In his day you shall give him his wages, neither shall the sun go down on it; for he is poor and sets his heart on it; lest he cry against you to Yahweh, and it be sin to you.
To pay a hired worker his wages on the same day before sunset
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
בְּיוֹמוֹ תִתֵּן שְׂכָרוֹ וְלֹא־תָבוֹא עָלָיו הַשֶּׁמֶשׁ כִּי עָנִי הוּא וְאֵלָיו הוּא נֹשֵׂא אֶת־נַפְשׁוֹ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו לתת שכר שכיר ביומו ולא יאחר אותו ליום אחר. והוא אמרו יתעלה ביומו תתן שכרו. ודין מצוה זו שיהיה שכיר יום גובה כל הלילה ושכיר לילה גובה כל היום כמו שנבאר במצות לא תעשה. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו בפ"ט ממציעא. ושם התבאר שזה מחוייב בכל שכיר יום בין בנכרי בין בישראל מצות עשה לפרוע בזמנו. (כי תצא, משפטים, הלכות שכירות פי"א):
That is that He commanded us to give the wage of an employee on its day, and not to delay it to another day. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "You must pay him his wage on the same day" (Deuteronomy 24:15). And the law of this commandment is that a day-worker is to collect [his wage] during any of the night, and a night-worker is to collect during any of the day - as we will explain in the negative commandment (Sefer HaMitzvot, Negative Commandments 238). And the regulations of this commandment have already been explained in Chapter 9 of [Bava] Metzia. And there, it is explained that this is obligatory with any daily worker, whether a stranger or a Jew - it is a positive commandment to pay on time. (See Parashat Ki Tetzei; Mishneh Torah, Hiring 11).
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 flat, unconditional command
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 Specialibus Legibus 4.195 rationalized it treats prompt payment as required by reason and compassion for the laborer's dependence
- De Virtutibus 88 affirmed it
Josephus
- Ant. 4.288 affirmed it paraphrase requiring prompt payment of wages within the laws protecting the dependent; reference attributed, not load-bearing
The New Testament
- James 5:4 affirmed it withheld wages of harvesters 'cry out' against the rich, echoing the Deuteronomic/prophetic motif
- 1 Timothy 5:18 affirmed it 'the laborer deserves his wages,' citing the principle of timely compensation
The Qur'an and hadith
- Sunan Ibn Majah 2443 The catalog describes this reception as: parallel (hadith: 'Give the worker his wages before his sweat dries')
Beside the older legal codes of its world
The commandment set beside the ancient Near-Eastern legal collections scholars compare it to — a descriptive comparison, not a claim of dependence.
- code of hammurabi fixed annual wages for agricultural laborers and ox-drivers Relationship to the parallel: shared theme §§257-258 Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
- code of hammurabi schedule of daily hire rates for laborers; a wage-rate provision rather than a timely-payment rule Relationship to the parallel: shared theme §§273-274 Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
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.