Justice and the Marginalized
Scripture: Deuteronomy 24: 10 – 21
Background Scripture: Deuteronomy 24
Lesson 9 January 29, 2022
Key Verse
But you are to remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and that the Lord your God redeemed you from there; therefore I am commanding you to do this thing.
Deuteronomy 24:18
INTRODUCTION
The Lesson Study focuses on the nature of God and His excellences. It goes into much detail on what the Second commandment to love one’s neighbor as ourselves means for it embraces the kind of relationship that God wants His people in the Covenant to have with others close to Him as well as the relationship that God wants people to have with those who are strangers and aliens, people that were not initially invited into the specific covenant relationship with God that the nation and the people of Israel had.
The 10 Commandments, the Constitution of the nation of Israel, had made clear that God wanted worship for Him alone and loyalty to Him alone. But God’s desire and will was that His people would love, care for, respect, and show this kind of love to others around them whether they were family, or aliens, or strangers.
We should remember therefore that we are looking at the concerns of a holy and righteous God. This God therefore is concerned about matters of justice and He wants people to be just and He wants society to be just.
It is very refreshing, surprising but exciting to see that God is concerned about things like the happiness of people who were recently married, the protection afforded to women when they are divorced from this marriage, for the poor people that are put into situations that will embarrass for He wants them to have dignity and for this dignity to remain intact. There are therefore many groups that God is concerned about and God has given specific instructions about how His people should treat others who are in situations that are not so good for them.
It is to be carefully noted therefore that though God tells us that we have obligations to certain people, God goes even further by interpreting these obligations as rights.
These are behaviors that we should manifest to all people for the Lord God defines a just society and a just people as one who does not treat certain people with what we would call favoritism for that is how God sees people and God wants His people to see others as God sees them. God treats them in a just manner and therefore He commands that we do the same.
We are to note specifically that when we compare the instructions in Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy with the ancient Codes such as that of Hammurabi we see that the Codes God gave to Israel through Moses is very superior to those penal pagan Codes and represents a significant advance on how we see and view rights. Pagan societies like that in Egypt and throughout the world did not care for poor people, needy people, women, strangers and aliens. They did not particularly care for their own or respect others. They deprived foreigners, women, or the helpless of their rights. Their Codes would call for the leaders to execute people for quite minor offenses and if you were of a certain class and belonging to marginalized groups you were not treated with any justice.
The Lord God Almighty was concerned about matters of justice and His justice when applied to human beings especially to the marginalized is very refreshing.
We should recall that Justice is a major idea in the Bible occurring over 400 times in the Old Testament. The Bible defines Justice in such a way to indicate that laws and statutes and behavior should treat people fairly no matter who they are. People should not get favorable treatment simply because they are family, members of the tribe, the rich and powerful, and those that are in control of the society. So God makes it clear that the guilty should not be acquitted by using bribes and the innocent must never be deprived of their rights.
At its basis therefore is a God which treats all humans as valuable because they are made in His image and likeness. One writer therefore comments:
“God’s covenant people must recognize the value and worth he places on humans and respond appropriately”.
The Lord God has a standard and His standard involves dealing kindly and equitably with all people.
The practical effect of this standard is to enable people to have a good quality of life.
It is to be noted that the prophets in Israel constantly railed against the departure of the leaders and the people from the standards of God. They broke God’s laws consistently. They did not seem to get through to them that their behavior was damaging their society. The leaders and the people steadily ignored the fact that when they broke this standard they would be plucked out of the land just as the pagans before them had been expelled from the land of Canaan. They seem to have thought that because they were descendants of Abraham God would wink at everything that they were doing. The prophets even complains that they often wondered whether God saw what they were doing.
This attitude would lead to destruction of many of God’s chosen people. We are warned by the Apostles that if we disobey God and what He wants and wills we too will be “cut off”.
But that unpleasant thought does not seem to affect those that profess to be people of God in the modern world for we are behaving just as the ancient people of God behaved. So we too seem to be asking the question, Does God see?
