EXOD705 I know that the reader will think to himself: "Why should I set a sum aside like the Free Loan Societies in each city, and then hand out small loans? It is better for me to lend a large, single sum which I can afford, as a single loan, to a respectable person, for after all gemiluth chesed is a mitzvah whether the loan is made to the poor or the rich." This is a fallacy. Firstly, it is a greater mitzvah to lend to the poor. Chazal have explained [this verse]: "When you lend money to any of My people, to the poor with you…" to imply that if there are rich and poor, the poor take precedence (Bava Metzia 71a). Now where a person could not allocate more than a modest sum out of his capital, then if he were to loan it to the rich, there would remain nothing for him to loan to the poor. Scripture has taught that (Proverbs 2:5): "If you seek her as silver… then shall you understand the fear of God." In business, if one engages in a number of small transactions involving a certain amount, the total profit will be larger than if the whole amount would be used in a single transaction. So too in our context, when the person gives a number of loans, each for a small amount as is customary, he can perform hundreds of positive mitzvoth of the Torah in the course of one year. This would not be so if he lent a single large sum to one individual. In the same period, he might only perform a few mitzvoth. Similarly, the Tanna (Pirkei Avoth 3:15) has laid down that "the world is judged by grace, yet all is in accord with the majority of deeds" (i.e. the world is judged according to which number of deeds is the larger, if the good, then the judged shall emerge victorious from their trial).