Deuteronomy 24:14

_THOU SHALT NOT OPPRESS AN HIRED SERVANT THAT IS POOR AND NEEDY, WHETHER HE BE OF THY BRETHREN, OR OF THY STRANGERS THAT ARE IN THY LAND WITHIN THY GATES:_ Thou shalt not oppress an hired servant that is poor and needy. Hirelings, who consisted for the most part, though not exclusively, of foreigners (Exodus 12:45), were entitled by express statute to kind and considerate treatment: and as they had it in their power to choose their services, they could doubtless be influenced in the kind and degree of employment they deemed the best and easiest. Hired servants, with the exception of a particular class resident in the family of their master, and whose term of employment lasted for a year (Gen. 25:53), were among the Israelites (cf. Matthew 20:1), as in the East generally, day labourers

14._Thou shalt not oppress an hired servant_. This precept is akin to the foregoing. Moses pronounces that he who has hired a poor person for wages oppresses him unless he gives him immediate recompense for his labor; since the two admonitions, “thou shalt; not; oppress,” and “_thou _shalt give him his hire,” are to be read in connection with each other. Hence it follows, that if a hireling suffers from want because we do not pay him what he has earned, we are by our _very _delay alone convicted of unrighteousness. The reason is now more clearly expressed, viz., because he sustains his life by his daily labors. (101) Although, however, this provision only refers to the poor, lest they should suffer hunger from the negligence or pride of the rich, still humanity in general is enforced, lest, whilst the poor labor for our profit, we should arrogantly abuse them as if they were our slaves,...

14-22 It is not hard to prove that purity, piety, justice, mercy, fair conduct, kindness to the poor and destitute, consideration for them, and generosity of spirit, are pleasing to God, and becoming in his redeemed people. The difficulty is to attend to them in our daily walk and conversation....

EXPOSITION LAWS RESPECTING DIVORCE, AGAINST MAN-STEALING AND INJUSTICE. DEUTERONOMY 24:1 _Of divorce_._ _If a man put away his wife because she did not any longer please him, and she became the wife of another man, by whom also she was put away, or from whom she was severed by his death, the first husband might not remarry her, for that would be an abomination in the eyes of the Lord, and would bring sin on the land. This is not a law sanctioning or regulating divorce; that is simply assumed as what might occur, and what is here regulated is the treatment by the first husband of a woman who has been divorced a second time....

THOU SHALL NOT OPPRESS AN HIRED SERVANT,.... That is hired by the day, as appears by Deuteronomy 24:15; though the law may include such as are hired by the week, or month, or year; neither of whom are to be oppressed by any means, and chiefly by detaining their wages; so the Jerusalem Targum explains the phrase, "ye shall not detain by force the hire of the hired servant;'' nor by fraud, as in James 5:4; [THAT IS] POOR AND NEEDY; and so cannot bear the lest oppression of this kind, nor to have his wages detained from him any time, and much less wholly to be defrauded of them: [WHETHER HE BE] OF THY BRETHREN; an Israelite, and so a brother both by nation and religion: or of thy strangers that [are] in thy land, within thy gate

20. CONCERNING DIVORCE AND LAWS OF MERCY CHAPTER 24 _ 1. Concerning divorce (Deuteronomy 24:1)_ 2. Concerning pledge and slavery (Deuteronomy 24:6) 3. Concerning leprosy (Deuteronomy 24:8) 4. Concerning the oppression of the poor (Deuteronomy 24:10) 5. Concerning injustice (Deuteronomy 24:16) 6. The stranger, the fatherless and the widow remembered (Deuteronomy 24

XXIV. 6_ F_., 10- 13, which stood perhaps originally together, belong to the many humanitarian laws of D (Deuteronomy 15:12 *). Corn is still ground in the home in Palestine; this is done by the rotation of an upper on a lower round stone (_cf._ the British quern used in Scotland in 1880 according to E. B. Tylor (_Academy_, vol. xviii. (1880) p. 204). Deuteronomy 24:7. Exodus 21:16 (JE). Here the law is narrower. In CH (§ 14) it is only the nobleman who may not be stolen (Deuteronomy 15:12 *)....

OPPRESS. defraud. Compare Leviticus 19:13....

Deuteronomy 24:5 to Deuteronomy 25:4. Thirteen Laws of Equity and Humanity Besides the humane temper common to most of them, and a few cue-words, there are no apparent reasons for their being grouped or for the order in which they occur. They have various openings, mostly conditional, otherwise negative. Three are not in the direct form of address, and two only close with this; the rest are in the Sg. form, except one mixed of Sg. and Pl. Some are peculiar to D, others have parallels in E and H. In particular note the separation of the three laws on pledges, and their use of two different terms for -pledge." All this suggests a compilation from different sources....

(12) PAYING THE POOR HIRED SERVANT (Deuteronomy 24:14-15) 14 Thou shalt not oppress a hired servant that is poor and needy, whether he be of thy brethren, or of thy sojourners that are in thy land within thy gates: 15 in his day thou shalt give him his hire, neither shall the sun go down upon it; for he is poor, and setteth his heart upon it: lest he cry against thee unto Jehovah, and it be sin unto thee. THOUGHT QUESTIONS 24:14, 15 421. If Jehovah loved all His children with an equal love, why are some poor and others rich? 422. What is suggested in the word oppress as here used? 423. Nothing is said of the pay scale, Why not? Are all servants to be paid every day? Discuss. AMPLIFIED TRANSLATION 24:14, 15 14 You shall not oppress or extort from a hired servant who is poor and needy, whether he is of your brethren, or of