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Deu_24:6No man shall take the nether. God now enforces another principle of equity in relation to loans, (not to be too strict (107)) in requiring pledges, whereby the poor are often exceedingly distressed. In the first place, He prohibits the taking of anything in pledge which is necessary to the poor for the support of existence; for by the words which I have translated meta and catillus, i e. , the upper and nether millstone, He designates by synecdoche all other instruments, which workmen cannot do without in earning their daily bread. As if any one should forcibly deprive a husbandman of his plough, or his spade, or harrow, or other tools, or should empty a shoemaker’ or potter’ or other person’ shop, who could not exercise his trade when deprived of its implements; and this is sufficiently clear from the context, where it is said, “ taketh a man’ life to pledge,” together with his millstones. He, then, is as cruel, whosoever takes in pledge what supports a poor man’ life, as if he should take away bread from a starving man, and thus his life itself, which, as it is sustained by labor, so, when its means of subsistence are cut off, is, as it were, itself destroyed.
(107) Added from Fr.