The Wages Of A Hired Worker

Mosaic Law addresses both the state of debt servitude, with the male and female servants of one's own countrypeople (or foreigners living alongside them according to Leviticus 19:33-34) to be freed from both debt and service every seven years (Deuteronomy 15:1-3, 12-14), and the more temporary state of hired work.  With Biblical servanthood, a man or woman sells their labor to pay off a as much of a debt as can be diminished in six years (Exodus 21:2).  A hired worker could labor on a more ongoing basis.  While he or she would have the human rights shared by all people, such as the right to not be murdered (Exodus 20:13, Exodus 21:12-14), and they like servants are certainly not to be physically or otherwise mistreated (Exodus 21:26-27), some additional Biblical obligations towards them are detailed.

Whereas Deuteronomy 24:14-15 focuses on paying poor physical laborers of one's own or a foreign nationality their wages before sunset, the very day of their work as opposed to up to two weeks later as with today, Leviticus 19:13 expands this to all workers by saying to not withhold wages overnight, regardless of the person's economic class or category of labor.  Every hired man and woman is to be paid the day they work instead of waiting days or even weeks as is customary in the modern United States.  Yes, the Bible teaches that not paying one's daytime workers the literal day they work (night laborers would have to be paid before the following sunset), before the sun has even started to descend in the sky, is a universal injustice.

Though the text of Leviticus 19 would not need to clarify this part--since foreigners can be hired workers, there is nothing in the Torah that allows for a potential difference in how foreigners are to be treated regarding professional labor and in many other ways (Exodus 22:21, 23:9, 12, Leviticus 19:33-34, 24:22), and Deuteronomy 24:14-15 already touches on this--a foreign worker in the midst of one's community should never be exploited in this way either.  Again, this is contrary to a notion and attitude that I have encountered in my nation over and over holding that foreign workers, and more particularly, foreigners from certain regions of the world, are to be used as if they are only a means to an end, paid as little as one can get away with and probably not the day of their work.

In America, where even today, some employers do everything from excusing months-long accumulations of payroll errors to underpaying employees to disregarding human workers the moment they can save a dime, businesses/employers are typically not concerned with enduring their workers receive their pay promptly.  Even then, the compensation is often the bare minimum that employees will stomach or that the employers can legally get away with, with little to no focus on reason or morality as opposed to legality and pragmatic selfishness.  That delayed payment is overtly condemned in the Bible but not by many who identify as Christians is another example of how for all its extraordinarily superficial and misleading "Christian" trappings, America as a whole is nowhere near adhering to the commands of the Bible related to the "workplace" or the broader treatment of fellow humans.