Ron Sider Quotes

Physical handicaps, death of a breadwinner, or lack of natural ability may lead some families to become poorer than others. But God does not want such disadvantages to lead to ever-increasing extremes of wealth and poverty with the result that the poor eventually lack the basic resources to earn a decent livelihood. God therefore gave his people a law to guarantee that no family would permanently lose its land.

Yahweh is Lord of all, even of economics. There is no hint here of a sacred law of supply and demand that operates independently of biblical ethics and the Lordship of Yahweh. The people of God should submit to God, and God demands economic justice among his people.

In an agricultural society, land is capital, so land was the basic means of producing wealth in Israel. At the beginning, ... the land was divided more or less equally among the tribes and families. Apparently God wanted that basic equality of economic opportunity to continue. Hence his command to return all land to the original owners every fifty years. Private property was not abolished. Regularly, however, the means of producing wealth was to be equalized—up to the point of every family having the resources to earn a decent living.