Musar על שמות 22:25

"You shall not deal with him as a creditor does" (Exodus 22:24), means not to cause pain to the borrower. And the lender should even avoid walking by the borrower when he knows that the borrower has no money with which to pay back the loan, (Baba Mezi'a 15) for the lender distresses the borrower with this kind of conduct. And we have been warned to remove from our souls the quality of cruelty, as it is written: "You shall not afflict any widow or fatherless child" (Exod. 22:21), and it is written: "And you shall not wrong one another and you shall fear your God" (Lev. 25:17). We are commanded to return to the poor his pledged article as is written: "If you take the garment of the poor in pledge you shall restore it to him before the sun goes down" (Exod. 22:25), as it is said: "And it shall be when he cries unto me that I will hear for I am gracious." And it is said : (Ibid. : 26) "And you shall not wrong nor oppress a stranger."

אם חבול תחבול שלמת רעך, Rashi explains that the subject matter is a garment worn by day. This is difficult, since the Torah continues "when he lies down at night, what will he (the indigent debtor) cover himself with?" From this it seems obvious that the Torah must have referred to a cover the debtor needs at night! Perhaps the bed the Torah has in mind is one which is used as a "table" at meal times. The verse may however contain a meaning in the mystical realm. Sometimes a person "grabs" the מצות, i.e. the reward for them which should by rights have accrued to someone else. The Zohar illustrates this in connection with כסוי חטאה in Psalms 32,1, and it is dealt with in Pardes Rimonim, in the seventh chapter dealing with the soul. The upshot is that even if a person has committed so many sins, i.e. is so indebted to G–d that his "clothing" (i.e. body) is pledged in payment, it is never too late to repent and to reverse the process of indebtedness to G–d. G–d says to the person who has sinned almost till the end of his life i.e. עד בא השמש, that his garment will be restored if he repents. The garment is a euphemism for the body. Were the person not to repent, his soul would be exposed, return "naked" to G–d once the body dies it had inhabited. The words והיה כי יצעק אלי ושמעתי כי חנון אני, "when he will cry out I will listen, for I am gracious," is a reference to the prayer for forgiveness of the repentant sinner.

According to the Rekanati even the prohibition to take the garments of a widow as a pledge for a loan (24,17) contains an allusion to transmigration of souls. He sees in the prohibition a device by the Torah not to subject the widow to two painful experiences, the loss of her husband and the loss of her garments. In order to understand how this alludes to transmigration of souls we need to refer to a similarly worded verse in Exodus 22,25: אם חבול תחבול שלמת רעך עד בא השמש תשיבנו לו, "If you have occasion to take your fellow man's garment as a pledge, you must return it to him by sunset." This verse alludes to the mystical dimension called סוד העבור. Kabbalists see in it a reference to the soul which has to return to the Celestial Spheres every night, a concept we are familiar with from our nightly payer המפיל in which we consign our soul to G–d till the following morning. The widow consigning her garment (="soul") to a creditor therefore is punished every night on two counts, her soul suffers its second reincarnation. A widow is metaphor for a soul which has been consigned to a second round of life on earth already. The lender must not become the cause of her having to live a third round on earth. Transgressing the physical commandment described here results in psychic harm to the soul of the person against whom one has sinned.