על החוקים לפרטיהם, ספר ד ל״זOn the Special Laws, Book IV 37
א׳
1[193] Again those who handle weights and scales and measures, merchants, pedlars and retailers and all others who sell goods to sustain life, solid or liquid, are no doubt subject to market-controllers, but ought, if they have sound sense, to be their own rulers and do what is just not through fear but of their own free will, for a right action if self-prompted is everywhere held in higher honour than if done under compulsion.
ב׳
2[194] And therefore he commands tradesmen, merchants and all who have taken up such a line of life to provide themselves with just scales and weights and measures, and eschew dishonest plots to injure their customers, and rather let every word and deed spring from a liberal and guileless spirit, considering that unjust gains are utterly pernicious but wealth which comes of justice can never be taken away.
ג׳
3[195] Since workmen or labourers are offered wages as a reward for their industry and the persons so employed are the needy and not those who have abundance of resources to spare, he orders the employer not to postpone his payment but to render the stipulated wages on that very day. For it is against all reason that the well-to-do, with their ample means of livelihood should after receiving the services of the poor fail to render at once to the needy the recompense for their services.
ד׳
4[196] Have we not here clearly indicated a warning against worse iniquities? He who having appointed the evening as the time in which a labourer should receive his recompense when he leaves for home, and does not even permit the wage though its final payment is assured to be delayed beyond the agreed hour—how much more does he forbid robbery and theft and repudiation of debts and other things of the same kind, and thus mould and shape the soul into the approved standard, into the form of true goodness itself.