The Apostle Peter therefore warns that those who think that God is not seeing and therefore they can continue doing whatever they want since God is apparently experiencing what for them is a terminal delay, that they will be sadly mistaken. 2 Peter 3 references that God is not slack concerning His promise and that for God a thousand years is as one day. We therefore should be most circumspect in our behavior especially concerning matters of Justice. We must do what is right, for righteousness and holiness must be part of the nature of those that profess faith in God.
Some of what God requires may look as trivial requirements, but we must remember that God does not see things the way we do for God is holy and righteous while our thoughts, outlook, and attitudes have been twisted by sin.
Interestingly, the Study Chapter begins with dealing with the issue of the protection to woman who had been married and who did not please her husband because she has done something offensive or literally a “naked thing”. We are not told specifically what this entailed and Jewish religious leaders argued incessantly and disagreed about its meaning. This offence was not specific but it could result in death of the woman. So the instruction was that for the woman’s protection against false accusations of adultery she should be given a certificate of divorce indicating that the previous marriage was terminated and that she was free to remarry. This provided protection to this unfortunate woman.
But we must understand that this issue of remarriage was not really one that God liked but given the hardness of human hearts God had to protect the woman. From God’s point of view the behavior that was common was not acceptable and there was no preferred or easy option. But in any case, the woman had to be protected for she would now become generally a member of the marginalized class of people.
We therefore get an inkling of how God thinks. The regulations continue to tell us that when a man is newly married he was exempted from military service and from any other civil obligations to the state because he had to bring happiness to his wife.
Then there were various laws which protected against taking someone’s livelihood as a pledge for a loan for Israel was warned against taking advantage of each other in times of great need profiting unfairly from the poverty or difficulty of others, says one writer.
Then there was a strict rule against kidnapping members of the nation and taking them into slavery. As slaves they would have no protection under the prevailing cultural practices. So God commanded that anyone kidnapping others must be put to death.
Then to protect the people God commanded that the nation act swiftly when leprosy broke out. Lepers had to be examined and quarantined so that it will not become a plague all throughout Israel.
When we therefore look at some of these so-called minor laws we see something of the nature of God. God is concerned about people and the Lord God does not want things to happen that would damage people. But He is very careful in showing His mercy and kindness. We should do the same for we are to be like God.
Our Study Scripture therefore now focuses firstly on Economic justice, and then the protection of various groups, and then it deals with the motivation for Justice for that forces us to look at ourselves and remember our history and how God dealt kindly with us.
We of course to do likewise. It is clear however that there will be pain for the people of God in looking at these principles and these miscellaneous laws of justice. We will not like the kind of obligations or rights that God gives to others for we enjoy or at least are happy to stay in our comfort zone and not be strict about the law about loving our neighbor as ourselves. But nevertheless we are looking at what God requires. We want to be obedient to God so that we will not be ashamed at His coming.
THE TEXT
Verse 10. We are all acutely aware that there are and always will be some in the society that find it necessary to borrow money in order to survive. The laws we will look at now is not dealing with business loans but subsistence loans, loans which are necessary to provide basic needs of life.
God therefore gave instructions that the dignity and privacy of the one borrowing the money must be protected.
Collateral had to be provided however when the loan was made and in our Study Scripture this is called a “pledge”. The pledge signified that the borrower intended to repay the loan, for if the borrower did not repay the loan lender could keep the collateral. It was therefore most necessary that lenders had to be given commands about how they should treat this collateral.
In verse 6 it had already been stated that when a person in the nation of Israel borrowed money there were limitations on what could be taken as collateral. One writer tells us of one such command:
“Ancient Israelite homes had small mills to prepare flour for making bread. This smaller upper stone was used to rub grains over the surface of the larger lower stone, which remain stationary. The taking of either millstone would render the mill useless. Taking such millstones as collateral would be like taking life itself in the sense that the millstones were a means for survival”.
We can see why God forbade taking the upper or lower millstone as security for a loan for a tough lender to protect his investment would take the upper millstone without which the entire mill became useless. The borrower therefore would have to come up with the money that was borrowed and the family in the meantime would often be forced to pay even more money to buy already processed grain. This is somewhat like what happens today in payday loans which though legal is really legal loansharking which leads to increasing financial stress and further impoverishment of people instead of delivering from need.
Our Study therefore shows the stipulation that when a loan was requested and a pledge was taken, the lender should not go into the house of the borrower and take what he thought he wanted as security. If that was allowed the lenders would simply look around inside the house and take the most valuable possessions that this poor person had.
