If the neighbor is poor, do not go to sleep with their pledge in your possession. – Deuteronomy 24:12

Today’s Scripture Reading (December 17, 2018): Deuteronomy 24

There was a time in our history when business could be completed with a handshake rather than a contract. The handshake was an acknowledgment of the agreement that had been made, and it was enough. Earlier this month (December 2018) I have to admit that I enjoyed watching the Bush family come to the Capitol Rotunda as the patriarch of the family “lay in state” in that grand room. I am not sure if the people knew that the family would return to pay their respects to Dad and Grandpa, but what impressed me was the way that the family interacted with the others who had come to pay their final respects to George Herbert Walker Bush. And as the family moved around the room, there was laughter and hugs, and plenty of handshakes. It was as if they were acknowledging and agreeing about the greatness of the man lying silently at the center of the room in his eternal bed, snuggling under the American Flag.

A handshake spreads love and respect as nothing else can. A handshake says “I value you, and I trust you. I know that what we do, we will do together.” But in business, the handshake belongs to an age long past. Today we live in a world dominated by lawyers and contracts. Even within the church, we governed by manual’s, job descriptions, agreements, and responsibility charts; we are directed by the cold dictates of business. And while all of that might be necessary, I miss the handshake agreements that convey value and trust in the relationship.

Moses reminds Israel that essentially they are to operate on a handshake. He stresses that if the person receiving the loan is poor, that they are to take a pledge, but return it before the sun went down. Two things need to be noted here. First, the vast majority of people who would have needed to make a loan would have been poor. The ancient world was not a place dominated by a vast consumer credit culture that loaned money for everyday things. If you needed to borrow money, that meant that you were, by definition, poor.

Second, the pledge, often a cloak or a blanket which was one of the few possessions that the poor could offer the lender, was symbolic, much like a handshake. In the giving of the pledge, the borrower was making a promise to abide by the details of the agreement. By returning the pledge, the lender was communicating a message that said: “I value you and trust you in this matter.” This act of giving and receiving transmitted the same message inherent in the shaking of hands.

But Israel did not always follow Moses’s instruction. The prophet Amos chastised Israel for their violation of these instructions arguing that the lenders in Israel “lie down beside every altar on garments taken in pledge.” Those who lent money violated the rights of the poor in the very presence of God, and for that, they would be judged by the God they professed to serve.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Deuteronomy 25