Deuteronomy 15:4

“At the end of every seven years thou shalt make a release.” Moses gives this command to Israel as they prepare to enter the land, and it opens a run of laws about the poor. Just before it come the tithe and the care of the Levite, the stranger, the fatherless and the widow (Deuteronomy 14:22–29). After it come the command to open the hand to a needy brother (Deuteronomy 15:7–11) and the freeing of Hebrew servants after six years of service (Deuteronomy 15:12–18).

The word for release, shᵉmiṭṭâh, means the remission of a debt, and it is also used for a suspension of labour. It comes from the verb shâmaṭ, to let drop or let alone, which verses 2 and 3 use for what the lender does. So every seventh year a lender among God’s people let go of what a fellow Israelite owed him. “At the end”, qêts, simply means the end, here the close of each seven years, and so the release came round on a fixed schedule that the whole nation knew. “Thou shalt make” is ʻâsâh, the broad everyday verb for doing or making, and with it the release becomes a thing Israel must carry out. The “thou” is singular. It speaks to the nation as one and to each person in it, above all to those who had lent.

Verse 2 gives “the manner of the release”. The word behind “manner”, dâbâr, means a word, and in a separate sense a matter or thing. Here it introduces the details of how the command of verse 1 was to be done.

“Every creditor” stands over three Hebrew words, baʻal, mashsheh and yâd, an owner, a debt and a hand: the man who holds a loan in his hand. “Lendeth ought” means lends anything at all, so the release covered every kind of loan between Israelites. That creditor “shall release it”, using shâmaṭ, the verb behind the noun for release. He lets the claim fall, and the debt is ended.

“He shall not exact it of his neighbour, or of his brother.” To exact, nâgas, is to drive, as a man drives an animal, a workman, a debtor or an army, and so to press, tax or harass. Once the release came, the lender could make no demand and put no pressure on the man who owed him. The verse names that man twice, first as neighbour, rêaʻ, a companion or fellow, and then as brother, ʼâch, a word used for a brother by birth and, more widely, for any fellow Israelite. Together they remind the lender that his debtor belongs to his own people and his own family before God, the people told to love their neighbour as themselves (Leviticus 19:18). Moses shows the same care in his laws for the poor worker, the stranger, the fatherless and the widow (Deuteronomy 24:14–22).

The release was a gift within the covenant family, so it covered what a brother owed and left a foreigner’s debt open to collection. The word for foreigner, nokrîy, means strange or foreign. It names an outsider to Israel, often someone passing through, such as a trader, and it differs from the ger, the stranger who lived among Israel and whom the law protected in many ways. The foreigner stood outside the covenant and its laws for Israel’s own poor, so his dealings ran on ordinary commercial terms. “Thou mayest exact it again” uses nâgas, the same verb as verse 2, and means the lender could still press a foreigner for payment, even in the year of release.

“But that which is thine with thy brother thine hand shall release.” The lender’s own hand, yâd, is to let go, shâmaṭ, of what his brother owes. The same word for hand stands inside “creditor” in verse 2, and the law places the act on the one who holds the loan.

The same line between brother and foreigner runs through the law of interest. Israel could lend upon usury to a stranger, while a brother’s loan was to be free of it (Deuteronomy 23:19–20), and Leviticus forbids taking profit from a poor brother’s need (Leviticus 25:35–37). God’s love reaches every people, and the line drawn here belongs to the particular covenant he made with one nation, marking the care its members owed one another. The New Testament keeps a special care for “the household of faith” while telling us to do good unto all men (Galatians 6:10). In Christ the family itself grows wider. Jesus calls whoever does the will of God his brother (Mark 3:35), and Gentiles who were once strangers become fellowcitizens with the saints and of the household of God (Ephesians 2:19).

Verse 4 tells what God’s blessing would do among an obedient people, and later in the chapter Moses tells Israel what would in fact be, with the command that goes with it: “For the poor shall never cease out of the land” (Deuteronomy 15:11). The two belong together. Verse 4 holds out what God desires for his people and what his blessing could bring, and verse 5 attaches it to their careful obedience. Verse 11 reckons with a people who would sin and fall short, and so it commands an open hand toward the poor brother. The promise stands, and so does the duty to care for the needy. Jesus said the same to his disciples, that the poor would always be with them (Matthew 26:11).

“Save when” translates ʼepheç, a word meaning cessation or an end, which together with the small word after it introduces the condition, “except when” or “provided that”. The poor man of this verse is the ʼebyôwn, the needy or destitute, from a word for want. It describes someone in deep need, who depends on the compassion and justice of others, and above all of God and his people.

“For the LORD shall greatly bless thee.” The Hebrew says the verb bârak twice, bārak yebārek, and the doubling stresses how abundant and how sure the blessing would be. bârak is the verb used both when people bless God in worship and when God blesses people with good. The clearing away of want is credited to the LORD’s own blessing, more than to any plan or relief of man. The same promise of plenty for obedience fills Deuteronomy 28:1–14, and Leviticus promises that a faithful Israel would dwell safely in a land that yields its fruit (Leviticus 25:18–19).

