Abstract
This article presents an overview of scholarship related to the economy in Hebrew Bible studies, focusing particularly on scholarship published in the past decade (2013–2023). For the scholarship before this past decade, please see Nam’s excellent survey on the topic in Portrayals of Economic Exchange in the Book of Kings (2012: 17–70) and in ‘Economics and the Bible’ (2013). The article has three sections. The first explores recent discussions on various models proposed to understand the economic situation of the world behind the Hebrew Bible. The second outlines recent discussions on the components of production; namely, land access, labor relations, and the role of debt in connecting the two. The third and final section surveys scholarship on two interrelated elements responsible for the flow of resources: temple and royal administration.
Introduction
This article presents an overview of scholarship related to the economy in Hebrew Bible studies, focusing particularly on scholarship published in the past decade (2013–2023). For the scholarship before this past decade, please see Nam’s excellent survey on the topic in Portrayals of Economic Exchange in the Book of Kings (2012:17–70) and in ‘Economics and the Bible’ (2013). The article has three sections. The first explores recent discussions on various models proposed to understand the economic situation of the world behind the Hebrew Bible. The second outlines recent discussions on the components of production; namely, land access, labor relations, and the role of debt in connecting the two. The third and final section surveys scholarship on two interrelated elements responsible for the flow of resources: temple and royal administration.
On Models
The search for appropriate theories by which to understand economic issues in Hebrew Bible contexts, in particular, and ancient economies, in general, is now established in biblical studies. In addition to Nam’s work, surveys of economic models are available in Houston (2008: 18–51), West (2011), and Altmann (2015: 105–108; 2016: 5–32), all of which largely survey with particular attention to the economic models of ancient Israel. In contrast, Van De Mieroop (1999: 105–136), Jursa (2010: 1–61), and Manning (2018: 8–38) survey the economic models of ancient Southwest Asia more broadly. If, in the past, the scholarly discussion on the economic models could be categorized neatly into divergent schools of thought—such as Marxist, classical/neo-classical, formalist/modernist, and substantivist/primitivist—this is less the case nowadays, particularly for the latter three, and especially with the rise of New Institutional Economics (NIE), which attempts to go beyond the famous formalist/modernist-substantivist/primitivist debate. Perhaps Silverman (2021a) is correct to categorize economic models into only two approaches—Marxist and neoclassical—where the former focuses on the question of exploitation and its ideology, while the latter focuses on markets, trade, and growth. Silverman includes both ‘substantive’ and ‘institutional’ schools as belonging to the classical traditions. Boer (2015), the main contemporary representative of Marxist biblical scholarship, seems to agree more or less with Silverman, and distinguishes the Marxist approach from the neoclassical approach (pp. 11–18). However, as Boer employs a particular Marxist-derived approach called Régulation theory, he also uses the concept of ‘institutions’ in which structural and economic forms are embedded. In his co-written work with Petterson, Boer acknowledges some connections with the NIE, though the two differ somewhat, with NIE assuming that ‘institutions and law function…to assist or hinder the “market”’, just like the general neo-classical framework does (Boer and Petterson 2017: 42n143). This section surveys the recent proposals for economic models, starting with Boer.
Boer’s Sacred Economy
Boer’s model has multiple layers. The first layer identifies five basic institutional forms: subsistence survival, kinship-household, patronage, (e)states, and tribute exchange. These institutions can be divided into two broad kinds of economic practices: allocative and extractive. Boer considers the first two institutions primarily as practicing allocative economics as they focus on the reallocation of labor and its products. The latter two are considered extractive because they focus on securing the flow of labor products from those who labor to those who do not. Patronage, however, stands in between. In Boer’s 2023 work, he subsumes patronage into the ‘kinship-household’ institutional form (2023: 54–55). It could join the first two to make up allocative economic practices but was prone to fall to the extractive practices as well. These institutions were arranged in different ways in relation to the next layer of economic activity; namely, three economic regimes. The first is the subsistence regime, which is characterized by the dominance of subsistence-survival and kinship-household institutions (2015: 53–109). Working primarily from an allocative mindset, this regime emphasizes the long-term survival of communities by prioritizing underutilization rather than overutilization of resources. This allocative regime stands in tension with two other extractive regimes.
The other two regimes are the palatine and plunder regimes. The dominance of (e)states and tribute-exchange institutional forms, respectively, characterize these. They are extractive in that they are focused on securing labor and labor products through the means of royal/temple estates or taxation schemes. The palatine regime maintains its goal in at least two ways: securing and supervising labor directly in the estates or indirectly through a land tenure system (pp. 110–45). The plunder regime also operates in different ways. It may use ‘overt’ violence through direct pillage, or ‘covert’ violence through taxation and tributary demands. The latter demand might seem ‘innocent’ or ‘voluntary’ in the form of ‘gifts’, but it serves nothing more than taxation; its absence still upsets the ruling party. Expanding the discussion of the tribute-exchange institutional form, Boer also tackles long-distance exchanges and markets (pp. 146–92). However, Boer proposes a different understanding of these terms beyond the neoclassical assumption of economic growth and profit. For Boer, long-distance exchange functions primarily for preciosities for the elites, while the markets primarily serve the purpose of military logistics, following a Polanyian concept of market.
Boer’s use of Regulation theory seeks to explain the switch of regimes in the second and first millennia of ancient Southwest Asia. This theory illuminates how various economic compromises emerged in response to conflict and tension between and within these regimes. Such compromises were sustained by modes of regulation, which refer to various ideologies, norms, patterns of conduct, et cetera. However, due to the religious nature of various modes of regulation in ancient Southwest Asia, Boer refers to this economic system as the ‘sacred economy’ mode of production (pp. 193–216).
Reception of Boer’s Model
Boer’s model is popular among scholars who attempt to understand economic conflict in the Hebrew Bible, including Jonker (2015), Yee (2017), West (2022), Hankins (2023), and Knight (2023). Ro (2018) finds Boer’s model helpful for the study of economics in the Persian and Hellenistic periods. However, Ro prefers to combine it with other (though also conflict-focused) models: Gottwald’s (1993) Tributary Mode of Production and Lenski’s (1966) Advanced Agrarian Society model (pp. 71–72). Furthermore, Ro argues for a need to bring more specific models to analyze Persian-Hellenistic Judah at the micro-level. Ro finds that combining those models with Tainter’s (1988) post-collapse society and Weinberg’s (1992) citizen-temple community models elicit a fuller understanding of socioeconomic and political situations in the region during the Persian-Hellenistic periods (pp. 44–47; 120–22).
Simkins (2014; 2020) also affirms Boer’s labor-focused model, but he emphasizes the prevalent notion of patron-client relations across Boer’s institutional forms. Using the classic study of Eisenstadt and Roniger (1984), Simkins highlights variation among patron-client relations and suggests treating various economic relations as different types of patron-client relations. On the one hand, patronage connects to the kinship-household institution as it uses kinship terminology. The patron was considered a ‘father’ for his clients, and the patron considers his clients as his ‘sons’ (2014: 26). Patron-client relations also reflect the gendered relationship between husband and wife. On the other hand, patronage expands this kinship terminology in suzerain-vassal relations, the king and his people, and beyond. For Simkins, either in palatine estate situations or tributary relations, both are specific types of unequal power and labor product distribution underlies patron-client relations. Simkins also includes slave relations as a form of patronage (p. 24). Thus, patron-client relations can exist on multiple levels: imperial powers and their vassalages, local or supra-regional elites, and local households, as well as the paterfamilias and their dependents. In the religious ideological system of ancient Israel and Judah, however, the supreme deity, Yahweh, is the ultimate patron (p. 27).
The focus on patronage as the primary sociopolitical relation which underlies the asymmetrical power and economic distribution is noted by other scholars such as Pfoh (2013; 2022a), Pfoh and Thompson (2019), Schloen (2016), Lemos (2016), and Houston (2018). (For important scholarship on patronage or the patrimonial model in the past decades, see Pfoh 2022b). For Pfoh and Thompson (2019), patronage is a more appropriate sociopolitical model for the ancient world than the concepts of city- or national-states. Maeir and Shai (2016) include archaeological evidence that corroborates the model. For Schloen (2016), this model explains well the abundant evidence of self-sufficient households, local kin-based reciprocity, and royal storages. The model also covers how the self-sufficient household supports political elites either in walled or unwalled settlements (towns vs. villages) with labor and goods.
The Rise of New Institutional Economics (NIE)
More recently, scholars approaching economic questions utilize the aforementioned NIE. Excellent introductions to this approach by scholars of the ancient world are provided by Altmann (2015: 107–108; 2016: 29–32), Schloen (2016), Pirngruber (2017: 9–13), and Manning (2018: 27–32). In a nutshell, this approach attempts to bridge the substantive-formalist debate by combining the strengths of each. For the formalists, it combines their concern with market exchange and the rational choice to maximize utility. For the substantivists, it addresses their concern about the role of sociopolitical and institutional spheres in economic behaviors. NIE reconsiders the Polanyian claim that the type of market exchange argued by the formalists did not exist in the ancient Near East and provides a formalist language of ‘transaction costs’ for the substantivist’s tenet of sociopolitical embedding of economic behaviors. As Altmann (2016) notes, NIE provides languages ‘for the broader institutional—both political and cultural—perimeters that nonetheless include space for considering active individual or family responses within these structures to work towards economic prosperity’ (p. 31).
