What Does Deuteronomy 15:7 Mean?
If there is among you one in want, from one of your brothers, within any of your gates in the land the LORD your God gives you, you shall not harden your heart, nor close your hand from your brother, the one in want.
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
If there be among you a poor man of one of thy brethren within any of thy gates in thy land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not harden thine heart, nor shut thine hand from thy poor brother:THE KEY
The Hebrew traces one contraction from a heart made firm (אמץ) to a hand drawn shut (קפץ).
THE MEANING
Need is present within the shared circle, among your kin, inside your gates, in the land received as a gift. The verse links an inward hardening of the heart with an outward closing of the hand, making material withholding visible as inner contraction. Your brother’s need is part of the life named as among you.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie it undoes is that a closed hand can coexist with an open heart; the verse binds the two responses together.
THE ROOT
תְּאַמֵּץ
təʾammēṣ
GROWS FROM
א־מ־ץ
ʾ-m-ṣ
To be strong or firm; in this form, to make firm or strengthen.
The verb behind harden belongs to the same root used for strength and courage. That root can make feeble knees firm in Isaiah 35:3, while here that firmness is forbidden when it sets the heart against a needy brother.
ALSO GROWS
veʾĕmaṣ: Be courageous, be strong (Joshua 1:7).
וֶאֱמַץ
The same firmness can appear as courage; here it becomes harmful when the heart is made unyielding toward need.
ʾammēṣū: Make firm, confirm the feeble knees (Isaiah 35:3).
אַמֵּצוּ
The root can describe strength that supports the weak; Deuteronomy shows the heart’s firmness turned in the opposite direction.
תִּקְפֹּץ
tiqpoṣ
GROWS FROM
ק־פ־ץ
q-p-ṣ
To close, contract, or draw together.
“close” in this verse is tiqpoṣ. The root names a physical contraction: the hand draws shut instead of releasing what it holds. The same root describes kings shutting their mouths in Isaiah 52:15, carrying that image of closure from the hand to the mouth.
ALSO GROWS
tiqpoṣ: You close or contract your hand (Deuteronomy 15:7).
תִּקְפֹּץ
The contraction is made visible in the very hand that could extend provision.
yiqpeṣu: They will shut their mouths (Isaiah 52:15).
יִקְפְּצוּ
The same root closes the mouths of kings, showing its image of drawing shut across different parts of the body.
THE PATTERN
Another person’s need exposes whether the inward response opens into concrete provision.
Whoever stops up his ear to the cry of the emptied one also cries out, and is not answered.Is it not to break your bread for the hungry, and to bring the wandering poor into your house? When you see the naked, cover him, and do not hide yourself from your own flesh.Whoever has the world's means of living, and gazes upon his brother in need, and shuts his inner parts away from him, how does the love of God remain in him?THE THREAD
For the one in want shall never be gone from the midst of the land. Therefore I command you, saying, "You shall open your hand wide to your brother, to the one in want and to the bowed down, in your land."The word translated needy here, אֶבְיוֹן (ʾevyon), is the same word translated poor in verse 7, and brother, hand, and land return. Verse 7 names the closing movement; this verse opens its opposite, making the repeated need the hinge between a contracted hand and one opened wide.
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