Pledge

In the UPDV, a pledge is the security a borrower hands over against a loan, and the topic gathers three connected strands: the lender's duties when the security is in his possession, the prophets' use of the pledge as a moral test, and the wisdom literature's insistent warnings against personal suretyship for another. The vocabulary is consistent — "pledge," "surety" — though Genesis uses "security deposit" for the same kind of object.

Tamar's Security Deposit

The earliest narrative is Tamar's. Judah promises her a young goat, and she answers, "Will you give me a security deposit, until you send it?" (Gen 38:17). What she takes is identifying — "Your signet and your cord, and your staff that is in your hand" (Gen 38:18) — and Judah, sending the goat afterward "to receive the security deposit from the woman's hand," cannot find her (Gen 38:20). The institution functions exactly as later law assumes: a personal item held until the debt is paid.

The Garment of the Poor

The Covenant Code restricts what a creditor may keep overnight: "If you at all take your fellow man's garment for a pledge, you will restore it to him before the sun goes down: for that is his only covering, it is his garment for his skin: in what will he sleep?" (Ex 22:26-27). The reason given is direct: "when he cries to me, that I will hear; for I am gracious" (Ex 22:27).

Deuteronomy preserves and tightens this. The lender may not invade the debtor's house — "you will not go into his house to fetch his pledge. You will stand outside, and the man to whom you lend will bring forth the pledge outside to you" (Deut 24:10-11) — and if the borrower is poor, "you will not sleep with his pledge; you will surely restore to him the pledge when the sun goes down, that he may sleep in his garment, and bless you: and it will be righteousness to you before Yahweh your God" (Deut 24:12-13). The same chapter shields the most exposed: "nor take the widow's raiment for a pledge" (Deut 24:17).

Wicked Pledges in the Prophets and Job

Job lists pledge-seizure among the offenses of the wicked: "They drive away the donkey of the fatherless; They take the widow's ox for a pledge" (Job 24:3). Amos turns the pledge-garment into the most damning evidence — the worshipper sleeps on it at the altar: "they lay themselves down beside every altar on clothes taken in pledge; and in the house of their God they drink the wine of such as have been fined" (Am 2:8).

Ezekiel makes the pledge a hinge of his individual-responsibility oracles. The just man "has restored his pledge for debt" (Eze 18:7); the wicked son "has not restored the pledge" (Eze 18:12); and the repentant wicked must, among other things, restore the pledge to live: "if the wicked restores the pledge, gives again that which he had taken by robbery, walks in the statutes of life, committing no iniquity; he will surely live, he will not die" (Eze 33:15).

Suretyship in Proverbs

Genesis already shows surety in personal form — Judah pleads for Benjamin: "your slave became surety for the lad to my father, saying, If I don't bring him to you, then I will bear the blame to my father forever" (Gen 44:32). Proverbs treats this kind of pledging-for-another as a near-disaster. The opening warning is extended:

"My son, if you have become surety for your fellow man, If you have stricken your hands for a stranger; You are snared with the words of your mouth ... Deliver yourself as a roe from the hand [of the hunter], And as a bird from the hand of the fowler" (Prov 6:1-5).

The collected proverbs reinforce it from several angles: "He who is surety for a stranger will smart for it; But he who hates suretyship is secure" (Prov 11:15); "[A] man void of understanding strikes hands, And becomes surety in the presence of his fellow man" (Prov 17:18); "Don't be one of those who strikes hands, [Or] of those who are sureties for debts" (Prov 22:26). And procedurally, the text twice gives the lender hard advice on how to handle the man foolish enough to do it: "Take his garment who is surety for a stranger; And hold him in pledge [who is surety] for foreigners" (Prov 20:16; restated in Prov 27:13). Even the borrower-without-means is warned the bedding will go: "If you have not with which to pay, Why should he take away your bed from under you?" (Prov 22:27).