Master (2014) is among the early proponents of using NIE to analyze the economic situation (particularly the modes of exchange) in the Levant, the area pertaining to the Hebrew Bible. He identifies three major institutions for economic exchange: monarchy, market, and trade route (p. 83). Monarchy refers to royal taxation and its redistribution to its retinues—from court officials, armies, to skilled craftsmen. Market refers to the locus of exchange for agricultural surpluses and household workshops. The trade route refers to long-distance avenues or routes of exchange that cover the Mediterranean coast and the Arabian Peninsula. In practice, these long-distance traders who use these trade routes also engage in economic interaction with local markets while at the same time paying dues to the local ruling elites (pp. 89–90). Working with the NIE approach, Master views various opportunities for people to gain an economic advantage in these overlapping contexts of exchange.
Brody’s (2022) archaeological work on Tell en-Naṣbeh (biblical Mizpah), however, nuances Master’s model. For Brody, this site shows evidence of having had minimal contact with the state, yet it does provide evidence of interaction with interregional and international markets beyond the primary trading networks. For the site yielded evidence of imported materials that indicate secondary and tertiary trading networks to Phoenicia and Ammon. Furthermore, these networks seem to have extended beyond royal initiative and control. The imported wares from Ammon also do not seem to symbolize wealth.
While Master focuses on the exchange interaction, Walton (2022) expands the model to include productive and consumptive activities. Walton proposes six primary economic institutions: subsistence agriculture, pastoral nomadism, the redistributive economy, the market economy, administered trade, and the extractive economy. The first two institutions seem to reflect Boer’s (2015: 53–81) subsistence-survival institution that focuses on risk-spreading agricultural and herding mechanisms. Though Walton, unlike Boer, separates the agricultural and pastoral activities, Walton acknowledges that they were not mutually exclusive. Walton’s ‘redistributive economy’ (and ‘extractive economy’), ‘market economy’ (and also ‘administered trade’), and ‘local markets’ follow Master’s monarchic context of exchange that includes the temple, trade route, and market institutions, respectively. But Walton’s ‘administered trade’ and ‘extractive economy’ contexts of exchange seem to reflect Boer’s ‘tributary-exchange’ institution because the latter focuses on tribute and booty in contrast to the focus on royal estates in the ‘redistributive economy’. However, for Walton (unlike Boer), the administered trade was separated from the institution of the market.
One observation in recent scholarship concerns the fluid interaction between approaches. This phenomenon might result from an acknowledgment of the complexity of ancient economics. Altmann (2016), who strongly promotes the use of NIE, also views patronage as an apt model. For him, the patronage system that ‘allows for both economic dependence in a rural setting and economic progress was shown to be the best way to characterize the Yehud economy while retaining the conceptual framework of New Institutional Economics’ (p. 302).
Beyond Marxian and NIE Models
Scholars who are more inclined to the classical economic approach also tend to be more open to the social aspect of economics. Guillaume (2022), who works within Becker’s approach of individual inclination toward maximization of welfare, also considers the role of social interaction and conflicting interests. Guillaume’s reading of Deuteronomy’s core (chs. 12–26) identifies three institutions that regulate socioeconomic interaction: the local village administrative system (‘your gates’), the yearly festival gathering (‘the Place’), and the supra-regional commercial guild (‘qehal-Yahweh’). But in the redactional analysis, Guillaume also identifies conflicting interests embedded in Deuteronomy’s core, chiefly those between well-to-do farmers who engage with works beyond ordinary agricultural activities (‘private entrepreneurs’) and the priesthood. Another instance is Miller (2015), who focuses on analyzing markets in the proposal for building an ancient economic model. He proposes three processes that include (1) analyzing the types of market exchange; (2) examining the relationship between political, religious, and market institutions; and (3) exploring the evolution of market economies. In the first level, Miller’s market-centered proposal calls for considering social interaction in local and regional householding contexts—specifically whether the household as a basic unit is involved in reciprocal or hierarchical exchange, and whether they have access to trade routes (p. 15). He also calls for considering the role of sociopolitical institutions such as imperial administrators and religious elites in economic activities (pp. 9–12).
Meanwhile, scholars like Nam (2023; see also 2012) who employs Polanyian tripartite modes of exchange (reciprocity, redistribution, and market exchange) in evaluating the texts, join other economic anthropologists in revisiting Polanyi’s strong anti-market stance in ancient economics. The reasons for doing so are not only the result of philological analysis in ancient Near Eastern sources but also analysis of the Hebrew Bible itself. Nam notes that recent scholars acknowledge that any economic system would include both socially embedded forms of exchange (in its symmetrical relationship of reciprocity between two equal parties or in an asymmetrical form of redistribution between centers and peripheries) and market forces.
Silverman (2021a) likewise promotes the engagement with sociological and anthropological disciplines for ancient economic analysis. Taking up Bourdieu’s (1991) ‘field theory’, he proposes to analyze ancient economics as a ‘field’ comprising production and consumption’, where economic actors operate and negotiate. To do so, it is imperative to examine various elements involved in this production-consumption sphere, including environments and raw materials, social patterns, and structures, as well as the related practices that also encompass ‘cultural’ and ‘religious’ practices (p. 329). Silverman further suggests understanding this field not in relation to ‘efficiency’ but to the concept of ‘weal’ or well-being, namely, how economic actors operate and negotiate in this economic field with an eye toward their own (and their communities) well-being as they understand it (p. 325; emphasis in original). Thus, Silverman also considers one’s own economic interest with one’s social relations.
Hirth’s Attempt to Bridge Marxian and NIE Models
A final model I want to include is that proposed by Hirth (2020, for ancient economics in general and 2023, for the Palestine context in particular). Hirth not only attempts to go beyond substantive-formalist debate as NIE attempts to do but also to incorporate Marxist tradition with its concern for analyzing the diachronic changes in the production and distribution of resources. Thus, Hirth defines economy as ‘a socially mediated form of material provisioning and interaction involving the production and allocation of resources between alternative ends’ (p. 14). Hirth identifies a tripartite ancient economic organization of the domestic economy, the informal institution, and the formal institution. Hirth’s explanation of the domestic economy in ancient Palestine follows Boer’s subsistence-survival institutional form. The informal institution refers to individual households and their neighbors in a particular regional context. And finally formal institutions refer to structures that encompass the entire society. Hirth has a positive view of formal institutions as a superstructure whose goal is to knit together society as a whole, especially in the ways that such formal institutions respond to four societal needs: ‘the formation of landholding and resource pooling associations, the need for mutual protection, the intensification of agricultural production including the development of irrigation technology, and the need to mediate political relationships with neighboring groups’ (p. 25). But Hirth also acknowledges the social inequality that emerges from these structures and specifically from their estate-building and taxation mechanisms. Hirth calls for a need to understand changes in land access and labor relations between freeholders, debt laborers, estates, and tributary systems in ‘reconstructing the relationship between the domestic and institutional sectors of the economy’ (p. 28).
Indeed, ‘there is nothing simple about reconstructing ancient economy’ (Hirth 2023: 37). It is a complex process that requires a nuanced understanding of the available evidence. As I have shown, recent scholarship on economics in the Hebrew Bible world suggests there is no single rigid economic model that can be applied to all cases. Instead, interpreting the available evidence demands our flexibility and fluidity in engaging different approaches.
On Production
In the agrarian economic system shared by ancient Near Eastern regions, land and labor are the basic components of production. Thus, in this section, I survey recent scholarship on the questions of land and labor, as well as what connects them: debt.
On Land
Scholars have long noticed how land is crucial for the people in the world behind the Hebrew Bible. At the most basic level, it supplies sustenance for the people. At another level, access to land, land rights, or land ownership offers ideological status. Barrera (2013) suggests that not only was land vital to the identity of Israelites, both as individuals and collectively as a nation on an abstract level, but it also provides rights for ‘full participation in the life and governance of the community’ (p. 30). Furthermore, Matthews (2023) notices that in the Hebrew Bible, different actors’ struggles for power and for exercising authority are deeply interconnected with holding land. Knight (2023) highlights how many laws in the Hebrew Bible reflected the interests of large landowners. Thus, it is unsurprising that the concern of land and its fertility is central in the Hebrew Bible (see Fu 2022, Abernethy 2022, and Kessler 2023), as is the justification for claiming land (Dube 2017).
In terms of land for human sustenance, Welton (2022) discusses food items produced and processed in the subsistence survival strategy (see also other articles in Fu, Shafer-Elliott, and Meyers 2022). Scholars have also raised interesting points about food items that have otherwise tended to be overlooked. For example, Welton (2020; 2022) talks about beer, which provides the primary source of calories. Beer is often overlooked due to the primacy of wine in the texts and that Welton suggests has something to do with the former being cheap and mostly produced in the domestic sphere by women, and the latter being expensive and mostly consumed by elite males. Additionally, Shafer-Elliott (2023) discusses legumes and their pulses, which tend to be overlooked despite being ‘economic and excellent sources of protein, carbohydrates and fiber’ (p. 439) and despite being able to be processed in various ways to make everything from cakes to stews.
