Exodus 22:26-27 may read at first like a quirky, specific law for Israel, but it is in fact an admonition to grace: “If you ever take your neighbor’s cloak as a pledge, you are to return it before the sun sets, for that is his only covering; it is his cloak for his body. What else shall he sleep in? And it shall come about that when he cries out to Me, I will hear him, for I am gracious.”

In the midst of sundry precepts following The Ten Commandments, God instructs His people to be gracious to each other. The specific command here is that if they take a man’s cloak as a pledge (for a loan) they are not to keep it, but are to graciously give it back to him that evening so he will have something with which to cover himself while he sleeps. That is going “above and beyond” what lenders typically do, but God admonishes His people to be gracious, and do more than is expected in their dealings with others.

What we should also see in this passage is the GROUND of that graciousness, which is in the nature of God Himself. In the last part of :27 God says “when he cries to Me, I will hear him, for I am gracious.” God reminds His people here that He is intrinsically gracious in His nature. He WILL answer graciously the poor man who calls to Him in his hour of need, for that is who He is: God just IS gracious.

The unspoken lesson here is that God’s gracious nature is the reason why His people should be gracious to others. As the people of God, we are to reflect His nature. God repeatedly taught this throughout the Old Testament when He said: “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” (Leviticus 11:45 et al.) The reason we are to be holy is that as His people, we reflect His holiness to the world. And the present passage teaches us that we are to reflect His grace in the same way. It is not much of a leap for us to extrapolate from this verse a corollary command: “YOU shall be gracious, for I am gracious.”