In this video listen to Deuteronomy 15 read by David Alley, followed by comments and prayer.

In Deuteronomy 15 Moses talks about debt, slavery and defective sacrifices. First on Debt: Imagine a country which cancelled debt every 7 years. Debt and credit would be low. God put in place a number of things to make sure there were no poor among them, including this debt management strategy, and elsewhere things like Jubilee, and the gleaning during harvest.

But we do see poverty in scripture… why? Simply that people didn’t follow the laws of the Lord. Much later the Lord exiled his people for 70 years, to Babylon because of the 70 sabbath years which were not observed. Effectively, lending was to be approached like giving.

We are told in NT terms to give to the poor, and we don’t expect to be repaid. This was effectively the s ...