Indeed, most people in the world of the Hebrew Bible did not regularly eat meat (Shafer-Elliott 2023). Discussion of animal consumption, primarily due to the discovery of animal bone remains in archaeological sites, includes, for example, Lev-Tov (2022), who outlines various uses of animal and their by-products. Continuing the consensus in ancient animal studies, Lev-Tov writes that animals were primarily used not for meat consumption but for their by-products (wool, milk, dung, etc.) and their ‘labor’ (as burden carriers or companions). Shafer-Elliott’s survey (2013: 181) on the immaturity of the animals used for human food also further supports this theory. Although the primary groups of animals raised are caprine and bovine (Lev-Tov 2022), evidence of pork consumption also exists throughout the Levant in different time periods. Pork consumption is most likely related to economic considerations. Sapir-Hen (2019) highlights pork as ‘a reliable source of meat’ in the context of major population growth in urban areas and among migrant populations. Pigs are more transportable and reproduce and grow rapidly (Lev-Tov 2022). Food analysis also highlights the question of social stratification. Shafer-Elliott (2013: 59–116) notices the different sizes of cooking apparatuses in urban and rural sites. The former have larger ones, which suggests that they consume meat in larger quantities than the latter, whose cooking pots are considerably smaller. Sapir-Hen and Ben-Yosef (2014) also note the higher value cuts of meat provided to skilled craftspersons in Timna's metallurgy industry.
Given the importance of land, scholars continue to inquire about the access mechanism to the land in the world of the Hebrew Bible, including land ownership, land possession, and land rights. Russell (2014; 2016; 2017) suggests one way to understand this range of land rights using Gluckman’s (1943) theory of different kinds of land rights to highlight how different economic actors may have interests and entitlements in the same parcel of land, particularly on the distinction between what he terms ‘administrative rights’ and ‘productive rights’. The former refers to the right to allocate, manage, and control the land (and its usufruct) but without directly using the land. This right tends to be held by the elites—local, regional, or imperial. The productive right, by contrast, refers to the direct use of the land for cultivation, pasturage, et cetera. These rights are interconnected and ideally entail mutual obligation. Those who have administrative rights are responsible for the protection of the land, people, and animals from external threats, while those who have productive rights are obligated to pay rent, taxes, or other different forms of compensation (labor, military, etc.) to those who hold the administrative rights. Benjamin (2015; 2017) employs Russell’s approach in analyzing the land rights of the women portrayed in the book of Deuteronomy. Combined with the analysis of women’s land use rights in the ancient Near East, Benjamin argues that the women in Deuteronomy also hold land use rights (or productive rights in Russell’s terms). But he further argues that women ‘could either delegate [this right] to elite males or exercise [it] independently’ (2017: 73). Via such delegation, Benjamin seems to suggest multiple layers of administrative rights. Based on the reading of the ‘honoring both fathers and mothers’ commandment, Benjamin writes that the delegated males are responsible for supporting the mothers ‘who delegated them to exercise their use rights’ (p. 74). Thus, another administrative-productive right relation seems to appear within the women’s land use rights with her delegated male(s).
Boer and Petterson (2023) approach the question of ‘property’ by revisiting the Hebrew terminologies, particularly ’ăḥuzzâ, naḥălâ and ḥelqat haśśādeh. For them, these terms are not so much about the capitalistic-influenced notion of private property. Having its root in ’ḥz (means ‘to hold’ or ‘seize’), Boer and Petterson instead argue that ’ăḥuzzâ refers to the right to use the land and the rights to its usufruct—in other words, the land tenure itself. They then posit that ’ăḥuzzâ is not synonymous with naḥălâ, which tends to be translated as inviolable or inalienable property. Boer and Petterson instead argue that naḥălâ focuses on the process of transfer of rights or how the rights are acquired, rather than on the rights themselves, which is represented by’ăḥuzzâ (pp. 86–87). The texts that discuss naḥălâ in the Hebrew Bible (some Pss., Lev. 25, Ruth 4, and 1 Kgs 21) corroborate this notion (pp. 88–90). The final term under consideration is ḥelqat haśśādeh. For Boer and Petterson, instead of the static plot of land owned by someone, this term refers to ‘a movable strip or strips of land that are constantly reallocated on the basis of usufruct and labor’ in village communities (p. 87)—or in other words, an allotment of land usage. In all these cases, these terms speak about the strategy of village communes in their land usage for subsistence rather than about individual concern regarding property rights.
Following the work of Chaney (1989), Barrera (2013: 27–61) continues the two conflicting land tenure systems model: prebendal and patrimonial. Prebendal land tenure refers to the royal land-grant system, while the patrimonial system refers to the hereditary and intergenerational system. For Barrera, each model has its own understandings about land: land as a commodity, or the land as an inheritance. The two models conflict with one another due to the former’s continuous attempt to encroach upon and accumulate lands to be included in their system. The royal land-grant system bestowed land on various parties in exchange for their loyalty and services to the crown, and these parties further delegated their land use to the peasants. In turn, the peasants had to pay taxes and rents, which could be ‘more than half of the harvest’ (p. 29).
Hankins (2023) likewise follows Chaney’s model, which Hankins finds particularly apt to explain socioeconomic conflict toward the end of Israelite and Judah monarchic histories in the late eighth to early sixth centuries BCE. For Hankins, this ‘prebendal and patrimonial’ category also reflects Boer’s (2015) distinction between regimes of extraction and allocation, respectively (see ‘Boer’s Sacred Economy’ above). In other words, people have different interests in the land, interests that focus either on the land’s sufficiency for survival or on the land’s efficiency in providing extractable resources.
Scholars also discuss the royal-grant land system in the Neo-Babylonian and Persian periods—particularly the haṭru system or the associated ilku-service. The system is also known as ‘fiefs’ or ‘bowlands’. In both the Babylonian and Persian periods (even into the Seleucids), kings controlled such lands after conquering the peoples—including the underused and underpopulated lands—and they later parceled them out to kings’ retinues (Fried 2015a; 2021a: 81–82; 140–41). Warren (2013) and Kopilovitz (2020) note that the book of Ezekiel seems to assume this grant system when it imagines the temple-building program in Ezekiel 40–48. While Warren discusses the role of the temple in this reimagined granting system, Kopilovitz expands the discussion by considering the land allocation for the gerim. Kopilovitz draws a comparison from the Judeans, who were attested as a part of similar land-for-service systems in the Al-Yahudu tablets and the Murashu archives in highlighting how the book of Ezekiel also imagines a land-for-service granting mechanism for foreigners. For more discussions on the economic situation of diaspora Judeans in Babylonia, see Pearce and Wunsch (2014), Pearce (2015b; 2016; 2020), Alstola (2019), and Noya (2024). Fried (2015a), however, suggests that the system was in play in Achaemenid Judah and how it is reflected in the economic crisis described in the books of Ezra-Nehemiah. From an archaeological perspective, the conversation about the haṭru-like system in the Persian Yehud can be found in Faust (2018a) as well as Kletter and Silverman (2021). As Guillaume (2015) notes, food access is important for military success. Thus, ensuring food provision is crucial for imperial expansion. To provide food, imperial overlords must secure access (‘rights’) to land that produces food.
While the land is crucial in the world of the Hebrew Bible, one must not think that economic crises are primarily about land issues. Boer (2015: 228) and Guillaume (2015) note that throughout most periods, the land was abundant, but that that meant nothing without labor. Land cannot work itself to produce, harvest, and process food: this requires labor. Thus, land and labor are deeply interconnected. Boer and Guillaume therefore argue that securing labor is more problematic than securing land parcels. Various elements contribute to the shortage of labor, including but not limited to infant mortality, disease, life expectancy, and war. Chaney (2016) and Ro (2018), however, argue against this notion. Chaney points out the archaeological evidence of population growth in Iron II, especially in Palestine highlands, which contributed to ‘population pressures on arable land’ (p. 140). Ro (2018: 67–68) notes that the competition for arable land also appeared in the Persian period Yehud, and argues that approximately eight hectares of arable land were needed to sustain a household with four to five members. Boer (2016) responds by highlighting the assumption behind population estimates of how many square meters are required for one human being to live. Boer also notes the assumption behind productive capacity of land while neglecting the difference between optimal (sufficiency) and maximal (efficiency) uses of land. Guillaume (2015) notes two strong ideological indications in which the Hebrew Bible attempts to overcome the labor shortage issue. First, the command to be ‘fruitful and multiply’ in Genesis stands in contrast to the Mesopotamian myth of Atrahasis, which cries against human overpopulation (pp. 128–29). Second, regarding the seventh-year ban against sowing in Lev 25, Guillaume insists that this Sabbatical year is granted to the ‘land’, not to the farmers (pp. 137–44). This mechanism freed the farmers to work on another parcel of land or other royal projects such as land reclamation, which was greatly needed in the Achaemenid Yehud to prepare for the new settlers. Thus, Erbele-Küster is correct to say that ‘the land stands for food and productivity but demands human labor’ (2022: 499).
On Labor
As an agrarian society, labor in the world of the Hebrew Bible is predominantly related to agriculture and animal husbandry. Scholars have termed this basic productive activity variously: household economy (Shafer-Elliott 2014), subsistence-survival regime (Boer 2015; 2023), subsistence economy (Simkins 2020), domestic economy (Hirth 2023), et cetera. Labor has its various challenges, including but not limited to erratic weather, drought, pets or disease cycles, limited life expectancy of the laborers, war, and other threats. The basic strategies used to mitigate these risks include prioritizing three crucial concepts: diversity, security, and underutilization. Diversity refers to planting and herding diverse species of plants and animals with different growing and life cycles. This diversification strategy ensures greater security; it is unlikely that every species will be adversely affected by the same threat or in the same growth cycle. Underutilization prioritizes optimal use for the long term rather than maximizing use in the short term.
Scholars who refer to this economic activity as the ‘household’ (Shafer-Elliott 2014; 2016; 2023; Ackerman 2016; Meyers 2016) or ‘domestic’ (Nakhai 2019; Hirth 2023) do so because they occurred in the domestic sphere and were executed the household. Shafer-Elliott (2016) defines a household as ‘a group of people who typically live and/or work together but may or may not be related’ (p. 34). While living in the same complex is a possibility, the central characteristic here refers to ‘work’, as a household member can reside elsewhere and come to the particular domestic or household sphere only for work. In other words, everyone in a household contributes to the subsistence work—including women, children, and even strangers.
