It shall not seem hard to you when you let him go free from you, for at half the cost of a hired worker he has served you six years. So the LORD your God will bless you in all that you do.
The above passage is found in the section about the Sabbatical Year for the Hebrews. In the seventh year anyone who had taken in a slave, who was also Hebrew, was to let the person freely go in the seventh year of their slavery. The reason they were a slave to a fellow Hebrew would be, might be, because they owed a debt of some kind. It could be because the person wants to be the hired slave for a person. But, whatever the reason, unless the SLAVE decides to stay, they were to be released. This was God’s way of making sure no one was abused or that the poor were not left to their poverty. If someone had squandered their needs, another Hebrew could take them in to care for them and have them work. But, in the seventh year that same person was to be let go. God gives them the moral reason for both “Hebrew style” slavery. It was to be a way to make sure no one was living in poverty and that no one abused the slave in a long term enslavement. But, in the above verse God also supplies the practical math for the command to let them go. If you took in a Hebrew slave you didn’t pay them the same rate has a hired worker. Instead, for that six years you were getting a worker at one-half the price. Perhaps the logic employed by God here is if He can’t convince your heart, he can make a plausible argument for your head. The part that should be practical for us (who have neither Hebrew slaves or celebrate the Sabbatical year, is that God does use logic and reason in His arguments for serving Him the say He wants. Yes, it is about faithful obedience. But, obedience does not have to be illogical. God uses reason along with a sound God-like moral compass. We should realize that their many times that God asks us to serve him, through faith, when it makes no logical sense. But, there are also times when we serve Him that it makes no logical sense. Believing God raised someone from the dead is not logical. But, in the above text we see that both the moral and logical can co-exist.
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