Note that God was therefore not prohibiting that a pledge could be taken for a loan but the entire transaction had to be done in such a way that the dignity of the borrower was respected.
In any case it was humiliating for lenders to be allowed to go into another man’s house and act as if they were the master and Lord in the man’ house.
We might think that that was not the type of behavior practise by lenders then and we feel that those practises were not followed in our modern society. But one writer awakens us as to some modern practices:
“Michaelis noted that his own University the pawnbrokers, who lent money to students, would come into their apartments to choose their pledges, enabling them to take the very best article they laid their eyes upon”.
Verse 11. Commanded by God, the lender had to stand outside the house of the borrower and actually the debtor had to bring the pledge he was offering outside. The borrower’s dignity had to be maintained as well as the sanctity of his personal dwelling. This poor borrower was given the opportunity to choose what he was offering as a pledge and so he would have to be treated just as every other Israelite was treated.
Verses 12-13. God recognized in His law that the poor person who might be very poor might only have an outer garment to offer a security for a loan. Exodus 22: 26-27 had before made it plain about how this kind of loan to the very poor should be handled. The cloak could be given as security for the loan but the cloak or outer garment could not be kept overnight by the lender. This was so because the poor person used the outer garment or cloak as a protection from the cold night air. The garment, which was most likely the long kind of blanket generally about 6 yards in length and 5 to 6 feet broad that some modern Arabs use currently to carry food and wrap themselves in the day and sleep in at night as a substitute for a bed, had to be returned for the debtor’s own use and the lender was not to use therefore the garment for his own use. The garment or cloak could stay with the lender during the day but it had to be with the borrower during the night.
One writer notes why this was a serious stipulation from God’
“Israel has long, hot, and dry summers. A hot and dry wind blows in the summer from the southern desert region. The average temperature are in the range of 22.2 C (72 F) to 37.8 C (100 F) in the summer. Temperatures occasionally run in the extremely high range of 44.4 C (111.9 F) in the Negev desert in the South. The winters was mild in the central and southern regions and cold along the Mediterranean coast. The cold season is wet in the north and west but brings little rainfall in the South.. The average temperatures are between 6.1 C (43 F) to 22.8 C (73 f) in the winter, but the daily sunshine last from 6 hours to 8 hours. Night temperatures occasionally drop below freezing in the desert. Mountainous regions are cold and windy, with at least one snowfall event each year at altitudes over 750 meters. The altitude, latitude, and proximity to the ocean affect the weather. Spring and autumn are short, mild, and mostly dry. (From weather Atlas0.
Records in the Talmud show complaints about garments being seized by a creditor so we know that this was an important matter for the poor. Many times the people behaved totally contrary to this rule and the prophet Amos along with others condemned the nation for this and other infractions. In Amos 2 judgment on Israel was proclaimed using a phrase denoting the certainty of deadly judment:
“Thus says the Lord:
For 3 transgressions of Israel and for 4
I will not turn away the punishment.
Because they sell the righteous for silver.
And the poor for a pair of sandals.
They pant after the dust of the earth which is on the head of the poor,
and pervert the way of the humble.
A man and his father go in to the same girl,
to defile My holy name”.
Note what they also did in Israel:
“They lie down by every altar in clothes taken in pledge;
and drink the wine of the condemned in the house of their God”.
Note therefore that the prophet is saying that this practice of breaking the pledge and disrespecting the poor and marginalized people are listed right beside other serious abominations and defilements. So we must not think that this matter of the pledge is something that is not important to God. We must understand that acting contrary to the stipulations of God in ways that might seem trivial to you is not trivial to God.
God therefore promises that these instructions concerning how the generally wealthy lenders are to treat the poor and needy if followed will bring blessing to them. The borrower would be inclined to speak words of blessing and implore the divine favor on the lenders so that the lenders would have a good business or circumstances in the future. The obedience to this command would be considered a just deed by the Lord God and God would commend the lenders as righteous. Note however one scholar tells us about this word:
“Righteousness is the state of doing what is required according to a standard, in this case God’s standard of dealing kindly and equitably with a debtor”.