To explore women’s labor in the Hebrew Bible, scholars have long noticed that one must go beyond the Hebrew Bible itself since, as Ackerman (2016) states, the Hebrew Bible ‘was primarily written by men, for men, and about men’ (page number here). However, in conversation with anthropology, archeology, and comparative studies, scholars provide insights into the world of women’s labor. In the subsistence economy, the role of women is crucial. Meyers’ reworking of Discovering Eve (2013: 125–46), for example, is a survey of women’s roles in the tedious flour processing, beer brewing, fruit drying, and legume/herb processing activities. For an analysis of Hebrew terms for cooking activities such as bread-baking and pottage-making, as well as other cooking activities, see Peters (2022) and Shafer-Elliott (2013; 2023). Meyers (2013) also provides crucial observations for our understanding of women’s labor: their work is essential for the household’s survival; their work complements men’s work, and in some cases, women even assist men; women’s work is technologically sophisticated as they also engage with tools-making; and much of women’s work occurs communally. The communal work of women is evident archaeologically from the appearance of multiple grinding tools in an area and the use of a communal oven (Meyers 2022). Meyers (2013) also emphasizes the fluidity of gendered labor, especially in the time of harvest. All in the household, regardless of gender, contribute to harvest—women’s labor included, not only in the food production (Simkins 2014; Ebeling 2018). Ackerman (2016) likewise discusses the various roles of women in the economic sphere. Because of the crucial role of women’s labor, Meyers (2013) suggests that women held considerable amount of power in the household sphere and challenges the dominant image of patriarchy when describing ancient Israelite households. Shafer-Elliott (2013; 2023) agrees, highlighting the role of the matriarch or senior woman as the household manager in food production, which is an economic activity. Chapman (2016) also discusses the concept of the ‘house of the mother’, a phrase that appears in five Hebrew Bible passages and refers to the socioeconomic subdivision within the ‘house of the father’ in the Israelite household. Fu (2022), however, has a different viewpoint about this, suggesting that dominance in one sphere does not necessarily imply dominance in all other spheres. Meyers (2023) later acknowledges this, noting that though ‘heterarchy’ might be the better concept to depict ancient Israelite households instead of ‘patriarchy’, it does not mean the absence of male privilege or broader gender equality. For instance, the spheres of inheritance and marriage are still in the purview of male control. For discussions on marriage, see Stone (2014), Adams (2014: 22–39), Ackerman (2016), and Knight (2023).
Children are also a source of labor in the world of the Hebrew Bible. Koepf-Taylor (2013) details the role of children in ancient economics. In contrast to the modern world, which considers children to be liabilities, the ancient world views children as assets (pp. 43–47). They began working at an early age as part of their education and socialization, graduating from simple tasks to more complicated assignments. Koepf-Taylor discusses various passages in the Hebrew Bible that only make sense if the role of child labor in ancient economics is taken seriously, including the widespread concern about childlessness. Parker (2013) likewise highlights that children’s roles entail more than mere ‘helping out’, and that their labor should not be considered less important than that of others for they also ‘toiled in the fields, gathered fuel, fetched water, tended to younger children, watched over animals, and learned skills, such as how to make pottery, process grains, cook, weave, build, plow, plant, and harvest’ (p. 133). Guillaume (2015), noting Neolithic skeleton evidence of a ‘correlation between the intensification of agriculture and higher fertility rates’, considers the role of child labor in interpreting the command to multiply in the book of Genesis (p. 135). In Genesis, the gender of the children seems less important, and Guillaume understands this from the perspective of the rural subsistence economy where all children, along with all members of the household—regardless of gender—contribute to agricultural production, especially at harvest time. But Garroway (2018: 137–72) notes that various labor tasks are also learned by children as a part of their ‘gendering process’—that is, older boys start heading out to the fields while girls spend most of their time doing tasks around the home.
Strangers also contribute to the economic survival of the household by their labors. Chapman (2023) highlights the connection of land, labor, food, and feeding with the notion of kinship. Discussing the story of Ruth found in the book of Ruth, Chapman notes how Ruth is integrated into the kinship circles through her labor. This analysis follows Chapman’s (2016) assertion that strangers who were listed as members of a household are ‘usually found as a laborer, someone whose membership in the household is secured through work he provides to the household’ (pp. 236–37). In a subsistence economy, more hands mean more food to be produced. Awabdy (2014) similarly notes that the inclusion of ger in the book of Deuteronomy welcomes strangers to enter patronage with the native society and work as clients. Here, population growth is understood as an asset rather than a liability. Hence, strangers are welcome for they contribute to the subsistence labor.
The contribution of all members to the survival of the household, however, was challenged when extractive regimes emerged. Boer (2015) discusses the labor demands of these regimes, either in the form of estates or taxation. Elites in these regimes required human power to work on the estates, on other major royal projects, on military provisioning, or to continuously supply the royal table with its unceasing and abundant feasts. Yee (2017) notes that these labor needs cut directly into the resources of the village communes or the household labor pools. In such regimes, households needed extra labor to fulfill the needs of not only of their own members but also of the corvee workers and to supply the royal feasts. These regimes also intensify agricultural work, betraying the ‘optimal-over-maximal’ concept in the subsistence regime to fulfill the elites’ extractive demands (Chaney 2014).
Yee’s work (2017; 2020; 2022) discusses labor that was usually conducted by women for extractive regimes, including as grain grinders, bread-bakers, and even midwives. Midwives, Yee notes (2022), are crucial in securing the safe (re)production of labor to mitigate labor shortage. The high degree of maternal and infant mortality made this job even more crucial to secure the continued flow of labor reproduction. Grain grinders and bread-bakers are also important for extractive regimes to supply the royal table. Yee (2020) and Case (2021) both note the evidence of a royal milling house in Mesopotamia that was primarily occupied by women who produced the daily sustenance for the royal household. Yee (2017), however, understands this extra-household assignment to be ‘in addition’ to agricultural tasks these women need to do in their own respective households—whose large sum of products is still demanded by the elites. For further discussion of Hebrew terminology of other women’s labor roles or occupations, especially those related to the royal household, see Garcia Bachmann (2013: 237–66). These roles included perfume-makers or cosmeticians, personal assistants, wet nurses, and child-caregivers, among others.
As regards child labor, in addition to claiming their labor products, extractive regimes also claimed their labor itself in a variety of ways. Parker (2013: 106–107) and Koepf-Taylor (2013: 29–31) write that children can be sold into debt slavery or drafted as child soldiers. Adams (2014: 58–81) notes that this practice continued into the Greco-Roman periods in the broader Mediterranean. Parker (2013) further notes that children hold advantages as debt slaves as they were less threatening to slaveowners, easier to control, more adaptable to learning new tasks and cost less to feed. The importance of child labor is also noted by Boer (2018), whose reading of Nehemiah 5 highlights the absence of ‘sons and daughters taken off to labor’ in Nehemiah’s debt restoration. Though fields, vineyards, and houses were being restored in the passage, Nehemiah does not mention the restoration of these child laborers. This further attests to the crucial role of labor, even child labor, for extractive regimes.
Regarding the labor of strangers, Jenei (2019) notes the division of labor between natives and strangers, not only in the broader ancient Near East but also in ancient Israel. What Jenei calls the ‘second-class population’ refers to ‘the semi-assimilated residents and the non-assimilated strangers [who] performed heavy, low-quality work duties, such as stone-cutting and burden-bearing’ (p. 68). These strangers were also at times made to enter a perpetual state of forced labor, namely slavery. Houston (2018) discusses something similar. Comparing passages about forced labor in Deuteronomistic History, Houston suggests that while the conquest of the Canaanites might not be a historical reality, subjugating the Canaanite population to forced labor certainly was. Frolov (2016) also notes a similar sentiment subjugating surrendered enemies into forced labor in the rule of warfare in Deuteronomy 20. Sharp (2017) reads the story of Ruth differently than Chapman (2023) above. Sharp understands Naomi, the native, as co-opting the labor of Ruth, the stranger. Not only does she put Ruth into the vulnerable position of going out to labor in the field on her behalf (with the possible threat of sexual assault), but she also sends her to the threshing floor to lure Boaz sexually. Finally, Naomi claims Ruth’s baby—another ‘product’ of Ruth’s labor. Kopilovitz (2020) also discusses the socioeconomic stratification of natives and strangers, where the latter is supposed to stay at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. Kopilovitz notes the curse in Deuteronomy 28 as being the result of disobedience, which would be the reversion of the ‘ideal’ ladder, with strangers becoming the ‘head’.
Other scholars notice socioeconomic categorization within various groups of strangers themselves, beyond the broader dichotomy of natives and strangers. Mayshar (2014) discusses the term ‘toshav’, usually translated as ‘foreigner, alien, or immigrant’, in the Holiness source and notes that the general term for strangers (ger) is subdivided into toshav and sakhir, usually translated as ‘hireling’. The former refers to a rent-paying tenant, while the latter is a hireling alien. The latter is considered to be inferior to the former, and as a result, more privilege is given to the toshav than the sakhir. In other words, more privilege is given to strangers, which gives more economic advantage to society. Pitkanen (2017) categorizes strangers differently. Reading from the perspective of settler colonial theory, Pitkanen posits different terms for of strangers (ger, nakhri, and toshav) in the law codes, terms which refer to a person’s degree of foreignness or strangeness. This categorization, however, functions similarly to Mayshar’s analysis above to introduce differing privileges based on the economic value of these strangers—or, in Pitkanen’s words, the ‘selective inclusion of exogenous others as there is the possibility of collaboration’ (p. 145).
