‘Israel, A Peculiar People--A Light To The Gentiles’

Right from the beginning of God’s plan for the nation of Israel, he planned for them to be totally different from all other nations--a total polar opposite of all earthly kingdoms and nations.  Henry A. Wallace, FDR’s Vice President dreamed of “A Century For The Common Man.”  When we take a closer look at the government structure of the nation of Israel, as laid out from Exodus through Deuteronomy, we will see a nation that was totally opposite in political structure than all its Middle Eastern neighbouring kingdoms and empires.  We’ll look at four structures that made up any empire or kingdom, and then we’ll look at the Israelite counterpart of them.  These structures are:  1) the leader or king, 2) the military structure, 3) the economic structure, and 4) the social structure. 

The leader or king:  The empires surrounding Israel had powerful kings over them, they ruled with absolute power, they were total dictators, and were extremely wealthy, and usually had large harems.  They were also very militaristic.  God in his Torah Law put strong restraints on the powers an Israelite king could wield.  Israelite kings, if they followed God’s plan for them spelled out in his Law, looked nothing like the kings of the surrounding nations and empires.  God spelled out the requirements for an Israelite king in Deuteronomy 17:14-17, which states, “When you come to the land which the LORD your God is giving you, and possess it and dwell in it, and say, ‘I will set a king over me like all the nations that are around me,’ you shall surely set a king over your whom the LORD your God chooses; one from among your brethren you shall set as king over you; you may not set a foreigner over you, who is not your brother.  But he shall not multiply horses for himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt to multiply horses, for the LORD has said to you, ‘You shall not return that way again.’  Neither shall he multiply wives for himself, lest his heart turn away; nor shall he greatly multiply silver and gold for himself.” (NKJV)  1) It is to be ‘a king God chooses, chosen from among the ordinary citizenship, not a foreigner.  Verse 16, “The king must not multiply horses for himself.”  God is putting limits on the king’s ability to militarize Israel.  Israel was not to be militaristic or a major military power like the empires surrounding it.  Verse 17, “Neither shall he multiply wives to himself, lest his heart turn away.”  The kings of the surrounding empires had large harems, and they often married daughters of neighbouring or rival kingdoms to form military alliances.  Also foreign wives, as happened with both Solomon and king Ahab, brought false religion and idolatry into Israel.  Verse 17b, “nor shall he greatly multiply silver and gold for himself.”  By becoming wealthy, a king is no longer at the social status of an ordinary citizen, and he would soon forget where he came from.  It’s as if God, well in advance of the British Empire, instituted his own Magna Carta for the king of Israel.  Limiting a king’s wealth limited the king’s power and status among his subjects.  Deuteronomy 17:15, 20, states, “you shall surely set a king over you whom the LORD your God chooses; one from among your brethren you shall set as king over you; you may not set a foreigner over you, who is not your brother…that his heart may not be lifted above his brethren,” (NKJV) He was not to be “above the law.”  Verses 18-19 of Deuteronomy 17 states that the king was instructed to make a copy of God’s Law, and to read it every day of his life, “Also it shall be, when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write for himself a copy of this law in a book, from the one before the priests, the Levites.  And it shall be with him, and he shall read it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the LORD his God and be careful to observe all the words of this law and these statutes,” (NKJV) And we saw in verse 16 that the king was forbidden to amass large numbers of horses.  This wasn’t the ordinary horse, but war horses.  For the surrounding empires, war horses and chariots were the ‘modern strategic weaponry’ of the day, the APCs and tanks of today.  That gets into our next category.

