Wages Shall Be Paid To The Poor And Needy On The Same Day (Deuteronomy 24:14-15).
Just as the newly married man must not be taken advantage of and must be allowed immediately to enjoy the fruits of his contract, so must it be with a hired servant. He too must receive his wages without delay.
‘ You shall not take advantage of a hired servant who is poor and needy, whether he be of your brethren, or of your resident aliens who are in your land within your gates, in the same day you shall give him his hire, nor 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.'
The point here is that wages were not to be held back but paid according to the normal terms, in this case daily (compare Leviticus 19:13). Once the work was done satisfactorily payment should be made, and this applied whether the hired person was a native Israelite or a resident alien. No one must use their superior position to withhold such payment. The workers would probably be poor and would need the money immediately. It would be needed in order to feed their families. Their hearts were set on it for that very reason. The Israelites were reminded that otherwise the man might cry out to God, and it would then be counted against them as covenant breaking. In Leviticus 19:13 it was a simple commandment, here there is a reasoned explanation along with it as we might expect in a speech. We can compare here James 5:4 which has these verses in mind. He pointed out that when the Lord came in judgment such failures would be taken into account.
Regulations Relating To Fairplay (Deuteronomy 24:16 to Deuteronomy 25:3).
Analysis.
a The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, nor shall the children be put to death for the fathers. Every man shall be put to death for his own sin (Deuteronomy 24:16).
b They must not distort the justice due to the resident alien, or to the fatherless, nor take the widow's raiment to pledge ‘but you shall remember that you were a bondsman in Egypt, and that Yahweh your God had redeemed you from there. Therefore I command you to do this thing' (Deuteronomy 24:17-18).
b They must not gather the gleanings but must leave them for the resident alien, fatherless or widow ‘but you shall remember that you were a bondsman in Egypt, and Yahweh your God redeemed you from there. Therefore I command you to do this thing' (Deuteronomy 24:19-22).
a If there be a controversy between men, and they come for judgment, and the judges judge them, then they shall justify the righteous, and condemn the wicked. The punishment for the wicked must be fair and just (Deuteronomy 25:1-3).
Note in ‘a' that each must be punished fairly, the guilty being punished and the innocent going free, and in the parallel the same is required. In ‘b' justice must be given to the weak and in the parallel gleanings must be left for the weak. As regularly happens elsewhere a threefold pattern is introduced, in this case with regard to the gleanings.
No One Shall Die For Another's Sin (Deuteronomy 24:16).
Fair play and consideration for others was even to reach to those responsible for justice. This idea of personal responsibility was not late. It appears in early law codes outside Israel, although as we would expect, in varying degrees. The unrighteous must be condemned and the innocent justified.
‘ The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, nor shall the children be put to death for the fathers. Every man shall be put to death for his own sin.'
The root principle of justice was to be that every man died for his own sin, and not for the sins of others (compare Numbers 27:3). The Law Code of Hammurabi sometimes applied the principle of ‘a life for a life' in terms of the fact that if a man killed someone else's son, his own son must be killed in recompense. This was never to be so in Israel. Each man was accountable for himself and himself alone as far as justice was concerned.
This is not contradictory to the principle that the sins of the fathers will be visited on the third and the fourth generation (Deuteronomy 5:9). There God was warning of how sin could, and regularly did, work out. He was warning of the consequences that could result. That is a very different thing from the administering of individual justice. The consequences brought about by evil in our lives are inevitable results, not God's deliberate judgments.