The actor and comedian Charlie Chaplin once quipped, “Judge a man not by how he treats his equals but by how he treats his inferiors.” How we treat those who have no power over us is a good measure of our values and character.

Deuteronomy 24 contains a series of laws that seem a bit random. However, most of them deal with how Israel should treat those in a powerless or vulnerable position. For example, if a man divorced his wife, he had to provide her with a certificate of divorce (v. 1). This would protect the woman so the man could not claim later he was still married to her. It freed her to legally marry someone else (v. 2).

If a man was recently married, he was exempt from military service for one year (v. 5). This provision affirmed the value of marriage. If someone owed you a debt, you could not take one of their millstones as a pledge (v. 6). That would prevent them from grinding grain to make money to pay you back. Similarly, if someone owed you money, you could not enter their house to get their pledge (v. 10). This prevented you from choosing from among their possessions what you most wanted as a pledge.

For employers, the regulations were geared toward preventing abuse, “Do not take advantage of a hired worker who is poor and needy…pay them their wages each day before sunset” (vv. 14–15). There were laws that prevented farmers from being overly efficient harvesting their fields so that food was left over for the “foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow” (v. 19).

Again, these laws demonstrate God’s heart for the poor and needy. He hears their cry and upholds their claims to justice (v. 15). We should treat others the way that the Lord has treated us, with generosity and grace (vv. 18, 22).

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