What Does Deuteronomy 15:3 Mean?
From the foreigner you may press it again, but whatever is yours with your brother, your hand shall let fall.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Of a foreigner thou mayest exact it again: but that which is thine with thy brother thine hand shall release;THE KEY
The verse gives the hand two different motions: it may press a foreign debt into payment, but it must let a brother’s claim fall.
THE MEANING
The verse holds two claims in view: a debt owed by a foreigner may still be exacted, while what is owed by a brother is released by your own hand. Release is an enacted letting go of the claim; your hand is where that release takes effect.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a debt always remains claimable simply because it is owed: toward a brother, the verse makes release part of what the hand does.
THE ROOT
תִּשְׁמֹט
tishmot
GROWS FROM
שמט
to let drop or fall; to release or remit
“let fall” in this verse is tishmot. The verb pictures a claim falling from the creditor’s hand. The same root names the release itself as a recurring interval, so the verse makes remission visible as a hand letting go.
ALSO GROWS
shamat: to let fall, drop, or release
שָׁמַט
This is the verb’s root form and carries the physical image beneath the translated “release.”
shemittah: release or remission, including the release period
שְׁמִטָּה
The noun from this root shows that the hand’s act belongs to a wider pattern of letting claims fall.
תִּגֹּשׂ
tiggōs
GROWS FROM
נגשׂ
to press, drive, or demand payment
“press” in this verse is tiggōs. The word for exacting a debt carries the force of pressing. Set beside שמט (shamat, let fall or release), it makes the verse’s two motions sharp: one claim is pressed, while another is dropped.
ALSO GROWS
noges: taskmaster or exactor
נֹגֵשׂ
The same root names the one who presses another, showing the force contained in demanding payment.
niggas: pressed or oppressed
נִגַּשׂ
This form describes the one receiving the pressure, revealing the human weight behind the act of exacting.
THE PATTERN
A claim that can be pressed into payment can also be released from the hand.
At the end of every seven years you shall make a release.But in the seventh year you shall let it drop and leave it, that the poor of your people may eat, and what is left over the beasts of the field shall eat. Do the same with your vineyard and your olive grove.And release our debts, as we also release our debtors.THE THREAD
At the end of every seven years you shall make a release.“Release” in this verse and “release” in 15:1 come from the same root, שמט (shamat, let fall or release). Here the hand lets a brother’s claim fall; there the same letting-go is named as a recurring release.
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