The early Hebrews considered wealth to be an integral part of human perfection and, moreover, what ought to be.[1] The ideal man was wealthy and leisured, and yet occupied with honorable work.[2] In the Torah, as long as the Hebrews as a people obey God, including dutifully acting as stewards rather than as selfish exploiters of the land that God has provided, poverty should be nonexistent in Israel. “There need be no poor people among you, for in the land the Lord your God is giving you to possess as your inheritance, he will richly bless you, if only you fully obey the Lord your God.”[3] Blessed wealth is a reward for fidelity to Yahweh, whereas poverty here is indicative of, or even punishment for, disobedience, which will evidently always be the case in Israel, for, “There will always be poor people in the land.”[4] The conditionality leaps off the page, as does the notion of collective justice, and yet wealthy individuals, including business practitioners, are held to account. The ethic of work is upheld even though labor in Genesis is due to original sin.
The Torah does recognize, however, that the humble can be poor and the greedy and prideful can become rich. God does not punish the humble and reward the proud. To be proud is to trust in oneself, and thus one’s own ability to acquire still more. In Psalm 52, the righteous laugh at the man, “who did not make God his stronghold, but trusted in his great wealth and grew strong by destroying others!”[5] Such strength refers here to becoming richer or more powerful, rather than more righteous or pleasing in the sight of the Lord.
The Hebrew Bible depicts greed as a sin. For one thing, greed can motivate a rich or powerful person to unjustly exploit the poor to obtain still more wealth. Relatedly, moreover, putting the love of gain above loving and obeying God implicates greed in contributing to the more grave sin of idolatry—regarding or treating something in Creation as being above the Creator, and thus as a superior god. Pride is thus in the mix—the arrogance of a pot to presume itself superior to the potter who made it. Generally speaking, the Hebrew Bible tends to associate the rich with being greedy, prideful, and, worst of all, idolatrous. Prideful idolatry involves trusting in oneself rather than God. This sort of pride goes easily with making money into an idol to form the ground of existence. The prophets had nothing good to say about selfish wealth and leisure.[6] This does not necessarily implicate wealth itself, however, or even being rich, since it can be a reward for being obedient in placing Yahweh before oneself and other possible gods, such as wooden idols and even earthly treasure. In the Torah, greed and wealth are uncoupled, as if snipped apart with scissors. Wealth itself can go either way. Riches acquired righteously are a blessing from God and therefore do not carry the stain of greed, whereas wealth gained greedily, as in taking unjustly from the poor, is associated with sin.
Nobody is exempt from being tempted by greed. Referring to the people of Jerusalem, Jeremiah charges, “From the least to the greatest, all are greedy for gain.”[7] As an urge, greed can be understood as coming out of an instinct that is activated along with the subtle sense, or fear, that having enough for the future can never be guaranteed completely. It is as if we were squirrels continuously scurrying around after walnuts, storing as many as possible until none more can be found. No amount of wealth is sufficient to get a person to certainty on whether what one now has is sufficient for one’s future needs and comfort. Accordingly, having just clinched a good deal is never enough; any brief satisfaction at the achievement is quickly replaced by the urge to get an even better deal.
Just because greed is a sin does not mean that it treats all wealth as sinful too. According to the Hebrew Bible, a person need not be wealthy in order to be greedy, and a person can be rich without being greedy. Every prophet preached that if Israel were righteous, it would be sure to prosper—the gift of Jehovah on condition that Israel kept to the covenant (i.e., righteousness).[8] The prophets denounce the abuse of wealth rather than seeking or holding wealth itself, luxury, commerce or even monopoly as evil in itself. [9] Even if the overwhelming majority of rich Hebrews in Jerusalem were at a certain time very greedy in unjustly exploiting the poor to gain still more wealth, the Torah indicates that God could still bestow riches, which, coming as a blessing, would be unstained by the sin of greed. Each of the three Patriarchs in Genesis, for example, is rich.[10] Were greed mixed in with blessed wealth, God would be rewarding the righteous with a sin, which does not make sense. Abraham’s wealth is a gift from God rather than a sin.[11]
As a gift, blessed wealth can come with or without the need to labor for it. Proverb 10 promises, “The blessing of the LORD brings wealth, without painful toil for it.”[12] Blessed wealth gained without effort is reminiscent of the natural wealth of the Golden Age depicted by Greco-Roman poets such as Homer and Ovid.[13] The Greco-Roman poets characterize such wealth as being free of greed; where there is plenty and no fear of future shortage, a person need not labor; one can even let go of the instinct for still more without fear of falling short one day. In the Hebrew Bible, blessed wealth without painful toil is associated with not only a lack of greed, but also the Garden of Eden—hence prior to Adam’s original sin. It follows that blessed wealth without labor is more of a reward than is the variety of blessed wealth in which industriousness is required.