The military structure of the surrounding empires, and then that of Israel:  For the ancient Middle Eastern empires military might, superpower status was the name of the game.  Egypt, under Thutmose III and then his son Amenhotep II had a chariot force second to none, 600 gold chariots and 20,000 ‘normal’ war chariots.  The Mitanni, their rival to the north, also wielded a large chariot force, as did ancient Assyria and Babylon after it.  The Persian Empire wielded both huge numbers of foot soldiers, chariots, and boasted a navy, as did the Greek and Roman Empires after it.  They were the “superpowers” of the ancient world.  They all maintained “a standing army” well equipped with foot soldiers, cavalry and chariots, and most also maintained a navy of warships, like the Persian and Greek and Roman biremes and triremes.  What about Israel?  When we look at the laws concerning militarism and maintaining a military, we will see that God hates militarism.  When we look at what God spelled out for Israel, we’ll see they were forbidden to maintain a standing army, no permanent military.  When they captured war horses, they weren’t allowed to keep them, but were instructed to hobble them, disabling them from being effective war horses.  They were also instructed to burn captured enemy chariots.  They were forbidden to own chariots of their own.  Deuteronomy’s description of how they were to conscript an army is hilarious by any normal military standard, both then and now, and would have driven any normal recruiter mad.  Just imagine a recruiter having to work off of this set of laws, Deuteronomy 20:2-9, “So it shall be, when you are on the verge of battle, that the priest shall approach and speak to the people.  And he shall say to them, ‘Hear, O Israel:  Today you are on the verge of battle with your enemies.  Do not let your heart faint, do not be afraid, and do not tremble or be terrified because of them; for the LORD your God is he who goes with you, to fight against your enemies, to save you.’  Then the officers shall speak to the people, saying: ‘What man is there who has built a new house and has not dedicated it?  Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle and another man dedicate it.  Also what man is there who has planted a vineyard and has not eaten of it?  Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle and another man eat of it.  And what man is there who is betrothed to a woman and has not married her?  Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle and another man marry her.’  The officers shall speak further to the people, and say, ‘What man is there who is fearful and fainthearted?  Let him go and return to his house, lest the heart of his brethren faint like his heart.’  And so it shall be, when the officers have finished speaking to the people, that they shall make captains of the armies to lead the people.” (NKJV)  Israel’s military was to be a group of volunteers who were given every opportunity to opt out of service.  The people chosen to be officers were to be chosen on the spot, men of no prior training, which implies there was to be no standing army in Israel under its king.  What gave them the military edge over all the other ‘modern’ military superpowers around them?  Verse 4, “for the LORD your God is he who goes with you, to fight against your enemies, to save you.”  Do you remember in Exodus 14 how God destroyed Amenhotep II’s massive chariot force, estimated to be 20,000 normal war chariots and 600 special gold chariots, all destroyed in the Red Sea?  Israel didn’t even have to lift a sword in that one.  Psalm 33:16-17 states, “No king is saved by the multitude of an army; a mighty man is not delivered by great strength.  A horse is a vain hope for safety; neither shall it deliver any by its great strength.” (NKJV) God was basically telling his people Israel to shun militarism.  Chariots and war horses were basically banned from the Israelite army.  Also militarism proved to be a real drain on a nation’s economy.  It cost a lot of money to maintain a ‘modern military,’ a standing army, the cost of which was passed onto the backs of the ordinary citizens as taxes--a heavy burden.  In the carnal world of hostile empires militarism equaled survival.  But with God’s nation, Israel, God was stronger than any rival military force (cf. Exodus 14).  But the tax burden, that gets us into the next government structure, it’s economy.

The economic structure, the world verses Israel:  The ancient empires were economically structured on a hierarchy of wealth where a few wealthy landowners amassed all the wealth, while all others, the peasant class, languished in poverty, virtual slaves and serfs.  The wealth of an empire has always been based on the solid foundation of its farms and its ability to produce  food.  The Nile River, periodically flooding, made Egyptian farmland one of the most productive in the world, even into Roman times, being the wheat-basket of Rome.  The Tigris and Euphrates, with Babylon between them, gave the Babylonian Empire some of the richest farmland in the region.  Land, farmland, equals the ability for people to make wealth.  A superpower cannot exist without its farms.  Even today, in our ‘recent history’ various forms of a wealthy class has always owned the output of farms, and large swaths of land for food growth.  In Latin America for the past 200 years the Latifundios thrived and a lot still do.  They are the equivalent of a massive Southern plantation, with serfs, poor tenant farmers instead of slaves, who farm the land.  The Mexican Revolution was a revolt against this, with the famous but short-lived reforms of Emelio Zapata in southern Mexico and Pancho Villa in northern Mexico.  Let’s take a look at the reforms they tried to install, and the importance of land reform, and then take a look at the land reform God instituted for his nation Israel.  You will see for yourself, they were quite similar.  Mankind has been struggling to achieve what God is going to give them in his coming Kingdom of God which Jesus at his 2^nd coming will install on earth for all nations.  So here’s a short  piece about Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa and their attempt at land reform.  Then compare that to ancient Israel. 

