Canter Bridge

An economy and society motivated by unmitigated greed are unlikely to reflect YHWH’s intentions on earth.

There is no straight line from a statement like this to a concrete political philosophy. Among the variables figure prominently the mechanisms or means that are most promising as mitigators or orientors of greed. The self-interested vice is not soon to disappear. Any realistic set of political or economic notions must have a plan for managing it.

The Israelite legislation preserved in the book of Deuteronomy is persuaded that the proto-Israelites’ bitter experience of slavery in Egypt must exert a powerful influence upon the construction of a new life in the land that YHWH is about to place into the stewardship of the children of the fathers he has chosen.

This national narrative will not merely provide the story-teller’s craft with picturesque illustrations. It will also shape the society in which he and many thousands of his kin will experience birth, coming of age, the burdens and privileges of adulthood, old age, and the inevitable gathering to the fathers. Slavery in Egypt is not merely the old folks’ tale. It is to serve as a the central, constant, and ever living story line in the life of the young movers and shakers.

So, for example, shall self-interest be trimmed around its edges when calamity brings a brother into servitude. One might grow accustomed to the brother’s strong hands in the field, the pleasing laughter of his children, to the way he and his have made things a bit better around here. One might begin to look ahead, to wonder about ways to keep the man near when his term of debt-servitude comes to its end.

Be careful, the Deuteronomic legislations intrudes in such a moment. YHWH’s blessing is more crafty than your micro-economic scheming. There is self-interest too—though with a longer horizon—in setting such a servant free. There is satisfaction and an unknown harvest of reciprocating benefits in having provided such a man a platform, of having raised him up from the pit in which he has fallen, even in seeing the back of him as he leads his family into freedom’s seven-year opportunity.

Do not consider it a hardship to set your servant free, because his service to you these six years has been worth twice as much as that of a hired hand. And the LORD your God will bless you in everything you do.

The Mosaic legislation suffers no incapacitating naiveté. It understands that virtue needs a motive.

Blessing is in the privilege of release, not quickly, not subject to guarantee, simply embedded into the fabric of YHWH’s good world. Count on it, the legislation shapes us to hear. Don’t program it into your plans. Just let go when it’s the right thing, then don’t be surprised when reciprocity takes more creative shape than you can imagine when that reliable servant walks toward the horizon, taking toil’s predictable promise with him to another place he’ll call his own.

.