The land-mark law, which sternly forbids encroachment upon peasant rights; consideration for the foreigner; additional sanitary and food laws; tithe regulations on behalf of widows, orphans, foreigners, etc.; that those who have no economic independence should eat and be satisfied; that loans should be given cheerfully, not only without any interest, but even at the risk of losing the principal.  To withhold a loan because the year of release is at hand in which the principal is no longer recoverable, is described as a grave sin.  When you are compelled to free your slaves, you must give them sufficient capital to embark upon some industry which shall prevent their falling back into slavery.  A number of holidays are insisted upon.  There must be no more crushing of the poor out of existence, for God cares for these people who have been driven to poverty, and they shall never cease out of the land.  Howbeit there shall be no poor with you, for the Lord will bless you, if you will obey these laws.

But then prosperity came, and culture, which meant contact with the capitalist ideas of the heathen empires.  The Jews fell from the stern justice of their fathers; and so came the prophets, wild-eyed men of the people, clad in camel’s hair and living upon locusts and wild honey, breaking in upon priests and kings and capitalists with their furious denunciations.  And always they incited to class war and social disturbance.  I quote Conrad Noel again: 

Nathan and Gad had been David’s political advisers, Abijah had stirred Jeroboam to revolt, Elijah had resisted Ahab, Elisha had fanned the rebellion of Jehu, Amos thunders against the misrule of the king of Israel, Isaiah denounces the landlords and the usurers, Micah charges them with blood-guiltiness; Jeremiah and the latter prophets, though they strike a more intimate note of personal repentance, strike it as the prelude to that national restoration for which they hunger as exiles.

The first chapters of Isaiah are typical of the Old Testament point of view.  Just as the prophets of the nineteenth century thundered against the “Christian” employers of Lancashire, and told them their houses were cemented with the blood of little children, so Isaiah cries against his generation:  “Your governing classes companion with thieves; behold you build up Sion with blood.”  Their ceremonial and their Sabbath keeping are an abomination to God.  “When ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you.  Your hands are full of blood.”  The poor man is robbed.  The rich exact usury.  “Woe unto you that lay house to house and field to field, that ye may dwell alone in the midst of the land.”  “Wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doing from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do well, seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.  Come now, let us reason together, saith the Lord.  Though your sins be blood-colored, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.  If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land.  But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured by the sword.

#Mother Earth#