Emiliano Zapata: Great Mexican Reformer

Some Basic Mexican History

“Just a century after the Artigas land code [1815], Emiliano Zapata introduced far-reaching agrarian reform in his zone of revolutionary jurisdiction in southern Mexico…In this republic of outcasts, workers’ wages had not risen by a centavo since the historic rising of the priest Miguel Hidalgo in 1810.  In 1910, 800-odd latifundistas, many of them foreigners, owned almost all the national territory.  They were urban princelings who lived in the capital or in Europe and very occasionally visited their estates---where they slept shielded by high, buttressed walls of dark stone.  On the other side of the walls, the peons huddled in adobe hovels.  Of a population of 15 million, 12 million depended on rural wages, almost all of which were paid at the hacienda company stores in astronomically priced beans, flour, and liquor.  Prison, barracks, and vestry shared the task of combating the natural defects of the Indians who, as a member of one illustrious family put it, were born “weak, drunk, and thieving.”  With the worker tied by inherited debts or by legal contract, slavery was the actual labor system on Yucatan henequen plantations, on the tobacco plantations of the Valle Nacional, on Chiapas and Tabasco timberland and fruit orchards, and on the rubber, coffee, sugarcane, tobacco and fruit plantations of Veracruz, Oaxaca, and Morelos.  In a fine report on his visit, John Kenneth Turner wrote that “the United States has virtually reduced [President] Diaz to a political dependency, and by so doing has virtually transformed Mexico into a slave colony of the United States.”  U.S. capital made juicy profits directly or indirectly from its association with the dictatorship.  “The Americanization of Mexico of which Wall Street boasts,” wrote Turner, “is being accomplished and accompanied with a vengeance.” (that being written by Turner in 1909-1910.)

Zapata’s Model Of Social Justice:  Small Farms Reign, Putting “CAPS” on Capitalism

“The agrarian reform proposed to “destroy at the roots forever the unjust monopoly of land, in order to realize a social state which guarantees fully the natural right which every man has to an extension of land necessary for his own subsistence and that of his family.”  Again, seeking the true Biblical solution of Numbers 26:51-56!  “Lands taken from communities and individuals since the deamortization law of 1856 were restored; maximum limits were laid down for holding sizes, according to climate and fertility; and the lands of enemies of the revolution were declared national property.  This last political decision had, as in the Artigas agrarian reform, a clear economic meaning:  the latifundistas were the enemy.  Technical schools, tool factories, and a rural credit bank were established:  sugarmills and distilleries were nationalized and became public services.  A system of local democracy put the reins of political power and of economic maintenance in the people’s hands.  Zapatista schools sprouted and spread, popular juntas were organized for defense and promotion of revolutionary principles, and an authentic democracy took shape and gained strength.  The municipalities were nuclear units of government and the people elected their leaders, courts, and police.  Military leaders had to submit to the wishes of organized civilian communities.  Bureaucrats and generals no longer imposed methods of production and of living.  The revolution tied itself to tradition and functioned “in conformity with the customs and usage of each pueblo…that is, if a certain pueblo wants the communal system, so it will be executed, if another pueblo wants the division of land in order to admit small property, so it will be done.”  

          “In the spring of 1915 all the fields of Morelos were under cultivation, mostly with corn and food crops.  Meanwhile food was short and hunger loomed in Mexico City.  Carranza, who had won the presidency, also ordered land reform, but his henchmen speedily cornered all its benefits.  In 1916 Morelos’s capital Cuerbavacam and the Zapatista district were threatened with powerful forces.  Crops now coming to fruition, minerals, hides, and machines were attractive booty for the advancing officers, who set fires as they came, and proclaimed “a work of reconstruction and progress.” … “A stratagem and a betrayal ended Zapata’s life in 1919.  A thousand men lying in ambush fired into his body.  He died at the same age as Che Guevara.” (“Open Veins of Latin America” p. 123, par. 2, p. 124, par. 3, all emphasis mine, for the full article see https://unityinchrist.com/Poverty/mexico.html)

Why Poverty and Starvation In Latin America?

