God is a Capitalist

by Roger McKinney

  If he became so poor that he had to sell all of his land, again a kinsman could help him out by repurchasing it or he would get the land back at Jubilee. But he could sell the land for only what the harvests might bring in sales for the number of harvests remaining until Jubilee. If the farmer had incurred so much debt that the harvest would not pay off the debt and he had no close relative to redeem the land, he could sell himself, and or his family as unpaid laborers until Jubilee. At that point any debt that might remain was erased and the family could start all over. The tribulations of Ruth and Naomi probably depict a scenario in which Israel was caught in a judgment from God because of idolatry that forced Naomi’s husband to relocate to Moab. The two returned to Israel after the death of her husband and sons, but their only help was the kinsman redeemer, not Jubilee.

  The economy under the judges

  The book of Judges records mostly the history of the moral and spiritual degradation of the nation of Israel following the death of the conquering generation. Cycles of repentance followed by delivery from oppressive invaders then descent into idolatry and immorality make up most of the book. Those cycles and the phrase “In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw fit,” (Judges 21:25) cause many commentators to deduce that the period of Israel under the judges was one of decline and chaos and the glory days of Israel came with the kings. But did Israel benefit from having kings instead of judges? The question suggests that God was wrong about how best to structure the laws of the new nation and that he erred in warning of the tyranny of kings.

  However, the record of the kings of Israel demonstrates that God was not wrong. A list of the names of good kings is short with David at the head, but even David kept the nation in continual warfare. God refused to allow him to build the first temple because God saw him as a bloody man. Solomon built the first temple, but he enriched himself at the expense of the people and taxed them so heavily that he caused a civil war that the nation never recovered from. The history of the remaining kings differs little from that of the judges in that most kings led the people into idolatry and immorality followed by God’s judgments in the forms of drought, plagues of locusts and invasions by foreign armies. The Israeli leadership may have thought that they could avoid God’s judgments of being conquered by foreign armies if they had a king and a standing army, but God proved to them that they could not raise an army large enough to defend Israel without his assistance. He had already proven with Gideon and others that with his assistance they needed only a very small army of volunteers to remain free.

  The era of the kings neither protected the nation from invasion nor prevented it from sliding into idolatry, immorality and even child sacrifice. So whatever Samuel, the author of the book, meant by the phrase “In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes,” he certainly could not have meant that Israel was more Godly, prosperous or peaceful under kings. Samuel would never have praised the rule of kings in the way that most theologians think the phrase does. He condemned monarchy.

  Samuel’s phrase occurs four times in the book of Judges (17:6; 18:1; 19:1; 21:25) and it has led many theologians to assume anarchy reigned the entire time. However, a similar phrase appears in Deuteronomy 12:8 where it refers to Israel under Moses in the wilderness: “There, in the presence of the LORD your God, you and your families shall eat and shall rejoice in everything you have put your hand to, because the LORD your God has blessed you. You are not to do as we do here today, everyone doing as they see fit, since you have not yet reached the resting place and the inheritance the LORD your God is giving you.”

  Anarchy did not exist under the leadership of Moses with the tabernacle in place and offerings being made. It is possible that Moses meant the people had been free to choose whether to serve God or not without compulsion and many chose to worship idols. Later, kings would determine by decree which gods the people worshipped. In other words, under the judges the people had religious freedom but under the kings they did not. Of course, the history shows that most of the kings led the people into idolatry and child sacrifice. It is possible that Samuel was lamenting the loss of freedom that the tyranny of kings caused.

  Under the judges, Israeli families would have been richer than those under the kings because they did not pay taxes to support the royal family, which would have included thousands of princes since David and succeeding kings had hundreds of wives. Nor would they have to pay for the many wars, standing armies and vast array of weapons, especially horses. They would not have paid for the crushing administration and army of bureaucrats required to collect taxes and oversee building projects. And they would not have suffered from the centuries of abuse in which the princes paid corrupt judges to steal the land of common people.

  We know from history that the incentives to work hard and produce more, which come from the knowledge that the owner’s property is secure, cause enormous increases in wealth. The experiences of the Dutch Republic, the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, the former communist nations of Eastern Europe, China and India in the past generation provide overwhelming evidence. The pattern of economic development in history is clear: first productivity increases in the agricultural sector enriches farmers and releases workers to the city. Wealthier farmers then demand more manufactured goods which cause that sector to grow as well as trade with other nations for goods not produced in the home country.

