From Ttribal Connection To an Agricultural Society⤒🔗

From a sociological perspective we can point to two significant upheavals in Israel’s history, which have contributed to the social contrasts among the people and which caused great groups of people to dwell in poverty.

The first upheaval occurred when the Israelites relinquished their existence as a semi-nomadic people at the conquest of Canaan, and exchanged it for an agricultural society. It was no longer the tribal or blood relationship, but the possession of property that became the cornerstone of their society. At a time when the patriarchs of the Israelites had roamed around, the problem of personal poverty did not exist. Whatever was available for basic human needs and whatever was produced as a tribal family — and to a large extent, that is still the case with many nomadic peoples — it was shared in equal portions among the members of the tribe, whether they could contribute and work themselves or not. Widows and orphans were included as a matter of fact in the protection and the care of the tribal community. After the death of her husband a widow would normally return to her father’s tribe, where she would find safety and a means of existence, whatever she would need, just as before her marriage.

After the settlement in Canaan it all began to change. In the best possible scenario the redeemer, the close relative, particularly the brother of the husband who had passed away, would take care of the widow by marrying her and by taking responsibility for her needs. Where such a relative was found ready and able to act according to the law about the levirate marriage according to Deuteronomy 25:5-10, the widow’s social problem was resolved. In the book of Ruth, Boaz was a good example of a man who acted in accord with God’s law and who took Ruth as his wife after she had been left destitute by the death of her husband, and had returned from Moab to Canaan with her equally destitute mother-in-law Naomi. From the same book we also learn that it was not always obvious that such a redeemer was found who would be ready and able to take upon himself the care of the widow and the oftentimes meager legacy of the family of her deceased husband. In chapter 4 of the book we read that the relative, who should have been eligible first and foremost to take on the duty of redemption, failed miserably and let his own concerns prevail over the rule of God’s commandment. In all likelihood he would not have been the only one to act in this manner.

Exploitation of Small-Scale Farmers←⤒🔗

The second social upheaval took place when money and trade made their appearance in the days of king Solomon. This upheaval too meant an intensification of the social differences, this time between small-scale farmers who with their hard work could barely make ends meet — provided there were no serious setbacks or hardships — and the class of those who had great possessions, whose aim it was to obtain as much real estate as possible, along with cheap labour. This was at the cost of the small farmers who had to give up their independence after they had endured various instances of failing crops, sometimes for many years in a row. How often did it not happen that the crops were lost by droughts, by infestations of grasshoppers, or destruction by enemy armies? And how often did it not happen that the affected farmers had to borrow grain from the well-to-do farmers in order to keep their families alive? More often they ended up being destitute, when they could not pay the high rents that the rich imposed (in the ancient East, sometimes up to 33%) and demanded, in spite of the prohibition according to God’s law.

The creditors knew all too well how to abuse the hopeless position of need of the affected farmer. When on account of new hardships the needy farmer did not appear to be able to pay his debts at the predetermined time, the creditor demanded a piece of land as exchange for the debt of the stricken farmer. Through this loss of property the poor man was even less able to produce sufficient means to pay off his debts.

In the end the creditor could even let it go so far that he caused the farmer, and sometimes also the other members of his family, to be robbed by corrupt judges and to lose their liberty. They lost all their property to the creditors and they had to sell themselves as slaves or serfs and work hard for the pitiless creditors (see Isa. 50:1b). In this way the rich robbed their victims of their last pieces of land in order to amass an enormously large estate for themselves, where they let their debtors work like slaves, often without payment or at most for just a paltry amount.

Such a situation was especially devastating for widows. When a husband died and his wife remained behind with the debts, the creditor could grab not only the single cow which had to provide for the widow’s livelihood (Job 24:3), but he could also take her children to force them into slavery (2 Kings 4:1; Job 24:9).

These were the things that Israel’s prophets exposed all the time when they revealed the causes of poverty and misery in Israel’s society. It is striking that the prophets never point to people’s own failures or bad behaviour as causes of poverty, the way the wisdom teachers do in the book of Proverbs. There we also read of laziness, abuse of strong drink and interaction with prostitutes as potential triggers of poverty. Israel’s prophets only direct our attention to the poor who have become victims of exploitation and injustice.