In “Open Veins of Latin America” Eduardo Galeano shows his readers how over the last 500 years first the Native American Indians, and then the poverty stricken populace of Central and South America, first by enslavement, and then by the enslaving plantation system has brought about great poverty, sickness, starvation and death for the vast majority of inhabitants, both Native Americans and the Spanish or Portuguese general populace.  Proper land-reform, fair distribution of farmland to the general populace would end all of this.  But the wealthy, both local and from abroad, first Spanish and Portuguese, and then from the United States, supporting the owners of sugar and coffee plantations, prevent this.  From the creation and ownership of coffee and sugar plantations, to copper and iron mines and the mining of all the rest of Latin America’s precious resources, this exploitation from sources abroad has, as Galeano so expertly documents in detail, brought about this cycle of poverty, starvation and death which has devastated the masses of Central and South America.  To quote, “The demand for sugar produced the plantation, an enterprise motivated by its proprietor’s desire for profit and placed at the service of the international market Europe was organizing.  Internally, however---since it was to a considerable extent self-sufficient---the plantation was feudal in many important aspects, and its labor force consisted mainly of slaves.  Thus three distinct historical periods---mercantilism, feudalism, slavery---were combined in a single socioeconomic unit.  But in the constellation of power developed by the plantation system, the international market soon took the center of the stage.  Subordinated to foreign needs and often financed from abroad, the colonial plantation evolved directly into the present-day latifundio, one of the bottlenecks that choke economic development and condemn the masses to poverty and a marginal existence in Latin America today.  The latifundio as we know it has been sufficiently mechanized to multiply the labor surplus, and thus enjoys an ample reserve of cheap hands.  It no longer depends on the importation of African slaves or on the ‘encomienda’ of Indians; it merely needs to pay ridiculously low or in-kind wages, or to obtain for nothing in return for the laborer’s use of a minute piece of land.  It feeds upon the proliferation of minifundios---pocket-sized farms---resulting from its own expansion, and upon the constant internal migration of a legion of workers who, driven by hunger, move around to the rhythm of successive harvests.” (Open Veins of Latin America, by Eduardo Galeano, p. 60, par. 2-3)

Late 1960s In Brazil, The Empty Promise Of Land Reform 
 

“The Northeasterner’s slave labor is now constructing the great trans-Amazonia highway that will cut Brazil in two, penetrating up to the Bolivian border.  The “march to the west,” as the plan is called, also involves the agricultural colonization project to extend “the frontiers of civilization”; each peasant will get ten hectares of land if he survives the tropical forests.  The Northeast [of Brazil] contains 6 million landless peasants while 15,000 people own half of all the land.  Agrarian reform is not carried out in the already occupied areas, where the latifundistas’ property rights remain sacred, but in the jungle [where this ten hectare land-reform is being offered].  Thus a road for the latifundio’s expansion into new territory is being opened up by its victims, the flagelado, or “tormented ones,” of the Northeast.  [This is a reference to the construction by these destitute workers of the Trans-Amazonia Highway.]  Without capital or implements, what is the use of ten hectares one to two thousand miles from consumer centers?  One must conclude that the government’s real aims are quite different:  to provide labor for the U.S. latifundistas who have bought or appropriated half the lands north of the Rio Negro, and also for U.S. Steel, which received Amazonia’s rich iron and manganese deposits from General Garrastazu Medici.” (Open Veins of Latin America, p. 91, par. 1, emphasis mine)  So much for genuine land-reform.

Early 1970s, Salvador Allende Attempts To Bring Real Land-Reform To Chile---What Happened?

In the early 1970s, right after the publishing of Galeano’s Open Veins of Latin America, Salvador Allende attempted to bring equitable land-reform into Chile.  What happened?  If you’re into historically accurate movies, order off amazon.com the movie “Missing” starring Jack Lemon and Sissy Spacek.  Also read this quote from Salvador Allende’s widow, Isabel Allende:  “If I had been able to read between the lines, I could have concluded that Salvador Allende’s government was doomed from the beginning.  It was the time of the Cold War, and the United States would not allow a leftist experiment to succeed in what Henry Kissinger called “its backyard.”  The Cuban Revolution was enough; no other socialist project would be tolerated, even if it was the result of democratic election.  On September 11, 1973, a military coup ended a century of democratic tradition in Chile and started the long reign of General Augusto Pinochet.  Similar coups followed in other countries, and soon half the continent’s population was living in terror.  This was a strategy designed in Washington and imposed upon the Latin American people by the economic and political forces of the right.  In every instance the military acted as mercenaries to the privileged groups in power.  Repression was organized on a large scale; torture, concentration camps, censorship, imprisonment without trial, and summary executions became common practices.  Thousands of peopled “disappeared,” masses of exiles and refugees left their countries running for their lives…In this context, “Open Veins of Latin America” was published.  This book made Eduardo Galeano famous overnight, although he was already a well-known political journalist in Uruguay.” (Forward to Open Veins of Latin America, written by Isabel Allende, pp. ix-x, par. 2, and par. 1, resp.)   If you didn’t catch it, the United States helped initiate and aid a military coup d’etat on September 11, 1973.  We 9/11-nd the nation of Chile and much of South America.  Many more innocents died in their 9/11 than did in ours, as it swept through Chile, and then on into much of the rest of South and Central America.  Nonetheless, I can almost hear God saying about our 9/11, ‘There America, back at ya!  How do you like them apples?’