Another important discussion on labor relations is the involvement of persons with disabilities. Gulliver (2018) examines the participation of deaf persons in ancient Israelite labor system. Building on the work of scholars like Meyers (2013) who argued that everyone in the household contributed to labor, Gulliver notes that deaf persons were still expected to work. For instance, a woman born deaf could still assist with chores around the house like ‘grinding grain, butchery, baking, cooking, brewing, wine making, spinning yarn, dying and making clothes, creating pots, cleaning’, or works outside the home such as ‘collecting water or twigs/dung for cooking, helping the harvest, defecation and urination’ (p. 547). As for deaf men, they could still care for the cattle with assistance or contribute to construction and crafts by emulating other workers. Gulliver also suggests that deaf persons still hold roles in cultic rituals as priests regardless of their lack of hearing, especially with the prominence of visual symbolic elements in the Israelite cultic sphere. Fuad (2022) also notices certain prominent places held by priests with disabilities, though he also highlights that their experience differs from that of persons with disabilities outside of the priestly system. The former has more privilege due to their priestly status, despite their disabilities. Similarly, Vengeyi (2016) points to the privilege held by elites with disabilities. The tendency to find ‘positive roles’ in a person with disabilities is also evident in Fiorillo’s (2014) work. Fiorillo highlights how individuals with disabilities were integrated into ancient Mesopotamian society through various roles such as musicians, courtiers, and silversmiths, as seen in the Mesopotamian myth of ‘Enki and Ninmah’. This shows that individuals with disabilities were not completely marginalized in the broader ancient Near East, but were instead included in various societal roles.
However, Vengeyi (2016) argues for the changing attitudes toward persons with disabilities in the extractive regime of the monarchic era (see also Bowa 2022). With the rise of taxation in labor and in kind, disabilities were viewed as a hindrance to meeting the elites’ demand for taxation. Such changing attitude was also evident in the close association between disabilities and infertility—of women (in the concern of the reproduction of labor) and of the land, including crop failure (in the concern for agricultural produce). These issues are explored by Moss and Baden (2015), Doak (2019: 178–82), and Bowa (2022: 394–97).
Furthermore, the discussion of slavery is also crucial to understanding labor exploitation. Bridge (2013) surveys the metaphorical use of ‘slave’ in the Hebrew Bible related to the following: subjects of a king, vassalship, personal servants, royal officials, and relation with the divine (pp. 15–21). Bridge notes that the following associations repeatedly appear in those relations: possession (control), inferiority, work, debt/poverty, oppression, and propensity to run away. Further, Bridge concludes that the association of ‘inferior status’ is a common element throughout the usage, which means an awareness of hierarchy in ancient Israel (pp. 27–28). However, a closer look at Bridge’s survey will also show the association of ‘work/labor’ as a common element throughout those relations, and thus, an awareness of hierarchy specifically related to labor relations.
In a survey of the differences in slavery between the ancient Near East and ancient Israel, Averbeck (2018) finds enslaved individuals function to fill in the labor needs in both contexts—not only in the domestic sphere but also in agricultural production. Although there are some differences, Averbeck concludes that by and large, slavery regimes in both contexts are similar—such as a similar categorization of treatment between of foreign and native enslaved people. Some differences include the concept of jubilee in ancient Israel, but there is also notable difference in the length of debt slavery: the laws of Hammurabi establish three years of labor while the Hebrew Bible established a period of six years. Knight (2023) also notes that the Hebrew Bible almost never denounces the institution of slavery. The closest to a denunciation might be in Job 31.15—‘Did not he who made me in the womb make them’ (referring to slave, NRSVUE)—but even this passage is read differently by Dawson (2013). For Dawson, Job’s saying in this passage does not intend to free enslaved people but to claim that Job was a good master and did not deserve the tribulation he experienced. Apart from this passage, however, Knight insists that the laws in the Hebrew Bible protect the economic interests of enslavers. As Knight argues, enslavers ‘had considerable, [indeed] virtually full power over their slaves, and even biblical laws and customary laws could not guarantee humane treatment of these powerless persons’ (p. 189). Yee (2016) also shares this point of view. While there seem to be some laws that attempted to revise slaves’ condition in the earlier codes (Exod. 21.2–11; Deut. 15.1–18; Lev. 25.39–46), Yee notes that ‘they did not abolish this exploitative system, and [that] the vicious cycle of debt slavery continued to persist among the peasant classes’ (p. 499). One motif found in the laws of the Hebrew Bible that is often considered liberating for enslaved peoples is the Sabbath motif, which some scholars argue functioned to prevent overworking. However, Noya (forthcoming) argues that the Sabbath laws seem to allow the enslaved—along with the rest of the household—to support the enslaver’s cultic obligations to bring tithes and offerings to the sanctuary. Thus, slavery provides extractive regimes another means of labor exploitation.
Averbeck (2018) and Adams (2014: 77–80) distinguish between debt slavery and chattel slavery. The latter primarily comes from the refugees of warfare, while the former comes from debt relations. Chattel slavery was a dominant mode of enslavement in the latter period of Greco-Roman society. In the earlier period of the ancient Near East, debt slavery was more dominant. However, following Dandamaev (2009), Boer (2015) suggests that we consider all labor relations in the ancient Near East as indentured, which, in turn, makes such workers ‘unfree’ due to the chronic debt relation used by extractive regimes in the periods. This debt relation is also the one that connects the labor and the land to the extractive regimes of production.
On Debt
Various scholars have discussed the cycle of debt relations that existed since the beginning of the ancient Israelite monarchies (Coomber 2013; Chaney 2014; Boer 2015; Yee 2016; Hankins 2023; Matthews 2023). The extractive regimes’ demand for the continual transfer of goods toward the elites for direct consumption or trade in luxuries resulted in both intensification and specialization of agriculture. However, either due to erratic weather, crop failures, or simply the excessive tax demand, taking out loans was almost unavoidable. Defaulted loan payments, in turn, resulted in foreclosure of land. Creditors then had access not only to the rent payment but also to the usufruct, which makes rent payment difficult and makes it almost impossible to get one’s land back. Defaulted rent payment, in turn, forces the debtors to sell their bodies or their children into debt slavery. This vicious cycle is what makes these scholars think that debt relations are just a means to transfer wealth from laborers to creditors. Kessler (2015) notices that the tenth commandment in the decalogue assumes this chronic debt relation.
This debt relation intensified in the Achaemenid period. Lee (2019) highlights the case in the book of Nehemiah, where the laborers borrow money to pay for taxes using their land as collateral, which is simply another mans for the rich to control property and labor. Altmann (2016) observes that the analogy of debt in the Hebrew Bible texts is likewise common in the Persian period texts, which highlight concerns about this chronic debt relation (see, e.g., Neh. 5 or Lev. 25). Guillaume (2015; 2022; 2023; and with Rossi 2018) argues that debt is not that bad—it is simply how the way things need to work. Rather than the measure of a bad economic situation, Guillaume views debt as fueling a good economy. But Altmann (2016) and Fried (2015a) disagree. Altmann (2016) thinks this concept assumes that debt relation is between the elites, while Mesopotamian texts show debt accrues primarily because of dues and taxes required from the common people. Indeed, Fried (2015a) argues that Guillaume underestimates the effect of such loans for, deprived of its usufruct on top of having to repay the loan at high interest, the laborers ‘had no way ever to repay the loan’ (p. 162).
Boer (2014) distinguishes between ‘debt’ and ‘credit’. Boer maintains that the latter existed within the kinship network and subsistence economic contexts. Credit is primarily based on ‘trust’ between social networks and ‘ensures the mutual allocation and reallocation of all tasks and goods within the community’ (p. 3). Debt, on the other hand, mainly serves extractive economic regimes to secure the flow of wealth from the debtors to the lenders. Issler (2020) also seems to have this distinction in mind, though Issler calls them subsistence and commercial loans. Boer (2014; 2017) further discusses the concept of debt remission (which in the biblical tradition is known as the Jubilee) in conversation with the Mesopotamian practice of misharum. For Boer, not only was this practice related to imperial propaganda, but it was less about relieving or forgiving all debts in their entirety and instead about restoring the debtors from one creditor back to their other creditor. Boer writes, ‘if people had become too indebted to landlord-usurers, then they were moved back to [the] palatine’ (pp. 4–5). In other words, debt remission was a means to transfer (or return) laborers from one extractive party to another extractive party. Though Rossi and Guillaume (2018) has a different way of understanding debt and credit than Boer, Rossi and Guillaume note a similar mechanism of debt release (particularly the one in Deuteronomy 15), one which does not mean ‘manumitted but released from any obligations toward the creditor of his own creditor’ (pp. 20–21).
Lest one thinks that debt relation exists only in the so-called ‘secular’ realm, Gordon’s (2020) study suggests otherwise. Gordon proposes that the mechanism of land consecration to the temple serves as a means of securing the loan from the temple’s coffer. In other words, the land becomes the surety given to the temple. Gordon, however, seems to insist that this practice is not an act of profiteering but a way to strengthen the local economy with an emphasis on redeemability. However, at the same time, Gordon discusses a twenty-percent markup buyback in the guise of a holy shekel, which weighs twenty percent more than the so-called ‘secular’ shekel. This practice was seen to prevent the locals from engaging with foreign creditors. Yet, foreclosure of defaulted payments still existed. With that in mind, I now turn to the scholarship on the temple economy.