In this way Amos pictures the ruthless creditors (Amos 2:6-8) who sold righteous, innocent people as merchandise, because they were unable to timeously  repay a small amount — comparable to a pair of sandals — to the moneylenders with whom they had sought refuge in their dire need. The rich creditors are clearly out to enrich themselves at the cost of the poor. They kick them wherever they want and when they meet a defenseless person in the narrow alleys of those ancient eastern cities they push him inhumanely to the side to give themselves plenty of room to maneuver. They do not even shy away from sexually abusing a poor young girl whom they had taken in as a servant or slave in their home. And for Amos it counts as the worst display of brutality that a father and son of the same family abuse the servant girl in her subservient position.

When the poor farmer had to take out a loan in his misery, the creditor would always be right there to demand a pledge. The already impoverished poor of Israel did not have much to offer, and the gracious law of the Lord aimed to protect them in such a way that the most essential things could not also be robbed: the hand mill with which the meager meals were prepared was not to be taken in pledge (Deut. 24:6), and neither could the garment of the defenseless widow be taken away. If necessary the mantle, i.e., the outer garment, could be taken from poor people, but then only for the daytime. Before nightfall the creditor had to return this piece of clothing; it was the only means that the poor owned to protect them from the cold at night. Amos reveals, however, how the rich men of his time did not care at all about God’s commandment: boldly and heartlessly they go to sleep on the clothes that they had extorted from the poor in pledge, and just as brutally they drink the wine, the people’s drink, that they had seized from the poor as so-called penalty because they could not make their payments in time.

The epitome of their brutality is revealed in that, without being conscious-stricken, they perform these things in the sanctuaries where the Lord is worshipped and adored. Obviously they have shut off their conscience to such an extent that they do not even realize how much their heartless behaviour clashes with the command of God, in whose house they are and where they display their outer piety in a hypocritical manner. They do not care that with their selfish attitude in life, without any sign of mercy for the poor, they are desecrating the holy name of the Lord (Amos 2:7). Nothing less than God’s name is at stake where the misery of the poor is exploited for the sake of their own interests.

A little further in his prophecy Amos shows how the rich trample the interests of the unfortunates of society, and how they ask for contributions of grain by which the already destitute family of such poor people is thrown into even greater misery and is being threatened with famine (Amos 5:11a). The creditors appear bound to destroy the poor. They are only thinking of enriching themselves, if needs be with lying and cheating. On feast days and Sabbath days they are already looking with anticipation toward the workweek, in order to exploit the people even further, although they are already at a minimum threshold. They dare to ask exorbitant prices for the grain, to use devious weights and to deliver substandard goods (see Amos 8:4-5).

Hosea, the subsequent preacher in northern Israel, unmasks the well-to-do merchants in a similar manner as they enrich themselves with false balances at the cost of their poor compatriots (Hos. 12:7-9).

Injustice Also in Judah←↰⤒🔗

Not only in the northern kingdom but also in Judah the prophets reveal in the name of the Lord how the leaders victimize the poor in their greed, by robbing them of even the few possessions they still own (Isa. 3:14; Jer. 5:27) and by treating them as sheep destined for slaughter at which they pull off the skin and consume the meat (Micah 3:3). There are also such leaders in the south who abuse and exploit the poor as cheap labour, who allow them to struggle and toil away (Mic. 3:10). As an infamous example of a king who let his great palace be built in such an unjust manner Jeremiah exposes king Jehoiakim, a king “who builds his house by unrighteousness...who makes his neighbour serve him for nothing” (Jer. 22:13).

