The world, and especially Christianity, has been gifted with a profound religious perspective from Judaism. Anyone who compares Judaism with other religions in the ancient world will find a uniqueness, relevance, and obstinate dedication to truth. Unlike the fertility religions of its day and the cyclic religions of the Far East, the faith of the Hebrew Scriptures assumes God is involved in history and that time is guided by divine providence. With the call of Abraham and Sarah and punctuated by the exodus, God began a determined plan to bring history toward a goal whereby all creation and all peoples would live in peace and enjoy the blessings of their Creator.
The prophets are unique spokespersons of this divine intention and dream. They refuse to sugarcoat evil in this world or to close their eyes to injustice. They realize that there are horrible consequences when nations and communities do not seek the common good and are insensitive to the needs of the most vulnerable. Their poetry plumbs the depths of human iniquity and scales the heights of God’s holiness and compassion which can never abandon Her creation to its folly.
Their understanding of shalom is especially relevant in our day. The word shalom is derived from a root communicating “wholeness, completion, and intact.” This underlying meaning allows for the word to be translated “tranquility, security, peace, wellbeing, health, welfare, or safety” (depending on the context). The prophets rarely refer to shalom without speaking of justice. The Hebrew word for justice always refers to some kind of deliverance. For example, the book of Judges in the Hebrew Scriptures is not about men and women who made judicial decisions in lawcourts. It’s about men and women who delivered the Israelites from their surrounding enemies who sought to oppress and conquer Israel. Justice is a deliverance from whatever form of oppression people are subjected to in life. Special attention is given to the most vulnerable in society: widows, orphans, the poor, and immigrants. The prophets judge nations by how the most vulnerable fare within those societies. The wealth, power, prestige, and military might of these nations amount to nothing in Yahweh’s eyes if the common good and the welfare of the most vulnerable and disenfranchised are compromised. For the prophets, there can be no shalom without justice. In fact, there must first be justice before there can be true shalom—a truth no nation throughout all of history has ever learned.
With this background, I want to explore several dimensions of shalom which are relevant in our world today. This article covers the first dimension. Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann defines justice is his characteristically blunt but illuminating way: “Justice is deciding what belongs to whom and returning it to them.” With this definition, Brueggemann focuses on the economic dimension of shalom. Israelite society was based on the oppression of rural peasants by urban elites. Through unfair taxation, a corrupt judicial system, oppressive debt policies, and collusion with the king and court officials who demanded what they considered their share of the wealth, peasants were forced into subsistence living. Brueggemann calls this system “econocide.” As time passed, the rich became richer and the poor became poorer. The rich, with the advantage of hereditary wealth gained through oppressive means by their forefathers, were never content with enough. They always wanted more, and that more came from peasants who struggled to survive.
In his definition of justice, Brueggemann assumes the principles of Sabbatical Year and Jubilee. (See Leviticus 25 and Deuteronomy 15.) Every seven years, all debts were to be forgiven, all slaves were to be set free, and the land was allowed to rest. With Jubilee, which was to occur every fifty years, one additional requirement was included: all land was to be returned to its original owners (reflecting the time when the Hebrews entered the Promise Land and the land was divided equally and fairly). These observances were designed to make sure unfair advantages and disadvantages did not occur over time resulting in economic disparities which would perpetuate the greed of some and the unfortunate circumstances of others. There may have been some economic equality before the time of kingship in Israel, but once the Israelites had kings, the pyramid system of wealth which Hebrew slaves suffered in Egypt became a painful reality in Israel. King Solomon became Israel’s pharaoh. (See I Samuel 8 for a severe indictment of kingship with regard to the economy.) There is little evidence that the Sabbatical Year or Jubilee was ever observed in Israel. Nevertheless, both are presented as parts of the covenant between Yahweh and Her people. (New Testament scholars maintain that Jesus understood the Kingdom of God as a perpetual Jubilee which would explain his focus on forgiveness, debts, and compassion for the oppressed and less fortunate. “The acceptable year of the Lord” in his inaugural sermon in Luke 4 probably referred to Jubilee. With Jesus, Jubilee was not a twice-a-century occurrence but a way of life.)
Brueggemann’s definition of justice is helpful only if the person deciding actually recognizes what truly belongs to whom. Those who have amassed wealth over generations through unscrupulous means as they took advantage of others will always assume that their wealth belongs to them even though they never worked to produce that wealth. Ethically, if not legally, they stole it from others but now claim it as their own. Ask any First Nations person in this country what it would mean to return the land Europeans took from them and which we today continue to exploit. We have virtually no awareness that we are living off of the exploitation and genocide of First Nations. Or ask Blacks today who have inherited the consequences and disadvantages of racism what it would mean to return to them what is rightfully theirs. Slaves were never paid, and many Blacks, even in our day, are not fairly compensated for the work they do. Whites have advantages people of color have never had in this “land of the free and home of the brave.” Or ask workers who make less than minimum wage (or even those who make minimum wage) if we are enjoying financial benefits at their expense—exorbitant benefits that our skewed economic system never allows much of our population to experience.
Brueggemann is absolutely correct about the economic dimensions of justice and shalom. However, we are spiritually blind to the principles behind Sabbatical Year and Jubilee. Today, we cannot literally fulfill the demands of these radical traditions, but we can explore ways to fulfill the spirit of fairness and justice that is behind these symbols. Before our nation can ever enjoy the fruits of reconciliation, we must find ways of making restitution to those who are disadvantaged and disenfranchised by generations of “econocide.” There can never be shalom without economic justice.
