Covid Jubilee
I learned last evening that New York State, in view of the Coronavirus epidemic, is easing bail requirements as a strategy to keep people out of jails. The flu poses a terrible danger to people in institutions. So jurisdictions all over the country have been finding ways to draw down the numbers of people in prisons.
As I listened to this news, a bold thought popped into my mind. Freeing prisoners sounds biblical. The Bible is peppered with verses that express sympathy for prisoners. Being set free in both testaments is a metaphor for salvation itself. Back in the Pentateuch, the first 5 books in the Old Testament, there are regulations which require that slaves and indentured servants be released periodically.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the Covid-19 pandemic has elicited a surprising number of measures that remind me of biblical laws.
Was I the first to see this? At first, I thought that I might be. But as I worked on this post, googling for facts, I discovered that Treavor Sutton, writing for Sojourners Magazine, had also noticed a link between the Old Testament Jubilee provision and some of the measures our society is using to combat the economic hardship of this pandemic.
Rats!
I’m not the only one noticing these parallels. But that may not be so bad. Others are coming to the same conclusion. So there must be something important going on here.
God’s Vision of a Just Society
Before talking about Covid 19 and this lock down let me say a word about the Bible’s vision for a just and fair society.
Church-goers are so accustomed to hearing sermons about personal morality and individual responsibility that we may not realize that the Bible gives a blueprint for how entire societies should be run. And most of it is in the first 5 books.
Much of this blueprint is hidden in plain sight. Exodus, the story of the Hebrew people’s miraculous escape from slavery in Egypt begins by giving a vivid look at a bad society, Egypt. The head of that society, the Pharaoh, thinks he is a god. His empire is organized around pointless building projects. Under the Pharaoh we have state-sanctioned slavery of an ethnic minority. There’s the killing of the babies—genocide. Egypt in Exodus is the perfect picture of what can go wrong with a society.
The biblical story follows the Hebrew people’s movement out of Egypt, in to the wilderness, culminating in their encampment at Mt. Sinai. At Sinai they get the Ten Commandments. I memorized these as a child. The Ten Commandments give guidance on rudimentary personal behavior. They deal with murder, lying, stealing, and the like.
What I didn’t learn as a kid was that Moses received much more than these ten laws. While he was on the mountain, God filled his head with a social program for running the kind of society that God intends for humanity. We might say that God gave Moses a constitution.
As the Hebrew people come to the end of their years in the wilderness, Moses gathers them in an assembly. He stands up on a rock and lays out that constitution in a long oration. His speech is the Book of Deuteronomy. which means literally, “second law.” The first law is the Ten Commandments. The second law is the lengthy elaboration of those commandments.
All of those laws which fill the Penteteuch give us a fairly thorough idea of what God yearns for in human societies.
The timing of Moses’ speech makes sense. The Hebrew people have been in the desert for so long that most of them are the children and grandchildren of the slaves that escaped Egypt. Now, entering into Canaan, they are shifting from a nomadic, herding way of life into an urban, agricultural existence. They need these God-given principles for setting up their own society. Instead of organizing their by copying the Egyptians or Canaanites, the Hebrews carry in a new, God-given social design.
What Does That Social Design Look Like?
In some ways, it looks like the US Constitution. What Moses taught the people was egalitarian and faintly democratic.
For example, the second law flattened social hierarchy, possibly an innovation by ancient world standards. The Middle Eastern empires, which surrounded Israel were organized vertically with the leader and elites at the top and and everyone else, the bulk of society, situated below as servants and slaves. Typically, the king was the all-powerful head of the military, courts, and religion.
As we read through the Pentateuch it becomes clear that the various laws are designed to dis-empower the king and spread authority to other leaders and to the people as a whole.
One surprising innovation is to deprive the king of status as a religion leader. Priests and elders provide religious leadership. Additionally, there is the quirky provision for prophets. The prophets functioned like un-tethered gadflies. The prophets were constantly upsetting the status quo with pronouncements from God.
The King must yield power even to common people. God instructs Moses (Exodus 19) to recite the whole national polity to the assembled masses for their approval. This practice suggests that for the first time in ancient society the common people have a say in the organization of their common life.
The law of gleaning (Leviticus 19.9-10) is a further example of the emergence of dignity for even the poorest of the people in Israel. This law required that land owners not gather every last bit of their crops. This allowed poor people could move into the fields after the harvest to gather small amounts of grain on which they could live. This regulation appears to establish an entitlement that insures that no one starves.
Dozens of laws like these in the Bible modify stark social stratification that existed in all ancient societies. Repeatedly, the Bible lifts the poor and confers value to individuals. Likewise, the Bible limits the power of kings, spreads their power to other leaders, and deprives them from tinkering with religion in order to twist it into a self-legitimizing force.
Readers will recognize these principles as American aspirations. While I don’t believe that the founders of our society derived our constitutional support of egalitarianism, checks and balances, separation of powers, and common consent directly from the Old Testament, I do believe that they thought their way into these values in the era that our constitution was drawn up.
What’s this have to do with this pandemic?