On Flow of Resources
In this section, I will show how scholars have noticed that the temple as an economic agent does not stand in a vacuum. Rather, the temple was connected to the larger economic network, including the royal administrative system and market/trade routes. The following surveys scholarship on the economic flow of resources in the temple, royal administrations, and market/trade routes.
On Temples
The modern separation of public and private realms seems to influence the dissociation of the secular and the sacred when examining the past. In turn, it influences the separation of religion/sacred/temple and the economic sphere. Wagner-Tsukamoto (2022) explores the economic aspect of religion in the Hebrew Bible, discussing and critiquing this separation as proposed by American economist Buchanan (1975). Other scholars like Boer (2015), Schaper (2022), Kartveit (2020), and Nam (forthcoming) write about the temple’s economic engagements in the ancient world. As Schaper (2022) notes, ‘Biblical and other ancient Near Eastern texts do not obfuscate the central significance of the economic basis and the economic consequences of cultic activity; on the contrary, they address them without any qualms’ (p. 473). Throughout ancient Near Eastern history, especially in Mesopotamia and Egypt, the temple played a significant role in maintaining lands and labor, collecting taxes/tithes, and maintaining various manufacturing enterprises, including coinage mints in the later period. Various temple archives attest to these roles of the temple in the economic sphere.
However, whether the situation of the temple in the broader ancient Near East (especially in the major areas of Mesopotamia and Egypt) is identical with that of ancient Israel and Judah is questionable, particularly because details of land ownership by the ancient Israelite and Judahite temples is unclear and indeed largely unknown (Gordon 2020: 19–28; Kessler 2023; Noya 2023). The lack of land ownership may lead one to conclude that ancient Israelite and Judahite temples had less importance in the economic sphere. But Silverman (2015; 2021b) and Premnath (2018) argue that the temples’ role in the economic sphere is still crucial despite the lack of evidence of land ownership. Premnath (2018: 36) highlights the role of the temple in collecting surplus, as portrayed in various sacrifices, offerings, and tithes demands, including the regulation of pilgrimage festivals (also Schaper 2022). Silverman (2021b) discusses the role of the temple in organizing labor. Jerusalem’s wall-building project in Nehemiah 3 used the term pelek, which Silverman, like other scholars, associates with Akkadian pilku, a term for a corvée labor in the Mesopotamian context. Silverman likewise points out the reference to temple slaves (netinim) in Ezra, Nehemiah, and even Chronicles. As people associated with this term have foreign names and nicknames, Silverman highlights the ancient Near Eastern tendency of using foreign-originated prisoners of war to serve as slaves (see also Fried 2015a: 119–20). Silverman (2015) further suggests considering the role of the temple in organizing labor for wine and oil production in the Jerusalem environs. In such matters, temple still held a considerable influence in the economic sphere.
The role of the temple in the economic sphere is also reflected in the various passages in the Hebrew Bible that promote proper attention to the temple. Silverman (2021a) and Carlson Hasler (2022) discuss various prophetic texts that connect economic calamity with the mistreatment of the temple and its deity and, in contrast, economic blessings that resulted from a proper attitude toward the temple. Carlson Hasler highlights how, on the one hand, the book of Haggai connects the lack of temple’s completion to people’s ‘disappointing harvests, unsated appetites, and porous bags’ (2022: 455). On the other hand, the book of Malachi accuses the people of robbing the deity by not tithing properly, but promises a successful harvest and overflowing blessings from the windows of heaven should the full tithe be brought into the temple storehouse (Carlson Hasler 2022: 455–59). Silverman also discusses Haggai’s connection between the temple rebuilding and economic success but adds the book of Joel, where ‘economics [are] directly indicative of divine (dis)pleasure and the dialectic interrelation of the economy with the cults’ (2021a: 551). Cultic inadequacy led to the swarm of locusts, while agricultural abundance was understood as the result of divine favor. Rhyder (2019) analyzes the Holiness source in the Pentateuch, arguing that it promotes the notion that ‘agricultural and economic spheres can never be divorced from the sanctuary’ (p. 384). Focusing on Leviticus 25, Rhyder argues that the Holiness source insists that the central temple should be the exclusive source that structures Israelites' cultic, agricultural, and economic worlds as a collective sanctified people. Refusing to do so, Rhyder says, ‘would run counter to the Israelite’ call to sanctification and therefore jeopardize their special status as the clients of the god Yhwh’ (p. 384).
The cultic association with agriculture and economic prosperity is also influenced by the belief in a divine fertility role. Abernethy (2022) mentions that this motif appears in the books of Isaiah and Jeremiah, where obedience to the deity leads to the land’s fertility because the deity is responsible for its fertility. Braaten (2022) explores how the notion of Yahweh’s responsibility for the fertility of the land is sustained throughout the book of Twelve. Obedience to this deity leads to the blessings of the land’s fertility, while disobedience leads to the curse of infertility. Divine responsibility for the land’s fertility also brings up the concept of God as a ‘provider’ (Braaten 2022; also Barrera 2013). But Adam (2022), on the one hand, notices ‘exchanges of food between humans and deity’ in the book of Psalms (p. 545). While, on the other hand, the deity serves as a provider and the sanctuary serves as a place where the psalmist will get provision, ‘petitioners would bring food for sacrifices and burnt offerings for the deity’s [virtual] consumption’ (p. 546). The role of burnt offerings and sacrifice for divine sustenance is common in the broader ancient Near Eastern traditions (Hundley 2013: 204–206, 281–84, 331–32, 360–72). De Hemmer Gudme (2014) also discusses a similar phenomenon in the Hebrew Bible, where the sacrifices were considered ‘food’ for the deity, and where the only method of divine consumption was through inhalation of smoke. But both de Hemmer Gudme (2014) and Adam (2022) mention how Psalm 50 seems to suggest that Yahweh does not need sustenance. Hundley’s (2013) comment is apt for this matter: ‘while it is not always clear to what extent the gods or their statues needed food, it is abundantly clear that the gods desired it and would go to great lengths to get it’ (p. 366).
If divine sustenance is not that clear for a temple’s purpose, the role of the temple in providing for its priesthood system is clearer. As Boer (2015) summarizes, ‘[Tithes, sacrifices, and offerings’] recipients—the various priests and their offsiders—do no productive work of their own, so they need others to do so. Yet the recipients of that produce justify such extraction through increasingly elaborate theological systems that assert the supreme importance of their activities for the welfare of the whole community’ (p. 142). Gordon (2020) discusses how Ezekiel 40–48 reflects this ideology, in that ‘it imagines [priests] as non-agrarian, removed from all aspects of production and subsisting entirely from the offerings of the people’ (p. 115). Kim (2014) explores this idea in the book of Chronicles, particularly in how the author(s) of Chronicles claims Levitical status for the entire temple staff to justify their provision from the temple’s coffers. Sapir-Hen et al. (2016) brings an archaeological perspective to this topic. From the survey of animal remains in the Jerusalem area, they found that those who lived closer to the temple mount (which includes the Western Wall Plaza, the Ophel, and the Givati parking lot) consumed higher quality meat (namely, younger meat and meat-rich body parts). Furthermore, those who resided in said neighborhoods did not directly engage with herding and agriculture. Their meat and agricultural needs were supplied by regions surrounding the Jerusalem area—with the Tel Moza site currently identified as the primary supplier.
With this interest in the priesthood in mind, Fewell (2018) suggests how some narratives in the Hebrew Bible, like the Akedah (Genesis 22), functioned. Fewell argues that the story serves as sacred rhetoric to promote radical obedience to the deity, even to the point of making difficult sacrifices. Why was it difficult? Fewell acknowledges the extensive imperial taxation demand. Fewell brings us full circle in noting two interrelated economic interests between the temple and the imperial taxation system. Nam (forthcoming) analyzes texts about temple taxes in Exodus 30 and Nehemiah 10. Though these two texts apply different strategies in justifying the temple taxes—the former uses religious rhetoric and the latter royal authorization rhetoric—both are situated in the temple economy within the broader imperial economic system. Legitimating taxes through sacred rhetoric is also mentioned by scholars, like Bedford (2015) and Rhyder (2019: 380–85), who doubt the Yehud temple’s official task as a site of imperial tax collection. Instead, Bedford suggests the concept of ‘informal taxation’, which refers to communal financing for local projects (p. 347–351). Reflecting on the funding for Yehud’s temple construction, Bedford writes that ‘The temple was a government-sanctioned public work for local good, much of whose costs (for rebuilding and ongoing maintenance, and for its personnel) the government expected the local community to meet’ (p. 348). However, although this project was not directly funded by the empire, it was still ‘under the monitoring eye of the state’ and the empire was still a primary beneficiary of this project (p. 348). Royal entanglement in the temple economy was also shown in Hezekiah’s era of the Judahite monarchy (Rothlin and Roux 2013). Rothlin and Roux highlight the motivation of Hezekiah’s reform, which is beyond piety. Hezekiah’s reform enabled the monarchy’s total economic control of the Judean area through the centralization of resources (in the form of tithes) in the capital. The strong interconnection between the royal and temple spheres, including the king’s control over the temple income, prompts Master (2014) to categorize the temple's economic role under the category of the monarchy in his economic model. This royal entanglement is not without critics from within the Hebrew Bible traditions. For example, Mitchell (2019) argues that the books of Chronicles use an anachronistic term of Persian ‘darics’ back to the Davidic era in order to promote David as a proper imperial monarch who sponsored and funded the temple instead of benefitting from it. Chan (2017) also talks about this concern to move away from the royal sphere and more toward the temple in the discussion of the ‘Wealth of Nations Tradition’ in the Hebrew Bible. This tradition refers to a literary trope in which nations of the earth bring their wealth to a figure, and is common throughout the ancient Near East. While in most cases, the recipient of this wealth is a royal figure, Chan notices how Isaiah 40–66 adapts the tradition by claiming Zion, with its people serving as its priests as the recipients. Chan argues that this adaptation responds to the Persian hegemony with its imperial taxation demand, turning its wealth flow more toward the temple than the royal coffers. With that in mind, it is to the scholarships on the engagement of the Hebrew Bible with the broader royal economy that I now turn.
