In this post, I'll blog about Deuteronomy 15:7-11. The passage states (according to the King James Version):
"(7)
If there be among you a poor man of one of thy brethren within any of
thy gates in thy land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not
harden thine heart, nor shut thine hand from thy poor brother: (8) But
thou shalt open thine hand wide unto him, and shalt surely lend him
sufficient for his need, [in that] which he wanteth. (9) Beware that
there be not a thought in thy wicked heart, saying, The seventh year,
the year of release, is at hand; and thine eye be evil against thy poor
brother, and thou givest him nought; and he cry unto the LORD against
thee, and it be sin unto thee. (10) Thou shalt surely give him, and
thine heart shall not be grieved when thou givest unto him: because that
for this thing the LORD thy God shall bless thee in all thy works, and
in all that thou puttest thine hand unto. (11) For the poor shall never
cease out of the land: therefore I command thee, saying, Thou shalt
open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to thy needy, in
thy land."
I have three thoughts:
1. The passage tells the
Israelites to lend to their fellow Israelites who are poor. It's
interesting that the passage does not talk about giving, but rather
lending, which implies that the poor Israelite would have to pay back
the person lending to him. I say that because v 9 refers to the seventh
year, during which debts were cancelled, and I don't think that the
seventh year would be mentioned here if the subject of the passage were
gifts rather than loans. Of course, if the lending occurred at a time
that was really close to the seventh year, then the loan would
practically amount to a gift, since the lender would lend the poor
Israelite money, and the poor Israelite's debt would soon be cancelled
and he wouldn't have to pay the lender back. But, in many cases, we're
not dealing with free money. The idea is probably that the poor
Israelite ordinarily would get off his feet and would be able to pay
back the lender, by working for the lender as an indentured servant, or
by finding some way to gain enough wealth to pay the lender back.
This
is not to say that there are no handouts in the Torah, for there are:
there are gleanings for the poor or the widows and orphans (Leviticus
19:10; Deuteronomy 24:19-21), the command to leave the corners of the
fields for the poor (Leviticus 23:22), and the exhortation to share with
widows and orphans during the festival (Deuteronomy 16:11). There was supposed to be a safety-net. But not everything was intended to be free, for God exhorted Israelites to lend to the needy.
One
verse that has long given me problems is Matthew 5:42, which states:
"Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee
turn not thou away." So I'm supposed to give to everyone who asks me for money? What would prevent people from taking advantage of me?
But the second part says "borrow", so is there a presumption that I'd
get paid back? Not so fast, for Luke 6:34-35 commands that people lend
without expecting to be repaid. I'm all for giving something
to a needy person who comes to me, such as a sandwich or a meal. But
I'm not willing to give indiscriminately to everyone who asks of me, for
then I could go broke. I'd prefer to give to charities, for I have
more confidence that they will spend the money appropriately. Is that a
violation of Jesus' teachings? Or is there a more common-sense, less absolutist way to interpret what Jesus is saying?
2.
Something that I've long wondered: If debts are cancelled every seven
years, what would keep a debtor from not paying for seven years until
his debt is finally cancelled? I don't think that happened, and the
reason is that Deuteronomy 15:9 says that Israelites are supposed to
lend to their poor brethren even if the seventh year is near.
That tells me that, when the seventh year was further off in the future,
the creditor felt that there was a greater chance that he'd be paid
back. Perhaps the creditor could appeal to courts to make the debtor pay back at least some of the debt.
Even with the seventh year, there are still loans and debts, at least
for six years. But the seventh year was most likely intended to ensure
that Israelites were not weighed down by debt for long periods of time,
such that they became perpetual slaves with little hope of paying their
creditors back and getting off their feet. Moreover, according to Deuteronomy 23:20, Israelites were not to charge usury when they lent to their fellow Israelites, and
so indebted Israelites would not be weighed down by rapidly and
massively accumulating interest as they sought to pay back their
creditors.
3. My hunch is that the likelihood that,
during six year periods, indebted Israelites would be expected to pay
back their creditors would ensure that people would lend, since they'd
have an expectation that they'd be paid back, on some level. Or perhaps
it worked better back then than it would now (assuming that the policy
was ever implemented), for, today, debts are so huge that they take much longer to pay back. I think of mortgages and student loans. Even in the first century, there was a rabbinic attempt to circumvent the seventh year debt cancellation (see here), which may show that the Sabbatical year was impractical even then. But was it always impractical? I'm hesitant to say that.
But
would people lend if they couldn't charge interest? After all, don't
bankers make their money from interest, in part? I don't see anything
in the Torah about banks, and so the idea was probably that private
individuals rather than institutions would lend. And Deuteronomy
presents a scenario in which the lenders would not need to charge
interest in order to support themselves, for the Israelite lenders would
already be wealthy on account of their crops. My impression is
that Deuteronomy has a prosperity Gospel sort of mindset: lenders
wouldn't even have to be worried if they lent close to the seventh year
and thus didn't get paid back, for they'd have plenty of wealth.
But they had to obey God to get that wealth, and one element of being
obedient to God was lending to the needy, even when the seventh year was
at hand.
Can we apply any of these principles to today? One
important principle is that people should pay off their debts. But
another important principle is that debt should not become a form of
perpetual slavery or a burden that keeps people from getting off their
feet, and so exorbitant interest rates are wrong. In light of
these principles, I favor some elements of President Barack Obama's
student loan proposals, but I have problems with other parts. (And I'm
writing this post on December 1, 2012, so my understanding of the
proposals in this post is based on how they were conceptualized then.)
Cancelling the student loan debt after a certain number of years may be
problematic, for the government would have to take the loss from people
not paying back all of their debt. But imposing a high interest rate
on student loans, even though that brings the government revenue, can
become an undue burden on the debtors, and so I agree with President
Obama's desire for interest rates on student loans to be low. I
believe that people should pay off their loans as long as it takes,
based upon their income, and that the interest rate should be really
low. Of course, if this country were booming with prosperity, perhaps
it wouldn't be a problem if the government cancelled student loan debt
after a certain number of years, the same way that Deuteronomy
envisioned a situation in which a lender could practically give somebody money and not be hurt if he wasn't paid back. But would that ever happen?