EMPTY, empty-handed — an adverb, not an adjective: it describes how somebody arrives or is sent away, never a container. Read consonantally across the whole Hebrew Bible it stands in SIXTEEN verses (the raw match returns twenty-three; six are the name Azrikam and one is a different verb). ⭐ Three of the sixteen are one commandment, and it is the pilgrimage law: and none shall appear before me empty (Exodus 23:15, 34:20, Deuteronomy 16:16). ⚠ And the word arrives there straight out of the previous chapter, pointed the other way: Deuteronomy 15:13 forbids sending a freed slave away reqam. The man told to fill somebody else’s hands is then told not to come with his own empty. ⭐ Its two most quoted appearances are complaints: Jacob to Laban, you would have sent me away empty now (Genesis 31:42), and Naomi, I went out full, and Jehovah has brought me back empty (Ruth 1:21). → first discussed at Deut 16:16