Bible Strands
Deuteronomy 24:6
Do not take a pair of millstones or even an upper millstone as security for a debt, because that would be taking one’s livelihood as security.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Moses addresses Israel regarding domestic and civil regulations as the nation prepares to enter the Promised Land. The command follows instructions for newly married men and precedes laws on kidnapping.
The words — רֵחַיִם (re.Cha.yim) = hand-mill and חֹבֵל (cho.Vel) = taking as pledge. The text explicitly forbids using a millstone or upper millstone as collateral for a loan.
The thread — This protection of essential sustenance echoes Deuteronomy 20:19, which preserves trees during siege, and Genesis 44:30, which shows how livelihood and family ties are inseparable. Luke 12:15 warns against greed by noting that life does not consist in possessions.
Why it lands — The text commands readers to refuse debt arrangements that seize daily necessities. It requires protecting the means of survival rather than treating them as disposable collateral.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
No man shall take the nether or the upper millstone to pledge: for he taketh a man’s life to pledge.
Cross-references
- Deuteronomy 20:19 When you lay siege to a city for an extended time while fighting against it to capture it, you must not destroy its trees by putting an axe to them, because you can eat their fruit. You must not cut them down. Are the trees of the field human, that you should besiege them?
- Luke 12:15 And He said to them, “Watch out! Guard yourselves against every form of greed, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”
- Genesis 44:30 So if the boy is not with us when I return to your servant, and if my father, whose life is wrapped up in the boy’s life,
- Revelation 18:22 And the sound of harpists and musicians, of flute players and trumpeters, will never ring out in you again. Nor will any craftsmen of any trade be found in you again, nor the sound of a millstone be heard in you again.
- Exodus 22:26 If you take your neighbor’s cloak as collateral, return it to him by sunset,