Leviticus 25:14, commentary and pictures

Christ Himself, enclosed in the pillar of cloud, spoke to Moses and laid down the principles to guide buying and selling, commanding His people not to oppress one another. The Lord is the owner and Householder of the land, and the people live upon it as His tenants. Its setting is the sabbatical year every seventh year, when agricultural work and cultivation were forbidden and the land kept a yearly sabbath to rest and invigorate worn-out soil, along with the fiftieth-year jubilee. The spontaneous growth was left available with free access for the benefit of the poor, strangers, flocks, herds and livestock, renewing the soil and teaching dependence on God's provision.

The Lord promised to make the land productive if they were obedient, and by special interposition under His supervision caused the sixth year to yield enough for three years, as a constant lesson that the land was His. In buying from or selling to a neighbor, neither seller nor buyer is to oppress or wrong one another, in buying and selling and in all duties one to another. All trade must be honest, just and merciful, with no unrighteousness in judgment or in measures of length, weight or quantity, but with just balances, just weights and just measures. There is to be no cheating in price, weight, measure or quantity and no taking advantage of the poor, the borrower, the unemployed and the homeless.

It forbids purchasing from a neighbor at the lowest possible figure and disposing of goods to him at the highest possible figure, and forbids accepting terms that take too much from the other party. When a seller afterward sees the buyer is being wronged, he must go and explain matters so the buyer does not cheat himself, and likewise the buyer must refuse advantage when the seller is cheating himself. Trade must show liberality, overcome stinginess and selfishness, and care for the poor. It calls for willing giving, free lending, fairness in pledges, and shelter for outcasts.

Fair business belongs with commands not to pervert justice for the stranger and fatherless, not to take a widow's clothing for a pledge, not to enter a borrower's house to take his pledge, and to return a poor man's pledged garment by sundown because God hears his cry, showing that fair business is part of justice and mercy to the poor and vulnerable. It was part of the plan of life given to Israel as an object lesson for all mankind, laying down principles for the distribution of property in which fair dealing in transactions was part of providing for people in need. Not wronging each other in buying and selling and in all duties one to another is actual practical missionary work and the principles of Christianity, the gospel of the Old Testament.

The reason is that by giving His life for the world Christ has placed a high value upon human beings, so that in dealing with fellow men in business, men are dealing with God's property. The principles given to the children of Israel apply just as surely to the Israel of God now, and they will be alive in the judgment when all meet face to face the One who gave them. Keeping them frees the soul, while grasping practice kills the soul and draws from it every particle of sap and nourishment. Carried out today it would make the world a different place, bringing justice, counsel, shade, shelter and protection for outcasts, fugitives, the unemployed and the homeless. It would change the condition of the people by preventing the terrible evils that in all ages have come from the oppression of the poor by the rich and the hatred of the rich by the poor, hinder the amassing of great wealth while preventing the ignorance and degradation of tens of thousands whose ill-paid servitude is required to build up colossal fortunes, and bring a peaceful solution to problems that now threaten to fill the world with anarchy and bloodshed.

Applied now as part of God's care for the poor, the unemployed and the homeless, it requires obedience that does not close the heart and say No when brethren working in hard fields ask a favor, but helps with compassion.