When you let him go free from you, you shall not let him go empty.
Not to send a Hebrew bondman away empty-handed upon his release
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְכִי תְשַׁלְּחֶנּוּ חָפְשִׁי מֵעִמָּךְ לֹא תְשַׁלְּחֶנּוּ רֵיקָם
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
הזהיר שלא לבקש המלוה מן הלוה כשנדע שלא יכול לפרוע. והוא אמרו לא תהיה לו כנושה. ובגמרא מציעא (דף ע"ה:) מנין לנושה בחבירו מנה ויודע שאין לו שאסור לעבור לפניו שנאמר לא תהיה לו כנושה. ובמכילתא לא תהיה לו כנושה שלא תראה לו בכל זמן. ודע שזאת האזהרה כוללת גם כן מי שיבקש חוב של רבית, וכן אמרו שמי שילוה ברבית עובר על לא תהיה לו כנושה כמו שאבאר במה שאחר זה. (משפטים, הלכות מלוה ולוה פ"ד):
He prohibited that the lender seek out the borrower, when he knows that he is not able to pay. And that is His saying, "do not be to him as a creditor" (Exodus 22:24). And in the Gemara, Metzia (Bava Metzia 75b): "From where [do we know] about one who is owed one hundred dinars by his fellow and knows that [the latter] does not have [the funds] - that it is forbidden for him to pass in front of him? As it is stated, 'Do not be to him as a creditor' (Exodus 22:24)." And in the Mekhilta (Mekhilta d'Rabbi Yishmael 22:24:4): "'Do not be to him as a creditor' - do not appear to him at all times." And know that this prohibition also includes one who seeks out a debt of interest. And so did they say (Mishnah Bava Metzia 5:11) - that one who lends with interest transgresses, "do not be to him as a creditor," as I will explain in what follows this. (See Parashat Mishpatim; Mishneh Torah, Creditor and Debtor 4.)
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 case law — "if X, then Y"
Applicability
How the catalog describes where and when this commandment applies. These are independent descriptions, not a verdict on which laws still count.
No applicability flags are recorded for this commandment.
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, with modification
- Conservative Kept as an ethical principle
- Reform Kept as an ethical principle
- Reconstructionist Kept as an ethical principle
- Karaite Binding, with modification
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 2.79-85 rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 4.272-273 affirmed it
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 release of debt-bondsman in the fourth year after three years' service; contains no endowment/provisioning requirement Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §117 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (1997)
- code of hammurabi release/manumission of slave and offspring without endowment requirement Relationship to the parallel: polemical contrast §§170-171 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 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.