In the Bible God is specific about His concern for the poor, the widow, the foreigner, and the orphan/fatherless. It isn’t because he values them more than others. It is because their state of being makes them the most vulnerable in their society. God's concern is expressed all throughout the Bible. Here are just a few passages that highlight God's concern for the most vulnerable.
- He makes sure that orphans and widows are treated fairly; he loves the foreigners who live with our people, and gives them food and clothes. So then, show love for those foreigners, because you were once foreigners in Egypt.- Deuteronomy 10:18-19
- “Long ago I gave these commands to my people: ‘You must see that justice is done, and must show kindness and mercy to one another. Do not oppress widows, orphans, foreigners who live among you, or anyone else in need.” - Zechariah 7:9
- Whoever oppresses a poor man insults his Maker, but he who is generous to the needy honors him. - Proverbs 14:31
- Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. - James 1:27
In ancient near eastern societies poverty happened for many reasons. One primary reason is that the governing systems of a nation most often worked better for some groups of people than others. In many cases these systems could work against one group of people while privileging other groups of people. This group of people were defined as those who were “made poor.”
In the New Testament there are two Greek words for poor whereas English has one word. One Greek word for poor is penés. It is understood as the person who serves their own needs with their own hands. It describes the working person, the peasants who have nothing to brag about as they are neither rich or landowners, but they are not destitute or excluded from the social order. Though they lived on the edge of social existence and their status was lowly, they still had status. This word for poor (penés) has one occurrence in the New Testament. It can be found in 2 Corinthians 9:9 which quotes Psalm 112:9.
As it is written: “They have freely scattered their gifts to the poor; their righteousness endures forever.” - 2 Corinthians 9:9
This isn’t the word Jesus uses in Luke 4:18-19. In Luke 4:18-19 Jesus is standing in his boyhood synagogue. Jesus reads from Isaiah 61 to those gathered on that Sabbath day. Some consider Luke 4:18-19 to be something akin to Jesus’ mission statement.
He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor." - Luke 4:17-19
The Greek word for poor, in Luke 4:18-19, is ptóchos. This word describes absolute and abject poverty. Not poor in some spiritualized manner. This is poor as in stone broke.
In Jesus’ world (the Mediterranean region) one’s status in society was not located solely in economic realities, but was dependent upon a number of conditions. Things such as gender, education, family heritage, vocation, religious standing, economics and so on gave a person a low or high status in society. This word (ptóchos) was reserved for those of nominal status and spoke to those excluded based upon the social categories of status and honor/shame bound up in any number of the conditions mentioned above, also known as structural and systemic realities.
Those “made poor” are vulnerable to the wealthy people of privilege and power. In Israel the powerful and privileged often exploited the poor. Consider the story of Naboth’s vineyard in 1 Kings 21. King Ahab wanted Naboth’s land and got it not by offering Naboth fair financial compensation for his land. The King used his position to have Naboth murdered and then claimed the land as his. Naboth was "made poor" because Ahab could use the established system to get what he wanted. Naboth, and others "made poor", could be exploited by those with privilege and power.
Barbara Brown Taylor in her book Speaking of Sin touches on this concept of being "made poor" when she writes:
A few congregations had food pantries and clothes closets—bandage ministries—but none of them knew any better than we did how to tackle the larger systemic problems that made those ministries necessary. Plus, while no one disagreed about the goodness of handing out free food and clothes, quite a lot of people disagreed about the rightness of petitioning the county commission for more federal housing money or talking with local utility companies about lowering their deposits for low income families. Handing out free food and clothes was a charitable act. Approaching the powers was a political act. We could give people fish, but we could not ask why they had no fish.
Widows, orphans and foreigners were also vulnerable. The widow and orphan had no one to protect them, especially if they were female. The same is true of the foreigner who would be at a natural disadvantage due to ethnicity and pagan religious commitments.
In Hebrew Scripture the two words for justice and righteousness are often connected to these four specific groupings of people (the poor, the widow, the foreigner, and the orphan/fatherless).
Mishpat is understood as justice in legal and governmental spheres of civic life, and is often translated “justice,” depending on the context of the Scripture. It is used in its various Hebrew forms more than 200 times in the Hebrew Scriptures. It is not a linguistic stretch then to suggest that the word mishpat fits in with what we would call legal justice. Justice meted out via courts of law, legislation, the powers that be and the like.
The other word is tzedakah, understood as justice in social and human-to-human spheres of civic life on social levels. It is a word that brings our behavioral treatment/action towards our neighbor into question. It is sometimes translated “justice,” but most often translated “righteousness,” which could literally be called social right-ness (justice), or doing right (justly) by your neighbor. It is used in its various forms over 399 times in the Hebrew Scriptures.
However, it is overwhelmingly concentrated in the Torah in directing God’s people to do right by their neighbor (Genesis, 16 times; Deuteronomy, 18 times; Exodus 4 times; Leviticus 5 times). Mishpat and tzedakah are often paired together and sometimes used interchangeably. They do appear together over 50 times, mostly in the ministry of the Hebrew prophets.
God sent these prophets to be truth-tellers that would remind his people of what it means to faithfully love God and do right by one another, especially the vulnerable. Read any of the Old Testament prophets and it will not take you long to read of their concern for the poor, the widow, the foreigner, and the orphan/fatherless. The prophets ire was often reserved for God's people, governmental leaders and those considered in high status that were ignoring God's concern for the vulnerable.
Admittedly, and from all I’ve learned from others much smarter than me, it’s not easy translating a word like tzedakah. At the very least, it could sometimes mean something like our word "loyalty" or "solidarity” when used in a relational context. It's the sense that the other person is due certain things from me (and others), and I must provide it to them. Either way, it’s central to biblical (and Jewish and Christian) ethical thinking and a desire that God has for his people to put into behavioral practice.
Point is while the term social justice might be new and controversial in our time the concept is not new at all. This brief overview is a tiny drop in the ocean of what the Bible has to say on the subject of justice and its social implications. Besides, followers of Jesus have known about social justice before it was called social justice.
It was Jesus who summed up the Torah and the Prophets by saying love your neighbor as yourself. Loving your neighbor as yourself will require acts of justice and righteousness (social right-ness). Jesus also told all kinds of parables in an attempt to engage the imagination of his followers so as to redefine who is their neighbor. Jesus demonstrated his redefinition of neighbor via table fellowship. One of the main accusations against Jesus was that he "ate with sinners." Who Jesus eat with spoke louder than words. He demonstrated that our neighbor is not just the person who is from our own country or family, and votes like we do, talks like we do and eats the same food that we do. Jesus was the loving incarnation of God's desire for social justice.
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