Beware that there not be a wicked thought in your heart, saying, “The seventh year, the year of release, is at hand,” and your eye be evil against your poor brother and you give him nothing; and he cry to Yahweh against you, and it be sin to you.
Not to refrain from lending to the poor because the sabbatical year is approaching
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
הִשָּׁמֶר לְךָ פֶּן־יִהְיֶה דָבָר עִם־לְבָבְךָ בְלִיַּעַל לֵאמֹר קָרְבָה שְׁנַת־הַשֶּׁבַע שְׁנַת הַשְּׁמִטָּה וְרָעָה עֵינְךָ בְּאָחִיךָ הָאֶבְיוֹן וְלֹא תִתֵּן לוֹ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהיר מהמנע להלוות אל קצתנו מפני השמטה כדי שלא ישמטו החוב. והוא אמרו השמר לך פן יהיה דבר וגו'. ולשון ספרי השמר בלא תעשה פן בלא תעשה, כלומר שאלו שני לאוין בזה הענין בזה אחר זה לחזק. (שם, שם):
He prohibited the refraining from lending to some of us because of the sabbatical year, so that [such a] debt not be released. And that is His saying, "Guard yourself, lest there be a thing, etc." (Deuteronomy 15:9). And the language of the Sifrei (Sifrei Devarim 117:1-2) is, "'Guard yourself,' is with a negative commandment; 'lest,' is with a negative commandment" - meaning to say that these two negative statements about the same content [come] one after the [other] to strengthen [it]. (See Parashat Re'eh; Mishneh Torah, Sabbatical Year and the Jubilee 9.)
Hebrew: Sefer HaMitzvot, Warsaw 1883 (public domain). English: Sefaria Edition, trans. Rabbi Francis Nataf, 2021 (CC0). Via Sefaria; translator’s footnotes omitted.
Literary form: a prohibition
Applicability
How the catalog describes where and when this commandment applies. These are independent descriptions, not a verdict on which laws still count.
- Recorded as practiced today
Classical halakhic consequences
The consequences the classical halakhah attaches to this commandment, grouped by who imposes them. Where a category has none recorded, that absence is itself meaningful.
Imposed by a court
No court-imposed penalty is recorded.
At the hands of Heaven
No divinely-imposed consequence is recorded.
Ritual remedy
No ritual remedy is recorded.
How the streams of Judaism treat this commandment
The streams of Judaism read the same commandment differently — an ongoing plurality, not a ranking. Each position below is reported as the catalog records it; none is presented as the correct one.
- Orthodox Binding
- Conservative Binding
- Reform Kept as an ethical principle
- Reconstructionist Kept as an ethical principle
- Karaite Binding
24 of 613 commandments have been examined in depth so far — this one is queued.
How later traditions received this commandment
How later traditions read or reworked this commandment, each attributed to its own voice. The catalog’s own classification of each reception is shown as it records it, never adopted as GEBible’s.
Philo of Alexandria
- De Virtutibus 82-87 rationalized it Philo recasts the lending/release legislation as an expression of philanthrōpia, generosity toward debtors as an ethical virtue
Josephus
- Ant. 4.266-270 affirmed it Paraphrase of the seventh-year remission and lending provisions within Josephus's account of the Mosaic constitution
The New Testament
- Luke 6:34-35 carried a parallel Exhortation to lend expecting nothing in return shares the Deuteronomic ethos of disinterested lending to the needy
Where this commandment meets modern human-rights frameworks
One modern normative lens, attributed to it — not GEBible’s assessment. Each row names the framework it measures against and the catalog’s own classification of the relation.
This framework catalogues tensions; it records agreement in only one of its entries. The near-total tension rate is the shape of the instrument, not a finding.
No tension with the catalogued modern frameworks is recorded here.