Let the poor glean the leftovers from your harvest. If a debtor pawns their only cloak to you, return it at night so they can sleep. That’s the way the books of Exodus and Leviticus address poverty.1
But what if scraps are not enough?
Two laws given in this week’s Torah portion, Rei-eh (Deuteronomy 11:26-16:17), treat the rights of the poor with new seriousness. This serious approach becomes impassioned in second Isaiah—not in this week’s Haftarah of Consolation (the third in the series of seven readings from Isaiah), but in the haftarah for Yom Kippur six weeks from now.
Re-eih: Debt relief
Yet there will not be among you an evyon, because God will definitely bless you in the land that God, your God, is giving to you to hold as a possession—if only you really listen to the voice of God, your God, and take care to do all these commands that I command today. (Deuteronomy 15:4-5)
evyon (אֶבְיוֹן) = pauper, needy person, impoverished person.
What if people who suffer a run of bad luck become so poor they cannot even make payments on their debts?
A modern solution is to convict and imprison them—not just in Britain during the time of Charles Dickens, but in the United States today. When these debtors they have served their prison term, they are released—with no job, no new skills, and no money or property to make a fresh start. Unless someone helps them privately, they are likely to end up in debtor’s prison again.
The Torah portion Rei-eh has two more permanent solutions to the problem. The first is a time limit on indebtedness.
At the end of every seven years you must do shmitah. And this is the procedure of the shmitah: every owner of a loan in his hand, which he has loaned to his fellow, shamot. He must not press his fellow or his kinsman [for payment], since the shmitah of God has been proclaimed. (Deuteronomy 15:1-2)
shmitah (שְׁמִטָּה) = remission (cancellation) of debts. (From the root verb shamat, שָׁמַט = drop, let fall, release.)
shamot (שָׁמוֹט) = he must drop, let fall, release, remit.
In other words, every seventh year, the shmitah year, all debts are canceled. A business arrangement that includes repayment of a loan is written to take this seven-year pattern into account. But those who incurred debts because of poverty, and have not been able to pay off their debts in seven years, get relief.
In the books of Exodus and Leviticus, the seventh year is merely when farmland must lie fallow and rest for a year. During that year, paupers as well as the owner’s household may eat whatever food the land produces without cultivation; but no debts are remitted.2 Leviticus also provides a form of relief from poverty every fiftieth year, with a rule that families who had to sell their ancestral land get it back without payment.3 Then, with luck, they can make a living by farming their land again.
But these approaches only nibble around the edge of the problem of poverty. Deuteronomy takes a big step forward with its seven-year limit on debt.
Re-eih: Debt slavery
The second solution to chronic poverty in the portion Rei-eh concerns the institution of debt slavery.
Exodus declares that a male debt slave—a man who sold himself because he could not pay his debt any other way—must be freed after six years of service (unless the slave himself then signs up for life). But if a man sells his daughter as a slave, she is not freed unless a judge rules that her owner deprived her of food, clothing, or sex. Debt slaves of both genders are freed if their owner hits them and ruins an eye or knocks out a tooth.4
Leviticus adds that those who make loans to poor citizens may not charge interest. If impoverished borrowers cannot pay off their debts they can be taken as debt slaves, but they must be treated like employees, as well as being given room and board. However, debt slaves and their children must be freed only in the fiftieth year (if they live that long), the yoveil or “jubilee” year when all lands revert to the families of their original owners at the founding of the kingdom of Israel.5
These partial solutions are not enough, according to Deuteronomy. This week’s Torah portion imagines two scenarios in which these rules in Exodus and Leviticus do not help the poor at all.
For one thing, if the shmittah year is coming right up, lenders might refuse to make any further loans, and the poor might starve. So the portion Re-eih says:
If there is an evyon among you … you must not harden your heart and you must not draw shut your hand against your brother the evyon. Instead you must definitely open your hand to him and you must definitely pledge to him enough [to make up for] his lack that he lacks. Watch yourself, lest you have a wicked thought saying “The seventh year, the year of the shmitah, is approaching,” and you are bad to your poor, the evyon among your brothers, and do not give to him! (Deuteronomy 15:7-9)
Another problem is that if a debt slave is freed in the seventh year of service, he will be like American debtors today who finish their prison terms but have no job nor money nor property to make a fresh start. So this week’s Torah portion decrees:
When your brother is sold to you, a Hebrew man or a Hebrew woman, then he will serve you six years, and in the seventh year you must send him out free from beside you. And when you send him out free from beside you, you must not send him out empty-handed. You must definitely outfit him from your flock and from your threshing floor and from your wine-vat, your blessing which God, your God, has given you. (Deuteronomy 15:12-14)
This is an improvement over Exodus, since women must also be freed, and an improvement over Leviticus, since nobody has to be a debt slave for more than seven years. And the provision in this week’s portion of Deuteronomy also provides the freed slaves with products to sell or eat until they find employment.
Second Isaiah: Doing more
At first the desperately poor are mentioned in second Isaiah only in a promise that God will take care of them.
The poor and the evyonim
Are seeking water, and there is none.
Their tongue is dry with thirst.
I, God will answer them.
The God of Israeli will not forsake them.
I will open up streams on bare hills … (Isaiah 41:17-18)
evyonim (אֶבְיוֹנִים) = plural of evyon.
This week’s haftarah of Consolation, Isaiah 54:1-55:5, returns to second Isaiah’s continuing focus on motivating the Israelites in Babylon to go back to Jerusalem. But the prophet bursts into a rousing call for rescuing and embracing the poor in the haftarah for fast day of Yom Kippur.
Is the fast I prefer like this:
A day of mortifying a human’s appetite?
Is it to bow one’s head like a reed,
And go out in sackcloth and ashes?
Is it this you call a fast,
A day pleasing to Y-H-V-H?
Isn’t this is the fast I prefer:
Opening the shackles of wickedness,
Untying the bonds of the yoke,
And sending out the downtrodden free,
And breaking off every yoke?
Isn’t it offering your bread to the hungry,
And bringing the homeless poor into your house?
When you see the naked, then clothe him,
And do not ignore your own flesh!
That is when your light will break forth like the dawn …
That is when you call and Y-H-V-H will answer. (Isaiah 58:5-9)
The laws in this week’s Torah portion, Re-eih, cancel all debts at the end of seven years, free all debt slaves, and require the lender-owner to send them off with a grubstake. This is an improvement over the laws in Exodus, Leviticus, and the United States.
Then Isaiah 58 urges people to go beyond the law, and do even more to rescue the impoverished: feed them, clothe them, let them sleep in your own house! And stop treating your slaves or employees like dirt instead of human beings!
It is a tall order for private individuals, and we can only do so much. But in a modern democracy, we can also campaign and vote to help the poverty-stricken, instead of pretending that all their woes are their own fault and they deserve to die. We can reform our government and dedicate our joint resources to preventing sudden misfortune from driving people into unpayable debts, to habilitating those who resort to drugs in despair, to making sure every human being has food and health care.
The Torah portion Re-eih says:
However, there should be no evyon among you, since Y-H-V-H will certainly bless you in the land that Y-H-V-H, your God, is giving to you. (Deuteronomy 15:4)
We, too, live in a land of plenty; there should be no evyon among us.
- Exodus 22:24, 23:6, 23:11; Leviticus 19:10, 23:22.
- Exodus 23:10-11 and Leviticus 25:2-7.
- Leviticus 25:8-24.
- Exodus 21:2-11, 21:26-27.
- Leviticus 25:35-43.
Questioning Torah 