Two Farming Towns, Two Radically Different Social Structures, One Healthy, One Unhealthy

In 1946, an anthropologist named Walter Goldschmidt, working at the behest of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, put Jefferson’s suspicions of the costs of centralized capital and the alienating effects of wage labor to a sort of test. Goldschmidt examined two towns in California’s Central Valley that were similar in the size and nature of their agricultural economies but quite different in the character of the farms that surrounded each town. Dinuba was girdled by small, independent farms worked chiefly by the families who owned them, while Arvin’s lands were given over to fewer and much larger farms worked largely by seasonal workers. The total volumes of agricultural production in the two towns were very similar, but Goldschmidt was struck by profound differences in the towns’ social fabric. He found, for example, that Dinuba had more institutions than Arvin for democratic decision-making and broader participation in such decision-making by its people; that the small farms in Dinuba supported about 20 percent more people at a higher standard of living; that most citizens of Dinuba were independent entrepreneurs, while two thirds of the population of Arvin were wage laborers; that Dinuba had better community facilities—more schools, parks, newspapers, churches, and civic organizations; that Dinuba had twice as many business establishments, which did 61 percent more retail business, particularly in household goods and building equipment; that such public facilities and services as paved streets, sidewalks, garbage disposal and sewage disposal were more available in Dinuba, whereas in some areas they were entirely lacking in Arvin. These were not facts, actually, that the U.S. Department of Agriculture wished to hear. It cancelled Goldschmidt’s research, invoked a clause in his contract forbidding him to discuss his findings, and refused to publish his report[!]. The anthropologist finally published the report himself years later, and in 1972 he was called to testify before a Senate committee investigating land monopolies. “In the quarter century since the publication of that study,” Goldschmidt said, “corporate farming has spread to other parts of the country, particularly to the American agricultural heartland, which has always been the scene of family-sized commercial farms. This development has, like so many other events of the period, been assumed to be natural, inevitable, and progressive, and little attention has been paid to the costs that have been incurred. I do not mean the costs in money, or in subventions [subsidies] inequitably distributed to large farmers. I mean the costs in the traditions of our society and its rural institutions.” Ultimately Goldschmidt, like Jefferson, went unheeded. The family farm is now as quaint a notion as Jefferson’s yeoman husbandry. Its passing has not slowed the march of the American economy. The decline as well of the sort of small-town manufacturing in which Carl Johnston’s father worked has been balanced in the gross domestic product by the growth of a monetized service sector. But the journalists Clifford Cobb, Ted Halstead, and Jonathan Rowe question the accuracy of the gross domestic product as an economic measuring stick, and suggest that this growth comes at the expense of American families and small towns, where services were once performed for reasons other than money. This is a shift, I believe, that has been felt nowhere more profoundly than on Cape Cod since World War II. Cobb and his colleagues speak in terms that stretch in the 1990s from sea to shining sea but resonate with particular sense of loss through the gridlocked summer streets of Chatham and Hyannis: [Goldschmidt continues] “Parenting becomes child-care, visits on the porch become psychiatry and VCRs, the watchful eyes of neighbors become alarm systems and police officers, the kitchen table becomes McDonald’s—up and down the line, the things people used to do for and with one another turn into things they have to buy. Day-care adds more than $4 billion to the GDP; VCRs and kindred entertainment gear add almost $60 billion. Politicians generally see this decay through well-worn ideological lens: conservatives root for the market, liberals for the government. But in fact these two “sectors” are, in this respect at least, merely different sides of the same coin: both government and the private market grow by cannibalizing the family and community realms that ultimately nurture and sustain us.” [“AGAINST THE TIDE, The Fate Of The New England Fisherman” by Richard Adams Carey, © 1999, pp. 233-335, emphasis mine.]

