Deuteronomy 15:11

Deuteronomy records the last addresses of Moses to the generation about to enter Canaan, and chapters 12 to 26 set out the statutes Israel was to keep there. Deuteronomy 15 deals with the poor and the indebted. It opens with the year of release, the shemitah, when every seventh year the debts of fellow Israelites were cancelled (Deuteronomy 15:1–6). Verse 7 then turns from that periodic release to the everyday duty of caring for a poor brother, and the chapter goes on to the release of Hebrew servants, where Israel is told to remember its own slavery in Egypt and the LORD’s redemption (Deuteronomy 15:15).

Israel was moving from a wandering life to settled farming, and in a farming society a family’s security was fragile. Famine, war, illness or plain misfortune could bring crushing debt and even slavery. God’s law surrounded the poor with protection. The corners of the field and the gleanings were left for them (Leviticus 19:9–10), a tithe was set aside for them, the land rested every seventh year (Leviticus 25:1–7), and earlier laws governed loans and pledges (Exodus 22:25–27). The land itself was God’s, entrusted to his people, and the nations around Israel often exploited the weak. Israel was to be a different kind of society, because Israel had been poor and enslaved and God had set them free.

The command begins with a real person: “a poor man of one of thy brethren”. The word for poor, ʼebyôwn, means destitute or needy, and it comes from a root meaning to want. It describes someone who lacks and must depend on others. He is a brother, a member of the covenant family, and he lives “within any of thy gates”, in the towns where Israel’s daily life was carried on. The city gate was the place of trade, public life and justice, so his need would be seen there by everyone. He lives “in thy land which the LORD thy God giveth thee” (Yᵉhôvâh thy ʼĕlôhîym), and that phrase reminds the hearer that everything he owns came to him as a gift.

God speaks first to the heart. To harden, ʼâmats, is a verb of strength. It usually means to be strong, courageous or firm, and here that firmness is turned against a brother, so that the heart sets itself and refuses to be moved. The heart, lêbâb, is the seat of thought, feeling and will in Scripture, so the command asks for a choice to stay open to another person’s trouble.

Then God speaks to the hand. To shut, qâphats, means to draw together or close, the picture of a fist clenched around what it holds. The hand, yâd, stands for a person’s power to act and to give. The order matters. A closed hand begins as a hardened heart, and the verse ends by naming the man once more as “thy poor brother”. Proverbs carries the same teaching about giving to the poor (Proverbs 28:27), and Isaiah includes sharing bread with the hungry in the fast that God chooses (Isaiah 58:7).

The command is addressed to “thou”, one person with one heart and one hand. It also sits inside a body of law (the release of debts, gleaning, tithes) that shaped the whole community, and the mention of gates and land shows that the towns of Israel together were answerable for their poor. Personal generosity and a justly ordered society belong together in this chapter.

Verse 8 turns the prohibition into a positive command. The verb pâthach means to open wide or to loosen, and the Hebrew doubles it for emphasis, literally “opening, you shall open your hand”. The KJV carries that force with the word “wide”. The hand that was told in verse 7 to stay unclenched is now told to open fully and freely.

The measure of the gift is the brother’s need. He is to be lent “sufficient for his need, in that which he wanteth”. The word for need, machçôwr, means a lack or deficiency, a real want and something weightier than a passing wish. So the help is to be enough to meet the actual shortage, and it is to fit this particular person’s trouble. That calls for paying attention to him. Help that fits the need can set a man back on his feet.

Verse 9 goes behind the deed to the thought that produces it. “Beware” is spoken to a man doing sums in his head: the seventh year is near, the debt will soon be cancelled, so a loan now is as good as lost. God names that reasoning for what it is. The heart that thinks it is called wicked, bᵉlîyaʻal, a word that means worthlessness or wickedness. It is a prudent-sounding thought, and God calls it worthless because it finds a way around his law at a brother’s expense. Israel had been told to love the LORD with all the heart (Deuteronomy 6:5), and here God shows that he reads the heart’s calculations as well as its deeds.

The thought then shows in the eye: “thine eye be evil against thy poor brother”. The idiom joins the word for eye, ʻayin, with râʻaʻ, to be evil, a verb whose senses include to begrudge. An evil eye in Scripture is a stingy, begrudging way of looking at someone in need. Its opposite is the generous eye that Proverbs blesses (Proverbs 22:9), and Jesus uses the same picture when he says that a good eye fills the body with light and an evil eye fills it with darkness (Matthew 6:22–23). The begrudging look ends in an empty hand: “thou givest him nought”.

The poor brother has somewhere to go. “He cry unto the LORD against thee” tells us that God is the defender of the one who is turned away, just as he heard Israel’s cry in Egypt. The result is stated plainly: “it be sin unto thee”. The word chêṭᵉʼ means sin, or the guilt a person bears for a wrong act. Stinginess toward a brother in need is therefore an offence against God himself, and Scripture says the same elsewhere. Proverbs warns the one who hides his eyes from the poor (Proverbs 28:27), and James asks what good it does to wish a cold and hungry brother well and give him nothing (James 2:14–17).