  We can assume that ancient Israelis were no different in character and took advantage of their secure property in similar ways. Farmers would have searched for better seeds and farming methods, such as irrigation, better plows and the use of fertilizers. They would have switched to growing higher valued crops, such as grapes, and the production of milk, butter and cheese that earn farmers higher profits than grains while trading for the grains they needed. The farmers would have retained the surpluses they produced instead of losing them to the tax man as in Egypt or Israel under the kings. They would have exchanged some of the surplus for gold and silver to save, but much of it would have gone to buy manufactured goods in the cities. Manufacturing would have increased as well as trading for manufactured goods from other nations. Increases in manufacturing would have led to specialization, which would increase productivity and wealth of workers in manufacturing and raised their demand for better quality farm products. People in the cities and countries would have eaten more meat, milk and cheese and improved their health, further increasing productivity and wealth.

  Helmut Schoeck asserts in his book Envy: a Theory of Social Behavior that the genius of Christianity lay in its adoption of secure property rights for individuals. Of course, Christians did not create property rights; God did. And God was the first to prohibit envy. God began the Ten Commandments with "I am the Lord your God" and concludes with "You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s." Envy, which is related to covetousness, is corrosive to the individual and to those societies that embrace it. Rights to private property blunt the effects of envy by protecting the property owner from the envy of neighbors who want to take his property and distribute it to others. And property rights can redirect envy into productive activity because the envious person realizes that he has a chance at achieving the wealth of the person his envies through hard work and wise decisions, two of the major themes of Proverbs. But he will attempt the hard work and investment necessary to increase his wealth only if he has confidence that the law will not allow his neighbors to vent their envy and take his property and the state will not tax it away.

  If envy was controlled, then greed must have run amuck under the judges. But Israel had God’s laws preventing theft and fraud, which the courts would have enforced so greed that led to criminal activity would have been kept to a minimum if the people followed God’s laws. What about the greed that does not rise to the level of criminality, but is merely immo
ral? The freedom of entry into businesses that Israelis enjoyed would have increased competition, and as Adam Smith taught us, competition forces the greedy businessman to temper his greed in order to prevent the competition from taking his customers and ruining his business.

  More importantly, greedy businessmen work through the state to achieve their ends. Adam Smith warned about that, also. In a free market, businessmen must always worry about their competitors because they cannot force customers to do business with them. Competition forces them to please customers. Unable to get special treatment from customers, greedy businessmen turn to the state and buy the politicians. Only the state has the power to force people to do something they normally would not do. Greedy businessmen lust for that power to free them from the pressures of competition. They get it buy bribing politicians to pass laws that favor them and reduce competition. Today, most business regulations do little more than protect large corporations from competition by smaller companies. Ancient Israel had no politicians to bribe, so greedy businessmen had no relief from the pressures of competition.

  Had ancient Israel remained loyal to God, it might have launched the green revolution in agriculture caused by the discovery of the horse collar. After all, horses had pulled chariots for millennia. Then farm productivity would have rocketed and made Israelis extraordinarily wealthy for their times. Or they might have ignited the industrial revolution instead of the Dutch Republic. Israel had the most important elements in place – private property, low taxes, and the rule of law. The Dutch powered their machinery with wind; those quaint wind mills were actually factories. The technology existed for Israelis to use wind power and water wheels in the same way.

  Israelis under the judges might have been able to create a steam engine. After all, the Romans understood the power of steam by at least the first century AD, using it to power a primitive steam turbine and open temple doors in order to fool worshippers into thinking that their idols were alive. Hero of Alexandria wrote about the aeolipile, but others may have known of the power of steam earlier. Ancient Israelis had access to the technology for mining and smelting iron ore. Wooden pistons used for lifting water are ancient technology, too. They might have easily put together the technologies of pistons, iron and steam to create the steam engine. But the world would have to wait until the nineteenth century for James Watt because Israel kept rebelling against God who responded by allowing pagan nations to conquer them.

  The pagan nations stood no chance of sparking something like the industrial revolution because until the Dutch Republic all cultures have despised commerce and manufacturing, preferring war and plunder as means to greater wealth. In addition, slavery was so common that the elite saw no need to invent labor savings equipment like windmills, water wheels and steam engines. Roman and Chinese rulers even banned labor savings inventions out of fear of causing unemployment. As a result, most inventions like the aeolipile served no purpose but entertaining the bored nobility or deluding ignorant idol worshippers until the Dutch made private property secure again and labor became scarce.

  We often have the idea that God blessed Israelis with wealth because they followed his laws. However, it is more likely that following God’s economic principles embodied in the Mosaic Law caused the Israelis to become wealthy. God’s laws are not arbitrary like man’s laws. God gave us his laws because following them will make us prosper spiritually and materially. This is what the founders of “natural law,” God’s laws, meant when they wrote that the law is natural because it causes mankind to flourish in every way.

