The Nugget:
Lev 19:13 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. (KJV)
Lev 19:13 “Do not rob or take advantage of anyone. Do not hold back the wages of someone you have hired, not even for one night. (GNB, Good News Bible)
My Comment:
Today is Labor Day. The Bible has much to say about labor and wages.
Many people think unions are a very bad thing. I remember my father told me, when I encountered the issue of being required to be a union member when I began working for Michigan Bell Telephone Company, that “The only reason we need unions is because of bad management.”
We still have bad management, just as we have bad government, when individuals and organizations fail to follow what God has commanded in the Bible.
I happened to speak to a customer while I was in The Tree of Life Bookstore who thought that abortion was the most significant moral issue of our time. I agreed that abortion is a significant issue, but I suggested that a careful study of the over-all emphasis within the Bible itself demonstrates that justice is the main issue. The customer thought otherwise. I replied that when Jesus listed the commandments, He included the command, “Defraud not.” That is recorded in Mark 10:19, where Jesus was quoting from Leviticus 19:13.
We need to preserve in our teaching and witness the balance of truth found in the Bible itself. Many Bible believing Christians have made the mistake of being “single issue” Christians, and as a result we have now largely lost the culture.
Labor Day ties in to the subject of justice, an issue too many churches and individual Bible believing Christians have missed. The way to learn what the Bible emphasizes is to (1) read the Bible, starting with the New Testament, long enough each day–at least twenty minutes, often enough each week–at least four days a week, on a continuing basis. You will discover, as I did beginning now 70 years ago, that doing this will bring real change for the better to your life, but you will also begin to learn what the Bible itself emphasizes; (2) study the Bible using Cross Reference Bible Study.
My experience of teaching public school in Detroit, Michigan from 1962 until 2001, brought me into contact with many school administrators. Most of them were quite helpful and supportive of me and the teachers I worked with. But from time to time I encountered the exceptions–administrators who were not supportive of their teachers and said so! I became a Union Representative and filed (and usually if not always won) grievances against administrators who improperly withheld individual teacher’s paychecks as a disciplinary tactic, a practice not authorized by the Teacher Contract. Several such administrators were active in their churches, so I shared with them what the Bible commands when it comes to paying workers on time. I even printed out the Bible cross-references with the full text of Scripture and left a copy on each administrator’s desk. Some of the cross references I shared are given below in the references for Leviticus 19:13,
Cross Reference Study for Leviticus 19:13 from The Ultimate Cross Reference Treasury:
Leviticus 19:13
not defraud. Pro 20:10; Pro 22:22, Jer 22:3, Eze 22:29, >Mar 10:19, Luk 3:13; *1Th 4:6.
the wages. T1853, **Deut 24:14; **Deut 24:15, Job 31:39, +*Jer 22:13, +*Mal 3:5, +**1Ti 5:18; +**1Ti 5:19 note. +*Jas 5:4. lit. work. FS121C1F. Metonymy of the Cause F/S 551, Work is put for the wages paid for it. For other instances of this figure see Jer 22:13, Rom 11:6, Rev 14:13.