It is therefore not to be thought that this is the kind of righteousness attributed to say Abraham but it does contain the idea of rightness, the idea of doing what is straight and upright, with one walking a straight path.
The idea Scripture teaches is that we behave in this way to the poor and needy because we ourselves are debtors to God the Father. God has dealt kindly with us. He has redeemed us by His Son who came and died and paid the ransom price for taking us to freedom, paying the price for our sin debt. Jesus therefore shed His precious blood to pay our debt. We should therefore be most grateful to God for we were poor and needy and remember that we must behave in such a way as to be kind to all debtors.
Note therefore that God is concerned about the cold and sleepless nights that we experience and God has made this concern a matter of Justice. He has put this obligation as a “right”.
We should even think whether when we lend we should take the “pledge” during “the day”. Maybe when we help we do not have to do that for God does not do that with us when He helps us, protects us, removes our feeling of powerlessness and shame by His grace, without even demanding any kind of material pledge from us.
We do not often pay attention to the fact that we are constantly reminded by writers that the worst aspect of poverty is the shame that often accompanies it. We must consider that there are people that grow with that kind of shame and some of them vowed never to be placed in that position again and so they become cruel, oppressive and extremely dangerous kind of hustlers.
So therefore God knows the power of this kind of shame and He tells us that we should be aware of this and take care not to make the poor and needy feel so marginalized. We should not treat them like throw away outsiders. Economic need is a powerful and dangerous thing and as people of God we should pay attention to this matter.
We should also note that taking pledges or collateral from a widow was strictly forbidden in Exodus.
Verses 14-15. The command is made very clear and is very strict. There must be no oppression of a hired servant, no oppression of one who was poor and needy, whether it is one of the members of the nation of Israel or whether it is one of the aliens that come to live in the land.
They are never to take advantage of the poor and destitute laborers whether they were Israelites or foreigners. Payment of wages to workers must be paid in a timely fashion and it should be adequate to those on the lower side of the economic scale.
We should note that in many cases the prophets spoke strongly against and warned against oppressively low wages.
Here we are told wages must be paid timely and this was not to be determined by the convenience of the employer but by the needs of the workers. Those who are at that lower level of subsistence must be paid on a frequent schedule, such as daily.
We note therefore that God is concerned about poverty but He is also concerned about the dignity of the poor. The owners and employers and the poor labourers all have rights determined by God.
In chapter 25:40-43 God went even further and stipulates that on the year of Jubilee the hired man and the sojourners and his family should be freed from oppressive stipulations.
Oppression is regarded as wrong and as bad as extortion and abuse. It seems to mean defrauding and exploiting someone especially a servant, cheating or robbing them in some respects.
A righteous person does not suppress or exploit another person, nor does a righteous person abuse others. Proverbs 14: 31 uses the word to mean that in oppression one is reviling one’s Creator. It states: “He who reproaches the poor reproaches his Maker”. It indicates there is the guilt of blood on a person. In Proverbs 28: 27 however it is also made clear that helping the poor brings blessing. Proverbs 28:3 warns of grave danger in oppressing the poor. So whether we are rich or poor we are not to oppress or mistreat or to abuse or extort others.
Leviticus 19: 13 emphasizes this matter of dealing with the wages of hired people and Malachi 3: 5 even states that God the LORD of hosts will act in judgment swiftly against those that oppress the wage earner in his wages, oppress the widow and orphan, and God will act against those that turn aside the alien and do not fear Him the Lord God.
God even cares for the employers and the powerful for He warns that the poor might cry to God for the poor had set his heart on what he was to receive for he needed money desperately and the LORD God, note the name used is that of the Covenant keeping God, will hear and act.
Wages must be paid on a daily basis and the sun should not go down without it being paid.
James 5:4 in no uncertain terms condemns this kind of economic oppression.
Verse 16. This injunction is dealt with at length by the prophet Jeremiah in Jeremiah 31:29-30 and in 2 Kings 14:6.
This deals with personal sin and personal guilt. Those who sin and are deserving to die must be put to death for their own crimes. A parent therefore must not be put to death for the sins of the children nor children for the sins of their parents. The prophet Ezekiel in chapter 18 made this quite clear. King Amaziah as recorded in 2 Kings 14 followed this precept and did not execute the children of the murderers of his father.