  In fact, God’s principles make people wealthier even if they do not believe in the one true God. We have seen those principles work for non-Christians in the modern world in the rise of the Asian nations such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, India and China. Those nations rose from extreme poverty to become among the wealthiest nations on the planet by simply respecting private property a tiny bit more. And that respect does not have to go as far as prescribed in the Bible to produce results. China has lifted over 300 million people from starvation poverty in a generation by only slightly freeing markets and respecting property.

  Israel under the judges may have become the wealthiest nation in the region. We can assume that because of the fact that surrounding nations were so eager to conquer it and steal its wealth. After each incident of liberation by a judge, the nation would have accumulated large amounts of wealth as it followed God’s principles. Poorer nations would burn with envy, but Israel would have had the material resources to defend itself as long as it remained loyal to God’s principles. When the people began to worship idols they would naturally abandon God’s principles as well and become poorer, thereby destroying their ability to finance their defense against invaders.

  Like many of God’s judgments, national defense may be a built in judgment. For example, God does not have to do anything special to punish people who violate his principle of gravity. The principle enforces itself. And God does not have to enforce his warning about drinking too much alcohol. Drunkenness inflicts its own punishments. In a similar way, abandoning God’s principles of economics have built-in consequences that we cannot avoid. For the ancient Israelis, that created cycles. Following God meant following his economic principles, which would increase national wealth and the nation’s ability to defend itself from attack. When the people in sufficient numbers abandoned God for idols, they would abandon God’s economic principles as well and become poorer, thus destroying their ability to defend their nation and permitting another nation to conquer and loot its wealth. God had to do nothing but intervene to rescue the nation after it had repented, as he did in the case of Gideon and others, because it would not be able to re-establish his economic principles under foreign rule and therefore not have time to build wealth.

  The economy under the kings

  The rebellion against God and his economic system by the leaders of Israel in the time of Samuel would have caused the Israeli economy to degenerate until it became poor as Egypt. Problems began in the reign of Solomon. His temple was magnificent; his wealth legendary. But Solomon invented no labor saving devices to improve productivity. He got his wealth from taxes and international trade. He was wise enough to avoid war. Israel enjoyed forty years of peace under David’s son and that saved the nation an enormous expense. Throughout history, war has bankrupted more kings than any other endeavor, except for maybe pyramid building.

  Solomon earned some of his wealth through international trade. His attitude toward commerce stands out because of its stark contrast to the attitude of the pagan kings of nations around Israel who despised business and preferred the old-fashioned way of earning wealth through conquest and looting. For example, Solomon may have encouraged others to follow his example and invest in international shipping in Ecclesiastes 11:1: “Cast your bread upon the waters for you will find it again.” Most interpreters think the verse encourages charity because those good deeds will be rewarded in the future. But some theologians think he may be referring to the ships he invested in that engaged in trade as far away as the British Isles. Some translations substitute “grain” for “bread” in the passage.

  The second interpretation gets support from the verse that follows: “Give portions to seven, yes to eight, for you do not know what disaster may come upon the land.” It appears that Solomon is offering sound investment advice to diversify one’s investments among at least seven ships. The attitude of humility towards outcomes of one’s ventures is reinforced in verse six: “Sow your seed in the morning, and at evening let not your hands be idle, for you do not know which will succeed, whether this or that, or whether both will do equally well.”

  The book of Proverbs lent further support to commerce in chapter 31 in which King Lemuel describes his idea of the virtuous wife. The wife in the passage is obviously married to a wealthy man, possibly a prince, and does not need to work. Yet she engages in the type of work and commerce that all wealthy people and especially
nobility in the nations surrounding Israel despised, and all cultures until the Dutch Republic held in contempt. Here are verses 10-21:

  10 An excellent wife who can find?

  She is far more precious than jewels.

  11 The heart of her husband trusts in her,

  and he will have no lack of gain.

  12 She does him good, and not harm,

  all the days of her life.

  13 She seeks wool and flax,

  and works with willing hands.

  14 She is like the ships of the merchant;

  she brings her food from afar.

  15 She rises while it is yet night

  and provides food for her household

  and portions for her maidens.

  16 She considers a field and buys it;

  with the fruit of her hands she plants a vineyard.

  17 She dresses herself with strength

  and makes her arms strong.

  18 She perceives that her merchandise is profitable.

  Her lamp does not go out at night.

  19 She puts her hands to the distaff,

  and her hands hold the spindle.

  20 She opens her hand to the poor

  and reaches out her hands to the needy.

  21 She is not afraid of snow for her household,

  for all her household are clothed in scarlet.

  22 She makes bed coverings for herself;

  her clothing is fine linen and purple.