Thomas Jefferson’s dream of yeoman farmers on small farms was designed to put a giant Cap on Capitalism that would prevent the inordinate accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few, in this case, a few large agribusinesses, or out at sea, huge factory ships run by fishing conglomerates at the expense of the small fishermen, and the health of fish stocks themselves. Jefferson, whether he realized it or not (he may have), was trying to design a system, or at least put into the Constitution (I don’t think he succeeded), the very principles found in the Old Testament Law of God which divided up the Promised Land into inheritances given to every citizen, guaranteeing small farms which could not be bought or sold, they could only be leased, the land returning to the original owners every fifty years. As far as placing caps on capitalism in the fishing industry, it is my firm belief that fishing boats should be limited in size to boats no larger than the Andrea Gail, and that bottom trawling which damages the bottom environment should be banned, allowing only net trawling above the bottom, and long-lining fishing. Sorry, got salt-water in my veins. Along the line of putting Caps on Capitalism, thus guaranteeing every individual the ability to accumulate a degree of wealth, some major industries should be state-owned, like railroads and public transportation, mining and smelting of metals, paying their workers well, but selling their products at cost. That’s my guess, we’ll see how Jesus sets these things up when he returns and sets up the government of God on earth.

Don’t Oppress The Foreigner (immigrants anyone?):  Palestinian Problem Solved

“Also thou shalt not oppress a stranger:  for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.”
(Exodus 23:9)  This is a foreigner, it’s a prohibition of race prejudice.  The Bible forbids it all the way through, and God gives a remarkable reason in this place, he shows different reasons, different angles in different places, “thou shalt not oppress a stranger:” a foreigner, “for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.”  You should never oppress someone, seeing you were the oppressed in the land of Egypt, God’s exhortation to the children of Israel.  And more than that, you know, God has said to Abraham ‘I will bless them that bless thee, curse them that curse thee,’ all of the nations of the world shall be blessed through you, part of the blessing of Abraham is to go to the nations of the world.  If Israel was going to be prejudice and Israel was going to have an attitude towards foreigners, the blessing of Abraham could never continue and go wherever it was to go.  So, here the challenge, that they were never to do that.  By the way, we make application certainly to our own lives.  We’re in the Kingdom, we got in, we were foreigners to the Covenants and Promises of God.  [Comment:  God promises foreigners that Israel’s borders will be open to them, both in Leviticus 19:33-34, “And if a stranger [foreigner] dwells with you in your land, you shall not mistreat him.  The stranger who dwells among you shall be to you as one born among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt:  I am the LORD your God.” (NKJV)  Now that’s Old Testament, now for a prophecy for the future, covering the start of the Millennial Kingdom of God, right after Yeshua’s 2^nd coming, in Ezekiel 47:21-23, which starts out describing the division of the Promised Land at the beginning of the Millennial Kingdom of God, and states, “Thus you shall divide this land among yourselves according to the tribes of Israel.  It shall be that you will divide it by lot as an inheritance for yourselves, and for the strangers who dwell among you and who bear children among you.  They shall be to you as native-born among the children of Israel; they shall have an inheritance with you among the tribes of Israel.  And it shall be that in whatever tribe the stranger dwells, there you shall give him his inheritance,’ says the Lord GOD.” (NKJV)  You can’t get much clearer than that.  see also https://www.factsaboutisrael.uk/future-borders-of-israel-in-prophecy/ Palestinian Problem Solved, God’s Way!] 

In the Soviet Union Josef Stalin created the collective farm system enmass across Soviet territory, and the hidden reason was so he could siphon off tons of grain and sell it abroad to help pay for and maintain the Soviet military, helping give the Soviet Union superpower status, built on the backs of its peasant collective farm workers, who never achieved a decent level of income.  Even in the former British Empire all across its colonies, also coupled to its colonialism, wealthy landowners were enabled to become even wealthier on the backs of the poor in those nations.  Even in the United States, massive agribusinesses are thriving and are gobbling up small farms, driving them out of business.  In every instance it is land and land ownership that produces wealth.  Now for Israel.  While we don’t see that God abolishes Capitalism, he puts some serious “CAPS” on Capitalism.  Why?  To break the cycle of poverty amongst the poor and to enable the common man to achieve a fair amount of wealth.  We will look now at some of the Old Testament laws which would enable “the Common Man” to achieve a fair degree of wealth.