The pagan nations commonly penalized entire families for the sins committed by the head of the family and they were often put the death along with him but here this kind of retribution is prohibited for God regarded every person as accountable for their own wrongdoing.
Even when it came to the pagan nations God did not allow Israel to have possession of the land of Canaan as promised to Abraham until the iniquity of the Amorites was full. The cup of their gross sins had overflowed and it was only then that God commanded their extermination. But note that God warned Israel that if they follow the sins of the people of Canaan they too would be slaughtered and the remnant of them expelled from the Land and the Land would have its Sabbath rest. Such is God’s view of Justice for even pagans and the marginalized.
The obvious inferiority of the pagan codes which governed them is clearly shown when we contrast the penal Code given by Moses with that of Hammurabi. One writer tells us”
“For example, this Code of Hammurabi (CH210) says that if a man strikes the pregnant daughter of another and she miscarriages and dies, the man’s own daughter must be executed. CH230 says that if a builder builds a house that collapses and causes the death of the house owner’s son, the builder’s son should be put to death”.
Note therefore that God is always caring and merciful and does not want anyone to perish. God does not enjoy seeing people perish and so He has always continued to warn both the pagans and the people of Israel that they should stop sinning and instead worship Him.
There is in Scripture the case of Achan in the book of Joshua chapter 7 where the entire family was punished for rebellion against the designated established civil authority. In that case it appears that the entire family was in cahoots and there was a conspiracy in the family to do what God commanded that no one in Israel should do.
We must not think that what many of the dynasties in Israel did in executing members of the previous king was approved by God. What they did was often not legal and that is why we know that King Amaziah’s sparing the children of his father’s murder was important for he did what was right.
We are therefore warned we are individually responsible for the choices that we make even though our family, the society, and those connected to us will try to influence our choices. But we are responsible and God who in His sovereign wisdom has guided us in what we should do.
Verse 17. This strong warning therefore was that one should not pervert justice for orphans, widows, resident foreigners or strangers were to be protected. The word perverted basically means “stretched out”, spread out or “turned” and Israel was warned not to turn aside from doing what was just and right. Justice therefore involves the rights of people. Leviticus 19:33-34 had previously made this quite clear.
As part of this law the widow had the right of not having her garment taken away as collateral to get a loan. This was a confirmation of Exodus 23:9 and 22: 26-27. Widows needed special protection for when a husband died the widow lost economic and social protection and security. When Israel was seminomadic the tribal and family ties were strong but when they came to live in the land Moses expected that some of that strong tribal and family protection to widows would disappear. It is noted by some scholars:
“The Israelite widow had no rights of succession on the inheritance of her late husband. On the heirs of a dead man (in sequence son(s), daughter(s), brothers, fathers’ brothers, nearest relatives) the widow is not mentioned (Numbers 27:8-11)”.
The family should have cared for the widow but the widow was often forced to live under the charity of others according to Job 31:16. The widow was therefore often unable to pay back her debts at the prescribed time and she feared that a creditor would come in and take away her children, even her baby (Job 24:9) using them as his own slaves. God therefore restricted the kind of collateral widows would be forced to offer for help.
Isaiah 10:1-3 was therefore merciless in his denunciation of what was happening in Israel:
“Woe to those who decree unrighteous decrees.
Who write misfortune, which they have prescribed
To rob the needy of justice,.
And to take what is right from the poor of My people,
That widows may be their prey
And that they may rob the fatherless.
What will you do in the day of punishment,
And in the desolation which will, from afar?
To Whom will you flee for help?
And where will you leave your glory?”
The orphan was a fatherless child with their father having died and having a widowed mother and so they belonged to the class of persons that were helpless and were very poor. God was especially concerned about them.
Verse 18. Israel was to remember that instead of perverting justice they should be the ones who were always ready to give Justice. They were not to lose their memory that they were oppressed and impoverished and treated badly in Egypt. They were not to suppress the memories of the bad times that they had had in Egypt. They were to remember and not simply lose their memory for this keeping of their memory would make them more fair and just to their brethren and to aliens and strangers. They should therefore care for fellow citizens and for people that were not as fortunate as they were. They were most fortunate having been redeemed by God out of Egypt.