The Hebrew Bible does not insist that industriousness itself is sinful. Proverb 10 states, “Lazy hands make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth. He who gathers crops in summer is a prudent son, but he who sleeps during harvest is a disgraceful son. The wealth of the rich is their fortified city, but poverty is the ruin of the poor.”[14] Therefore, working diligently does not necessarily mean that a person is greedy. “Those who work their land will have abundant food, but those who chase fantasies will have their fill of poverty.”[15] Ceaseless activity does not necessarily point to the presence of greed. Proverb 18 goes so far as to say, “One who is slack in his work is brother to one who destroys.”[16] Industriousness does not suffer from the vice of such sloth.
Industriousness is not unconditionally good, however. The virtue must pertain to the person who works rightly as a steward in the vineyard in which God created the soil, the vine, the fruit, and even the laborer. Proverb 22 declares, “Rich and poor have this in common: The LORD is the Maker of them all.”[17] Although the vineyard differs from the Garden of Eden (or the poets’ Golden Age) in that painful toil is necessary, profit-taking from industrious labor is a blessing, or reward, that God bestows on the stewards who have been dutifully industrious in managing God’s property. The blessed wealth and the industriousness being presumed greed-free are therefore conditioned on how a person responds to God.
With God as “Possessor of heaven and earth,” the world is the Creator’s property in Genesis.[18] It follows that human possessions are gifts from God. Rather than becoming the absolute owner of the gifted property, the Hebrew is meant to act as God’s steward.[19] That is, God retains the basic or foundational ownership right in His property. Moreover, the property relations embody a relation between Israel and God in which the Israelites owe obedience and service as stewards in exchange for a right to Jehovah’s blessings, which include riches.[20] Put another way, because Jehovah is a partner in every Hebrew’s property, no Israelite was able “do as he liked with his own.”[21] Indeed, one’s own is precisely what is being qualified or restrained here. At most, a Hebrew’s property was his own and God’s, if not altogether God’s.[22] The partnership laid out in Scripture is one of rights and responsibilities rather than “anything goes,” as is the case with greed.
The theological value of maintaining the partnership through dutiful work and blessed wealth should not be overstated, however. Even though the bounty from God’s vineyard is free of greed, the riches cannot be expected to accomplish what righteousness can do. According to Proverb 22, “A good name is more desirable than great riches; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold.”[23] Proverb 11 is more direct. “Wealth is worthless in the day of wrath, but righteousness delivers from death.”[24] Through Zephaniah, God says of the sinners, “Neither their silver nor their gold will be able to save them on the day of the LORD’s wrath.”[25] Clearly, having wealth is not as valuable as being righteous.
For more on Judaism on profit-seeking and wealth, see Skip Worden, God’s Gold, ch. 2.
[1]. Charles R. Smith, The Bible Doctrine of Wealth and Work (London: Epworth Press, 1924), 21.
[2]. Smith, The Bible Doctrine, 22, 33-34.
[3]. Deut. 15:4-5.
[4]. Deut. 15:11.
[5]. Ps. 52:6-7. All Biblical passages quoted in this chapter are according to the New International Version of the Bible, obtained from BibleGateway.com.
[6]. Smith, The Bible Doctrine, 111.
[7]. Jer. 8:10.
[8]. Smith, The Bible Doctrine, 128.
[9]. Smith, The Bible Doctrine, 97-99.
[10]. Smith, The Bible Doctrine, 21.
[11]. Smith, The Bible Doctrine, 24; Gen. 24:35.
[12]. Prov. 10:22.
[13]. See Skip Worden, God’s Gold: Beneath the Shifting Sands of Christian Thought on Profit-Seeking and Wealth, ch. 1.
[14]. Prov. 10:4,5,15.
[15]. Prov. 28:19.
[16]. Prov. 18:9.
[17]. Prov. 22:2
[18]. Smith, The Bible Doctrine, 23; Genesis 14:19,22.
[19]. Smith, The Bible Doctrine, 25.
[20]. Smith, The Bible Doctrine, 26,55.
[21]. Smith, The Bible Doctrine, 54-55.
[22]. Smith, The Bible Doctrine, 55.
[23]. Prov. 22:1.
[24]. Prov. 11:4.
[25]. Zeph. 1:18.
[26]. Prov. 10:2
[27]. Prov. 28:6. According to Flusser, the Book of Enoch, of the ancient Jewish apocalyptic movement, contrasts woes against the wicked rich with word of hope and promise to the righteous poor. David Flusser, “Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit,” Israel Exploration Journal, 10 no. 1 (1960): 12.
[28]. Prov. 10:16.
[29]. Book of Enoch, bk 5, 97:8,10. Quote from Robert H. Charles, The Ethiopic Version of the Book of Enoch. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906.