The Covid-19 crisis has given us an opportunity to freshen our commitment to the idea that all people are valuable and deserve to survive. As I write this, the United States congress has passed 4 massive relief bills sending trillions of dollars into American households, small businesses, and especially into the hands of those who find themselves jobless because of the pandemic lock down. Monies are being appropriated to ensure that medical bills will not overwhelm any household that is stricken by the virus. It should be added that celebrities and philanthropists have launched their own projects designed to direct funds towards those struggling most from the disease.
I believe that these efforts align with biblical principles and with what is best in the American character. What’s more, it’s gratifying that these efforts are moving forward without undue partisan bickering.
Jubilee
So far, we’ve looked at general principles of social decency as they are found in the Bible. There are more specific instructions in those Old Testament books that deserve our attention.
The Sabbath provision, for example, is designed to give the former slaves a break from a seven day, dawn-to-dusk work schedule which they endured in Egypt (Exodus 5.11). Related to the sabbath is the Pentateuch’s Jubilee Celebration (Leviticus 25.1-10), which provides economic relief for debtors, slaves, and even farmland.
Both jubilee and sabbath challenge us to live better than we have so far. But this Covid-19 crisis has us experimenting with relief measures that remind us of these ancient standards.
Jubilee was built on sabbath. Every seventh day was a mandated rest from work. Every seven years, Hebrew slaves were released. And every seven times seven years (49 years) all debts were forgiven, fields to lie fallow, and people were freed to return to the land that was originally apportioned of their families.
Most of the time when American church-goers learn about the Jubilee provisions, we dismiss its ideas out of hand. The Jubilee provisions were God-designed to keep economic inequality, notably chattel and debt slavery, from becoming permanent parts of national life. Ultimately, these regulations were a stop against sliding back into an economic system like that of Egypt.
Americans have difficulty with Sabbath and Jubilee. Vast student loan and credit card debt is ubiquitous in America. We’ve had difficulty shaking our slavery tradition, whose afterlife is visible in our jails and prisons. Americans work and are expected to work far more than our counterparts in Western Democracies.
Americans can feel proud of our official desire to minimize the deadening hand of class distinctions. But for us to forgive debts, abandon the “hustle culture,” and give up our economic advantages are much less popular, even and especially among Christians
…until this Coronavirus crisis hit.
As I write this there are dozens of hastily arranged programs by Federal and State governments and even lenders that will make it possible to delay, defer, or drop one’s student loan debt. Out-of-work renters face a May 1st due date for rent, which they can no longer pay. But the Federal government has issued a 120 day moratorium on rents and State and Local governments are working out an array of ways that renters and landlords can make it through this crisis.
None of these economic survival measures may be permanent. They may not even work out and prove impractical. But for the moment, there is debt relief that at least has a hint of Jubilee release to it.
More subtly, Americans are taking a break. The machinery of the economy has been shifted into idle. Americans are home. We’re sleeping until 10:00 a.m., watching Netflix, playing with the kids, sleeping in our clothes, doing our hobbies, and making stuff in the garage. And while we’re indoors attempting to sign in to a Zoom meeting, animals are venturing out of hiding. The skies have cleared. Birds seem more abundant and noisy.
I realize that forced isolation is stressful for many. We’re in a pandemic after all. But for many, this stretch of idleness affords a degree of Sabbath rest and reflection.
The Covid Jubilee
It may seem as if we’ve strayed far from Covid-19 and our struggle to survive it. But I think not. Here’s where I’m going with this.
The measures which public leaders, notably the United States Congress and Senate are enacting, look a lot like the provisions Israel’s Jubilee and the social justice elements in the first books of the Old Testament.
Prisoners are being released, the biosphere is getting a rest, bankers and landlords are relaxing debts and rents. Money is flowing downward for a change. We’re cheering for people who work with their hands–hospital cleaning staff, the delivery driver, the cook, the grocery check-out worker. We’re looking for leadership and finding it in unexpected places. We’re on a long pause. Sometimes we’re idle with great anxiety, but sometimes with quiet re-creation.
What’s tantalizing is that much of this could have come off the pages of Leviticus.
When our society feels itself to be unstressed and humming along it bears down on the weakest people. Personal indebtedness keeps people working thanklessly at jobs they don’t like. Black and brown peoples continue to be relegated to lesser status. Health care is rationed to the affluent. Millions feel on their own to build satisfying lives rather than in partnership with a sympathetic social order where everyone is thinking about the common good.
But we’re scared right now. Right now the economic pieties of individualism and market forces are thrown to the wind.
And where do we go? Our leaders rush to the principles of justice that the Scriptures have, since Moses’ time, proclaimed as God’s will for humanity. This little jubilee is not big enough to signal the advent of a new order in America. It’s probably not forever.
But it’s there. And that’s amazing.
I hope this pandemic, with the lives that it has ended and the prosperity that it has destroyed, at least gives us a clear look at ourselves and the society that we have built. It was once America’s aspiration to establish a more perfect union, promote general welfare, limit class distinctions, and live free of the bondage of unworthy masters. These are biblical principles. And these we have tossed aside. The pandemic unmasks our neglect of justice. And it beckons us to build a sturdier, fairer society–one that God has designed.