Be careful to note therefore that the word redemption is an extremely important one. Moses reminded Israel that they had been redeemed from bondage or ownership and they had been rescued when they were in distress. Moses had to remind them that God had to slay the Egyptian firstborn but that God had spared them. All males therefore were redeemed to God.
We too should remember that we have been redeemed and so we should be more compassionate in our dealings with others who are in some kind of bondage.
We should therefore be careful to remember that we have been redeemed from slavery and bondage.
Verse 19. As a result of God’s gracious redemption farmers should remember the poor and when they had reaped a harvest harvest and had accidentally dropped a sheaf they should not return to pick it up. They should not simply consider maximizing their profit but to remember that the poor would come and gather it up for their own needs.
This practice of the rules about “gleaning was set up to remind Israel that the land belonged to God and that they were simply stewards. Therefore they should not be concerned only about money but should be concerned about poverty being experienced by others as well as the dignity of the poor.
In this practice of “gleaning’ there were all kinds of rules that governed the behavior of the poor. But it was important to know the stress that the stranger, the fatherless and the widow had. They had to be given the opportunity to survive and when the better off followed the rules that God established the Lord their God would bless them in all the work of their hands. They would be successful farmers, successful investors, and successful creditors.
We too should remember whenever we have achieved anything that is good for us that it is simply so because we have been redeemed by God. We should remember what we were like and what we would be like without the redemption of God.
Whether we live a life during which we are merely surviving or we are living a life in which we might have achieved a lot we should remember that Jesus was born in a cattle stall after giving up the glory in heaven. His parents Mary and Joseph were poor and offered two pigeons when he was circumcised, the offering that was established for the poorest citizens. He lived as a poor man and He told us that He had nowhere to lay His head. He died as a poor man and was buried in somebody else’s tomb so that we would be made rich. Don’t forget that Jesus’ only possession was His robe and the Roman soldiers cast lots for that.
So we should identify with the poverty around us. We should as the Scriptures say shake up our fallow ground. We should look around us, reject the satanic ways of the world. We should embrace the ways of God so that God will bless us and we will live with Him in the incredibly beautiful New Heaven and New Earth.
So recall your redemption at all times so that it will affect and determine your behavior.
Verse 20. We are now told more about God’s welfare program established in Israel. Notice that that program was established because of God’s concern and because of the love that God had required for the neighbor. We should not think that this program that we have today meets this stipulation by God for it does not. We are not interested in a theocratic government ruled by God. We are really in fact doing our own thing doing what seems right in our own eyes. We are really compromising. Sometimes however compromising seems to be the best option, but is not the option that God prefers.
The farmers were told that when they beat the boughs in the trees to get the olives to fall into the baskets they were not to keep doing that over and over again to get every last one. They were to leave some for the strangers, the fatherless and widows.
Verse 21. Similarly, when they were gathering grapes in the vineyards they were not to strip out every single grape but they should leave some for the strangers, the fatherless and widows.
They were to remember that they were once slaves and strangers in the land of Egypt and that they were abused and oppressed there. Their behavior should be in radical contrast to that of the Egyptian experience. God commanded.
CONCLUSION
It is really astounding when we consider how God thinks. God is absolutely holy and pure. He is totally righteous and would always do what is right. He will never deprive the innocent of their rights and He will never pervert the justice due to the fatherless, the widow, and the strangers.
It is not that in our modern society we do not have many laws that encourage justice and that tries to create a just society. But we must accept that we fall short. We fall very short and so we must look to God to see what God envisioned for us.
We must strive to know who our God is and what His nature is. His concerns for all those made in His image and likeness are to be our concerns. We must be motivated to do as He wills for it is best for us.
So we pray that you will remember that God has redeemed you and taken you out of bondage. You really are strangers and pilgrims on this earth for this is not your Home. So as you remember that think about your past life and remember what God has given to you. So let us march together to the promised land that God has prepared for us.
It is important to God that you make whatever provisions you have for the poor and needy, the strangers the orphans and widows. It might be only a little bit but it is very important that you do as God does and in doing so protect the dignity of the marginalized.
So let us all do what Scripture says, Do not be weary in well doing.