On Royal Administration
Perdue and Carter (2015) provide a broad overview of various imperial policies related to the Hebrew Bible (and also to late Second Temple and New Testament studies). Two elements that stand out from this survey are their concern for the economic sphere and the role of violence in imperial maneuvers. They note that throughout the period, Israel and Judah struggled to survive economically amidst the tributary regimes of the empires. In this section, I will survey scholarship that engages with economics in ancient Near Eastern empires—those of Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, and Persia.
As regards the contact history between the Egyptian Empire and the southern Levant, Huddleston (2016), Ben-Dor Evian (2018), Burke (2022), Pierce (2022), and Pope (2022), provide historical overviews. Huddleston (2016) also survey a broad Egyptian connection with the Hebrew Bible texts, as does Hays (2018). Some scholars either discuss the Hebrew Bible’s connection to the Egyptian context to justify the early date—if not the historicity—of the Exodus narratives (see articles in Hoffmeier et al. (2016), particularly the second part) or analyze the dynamics of Persian and Hellenistic Egyptian contexts in the Hebrew Bible texts (such as the Joseph Novella, see articles in Schmid et al. 2021). Other scholars focus on the economic aspects of the Egyptian connection with the Hebrew Bible in the period in between. For example, Premnath (2018) explores the influence of Sheshonq I’s administrative and taxation systems in the Solomonic account in the Hebrew Bible. Premnath notes some parallel administrative offices between the Egyptian system and the Solomonic account. In addition, Premnath also points out ‘the parallels between Sheshonq’s and Solomon’s provisioning systems [that] include division of the territory into twelve districts, each district furnishing provisions for one month of the year; and use of the levy to stock garrison posts (1 Kgs 5.8–9)’ (p. 35). Two other scholars discuss the economic aspects between Judah and Egypt during the decline of the Assyrian empire in the late 7th century BCE (Schipper 2015; Breier 2018).
Schipper (2015) revisits the famous city names ‘Pithom’ and Ramesses’ in Exod. 1.11 to situate it in the late seventh century BCE on the basis of Egyptian economic influence in the southern Levant during that period following the decline of the Assyrian Empire. Considering epigraphic evidence from Egypt and areas of Palestine (including from Meẓad Ḥashavyahu), Schipper connects the forced labor described in Exod. 1.11 with the forced labor assigned by the Egyptian Empire near the fortress of Meẓad Ḥashavyahu as an Egyptian vassal. In doing so, Schipper argues that the forced labor described in the book of Exodus reflects the historical situation in the late seventh century BCE, which helps to explain why eighth-century prophets like Amos and Hosea did not seem to know about Egyptian forced labor.
Meanwhile, in analyzing the political policies of Judah's last kings, Breier (2018) explores the economic factors behind the Egyptian-leaning maneuver—the maneuver that the books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel were against. Breier argues that the Judahite pro-Egyptian party considered the twenty-sixth Egyptian dynasty under Psamtik II to promise better economic opportunities to Judah than the Babylonian imperial policy. This was in light of its successful campaign against not only Nubia but also the Philistine coastal region. In turn, it applied a policy that was ‘designed to give it a trading advantage’ (p. 337; see also Noya 2024). Furthermore, Breier notes that because Babylonian imperial policy differed from that of the Assyrian empires (which promoted the economic growth of their conquered regions), the Egyptian-leaning maneuver seemed to be more feasible economically.
As regards the Assyrian Empire, scholars continue to discuss the Pax Assyriaca. Faust (2015; 2018b; 2021) is among those who challenge this concept. For Faust, the Neo-Assyrian Empire was less concerned with fueling local economic growth and more concerned with extracting as many resources as possible (see also Boer 2015; Heymans 2021: 156–161). While Faust notices that Judah’s economy flourished in this period, Faust maintains that its economic activity was directed less toward the Assyrian trade and more toward the Mediterranean trade. Faust notes how the regions annexed to the Assyrian direct provinces were largely left in ruins, such as the case of the olive oil industry in the North, while the regions properly located outside of Assyrian direct rule (simply as clients) enjoyed vastly better economic growth. Scholars who still hold on to the Pax Assyriaca concept include Crouch (2014: 8–82), Sapir-Hen and Ben-Yosef (2014), Younger (2015), and Gadot (2022), among others. For Younger, the Assyrian Empire established the Pax Assyriaca to secure long-term profits and the availability of resources to be extracted. However, Younger does not deny that its reign was cruel nonetheless. Crouch also discusses the impact of Pax Assyriaca on the economy in the Southern Levant. Crouch notes the various economic interests of the Assyrians in the region, including but not limited to tribute payments and commercial trade routes. This period also witnessed more intensive and specialized agricultural activity (see also Kessler 2023). However, Crouch notices that the Assyrian impact on Judah is less direct than in other areas of the Southern Levant. Even so, Crouch highlights Judah's geographical location, which is surrounded by and dependent on various economic networks in the broader region.
Van Der Brugge (2017) likewise writes about the minimal concern of Assyrians for Judah than for other parts of the region. Discussing Sennacherib’s campaign to the Levant, Van Der Brugge suggests that Sennacherib was more concerned with reestablishing the trade routes in the coastal area with Egyptian traders as well as taking control of the Shephelah that was occupied by Judah sometime after the death of Sargon (see also Niemann 2022). Van Der Brugge argues that after successfully reestablishing his trading relations with Egypt, Sennacherib returned home. This economic aspect explains the sudden retreat of Assyrians, which the Hebrew Bible explains as an aspect of divine protection of Jerusalem (2 Kgs 19). However, this does not mean that Judah was out of the Assyrians’ control. Baruchi-Unna (2018) notes that various imperial expectations had to be fulfilled by clientele kingdoms like Judah, expectations which include but are not limited to supplying provisions for the Assyrian army, providing labor itself for corveé in agriculture or royal building projects, as well as military support. Analyzing Ahaz’s request to Tiglath-Pileser through various Assyrian treaties as well as its adaptation in Ezekiel and Nehemiah, Baruchi-Unna highlights the role of the invocation of local deities in establishing patron-client relation and guaranteeing the client’s compliance with its economic obligations. Marzouk (2018) lists various tributes received by the Assyrian Empire from its vassal states, including exotic tributes such as trees, plants, and animals to decorate the palatial imperial gardens. Marzouk also notes that ‘royal women’ were taken or received as tributes. Furthermore, in terms of labor supply, Marzouk highlights the Assyrian policy of ‘multidirectional deportation’ or ‘cross-deportation’, which serves a dual function. First, to supply more specialized labor for different royal projects; and second, to ensure that ‘old ruling classes were unable to cultivate projects of recovery or revenge’ (p. 56). There are, however, scholars like Walton (2018) who argue that the economic aspect is the secondary interest of Assyrian policy in the region. Walton suggests instead that the Assyrian Empire was more concerned with creating buffer zones in the region to resist Egypt’s advance to the South. This buffer zone, however, is established through securing the provisioning of the Assyrian army, which includes not only material logistics (food and water) but also manpower and beasts of burden.
It was under the shadow of the Neo-Assyrian Empire that scholars noticed various prophetic texts about justice emerge—such as the books of Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah. Hutton (2014) discusses the opening of the book of Amos (1.3–2.8) in relation to the emergence of the international economy through various trade systems. Hutton argues for reading the charge of injustice in this passage in light of the elites’ complicity in unjustly establishing interregional trading networks in by their regions (see also a similar argument by Yee 2016). Chaney (2014) similarly analyzes these prophetic texts as responses to the intensive and specialized agricultural practices that threatened the feasibility and viability of villages’ subsistence economies. Chaney highlights the role of specialization not only in providing for privileged urban dwellers’ direct consumption but also in their interest in affording luxury imported goods, this in addition to imperial taxation demands. For archaeological evidence, Moyal and Faust (2015) survey the sites of Tel Moza and Ramat Rahel, which provided goods for consumption in Jerusalem in the forms of grain (primarily Tel Moza) and wine (Ramat Rahel). Faust (2018b) also surveys archaeological evidence to support social stratification in the period. Faust notes differing architectural components between urban and rural sectors (including areas of the building, the quality of materials, the use of shared walls, and the primacy of the location) that attest to the existence of social stratification in this period.
Regarding the Babylonian period, scholars have turned to a discussion of the situation of the Judean diaspora in the Babylonian region. This tendency is also influenced by the publication of some tablets from Al-Yahudu (Pearce and Wunsch 2014). But there are also recent works that explore the situation of Judah under the Babylonian Empire. Zorn (2013) and Richter (2020) provide an overview of scholarship on this topic. The discussion continues the debate of whether Judah was an entirely ‘empty land’ after the Babylonian captivity. Lipschits and Vanderhooft (2014) suggest a continuity of economic activity in the periphery of Judah, particularly in light of the presence of the lion stamp seals in the period. But scholars like Richter (2020) and Faust (2021) argue otherwise. The survey of the population from various locations in the region suggests a dramatic decline in the period. Important material evidence, such as the presence of Greek pottery as the result of international trade, which appeared in the seventh and fifth centuries in Judah, was also absent in the Babylonian period.
