What Does Deuteronomy 24:15 Mean in the King James?
At his day thou shalt give him his hire, neither shall the sun go down upon it; for he is poor, and setteth his heart upon it: lest he cry against thee unto the LORD, and it be sin unto thee.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The Hebrew behind “heart” is the worker’s living soul: the unpaid wage is what that living person is lifting themself toward.
THE MEANING
The wage due to you is bound up with your present need; your longing for it is not a trivial concern. When it is withheld past its day, your cry reaches the LORD, and the withholding becomes sin for the person who holds what is due.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that a worker’s urgent dependence on earned pay is merely a private inconvenience: the cry reaches the LORD, and the one withholding it bears guilt.
THE ROOT
נַפְשׁוֹ
nafsho
GROWS FROM
נפש
n-p-sh
The living soul, the living self, including its desire and appetite.
The KJV’s “heart” opens onto a word for the living soul itself: the worker lifts that living self toward the wage. The same root family includes refreshment and rest, keeping the person’s need for provision and recovery close to the line.
ALSO GROWS
nephesh: Living soul; a living person.
נֶפֶשׁ
Genesis calls the human a living soul; here the worker lifts that same living self toward the wage, making the deadline a matter of life and need.
naphash: To refresh oneself; to rest.
נָפַשׁ
This branch keeps the worker’s need for restoration in view: the wage due at day’s end is tied to the life of the person who has labored.
THE PATTERN
What is due for another’s labor cannot be held at the payer’s convenience; delay becomes a claim God hears.
Thou shalt not defraud thy neighbour, neither rob him: the wages of him that is hired shall not abide with thee all night until the morning.Withhold not good from them to whom it is due, when it is in the power of thine hand to do it.Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.THE THREAD
And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.Genesis names the human as a “living soul” with the same Hebrew word. Here that living self is lifted toward the wage, tying payment to the worker’s present life rather than leaving it as an abstract measure of labor.
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