That blessing would come “in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance to possess it”. The land is a nachălâh, an inheritance, given by God, so Israel’s prosperity in it would always be his gift, more than the fruit of their own labour or conquest. A people who knew that would also know that kindness to the poor is never lost: “He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto the LORD” (Proverbs 19:17).

“Only if thou carefully hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God.” Both “carefully” and “hearken” stand over the one verb shâmaʻ, to hear with understanding, a hearing that pays attention and obeys. What Israel is to hear is the qôwl, the voice, of the LORD thy God. That name joins the covenant name Yᵉhôvâh with ʼĕlôhîym, the word for God that is plural in form and, used of the true God, is read as a plural of majesty. Hearing him is the condition on which the blessing of verse 4 rests. The same pattern runs through Scripture. At Sinai God promised Israel would be his peculiar treasure if they obeyed his voice and kept his covenant (Exodus 19:5). Joshua was told he would prosper as he meditated on the law and did all that was written in it (Joshua 1:7–8), the blessed man of the first psalm delights in the law of the LORD and bears fruit like a tree by the rivers (Psalm 1:1–3), and Jesus likens the man who hears his sayings and does them to a wise man who built his house upon a rock (Matthew 7:24–27).

“To observe to do” joins two verbs. The first, shâmar, means to hedge about, to guard and attend to, and the second, ʻâsâh, is the verb for doing that also stands in verse 1. Israel was to guard the commandments by carrying them out. “All these commandments” uses mitsvâh, a command, from tsâvâh, to charge or command, the verb behind “which I command thee”. The word “all” takes in the whole of what God had given, including the release and the open hand of this chapter (Deuteronomy 15:1–11). “This day”, yôwm, speaks to the generation standing on the plains of Moab, about to cross into the land. The commands were for them and for their life in the land from that day on.

“For the LORD thy God blesseth thee, as he promised thee.” The LORD keeps his word. The promise in view is the one he made to Abraham, to make of him a great nation and bless him, and to bless all the families of the earth through him (Genesis 12:2–3). bârak, the verb of verse 4, returns here for God’s active giving of good to his people.

“Thou shalt lend unto many nations, but thou shalt not borrow.” The same verb, ʻâbaṭ, stands behind both “lend” and “borrow”. Its root sense is to pawn, and in the form used for lending it means to lend on security. In that day a strong kingdom lent and took tribute, and a weak one borrowed and served. Scripture says it plainly: “the borrower is servant to the lender” (Proverbs 22:7). The people who let their brothers’ debts go would themselves be lenders to the nations.

“Thou shalt reign over many nations, but they shall not reign over thee.” Again one verb serves both halves, mâshal, to rule. The two pairs say the same thing from two sides. Israel would have plenty to spare and would be free of foreign rule. Moses repeats the promise among the blessings for obedience (Deuteronomy 28:12–13) and warns that disobedience would turn it round, with the stranger lending to Israel and rising above them (Deuteronomy 28:43–44). Israel saw a glimpse of the promise when Solomon reigned over all the kingdoms from the river to the border of Egypt (1 Kings 4:21), and its history also held long seasons of borrowing and subjection.

Israel’s prosperity was meant to show God’s glory to the nations. A blessed Israel would be a light to the Gentiles, displaying the wisdom and power of the God who rules it.

The release of the seventh year points to the greater release God gives in Christ. Every sinner owes a debt to God that he could never pay, and Paul says that God forgave all our trespasses, blotted out what stood against us, and nailed it to the cross (Colossians 2:13–14). Jesus taught us to pray, “And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” (Matthew 6:12). When Peter asked how often he must forgive, Jesus answered, until seventy times seven, and told of a servant forgiven a vast debt who would not forgive a small one (Matthew 18:21–35). So the forgiven lender of verse 2 becomes a picture of every believer.

In the synagogue at Nazareth Jesus read from Isaiah that he was sent “to preach deliverance to the captives” and “the acceptable year of the Lord” (Luke 4:18–19), words that carry the spirit of the release and the Jubilee. The Sabbath year gave the land and the people a season of rest, and Jesus calls all who labour and are heavy laden to come to him for rest (Matthew 11:28–30).

The promise of verse 4 meets Christ too. “For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, 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 counts what is done for the least of his brethren as done to himself (Matthew 25:40), and he called the poor blessed (Luke 6:20).

The rule over the nations of verse 6 finds its fullness in him. On the cross he spoiled principalities and powers and triumphed over them (Colossians 2:15). His people are a royal priesthood and a holy nation (1 Peter 2:9), sent to teach all nations (Matthew 28:19–20) and to shine as lights in the world (Philippians 2:15). What we lend to the nations is the gospel, the riches of God’s grace to a world made poor by sin.

These six verses show a God who sees the debtor and the poor. He wrote relief into the calendar of his people, and he put his own name on it. He owns the land, the harvest and every loan, so letting go of a debt for his sake was an act of worship. He keeps his promises, the one he made to Abraham and every one after it. He also tells his people plainly that the poor will remain, and he joins the promise of blessing to an open hand.

In Christ the release reaches further than Moses’ law could go. The debt we owed God is cancelled and nailed to the cross, and the forgiveness we receive becomes the forgiveness we extend. Whatever we let go of for his sake was his before it was ours, and the God who called the release his own will not leave the one who obeys him in want.