1. At the end of seven years. The Hebrew does not say “at the end of the seventh year” because the phrase, as Abraham ibn Ezra notes, is meant to indicate the beginning of the year that marks the end of the seven-year cycle.

a remission. The parallel passage in Exodus 23:10–11 has a verb with the root sh-m-t but not, as here, the noun shemitah. The basic meaning of the root is “to release,” “to let slip out of one’s hand.” In the strictly agricultural context of Exodus 23, it was simply translated as “let it go,” referring to the cultivated land. Deuteronomy’s shemitah regulations, on the other hand, address a new urban and mercantile reality, and the focus of the law is consequently on debts rather than on allowing the land to lie fallow. For this business-oriented regulation, a more abstract English equivalent such as “remission” is required.

2. dun. The Hebrew verb is the same one reflected in the term for “taskmasters” in Exodus.

his fellow man and brother. These are equivalent terms here, and the one that will be favored through the rest of the passage is “brother.” That word focuses the social ethic of Deuteronomy: whatever the social and economic differences, all Israelites should regard each other as brothers. The collocation “your brother the pauper” is especially telling in this regard—however wretched the pauper, he is still your brother.

4. there will be no pauper among you. This extravagant statement, which may have fueled the imaginations of some later social revolutionaries, seems flatly contradicted, first, by “Should there be a pauper among you” (verse 7) and then, more blatantly, by “For the pauper will not cease from the midst of the land” (verse 11). Ibn Ezra neatly catches the utopian character of the pronouncement: “Know that I charged you not to dun your brother—there would be no need for this if all Israel or most of them would heed God’s voice, then there would be no pauper among you who needs you to lend to him.” As a realist, ibn Ezra registers the unlikelihood that a majority of the people will ever actually heed God’s words, hence “the pauper will not cease from the midst of the land.”

6. you shall lend to many nations. The Hebrew verb indicates a loan given against security, with the pawned object of worth thus placing the borrower in a palpable relationship of dependence to the lender.

dominate. In the present context, the force of the verb mashol is obviously economic rather than political domination.

7. harden your heart. The more literal sense is “strengthen your heart.” Though this is not one of the verbs used for Pharaoh’s heart in the Exodus story, the meaning is virtually the same.

clench your hand. The language of this chapter focuses on the hand as the synecdochic image of agency: debts are remitted when the hand releases or lets them go (see verse 3); parsimony toward the indigent is figured as a clenching tight of the hand, generosity as an opening of the hand.

9. a base thing. Elsewhere, the Hebrew bliyaʿal is translated as “worthless,” but the present context requires something like “base.”

you look meanly. Literally, “your eye is evil.”

10. your heart shall not be mean. Literally, “your heart shall not be evil.”

12. your Hebrew brother or sister. Unlike the regulations concerning Hebrew slaves in Exodus 21, where distinctions are made between the sexes, evidently because the case in view is one in which the young woman has been sold into slavery with the intention of her becoming a concubine, here male and female slaves are regulated by an identical set of laws. Grammatically, masculine gender remains dominant, so even though both men and women have been mentioned, the text goes on to speak of “he” (as does this translation) representing both.

14. You shall surely provide him. The notion of what amounts to severance pay at the end of the period of indentured servitude is an innovation of Deuteronomy, again reflecting its humanitarian social ethos.

as the LORD your God has blessed you. That is, the bounty bestowed on the freed slave will be proportionate to the material “blessings” enjoyed by the slave owner.

17. put it through his ear and into the door. In Exodus 21:6, this ceremony is performed when the slave is made to “approach the gods” (or “God”), but the frame of reference now is secular. If the phrase in Exodus refers to a local sanctuary, the programmatic elimination of that institution in Deuteronomy would necessitate the secularization of the ceremony as a practical matter. The meaning, symbolic or otherwise, of the ceremony has been variously interpreted (see the first comment on Exodus 21:6).

perpetual slave. At least according to rabbinic exegesis, even this condition of servitude was abrogated in the jubilee year.

18. twice the value of a hired man. The word rendered as “value” usually means “pay”—logically, what the employer would render to the hired man rather than what he would extract from the laborer. But the most plausible sense is that a paid worker over a period of six years would cost his employer twice what the employer would have to lay out for the acquisition and upkeep of an indentured servant.

21. lameness or blindness. The Hebrew literally says “lame or blind.” These physical impairments render the animal unfit as an offering to God, but since they do not necessarily involve any disease that might taint the flesh of the animals, the beasts are still fit for strictly secular consumption, “like the gazelle and like the deer,” which involves no restriction of ritual purity.