“When you make your neighbor a loan of any sort, you shall not go into his house to collect his pledge. You shall stand outside, and the man to whom you make the loan shall bring the pledge out to you.” Deuteronomy 24:10, 11

Justice as encoded in the Law of God is a jewel of five facets. The first and most basic of these we may refer to as obligatory justice. In the exercise of obligatory justice we give to others the dignity, respect, and love they deserve by virtue of their being human beings and the image-bearers of God.

Our text gives an example. In ancient Israel, making a loan to someone did not give the one who made the loan the right to violate the privacy or impugn the honesty of the one who has received the loan. If the terms of the loan included a pledge, the one making the loan was expected to trust the good and honest intentions, as well as the word, of the one receiving the loan, and wait for him to bring the pledge out to him.

We owe a good many things to all our fellow human beings. Together, these make up the various obligations of neighbor-love. We owe them honesty, truth, and fairness in contracts, wages, and communications; respect and care for their persons and property; due process in civil matters; and the protections of justice at all times. We are our neighbors’ keepers, and whatever love requires of us, we must be ready to perform.

It is not the place of public policy to require neighbor-love. Much of what constitutes obligatory justice will be practiced only out of a sense of gratitude to God and devotion to His Law. However, when clear transgressions of obligatory justice are committed, it is the role of public policy to redress injustice.

How would a man be judged who did, in fact, enter his neighbor’s home and search all through it to find the pledge his loan required, while his neighbor stood by, humiliated? It’s not clear. This and every breach of obligatory justice would have to come before the judges and officials of the community for a ruling. We would only be speculating as to how they might correct the injustice – the sleight of a neighbor’s dignity – such an unlawful action would create.

But that they had the power to do so, through the practice of restorative and retributive justice, is certainly the case, as we shall see.

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