The year of release belonged to Israel’s own law, but the warning reaches every kind of money dealing. Fear of loss is still the commonest reason for a closed hand, and the verse teaches us to examine our motives when we lend, give or hold back.

Verse 10 answers the grudging thought with a command and a promise. “Thou shalt surely give him” doubles the verb again. Nâthan is the ordinary Hebrew word for giving, used very broadly, and the doubling makes the command certain: you shall indeed give. This is said to the very man who was tempted to wait until the release had passed.

God then asks for the heart to go with the gift: “thine heart shall not be grieved when thou givest unto him”. The verb yâraʻ means to be broken up, and so to be grieved or to find something grievous. The giver’s heart is to be whole and willing as the gift leaves his hand, free of the sense that he has lost something. Paul teaches the same when he writes that God loves a cheerful giver, and that the one who sows bountifully will reap bountifully (2 Corinthians 9:6–8).

The promise follows: “for this thing the LORD thy God shall bless thee in all thy works, and in all that thou puttest thine hand unto”. “This thing” is dâbâr, a word that means both a word and a matter or affair, and here it is the matter of giving gladly. To bless, bârak, comes from a root meaning to kneel, and when God blesses a person he gives his favour and makes that person’s labour fruitful. The blessing covers “all thy works” (maʻăseh, deeds and labour) and everything to which the hand is put (mishlôwach, joined here with yâd). The hand that opens to a brother is the same hand God promises to prosper. Proverbs puts it memorably: “He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the LORD” (Proverbs 19:17). Jesus says, “Give, and it shall be given unto you” (Luke 6:38).

Verse 11 gives the standing reason for all that has gone before. To cease, châdal, means to stop or to be lacking, so the sentence says that the poor will always be found in the land. This is a sober statement about life in a fallen world. Even under good laws and in a land God blesses, need will keep appearing.

The next word is “therefore”. God draws a command out of that fact: “therefore I command thee”. The verb tsâvâh is the word for an authoritative, binding order, so care for the poor is obedience owed to God. The command repeats the doubled verb of verse 8, “Thou shalt open thine hand wide”, and names those who are to receive: “thy brother”, “thy poor” and “thy needy”. Beside ʼebyôwn the verse sets a second word, ʻânîy, which describes the afflicted and humble and comes from a root meaning to depress or afflict. “In thy land” keeps the duty close to home, among the people one actually lives beside.

Christians stand under the new covenant and do not look to the law of Moses for righteousness. This law shows the heart of God for the poor, and his heart is the same today. The New Testament takes up its teaching and deepens it. Jesus says, “Give to him that asketh thee” (Matthew 5:42), and again tells his followers to give to everyone who asks (Luke 6:30). The first believers shared what they had (Acts 2:44–45), so that none among them was in need (Acts 4:34–35). Paul tells us to do good to all, especially to the household of faith (Galatians 6:10), which keeps Deuteronomy’s “thy brother” and widens it to every neighbour. John asks how the love of God can live in someone who sees a brother in need and closes his heart against him (1 John 3:16–18). The Sabbatical calendar has passed, and the open hand remains, now flowing from a heart that Christ has changed.

The open heart and open hand that this law commands are seen perfectly in Jesus. Paul writes that “though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9). He emptied himself and took the form of a servant (Philippians 2:5–8). In his ministry he healed the sick, fed the hungry and cared for the lowly, and he gave his life a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). On the cross his hands were opened and nailed, and he poured out his life as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). This is the giving of God himself, who so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son (John 3:16). We were the poor brother, spiritually destitute and enslaved by sin, and what Christ gave was sufficient for our need.

Jesus also binds himself to the poor. He says that what is done for the least of his brethren is done for him (Matthew 25:31–46), so the brother of Deuteronomy 15 is one in whom Christ is served. He teaches us to lay up treasure in heaven (Matthew 6:19–21), which frees the hand to open on earth. The law exposed the grudging heart and the evil eye in us, and Christ both forgives that heart and, by his Spirit, gives a new one.

These five verses show who God is. He sees the poor man at the gate, he hears his cry, and he takes the side of the one who is turned away. He also knows the giver through and through, down to the quiet arithmetic that talks a person out of kindness, and he cares enough about the giver’s heart to want it glad.

The passage gives us a way of holding what we own. The land was a gift, the harvest was a gift, and the blessing promised on “all thy works” is a gift still to come. A person who believes that can lend to a brother and leave the outcome with God. When a need comes before you, verse 8 gives the measure, which is what the person actually lacks, and verse 10 gives the promise that goes with it.

It also gives us patience. Need will keep returning, and God has already told us so. Each time it returns, the command returns with it, and so does the God who opened his own hand to us in Christ.