by Marshall Massey
Genesis tells a story that is also a parable of economics. Tipped off by Joseph that seven lean years would follow seven fat ones, Pharaoh spent the years of plenty confiscating one-fifth of every grain harvest across Egypt. When the famine came, he sold the grain back — first for money, then for livestock, then for land, then for the people themselves. "As for the people, Pharaoh made slaves of them from one end of Egypt to the other" (Gen. 47:21). A shared abundance became the instrument of total domination.
In this October 2003 post to soc.religion.quaker, Marshall Massey uses a sermon by Friend Anthony Prete at the FGC Gathering to show that Pharaoh's outcome was not an accident but the predictable end of unchecked free markets: wealth concentrating in fewer and fewer hands, the majority reduced to desperation. He then turns to Moses. The Mosaic laws — mandatory lending to the poor, sabbatical cancellation of all debts every seven years, jubilee restoration of land to original owners — were designed to prevent exactly this. Their warrant is theological: "the earth is YHWH's and the fulness thereof" (Psalm 24:1). If God owns all property absolutely, then human ownership is contingent, and what "Thou shalt not steal" means depends entirely on whose property it was to begin with.
Massey is responding to an interlocutor called "Engineer" who argues the libertarian position throughout the thread. The debate form sharpens the theology: each objection forces Massey to articulate the covenantal logic more precisely.
Turning to an interesting twist in the discussion — "Engineer" continues, quoting Genesis 41 (NIV), including Joseph's counsel to Pharaoh: "This food should be held in reserve for the country, to be used during the seven years of famine that will come upon Egypt, so that the country may not be ruined by the famine."
"In the real world, of course, you don't always have a message from God warning you of the seven lean years. You have to be prepared for lean years or fat years, not knowing which will happen."
True. But there's also the question of how you prepare. In the case of Pharaoh's Egypt, we may read how they prepared in the ensuing chapters of Genesis. Friend Anthony Prete summarized the story in his address to last summer's FGC Gathering:
Tipped off by Joseph that after seven years of plenty [there will be famine]..., Pharaoh panics. Though arguably the richest person in the world, he spends the seven good years creaming off one-fifth of every grain harvest from every field in Egypt — so driven is he by the prospect of not having enough.
When the crash comes, the Egyptians have plenty of grain.... But to get their own grain back, they have to buy it. For those without money, the grain is not available. What's more, Pharaoh has a monopoly, so he can ratchet up the price as much as he wants. Where shared abundance could have saved everyone, scarcity starts taking its toll, as some go hungry and others fill the Pharaoh's coffers with their money.
After the first year, the money runs out. Does Pharaoh decide to give the grain back to the people he took it from? He does not. ... The people are forced to hand over their livestock in exchange for grain. Then the livestock runs out; what else can they sell? Genesis tells us their wrenching decision: "Buy us and our land in exchange for food" (Gen. 47:19). ... We're not surprised to read, two verses later: "As for the people, Pharaoh made slaves of them from one end of Egypt to the other" (Gen. 47:21).
— Anthony Prete, "Shalom: Much More Than Just 'Peace'", Friends Journal 49:11 (November 2003), p. 7
And there we have a typical result of uncontrolled free-marketism. A guy who starts off with a strong financial advantage and is willing to exploit it winds up reducing people to desperation and slavery.
Compare the way the robber barons of the nineteenth century built their empires, systematically bankrupting the competition while keeping their own employees in penury. It would seem that those who don't learn from Genesis are condemned to repeat it.
"Engineer" responds: "As I said, that's quite a nice defense of theft you have there. Too bad theft is still wrong."
You appear to prefer the sort of system that enabled Pharaoh (with Joseph's help) to do what he did to his countrymen — which was the origin of the fellahin system that kept 98% of Egypt enslaved for the next three and a half thousand years.
This is precisely what bothers me about the libertarian crowd. They don't seem to mind setting up a system that reduces 90% of the population to desperate poverty and to slavery — or to slavery's equivalent, wage-slavery — just so long as property remains sacred.
The Covenantal Economy of Moses
"Engineer": "In the case of seven year release of debts, that's not theft. It's a restriction on what kind of contracts are allowed."
A poor man wants to borrow money. By the laws of Moses (Leviticus 25:35, 37), the rich man has to lend it.
Comes the next sabbatical (i.e., seventh) year. By the laws of Moses (Deuteronomy 15:1–4), the debt is now annulled. The poor man hasn't had to repay one cent. The rich man is out of pocket for the full sum, despite the fact that he had no choice in the matter.
The next year, the poor man comes again to the rich man and wants to borrow money. And once again, the rich man has to lend it.
Under this system, the rich man has to pay and pay to support the poor, because the law requires it. This is precisely what you libertarians are always objecting to. You call it theft when the U.S. does it. Why won't you call it theft when Moses does it? Does it look any less like theft to you when the poor man soaks the rich man directly, with the village's backing, than it does when the I.R.S. plays middleman?
Obviously, the mandate to give when asked, the sabbatical-year requirement of full cancellation of all debts, and the parallel jubilee-year requirement of full restoration of all lands to the original owners, were all designed to help prevent — or at least delay — the arising of the same sort of thing that Pharaoh's actions brought about in Egypt, and that always happens when free markets proceed unchecked: the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands, and the reduction of the majority to a state of destitution.
Moses had realized that the good of the people requires intervention in the free market. But Moses (who handed down the law that "thou shalt not steal") did not call this theft, because his definition of property was different from yours. Under Moses's definition of property, all wealth belonged to God more fundamentally than to man — "the earth is YHWH's and the fulness thereof" (Psalm 24:1); and so God was well within the right to exert His powers of eminent domain and take it from the rich to redistribute it however He pleased.
This, I think, is something to think about — that "property" may not be in the eyes of God what it is in the eyes of libertarians. Human ownership of property may not, in the eyes of God, be the absolute claim that libertarians think — and since that is so, "Thou shalt not steal" may not mean what libertarians want it to mean.
In any case, in ancient Israel, no libertarian complaints about "takings" could override the laws of Moses in this matter, because the laws of Moses were understood to be expressions of God's will, and as such, not to be overridden by mere men. The mandatory giving of loans to the poor, and the mandatory cancellation of debts in the seventh year — the whole system by which the Hebrew and Jewish poor were entitled to soak the rich — were not theft but the fulfilling of a holy covenantal obligation.
And I think that is pretty much how the majority of the U.S. saw it too, when through their representatives they instituted taxes to care for the poor. It's not that they were stealing from the rich, but that they were honoring the true Owner of all wealth, who doesn't think much of an arrangement in which some are filthy rich and others desperately poor.
Colophon
Written by Marshall Massey in soc.religion.quaker, October 29, 2003, in a thread on libertarianism and Quakerism. Massey was one of the group's most theologically grounded contributors, consistently bringing Quaker testimonies — simplicity, integrity, community, equality — to bear on political and economic questions.
The Anthony Prete passage quoted here was originally published in Friends Journal 49:11 (November 2003), p. 7, in an article titled "Shalom: Much More Than Just 'Peace'."
Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026. Original Message-ID: [email protected]
🌲