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

Today’s passage contains various miscellaneous commands, but many of them touch on ethical business practices (or, perhaps, on forbidding unethical business practices). Let’s take a look at some of those rules:

• Don’t take the tools someone uses to make a living as security on a loan
• Don’t use a loan as an excuse to invade someone’s privacy
• Do not take advantage of hired workers by withholding their wages for a few days
• Don’t use different measures for different people
• When harvesting your crops, don’t go back over your fields to make sure that you didn’t miss a few sheafs of grain, a few grapes, or a few olives.

I see many businesses coming up with excuses as to why violating these are good business.  In a way, the justification for all of these amounts to violating that last one.  I interpret that last one this way: when you are a dominant player in “the market” leave room for others to make money in the margins.  Don’t manage your business so as to make sure that you don’t “leave money on the table”.   It may be “good business” to act in this manner, but it is bad for society, and it is bad for your soul.  The philosophy of “never leaving money on the table” makes people dependent on the biggest players to ever greater degrees and prevents them from independent.  The philosophy of “don’t leave any money on the table” means that you figure out how much someone can pay for something they must have, and making sure that you charge every penny of that.

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

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.

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

This passage contains multiple miscellaneous laws.  However, many of them have a similarity: do not mistreat the foreigner, the fatherless, or the widow.  Those three have one thing in common, they would have had little to no power to defend themselves.  Which gives us a theme running through most of these laws, do not take advantage of those weaker than yourself.

• Do not take advantage of hired workers who are poor and needy, pay them promptly
• Do not deny the foreigner or the fatherless of justice
• When harvesting, leave the hard to gather crops for the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow
• When making a loan to a neighbor, if they are poor return their pledge to them before you go to sleep that night.
• When making a loan to a neighbor, do not enter their house to retrieve their pledge.  Wait for them to bring it out to you.
• When making a loan, do not take as security the tools the person uses to earn an income.

At several points the passage tells the Israelites to remember that they were slaves in Egypt.  We too should remember when we, or our ancestors, suffered hard times.  We should remember that, but for the grace of God, we too might be dealing with being weak and having trouble providing for ourselves.  Let us treat those weaker than ourselves as we would wish to be treated if we were in their circumstances.

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

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

There are a lot of miscellaneous laws given in today’s passage which are not exactly connected.  However, many of them do contain a common theme: do not take advantage of the poor, needy, foreigner, orphan. or widow.  Some of these laws go further than that by instructing us to have business practices which leave room for the above to provide for themselves.  Things like, do not take someone’s tools as a pledge against a loan (if you do, how are they going to make the money to pay you back?).  Things like, do not enter your poor neighbor’s house to collect his pledge against a loan, wait for him to bring it out to you.  Things like, if you miss some of the crops in your first pass of harvesting, don’t go back to get them, leave them for those less fortunate than yourself.

From the different commands contained in this passage, I think we can extend the principles involved.  If you own a business, don’t milk it for every penny you can make.  Leave “money on the table”.  The principles of God’s Laws says that if you follow them, society will be better off, and you will be better off.

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

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

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

Today’s passage contains a lot of commands, some of which seem to have a common theme and some which seem unconnected to the rest.  I suspect that to the Israelites who first heard these commands they would have had greater continuity.  I will focus on the thread which seems to run through the majority of these commands.  The commands make a point that we should not take advantage of others.  So, we should not take as security for a loan the means by which the borrower would earn the money to pay us back.  We should make sure that we leave opportunities for the poor and powerless to work to provide for themselves without forcing them to become dependent on us.  We should make sure that the poor and powerless receive justice.