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Deuteronomy 15:9 · World English Bible

Deuteronomy 15:9 Meaning Beware That There Not Be a Wicked

Beware that there not be a wicked thought in your heart, saying, “The seventh year, the year of release, is at hand,” and your eye be evil against your poor brother and you give him nothing; and he cry to Yahweh against you, and it be sin to you.

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What does Deuteronomy 15:9 mean?

A thought that sounds like arithmetic gets admitted to the heart without inspection, and then it runs the hand. A calculation about timing is the most dangerous thing a person can admit to the heart, because it sounds like responsibility while doing the work of contempt.

From the Self-Help reading below.

Deuteronomy 15:9 through 1 lens

The same verse, read by one tradition.

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A thought that sounds like arithmetic gets admitted to the heart without inspection, and then it runs the hand.

A calculation about timing is the most dangerous thing a person can admit to the heart, because it sounds like responsibility while doing the work of contempt. Once inside it sets the state, the state hardens the eye, and a hardened eye shuts the hand before anyone has to decide to be hard.

Yahweh takes the complaint at the level where the thing started, so a person answers for the calculations they permit themselves long before any money moves. Each refusal then comes faster than the last, until what stands is not one loan withheld but a character assembled out of defensible small decisions.

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Live Deuteronomy 15:9 today

  1. Catch the sentence in your head that starts with "realistically" or "honestly, if I" the next time someone needs something from you. Say it out loud to yourself once. It usually sounds much worse than it felt.
  2. When a friend asks for money or time and your mind hands you a clean reason to wait, tell them the reason before you act on it. Saying "I was about to put this off until next month" tends to end the argument on its own.
  3. In a meeting where it would be easy and defensible to let someone take the hit, name what you are actually doing in your own head. Then do the thing you would want done for you.

Which of your reasons for saying no have never once been said out loud to the person they were about?

The same truth in other traditions

Dhammapada 1

Everything begins with the mind. The thought you let in and repeat becomes the thing you say and do, and suffering follows the untended thought like a cart follows the ox.

Stoicism · Marcus Aurelius

Marcus told himself to inspect the impressions arriving in his mind before accepting them, because the judgment you wave through becomes the action you take and then the person you are.

Zen

The teachers warn that the mind is skilled at building reasonable cases for what it already wants. The dangerous thoughts arrive dressed as good sense, which is why they are rarely questioned at the door.

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