“‘If any of your fellow Israelites become poor and sell themselves to you, do not make them work as slaves. They are to be treated as hired workers or temporary residents among you; they are to work for you until the Year of Jubilee. Then they and their children are to be released, and they will go back to their own clans and to the property of their ancestors. Because the Israelites are my servants, whom I brought out of Egypt, they must not be sold as slaves. Do not rule over them ruthlessly, but fear your God. Leviticus 25:39-43
“The seven-year cycle of debt cancellation has behind it the weekly Sabbath as a public, visible declaration against money as reality. That seven-year cycle, moreover, has in front of it the practice of Jubilee, that is, a fifty-year cycle of restoration of property and land to those who have lost them in the predatory transactions of the economy. The well-known Leviticus 25 is a collection of many different provisions that gives great complexity to the matter of Jubilee; but the general intention of the stipulation is unmistakable. Neighborliness trumps everything! It allows no change of interest on loans (v. 36). Property shall be returned (v. 27). Most of all, persons in debt shall be respected and held in hock only temporarily. No permanent underclass!
In verse 42, the double use of “servant-slave” (same word twice) insists that all “neighbors belong to the God who has emancipated them, and they cannot be drawn back into the predatory practices exemplified by Pharaoh. They cannot be reduced to debt slaves. The warning, “Do not treat harshly” is contrast to Pharaoh’s treatment of slaves with ruthlessness (Exodus 1:13-14). That same harshness of relentless predatory pressure is common against the poor in our current ruthless economy.”
Walter Brueggemann in Money and Possessions (Interpretation; Louisville: WJKP, 2016) 52-53. For those looking for the most recent comprehensive biblical theology of money and possessions from likely the most brilliant biblical scholar alive today, this book is it!
What does God think of debt (our current topic of study related to generosity)? In a word, God’s answer is Jubilee! God never designed people to rule over others in perpetuity. The economic idea of dominating and getting ahead of the next person runs contrary to God’s pattern of neighborliness. It stomps on it. Even as His provision is intended to be enjoyed and freely shared, He never desires people or nations (like America or any other country) to dominate over others. Never ever! Brueggemann continues with these words:
“It may be imagined that such a stance on money and possessions is sheer fantasy in the “real world.” Such an act of imagination, however difficult and complex, continues to evoke and revivify courageous alternative imagination. Thus Sharon Ringe has shown that the tradition of Jubilee did indeed fund gospel imagination in the listening community around Jesus. And even in our time, the turn of the new millennium has featured major initiatives around Jubilee debt cancellation. It is impossible to overstate the importance of this continuing tradition for issues of the real economy in the real world. The tradition attests that such practices assure well-being in the land, whereas disregard of such practices guarantees land loss. Current attentiveness to care for the environment stands in important continuity with the Jubilee summons. Surely the predatory economy is causing among us “loss of the land.”
Methinks that we will not experience such a Jubilee until we fully enter the eternal kingdom of God. Most assuredly that world will be characterized by unselfish neighborliness and unending Jubilee. In the meantime, we must, with “alternative imagination” or more precisely “gospel imagination” choose to live differently or, in a word, live neighborly, with regard to debt as followers of Jesus. This is actually not as complicated as it sounds, and precisely what the New Testament teaches. “For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Galatians 5:14