14 And if ye sell ought unto your neighbour, or buy of your neighbour's hand, ye shall not overreach one another.
And ye shall not oppress one another; but thou shalt fear thy God; for I am Jehovah your God.
Thou shalt not oppress thy neighbour, neither rob him. The wages of the hired servant shall not abide with thee all night until the morning.
Here I am: testify against me before Jehovah, and before his anointed. Whose ox have I taken? or whose ass have I taken? or whom have I defrauded? whom have I injured? or of whose hand have I received any ransom and blinded mine eyes therewith? and I will restore it to you. And they said, Thou hast not defrauded us, and thou hast not injured us, neither hast thou taken aught of any man's hand.
-- He that walketh righteously, and speaketh uprightly; he that despiseth the gain of oppressions, that shaketh his hands from taking hold of bribes, that stoppeth his ears from hearing of blood, and shutteth his eyes from seeing evil:
Go to now, ye rich, weep, howling over your miseries that [are] coming upon [you]. Your wealth is become rotten, and your garments moth-eaten. Your gold and silver is eaten away, and their canker shall be for a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as fire. Ye have heaped up treasure in [the] last days. Behold, the wages of your labourers, who have harvested your fields, wrongfully kept back by you, cry, and the cries of those that have reaped are entered into the ears of [the] Lord of sabaoth. Ye have lived luxuriously on the earth and indulged yourselves; ye have nourished your hearts [as] in a day of slaughter;
And persons engaged in military service also asked him saying, And we, what should we do? And he said to them, Oppress no one, nor accuse falsely, and be satisfied with your pay.
Both hands are for evil, to do it well. The prince asketh, and the judge [is there] for a reward; and the great [man] uttereth his soul's greed: and [together] they combine it.
Are there yet treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked, and the scant measure [which is] abominable? Shall I be pure with the unjust balances, and with the bag of deceitful weights? For her rich men are full of violence, and her inhabitants speak lies, and their tongue is deceitful in their mouth.
And they covet fields, and take them by violence; and houses, and take them away; and they oppress a man and his house, even a man and his heritage. Therefore thus saith Jehovah: Behold, against this family do I devise an evil, from which ye shall not remove your necks; neither shall ye walk haughtily: for it is an evil time.
Hear this, ye that pant after the needy, even to cause to fail the poor of the land, saying, When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? and the sabbath, that we may set forth wheat? making the ephah small and the shekel great, and falsifying the balances for deceit: that we may buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes; and that we may sell the refuse of the wheat. Jehovah hath sworn by the glory of Jacob, Certainly I will never forget any of their works.
Forasmuch, therefore, as ye trample upon the poor, and take from him presents of wheat: ye have built houses of hewn stone, but ye shall not dwell in them; ye have planted pleasant vineyards, and ye shall not drink the wine of them. For I know how manifold are your transgressions and your sins mighty: they afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside [the right of] the needy in the gate.
In thee have they taken gifts to shed blood; thou hast taken usury and increase, and thou hast overreached thy neighbours by oppression, and hast forgotten me, saith the Lord Jehovah. And behold, I have smitten mine hand at thine overreaching which thou hast done, and at thy bloodshed which hath been in the midst of thee.
In thee have they made light of father and mother; in the midst of thee have they dealt by oppression with the stranger; in thee have they vexed the fatherless and the widow.
Is not this the fast which I have chosen: to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the thongs of the yoke, and to send forth free the crushed, and that ye break every yoke?
Thou shalt not wrest judgment; thou shalt not respect persons, neither take a bribe; for the bribe blindeth the eyes of the wise, and perverteth the words of the righteous. Perfect justice shalt thou follow, that thou mayest live, and possess the land that Jehovah thy God giveth thee.
[As for] my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. My people! they that guide thee mislead [thee], and destroy the way of thy paths. Jehovah setteth himself to plead, and standeth to judge the peoples. Jehovah will enter into judgment with the elders of his people and their princes, [saying:] It is ye that have eaten up the vineyard: the spoil of the poor is in your houses. What mean ye that ye crush my people, and grind the faces of the afflicted? saith the Lord, Jehovah of hosts.
learn to do well: seek judgment, gladden the oppressed, do justice to the fatherless, plead for the widow.
The prince void of intelligence is also a great oppressor: he that hateth covetousness shall prolong [his] days.
He that by usury and unjust gain increaseth his substance gathereth it for him that is gracious to the poor.
He that oppresseth the poor, it is to enrich him; he that giveth to the rich, [bringeth] only to want.
Whoso stoppeth his ears at the cry of the poor, he also himself shall cry, and shall not be heard.
To do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed one, that the man of the earth may terrify no more.
For he hath oppressed, hath forsaken the poor; he hath violently taken away a house that he did not build. Because he knew no rest in his craving, he shall save nought of what he most desired.
Behold, we are servants this day, and the land that thou gavest unto our fathers to eat the fruit thereof and the good thereof, behold, we are bondmen in it. And it yieldeth much increase unto the kings whom thou hast set over us because of our sins: and they have dominion over our bodies, and over our cattle, at their pleasure; and we are in great distress.
And Asa was wroth with the seer, and put him in the prison; for he was enraged with him because of this. And Asa oppressed some of the people at the same time.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Leviticus 25
Commentary on Leviticus 25 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 25
The law of this chapter concerns the lands and estates of the Israelites in Canaan, the occupying and transferring of which were to be under the divine direction, as well as the management of religious worship; for, as the tabernacle was a holy house, so Canaan was a holy land; and upon that account, as much as any thing, it was the glory of all lands. In token of a peculiar title which God had to this land, and a right to dispose of it, he appointed,
Lev 25:1-7
The law of Moses laid a great deal of stress upon the sabbath, the sanctification of which was the earliest and most ancient of all divine institutions, designed for the keeping up of the knowledge and worship of the Creator among men; that law not only revived the observance of the weekly sabbath, but, for the further advancement of the honour of them, added the institution of a sabbatical year: In the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, v. 4. And hence the Jews collect that vulgar tradition that after the world has stood six thousand years (a thousand years being to God as one day) it shall cease, and the eternal sabbath shall succeed-a weak foundation on which to build the fixing of that day and hour which it is God's prerogative to know. This sabbatical year began in September, at the end of harvest, the seventh month of their ecclesiastical year: and the law was,
Lev 25:8-22
Here is,
Lev 25:23-38
Here is,
Lev 25:39-55
We have here the laws concerning servitude, designed to preserve the honour of the Jewish nation as a free people, and rescued by a divine power out of the house of bondage, into the glorious liberty of God's sons, his first-born. Now the law is,