Harmful market ripple effects are not peculiar to modernity. This chapter argues that the Hebrew economic ordinances were in fact a response to the pecuniary externalities and the economic chance and contingencies of their era. Moreover, there was a rehabilitative intent in these norms governing economic life. The challenge for contemporary Christian ethics is to reappropriate this earlier spirit of generosity and mutual sacrifice and adapt it to the dilemmas of our postindustrial age.

LAW CODES

We discern and comprehend more of God's self-revelation and initiatives as we grapple with and try to make sense of our own human experience – its joys, its hopes, its difficulties, and even its tragedies. A sphere of such divine–human encounter is economic life. We can best appreciate the role of economics as a venue for human participation in God's righteousness by reflecting on how we have coped with the exigencies of economic life. The Hebrew experience sheds much light in this regard because it was a dynamic process of economic disruptions evoking determined moral responses.

As seen in the preceding chapter, there is an impressive array of economic precepts in the Covenant (Exod. 20:22–23:33), Deuteronomic (Deut. 12–26), and Holiness (Lev. 17–26) Codes of the Hebrew Scripture. Of immediate interest to us are the provisions on debt legislation, slave manumission, and land return. These laws were written, edited, and further developed to even tougher standards over the span of several centuries from the formation of the nation to its post-exilic period.