Even Distribution Of Land Amongst The Ordinary Citizens, Ancient Land-Reform, Promise For The Future

Few realize, a wise King (Yahweh) in ancient history took an enslaved race, freed them from slavery, and brought them into an area of rich farmland, and by fair allotment, divided up that land equitably to every family and head of household.  He even gave allotments to women whose husbands had died.  This land then remained in each family, deeded to them by inheritance in perpetuity.  A family’s land could only be leased for a 50-year lease period, and then had to be returned back to the family, free of charge.  This prevented the over-accumulation of lands by the rich, at the expense of the poor, the result of which we have seen in Central and South America, as thoroughly documented by Eduardo Galeano.  This system of ancient land-reform took place in the Middle East back in the 1400s BC, and can be found documented in Numbers 26:51-56, “These were the numbered of the children of Israel, six hundred thousand and a thousand seven hundred and thirty.  And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Unto these the land shall be divided for an inheritance according to the number of names.  To many thou shalt give the more inheritance [i.e. if your family was large, you got more land in your allotment], and to few thou shalt give the less inheritance: [i.e. if your family was smaller, you got less land, this was fair distribution according to need, what some would consider a communist or socialist principle.  Well all this means, is that the great socialist and communist thinkers took a valuable principle out of the Bible, God’s Word, modifying it as it suited them]  to every one shall his inheritance be given according to those that were numbered of him.  Notwithstanding the land shall be divided by lot:  according to the names of the tribes of their fathers they shall inherit.  According to the lot shall the possession thereof be divided between many and few.” (KJV)  What God, Yahweh, the pre-Incarnate Christ did for the 12 tribes of Israel, granting them an incredible freedom from slavery and then granting them land-reform by fair allotment, he as the soon-returning Jesus Christ will yet again grant fair land-reform by allotment to the poor and destitute in the world, and yes, for those locked into poverty in Central and South America, who need it the most (according to Eduardo Galeano---don’t believe me, read his book).  (for the full article, log onto: https://www.unityinchrist.com/Why%2520Poverty%2520and%2520Starvation%2520In%2520Latin%2520America_1.html)  Now in Joshua chapters 13 through 19 the land of Israel was evenly distributed, according to size of family.  This leveled the economic playing field, giving all citizens the same opportunity to create individual wealth via farming, raising cattle and sheep (and yes, chickens and probably turkeys). 

Protection Of Land Ownership

We’ve already read about the evils of the wealthy using their wealth to accrue more land, creating vast agribusinesses, plantations and Latifundios.  These laws would guarantee the land of a citizen, all citizens, would remain in their families.  Say a person had to sell off their family property due to debt caused by drought or some other circumstances.  They had the right to buy it back at any time, should they gain the means to do so.  If they couldn’t “redeem” their property, every 50 years, on the year of Jubilee, the land automatically reverted back to its original owners.  This put a huge check on the wealthy amassing large tracts of land at the expense of poor, down on their luck people.  Leviticus 25:23-28, “The land shall not be sold permanently, for the land is mine; for you are strangers and sojourners with me.  And in all the land of your possession you shall grant redemption of the land.  If one of your brethren becomes poor, and has sold some of his possession, and if his redeeming relative comes to redeem it, then he may redeem what his brother sold.  Or if the man has no one to redeem it, but he himself becomes able to redeem it, then let him count the years since its sale, and restore the remainder to the man to whom he sold it, that he may return to his possession.  But if he is not able to have it restored to himself, then what was sold shall remain in the hand of him who bought it until the Year Jubilee; and in the Jubilee it shall be released, and he shall return to his possession.”(NKJV)  If a person, due to debt, was forced to sell himself or herself into bond servitude, the law demanded their release at the end of six years--no permanent involuntary bondslaves, Exodus 21:2, “If you buy a Hebrew servant, he shall serve six years; and in the seventh he shall go out free and pay nothing.” 

