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A Study of Poverty Laws in the Pentateuch

A Study of Poverty Laws in the Pentateuch

WONG Fook Kong

This is a continuation of my earlier article on poverty in the Pentateuch. In that article I compared present day understandings of poverty with those in the Pentateuch. This included words used to describe poverty as well as groups identified as poor in the Pentateuch. I also highlighted some theological bases of poverty laws in the Pentateuch. In this article, I deal in greater details with the steps taken to alleviate poverty in the Pentateuch and how they may be relevant today.
I do so by reexamining the laws related to the Jubilee and Sabbatical Years. These laws protected the Israelites within their community. They were meant to ensure that the Israelites never descend to the degradation suffered by other slaves in the wider world of the ancient Near East . Furthermore, they were not supposed to be permanently stripped of their means of production, ie, their land. This mechanism was meant to prevent latifundia, ie, the loss of the debtors' land to the rich creditor. This, in turn, would have prevented a widening gap between the rich and the poor. The last section of this article deals with the contribution of social networks (eg, family ) to the alleviation of poverty in biblical and present times.

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