Every seven years, let your land rest and let your debts rest. Anyone who owed money - the debt was canceled. Anyone who was enslaved - they went free. The economy itself practiced justice.
I'm an economist, and I find myself troubled by this passage and excited by it at the same time. Most modern economies are designed to accumulate wealth and power. The longer you're in the system, the more you have. The Sabbath year breaks that cycle. It says: you can't just compound forever. Justice requires reset.
It also shows something about how God thinks about ownership. If the land rests every seven years, if debts are canceled, if enslaved people are freed - then nothing is absolute property. You're temporary stewards. The land is the LORD's. The people are His. You get to use things, but you don't ultimately own them.
I think about what a Sabbath year would look like in our economy. It would be devastating to some and liberating to others. The powerful would resist it fiercely. That tells me something about whether we actually believe God's claim on property and people.
There's no Sabbath year in our system. Which means the rich get richer and the poor get poorer in a compounding cycle. I'm studying what biblical economics might suggest about our situation, and I'm uncertain about the practical politics. But I'm clear that something is broken.
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