God and of what is due to him. It usually implies contempt of God and hypocrisy in his service (Mal.
1 : 12, 13). Orr.—We must not offer to God except of our best. It must be the noblest, as for him who is noble beyond word or thought; and it must be the noblest, as ennobling us who serve him and making us more like himself. F. W. Faber.
Age of the Offering (Lev. 22 : 26-28. De. 15 : 19).
Three particulars are here noted: (1) That “from the eighth day and thenceforth it shall be accepted for an offering.” (2) That the mother and offspring shall not be offered the same day. (3) That “all firstling males of the herd and the flock” should be offered to Jehovah. B.
19-23. The first for God. The first day of the week he claims and hallows; the first-fruits of the soil he claims for religious offering; the first place in our affections he asks as his due; the first-born, both of man and of beast, he marks as his own. This is his royalty. D. D.—The firstlings which were males were not to be reared for work, but were to constitute, if perfect, a peace-offering before God. Just as in the first-fruits God claimed the first share; so in the case of the firstlings of the herd or flock, and the first-born among men. The dedication of the perfect firstling pointed to the consecrated first-born, Jesus Christ. He is indeed the first-born of every creature. To him the firstlings and first born pointed. He became the great peace-offering which makes God and man one. Edgar.
27,28. Before the eighth day they were not fit for food, and therefore not for sacrifice, which was the bread or food of God, as it is frequently termed. Bush.—The dam and the young are not to be slain in one day. Even the natural affection of a brute was not to be wounded. Much less is our own sense of propriety and good feeling to be blunted. This was a striking lesson in much higher things. M.—This precept seems to be confined to sacrifices, which were to be devoid of all appearance of cruelty. The Jews in general understand it as inculcating mercy. The Targum of Jonathan beautifully introduces the verse with this paraphrase: “And my people, the children of Israel, as our Father is merciful in heaven, so be ye merciful on earth.” Bush.—All cruelty was prohibited in the sacrifices, and in them the rule was laid down that God would not have the exercises of religion disconnected from the duties of humanity. Calv.
Offerings to be Voluntary, in the Spirit of Loyal Obedience and Reverent Worship (Lev. 22 : 29-33).
These solemn injunctions, with the sublime appeal, “I am Jehovah,” are in substance repeated again and again throughout the entire ritual legislation. At every point they emphasize the great fact that the true use and worth of the rite lay in the spirit of devotion which prompted the external act. B.
32,33. Ye are to hallow me in all your offerings and proceedings. And ye have the most powerful motives as well as the most cheering encouragements to aim at this object. “I am the Lord,” the God of covenant and of salvation. This is an all-powerful motive. “Who brought you out of the land of Egypt to be your God” Here is another overwhelming motive. I have delivered you from bondage; I am your God. “Who hallow you.” Here is both motive and encouragement; encouragement, because he who is hallowed of God is thereby endowed with a new life and enabled to glorify God in all things. The appeal is closed with the animating watchword, “I am the Lord.” M.
All Sacrifices to be Offered in the Court of the Tabernacle (Lev. 17 : 1-9).
It is an emphatic declaration of the Divine will as to the place where all sacrificial offerings should be made. As God designed there should be one altar, one high-priest, one sanctuary, and one commonwealth of Israel, this unity of the nation and the religion would be destroyed if various altars and priests, and various places of offerings, were allowed. Bush.—It was of the greatest consequence for a people just released from heathen bondage, like the Israelites, that it should possess only one sacred place. There was nothing so likely to promote the polytheism of nature-worship as that every place should be regarded as holy, according to its natural peculiarities, its situation, its historical associations, the customs of its inhabitants, nay, even according to the prevailing different notions of the Divine Being. By these means a multitude of deities would be produced. Without unity of worship the people, so long as without a king, could not be kept together as one State. And so in after times this “sacrificing on high places” always was the beginning of apostasy to false worship. Gerl.—This precaution was the more reasonable, because in ancient times it was common to make an offering of the flesh it was intended to eat. And hence arose a suspicion that whoever killed animals, usually devoted to the altar, offered them of course; and therefore Moses enjoined them not to kill such animals otherwise than in public, and to offer them all to the true God; that so it might be out of their power to make them offerings to idols by slaughtering them privately, and under the pretence of using them for food Maimonades.
The Jewish writers say, “Before the tabernacle was set up, the high places were lawful; and the service was by the first-born; after the tabernacle was erected, the high places were unlawful, and the service was performed by the priests.” This limitation as to the place of worship is graciously done away under the Gospel (Mal. 1:11), “My name shall be great among the Gentiles, and in every place incense shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering.” Bush.—NOTE.—For the modification of this law by Moses just before the entrance of the nation into the promised land, see De. 12. B.