Deuteronomy 15: The Sabbatical Year of Debt Cancellation

The King James Version (KJV) is mostly used in these lessons. Click here to access the KJV online.

Deuteronomy 15 is about a wealthy brother loaning a poor brother money and it's talking about loaning money when the Sabbatical year is coming up. Now that's significant because at the Sabbatical year all debts are released. Every seven years all debts were canceled. The law warns the wealthy brother not to be stingy or tight-fisted or hold back his money because the Sabbatical year is near. He sees this poor brother come to him and say I really need to borrow a thousand dollars. The wealthy guy's thinking but it's only six more months till we get to the Sabbatical year, I don't know if the poor brother will be able to pay me back in six months.

Yahuwah says - don't withhold from your poor brother go ahead and give it to him. If Sabbatical year comes about and he's not able to pay you back that quick, just count it as a blessing to him. That's the law of Yahuwah. He's not talking about your physical eyesight, ‘your eye be evil’ against your poor brother when you give him nothing. This means that your heart is hardened, you have no compassion – you are not clean on the inside.

“If there is a poor man among you—any of your brothers within any of your gates in your land that Yahuwah is giving you—you are not to harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother. ⁸ Rather, you must surely open your hand to him and you must surely lend him enough for his need—whatever he is lacking. ⁹ Watch yourself, so there is no unworthy thing in your heart saying, ‘The seventh year, the year of cancelling debts, is near,’ and your eye is evil against your poor brother and you give him nothing. Then he may call out to Yahuwah against you, and it will be a sin upon you. ¹⁰ You must surely give to him, and your heart is not to be grieved when you give to him—for because of this thing Yahuwah will bless you in all your work and in every undertaking of your hand. ¹¹ “For there will never cease to be poor people in the land. Therefore I am commanding you, saying, ‘You must surely open your hand to your brother—to your needy and poor in your land.’ (Deuteronomy 15:7-11)

In verse 9 above, The Tree of Life version says – ‘your eye is evil’

The Holman Christian Standard Bible [HCSB] translates it as ‘you are stingy’ towards your poor brother. The Hebrew literally reads word for word ‘your eye be evil’. ‘Stingy’ is not a bad translation. The HCSB is giving the meaning for meaning translation. The Tree Of Life Bible is giving the literal word for word.

We may miss out on the idiom when we read one version only. The more literal translation here shows that ‘the eye be evil’ it's talking about stinginess, miserliness, emanating from a hard heart. Hardness of the heart results in the lack of sympathy and compassion and this is disobedience to Yahuwah’s law.