Nehemiah 5:1-13: A Parable for our Times?

 

From time to time I pick up the KJV Bible I stole from a hotel room and read a section or two. The other night I read the books of Ezra and Nehemiah which concern the reconstruction of the temple and the Jewish community in the reign of King Cyrus that followed the exile in Babylon. I must say that, where a certain sort of Christianity is concerned, it is not encouraging. Ordinary Jewish people were having trouble making ends meet and were particularly burdened by taxes demanded by the Persian Empire. The ‘nobles’ and ‘leaders of the people’ took full advantage, of course, by making a series of predatory ‘sub-prime’ loans. To borrow money ordinary Jews put up their farms and vineyards for collateral. When they inevitably defaulted the ‘nobles’ scooped up their land which, one has little doubt, was their intention all along. The inevitable result of this, of course, was a concentration of land among a few ruling nobles and penury for the rest including people so desperate they sold their own children into bondage. Did Nehemiah congratulate the nobles on the prosperity with which God rewarded them? Seems he did not. In a shocking act of class warfare he ordered the nobles to cancel all debts AND to pay back every penny and restore every jot and tittle of the land. Since promises from such people are empty, he made them swear an oath before God subject to the severest penalties if they reneged. The wealth creators were forced to give up their job creating money to people with nothing to eat. Most shockingly of all, they were paid nothing for their loss from the treasury of the state. Nehemiah did not even petition the King of Persia to bail out the too big to fail Jewish nobility!

Of course the nobles were not very clever. They had more leverage than they thought. It seems that on the question of intermarriage Nehemiah took a hard line. To prevent the Jewish people from simply disappearing he forbade intermarriage with Canaanite women. He went so far as to demand that Jewish men divorce women they had already married. Here was an opportunity missed for what if the nobles agreed to back this policy in return for Nehemiah toning down his social criticism? What if he were promised a couple of anti-intermarriage judges if, in return, he forgot about the pesky widows and orphans and the lazy riff-raff who had foolishly mortgaged their futures by signing bad loans? Funnily enough, the offer was never made. Had it been the good and holy people of Israel would surely have begged him to take it. What is social injustice when weighed in the balance with inter-marriage? Here’s where I must give up in confusion. The nobles did not play their strong card. They simply caved and paid the money and land back as if they were actually responsible to something beyond their own ego. Even back then there was a sucker born every minute. Of course I am not a biblical scholar and I am not a theologian nor can I say what weight you ought to give this text or any others that seem to decenter individual prosperity in favor of communal responsibility. If you are a biblical literalist though, you might want to take it seriously.