What do you remember
what forget?
Things left behind,
things contained.
Sometimes there is no way back.
what forget?
Things left behind,
things contained.
Sometimes there is no way back.
This chapter connects to the previous one through the leitmotif of the "coming sun"--a focus on a specific unit of time, a cut off point within infinity. If in the previous chapter, sunset allows those "outside" to re-enter sacred space, here "the day" serves to delimit social responsibilities: workers must be paid before the end of day; "pledges" that were confiscated must be returned before nightfall.
These limitations are thematic. Even the consequence of sin becomes limited here, prescribed to the individual's boundaries-- "fathers shall not die for children, and children shall not die for fathers: each man shall die y his own sin" (24:16). The chapter closes with a series of limitations on property rights: one cannot return to gather forgotten grain, or pick over trees for leftover grapes and olives. There are no rights of possession for things left behind: they become common property, to be left for the "stranger, the fatherless and the widow."
The inability to return for what was lost creates a chiastic structure with the opening of the chapter, which prohibits a man to remarry his divorced wife after she has married another. One cannot return for an ex-wife, as one cannot return for lost grain (continuing the misogynistic bent of Deuteronomy, where women exist as aspects of men's property, to be "taken" and "sent").
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