Authentic Community Gives to Refugees

Synopsis     Deuteronomy 24:12-22     3/11/2018

Moses taught the Israelites; For a lender, treating the indebted poor with respect is just. Similarly, an employer must not hold wages overnight since the poor laborer needs the daily wages to survive. Additionally, Israelites were directed to leave the corners and forgotten sheaves and secondary harvests of fruit trees for the resident alien, orphan and widows to harvest.

A note on capital punishment included the admonition that parents were not to be punished for their children’s behavior nor children for the parent’s.

Authentic Community Gives to Refugees

With these laws, poor people from all over the world would be attracted to Israel. The Israel that Moses envisioned would draw refugees. Because it was a refuge for escaped slaves from other countries and because its laws made provision for the poor and needy, many would want to come. In Israel, the poor could eat from the field and the vineyard without price. In the harvest, farmer’s were encouraged not to harvest the corners of the field and admonished not to go back and retrieve forgotten sheaves.

“That will be your justice before the Lord, your God.”

This is a curious thought from Moses. My personal measure of justice is revealed in how well I treat poor people. The measure of a community’s justice is revealed by how well the poor are treated in general. So, the willingness of the poor to bless the citizens of a community is the measure of the justice of the community.

God’s way of thinking has this certain quality of the radically obvious.

“This poor one cried out and the LORD heard, and from all his distress he saved him.” Psalms 34:7

 

From <http://usccb.org/bible/psalms/34>