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From Eternity Past
with thee, even among you, ... where it liketh him best: thou shalt not
oppress him.”
Deuteronomy 23:15, 16
.
To the poor, the seventh year was a year of release from debt. The
Hebrews were to lend money without interest to their needy brethren.
To take usury from a poor man was expressly forbidden: “If thy brother
be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee; then thou shalt relieve
him: yea, though he be a stranger, or a sojourner; that he may live with
thee. Take thou no usury of him, or increase: but fear thy God; that thy
brother may live with thee. Thou shalt not give him thy money upon
usury, nor lend him thy victuals for increase.”
Leviticus 25:35-37
. If
the debt remained unpaid until the year of release, the principal itself
could not be recovered. “If there be among you a poor man of one of
thy brethren, ... thou shalt not harden thine heart, nor shut thine hand
from thy poor brother... . Beware that there be not a thought in thy
wicked heart, saying, The seventh year, the year of release, is at hand;
and thine eye be evil against thy poor brother, and thou givest him
nought; and he cry unto the Lord against thee, and it be sin unto thee.”
“The poor shall never cease out of the land: therefore I command thee,
saying, Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor,
and to thy needy, in thy land,” “and shalt surely lend him sufficient for
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his need, in that which he wanteth.”
Deuteronomy 15:7-9, 11, 8
.
None need fear that their liberality would bring them to want.
“Thou shalt lend unto many nations,” God said, “but thou shalt not
borrow; and thou shalt reign over many nations, but they shall not
reign over thee.”
Deuteronomy 15:6
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Preventing Extremes of Wealth or Poverty
After “seven times seven years” came the great year of release—
the jubilee. “Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the jubilee to sound
... throughout all your land. And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and
proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof:
... and ye shall return every man unto his family.”
Leviticus 25:9, 10
.
“On the tenth day of the seventh month, in the Day of Atonement,”
the trumpet of jubilee was sounded, calling upon all the children of
Jacob to welcome the year of release.
As in the sabbatical year, the land was not to be sown or reaped,
and all that it produced was to be regarded as the rightful property