The Charging Of Interest For Loans Banned

In the surrounding empires interest rates for loans could average between 20% and 30% and sometimes be as high as 80%.  In Israel, due to God’s concern for the poor, the charging of interest was banned, outright.  This would help break the cycle of poverty the poor so often get caught in.  Leviticus 25:35-38, “And if thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee; then thou shalt relieve him:  yea, though he be a stranger [foreigner, immigrant], or a sojourner; that he may live with thee.  Take thou no usury [interest] of him, or increase:  but fear thy God; that thy brother may live with thee.  Thou shalt not give him thy money upon usury, nor lend him thy victuals for increase.  I am the LORD your God, which brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, to give you the land of Canaan, and to be your God.” (KJV)  Also, every seven years, the year of the Land Sabbath, all debts were canceled.  Deuteronomy 15:1-11, “At the end of every seven years you shall grant a release of debts.  And this is the form of the release:  every creditor who has lent anything to his neighbour shall release it; he shall not require it of his neighbour or his brother, because it is called the LORD’s release.  Of a foreigner you may require it; but you shall give up your claim to what is owed by your brother, except when there may be no poor among you; for the LORD will greatly bless you in the land which the LORD your God is giving you to possess as an inheritance--only if you carefully obey the voice of the LORD your God, to observe with care all these commandments which I command you today.  For the LORD your God will bless you just as he promised you; you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow; you shall reign over many nations, but they shall not reign over you.  If there is among you a poor man of your brethren, within any of the gates in your land which the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart nor shut your hand from your poor brother, but you shall open your hand wide to him and willingly lend him sufficient for his need, whatever he needs.  Beware lest there be a wicked thought in your heart, saying, ‘The seventh year, the year of release, is at hand,’ and your eye be evil against your poor brother and you give him nothing, and he cry out to the LORD against you, and it become sin among you.  You shall surely give to him, and your heart should not be grieved when you give to him, because for this thing the LORD your God will bless you in all your works and in all to which you put your hand.  For the poor will never cease from the land; therefore I command you, saying, ‘You shall open your hand wide to your brother, to your poor and your needy, in your land.” (NKJV)  Coupled to the redemption of land sold every 50 years (Leviticus 25:8-28), these laws would lead to an even distribution of wealth.  Of course, as brought out in Proverbs, laziness would lead to poverty, a person had to work to produce wealth.  As Preston Sprinkle said in his book EXILES, “Social justice.  Concern for the poor.  Economic checks on the rich.  Redistribution of wealth.  Forgiveness of debt.  These aren’t liberal or Marxist or “woke” ideals.  They’re straight out of the Bible.” (p.40, par.2) 

The Priesthood

In the surrounding empires, like Egypt and Babylon, the priests of their pagan religions not only had access to the tithes and offerings of the people, but unlike ordinary citizens, they could own land, vast swaths of it.  Next to the king or pharaoh they formed a wealthy class of their own.  It was diametrically the opposite for God’s priesthood, which was made up of the tribe of Levi, and within it the sons of Aaron were the priests.  All Levites, plus the Levitical priests descended from Aaron couldn’t own land.  They had to live on the tithes and offerings of the people, the other 12 tribes of Israel.  And if they grew lax in doing their job of teaching God’s laws, so the people stopped caring about them, their own income would dry up.  The Levites and priests were thus at the bottom of Israel’s economic strata (to see God’s tithing system, log onto https://www.unityinchrist.com/gifts4.htm). 

The Judges

Instead of judges coming from some royal class, friends of the ruling king, God said Judges had to be selected from the people by the people.  Deuteronomy 16:18-20, “You shall appoint judges and officers in all your gates, which the LORD your God gives you, according to your tribes, and they shall judge the people with just judgment.  You shall not pervert justice:  you shall not show partiality, nor take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and twists the words of the righteous.  You shall follow what is altogether just, that you may live and inherit the land which the LORD your God is giving you.” (NKJV)  “In all your gates,” meant choosing judges out of the local cities and towns within each tribe of Israel.  No royalty, no upper class, but righteous, upstanding citizens chosen as judges. 

The Prophets

The prophets were mostly selected by God from the ordinary people, Amos was a farmer, although God could chose the son of a priest at times.  But God did the choosing, since it was God who did the talking to the prophet, telling him what to say or write.  As seen throughout the Old Testament, God’s prophets were a check against corruption in the monarchy and in the Levitical priesthood, and of Israel in general.  The real King of Israel, Yahweh, talked to and often corrected his people through his chosen prophets.  It wasn’t an easy life for a prophet, and their lives were often in danger, going up against a king.  Like the Press in the U.S. being called “the 4^th Estate,” a check on government corruption.  Prophets were a kind of 4^th Estate in God’s government structure over Israel, a 4^th Estate out of the other three, king, priests & judges.

The whole upside-down nation of Israel, a nation of The Common Man, the dream of Henry A. Wallace, Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa, was intended by God to be “A kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6) and “A light to the nations” (Isaiah 49:6).  And it will yet be that, for the whole world, after the 2^nd coming of Jesus Christ (see https://www.unityinchrist.com/kingdomofgod/MillennialKingdomofGod.pdf).