While the initial causes for the impoverishment of the simple farmers were found in natural disasters or hostile armies, the continuing pauperization is blamed by the prophets on the exploitation of such emergency situations by leaders and the rich. Israel’s poor have repeatedly become the victims of those who managed to enlarge their own estates and possessions in a sly and illicit manner, at the cost of those who were hit badly. In this way Isaiah pictures the behaviour of the big landowners who “join house to house, who add field to field, until there is no more room” for the small peasants and they, the landed owners, are the only ones left in the land (Isa. 5:8; see Mic, 2:2). The rulers often tried to achieve that objective with an appearance of justice, just as Ahab and Jezebel did with Naboth’s vineyard (1 King 21). They managed in a sly and underhanded way to obtain this vineyard by moving Naboth out of the waythrough murder.

No Justice in Court←⤒🔗

When their creditors threatened the hard-hit poor in their existence, or when even the lives of the poor were at stake, the latter often attempted in vain to receive their justice from the proper authorities, the “‘elders” who were responsible for justice in Israel. The judges proved to be corrupt, amenable to bribes from the rich creditors (Mic. 3:11; 7:3). That is how the prophets, Amos in the north, and Isaiah in the south, picture the judges who push the innocent poor to the side as they are attempting to receive justice in the gate of the city, the typical place of judgment. They refuse to give justice to the widows and the fatherless (Isa. 1:23), and turn it into wormwood, a bitter and poisonous substance (Amos 5:7-12; 6:12). In their thirst for bribes Israel’s judges behave like “evening wolves that leave nothing till the morning” (Zeph. 3:3). The shameful partial jurisdiction, which was in the hands of the wealthy classes, has become an instrument to destroy the hard-hit poor even more in their misery. The judges have become companions of thieves (Isa. 1:23), of the rich who knew how to exploit the emergency situation of the poor by robbing them of the last possessions they still owned. In this way also the corrupt judicial system has become, in the eyes of Israel’s prophets, a reason for the impoverishment of the already destitute and penniless groups on the bottom of the ladder of Israel’s society.

The Root Of the Evil: Turning Away From the Lord←⤒🔗

And yet the shameful behaviour of the rich farmers, the leaders and the judges, is not the deepest cause for the societal disruption where the poor were duped. Their behaviour was the external symptom of a much more significant evil in Israel’s society. It is what we read in Amos 2:4, as he accuses the people of Judah that they have rejected the law of the Lord, have not kept his commandments and have turned their backs to the Lord in order to worship idols. That is the deepest reason of all the misery among God’s people. God’s commandments, revealed in his holy law, are trampled the one after the other. That is how Hosea unmasks the situation in his time (Hos. 4:1-3): “There is swearing, lying, murder, stealing, and committing adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed.” This refers to the blood of the poor and oppressed people of the land, the economically disadvantaged. The entire country ends up in a deplorable situation as the poor languish, and even the animals have to suffer under the greed and selfish abuse of the authorities. It almost appears as if Hosea is speaking about our present time, in which God’s creation is being exploited in all sorts of ways by the greed and selfishness of man.

And then the prophet points to the most profound cause of all misery: “There is no faithfulness, no love, no longer a knowledge of God in the land” (Hos. 4:1a). No faithfulness: people have become untrustworthy, both in their attitude toward God and toward each other. No love: there is no love-filled devotion toward each other among the people of God; they are forgetting that they have been called by the Lord God to be a nation of brothers (Deut. 25), and therefore the wealthy have no heart and along with it no more an open hand for the impoverished brother (see Deut. 15:4, 10f). And the greatest cause is revealed when the prophet blames the Israelites that there is no longer a knowledge of God in the land. Faithfulness and solidarity with a fellow man in need ultimately flow from a knowledge of God. Such knowledge has everything in common with knowing God’s will from his commandments. The fact that people no longer reckoned with God’s will in society was to a large extent the guilt of the priests, who had neglected their task in this regard, i.e., to give instruction in God’s law. Therefore the prophet Hosea sighs, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge” (Hos. 4:6). The knowledge of God reaches even deeper yet: it is especially about knowing God from the heart, to know yourself united with the Lord God with all your heart and soul, and to live and to act from that unity — also in the interaction with each other. In a most profound way, that is where the greatest lack was found in Israel, and it was then also the most foundational cause of the selfish heartlessness, to which the poor of Israel fell victim.