Today, I am reading and commenting on  Deuteronomy 24-26.

Usually I read a passage, write my thoughts, and then determine what to title the days study, but today I read the passage and realized what theme I saw in the passage before I knew what I wanted to write.  In today’s passage there are numerous commands which call for protecting the dignity of the poor.  This passage contains a command not to take the tools a man uses in his trade as security against a loan.  You must leave him the means to earn the money to repay the debt (and to support himself) Another command that you not enter someone’s house to retrieve the item they have offered in security against a loan.  On the one hand, doing so might reveal how poor a person is, damaging their dignity.  On the other hand, it might reveal items a creditor might coerce the poor person into selling.  There is a command to pay a worker promptly, so that they do not need to borrow against their future earnings to feed themselves today.  Another command orders the Israelites not to harvest their fields with complete thoroughness, leaving some behind around the edges, or elsewhere that it requires extra effort to harvest so that the poor can come along behind and gather food to feed themselves.  Throughout this passage are numerous commands which tell those who are successful to leave opportunity for the poor to better their economic status.  This is the key to a truly great economy: the well off ensure that they do not block the ability of the poor to improve their economic position, they must make sure they do not crush them or their chance to make a life for themselves.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.