Regarding Judeans’ life in the Babylonian region, Pearce (2016; 2020), Nissinen (2020), and Noya (2024) give concise surveys, while Alstola (2019) explores the topic further in a monograph-length work. In a nutshell, Pearce (2020) summarizes the Judean exilic situation as follows: ‘nearly immediate Judean integration into the social and economic life of the Babylonian heartland, as well as of a trajectory of their experiences comparable to that of other deportee and native population groups’ (p. 132). This stands in contrast with the Hebrew Bible's portrayal of the absolute misery of the exilic situation, famously represented by Ps. 173.1, ‘By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept.’ The level of integration, however, varies. Both Pearce and Alstola notice Judeans’ role in three sectors: royal, mercantile, and agricultural. Some Judeans stayed in the royal court, as we have learned since the famous Weidner’s list (a list that notes Jehoiachin and his retinues as receivers of certain royal rations). But not everyone in the royal court was served like Jehoiachin; most of them served or worked in the palace—in the garden, kitchen, or in other administrative capacities (see also Bloch 2014). Others engaged in long-distance trade to supply ‘the needs of the palace, temples, and elite in Babylonia’ (Alstola 2017: 46). Alstola adds that the integration of foreign-originated traders in the Babylonian royal system also depended on their connections with local networks and their local linguistic abilities. Most of the Judeans, however, functioned in the agricultural sector—in particular, the land-for-service sector that I mentioned above. They were assigned lands to cultivate in exchange for taxes and other labor obligations, including military service. Most of these farmers lived just below the subsistence level, but some of them were able to climb the administrative ladder (Wunsch 2013), as tax collectors, labor organizers/supervisors, or agricultural forepersons (Alstola 2019). But although some Judean farmers managed to gain access to a higher social tier, Alstola notes that they were never recorded in the highest tier. With these layers of Judeans’ life situation, Nissinen (2020) summarizes that ‘generally, the Judeans appear as not very wealthy but not extremely poor either’ (p. 29). Berlejung (2017) argues likewise in the analysis of Psalm 137 in light of these cuneiform sources. Comparing the psalm’s promissory oath with promissory notes in Babylonian economic contracts, Berlejung argues that the psalm portrays a non-life-threatening situation. Instead, it depicts the exiled struggling to adapt to a new orientation of life abroad, which included challenges of farming in a new landscape and interacting with new people.
As regards the Persian (Achaemenid) Empire, brief surveys are provided by Elayi (2013), Adams (2014: 130–45), Kleber (2015), and Richter (2020: 554–562) that focus largely on the Babylonian context, while Altmann (2016: 79–187) provides a longer summary. Altmann, in particular, surveys the economic situations in different regions during the period, from Mesopotamia to the southern Levant. In the survey, Altmann joins other scholars like Kleber (2015), who revisit Herodotus’s account of the Persian economy, particularly in Herodotus’ claim on the shift of medium in imperial taxation away from ‘in kind’ to silver and coins. Both Altmann (2015) and Kleber (2015) notice that coinage did not play a significant role in the Persian heartland but mainly operated in the Northwestern periphery of the empire. Coins were actually absent in the Syro-Mesopotamian region (Kleber 2015). This view stands in contrast to those of scholars like Richter (2020; 2023) and Boer (2015; 2023), who emphasize the role of coinage in Persian-sponsored trade economics and military logistics. For Altmann, coinage is simply an indirect result of the imperial fiscal system, such as the need to hire corvée substitutes and raise taxes in rural areas.
Though Kleber (2015) notes that some imperial payments were made in silver, she observes that most places in the empire were still concerned with taxes on labor—military service or corveé. Silverman (2021b) surveys various taxations in the Persian period Judean materials, which were primarily concerned with labor. This concern for labor can also be seen in the continuation of the land-for-service sector from the Neo-Babylonian period. Fried’s works (2015a; 2015b; 2018a; 2021a; 2021b) focus primarily on this phenomenon, particularly its requirements among the Yehud community. Fried (2021b) even argues that in light of this land-for-sector institution of the empire, the Yehud returnees’ situation is less about voluntary return and more a different form of forced migration to fulfill this hatru-like system. Fried notes that how the returnees were expected to reside on the vacated land to perform this service. Note, however, the imperial administration still expected in-kind tax payments from them, given the different potential resources of the regions in the empire (Adams 2014; Lemaire 2021).
One feature of the Persian Empire widely remarked upon is its seemingly benign approach. Scholars see Achaemenid administration as less brutal and more tolerant than pervious empires, especially in terms of religious and cultural diversity, and as granting more freedoms to its subjects. Even if less brutal, we must still understand this approach from an economic perspective. As Adams (2014) warns, ‘while granting certain freedoms, these rulers also expected subject peoples to meet heavy taxation and tribute demands’ (pp. 131–32). Boer (2018) comments that in contrast to the brutality of the Neo-Assyrian Empire’s plundering regime, the Persian Empire used ‘covert violence’ manifested in its extensive administrative structure (p. 197). To do so, the empire, for example, employed various strategies to incorporate the local elites into the imperial administration. Fitzpatrick-Mckinley (2015: 52–171) also offers a lengthy discussion on the Persian empire’s political strategies with the local elites in various regions (also in Silverman 2019 for the early Persian period). While Fitzpatrick-McKinley (2015) situates the role of Nehemiah in light of the dynamics between the imperial administration and the local elites, Silverman (2019) highlights similar dynamics in the rhetoric of First Zechariah (1–8) and Second Isaiah (40–55). Lee (2019) and Joachimsen (2020) also argue in a similar vein about how Nehemiah functioned to promote local stability and cohesion for the imperial interest of political security.
Since I have discussed ordinary people’s food consumption and their provision of food for the priesthood, I want to close this survey by considering the royal consumption of feasting. Various articles by Altmann and Fu (2014) explore this topic by attending to various texts and cultural-material environments in different geographical locations and periods. Scholarships on this topic highlights both the political and diplomatic role of feasting (commensal politics), but also how it establishes and reinforces hierarchy (Meyers 2014; Yee 2016; Fu 2022). Meyers (2014) brings an interesting perspective in comparing food types in biblical texts and the broader ancient Near East. Meyers notes that the culinary features in Hebrew Bible feasting were relatively simple in contrast to other ancient Near Eastern literature, and concludes that class differentiation in biblical texts is less stratified than in other cultures. Yee (2017) and Fried (2018b; 2021a) discuss resources needed for the royal feasts. Both discuss Nehemiah’s feast, but Yee (2017) also talks about Solomon’s feast. While both Fried (2018b) and Yee (2017) note the role of surrounding regions in providing food supplies for these feasts, Yee (2017) also talks about the required labor not only to provide raw food supplies but also to process/prepare the food for the royal table. Fried (2018b) highlights how the royal feasts functioned as a redistributive economy, as attendees took the abundant uneaten leftovers are brought back to their families and retainers—making such feast ‘a mechanism for the redistribution of wealth’ (p. 830). While Yee (2017) recognizes this function, Yee warns that this mechanism was done in a way that ‘also cemented the class differentials between [elites] and the laborers and reinforced the dependence of the latter on the former for their subsistence needs’ (p. 838). Yee suggests, instead, that we pay attention to ‘the extraction of labor for royal feasts’ (p. 834). Welton (2022) further notes the importance of highlighting the context of social disparity in luxury foods and consumption. Welton argues that luxury consumption is portrayed negatively in biblical texts, not because of the quantity of consumption, but because of the context—the stark contrast between social groups. In other words, consumption is ‘“too much” when other people have very little’ (p. 365).
Conclusion
In this article, I surveyed scholarship on the Hebrew Bible that intersects with economic concerns in the past decade (2013–2023). More and more scholars are interested in exploring the economic aspects of the Hebrew Bible. As I wrote this article, there are no fewer than ten program units in the 2024 Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting whose ‘Call for Papers’ engages with economic concerns (Bible and Ethics, Contextualizing North African Christianity, Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy, Economics in the Biblical World, Island Islanders and Scriptures, Latino/a/e and Latin American Biblical Interpretation, Metacriticism of Biblical Scholarship, Paul and Politics, Poverty in the Biblical World, and Slavery Resistance and Freedom). However, the research I covered here is primarily concerned with the economic situation in ancient contexts.
Other scholarship has focused on the intersection of the Hebrew Bible and modern economic contexts—whether to promote ‘biblical’ values (however defined) as regards economics and the working environment, or to expose and engage with issues of socioeconomic inequality (such as the issue of poverty). For instance, Adams (2015) discusses the justice imperative in the Bible in conversation with Amartya Sen’s concern for modern economic justice. Coomber (2013; 2018) and Barrera (2021) examine the issue of debt in the modern world and point out the importance of the biblical concept of Jubilee. Nam (2020) highlights the recent pandemic of COVID-19 in relation to the growing economic inequality and calls for responses from biblical scholars. Kofoed (2022) interrogates the role of the church and its theologies in the development of capitalistic societies. The longstanding issue of poverty that has long been explored yet remains marginal continues to be explored by scholars such as Wafawanaka (2014), Kaminsky (2019), and Coomber (2019). I particularly value Holter’s (2016) article, which calls for attention to African biblical scholarship on this specific issue. Despite providing various open-access journals—such as Old Testament Essays, Scriptura, and Verbum et Ecclesia, among others—African biblical scholars have not sufficiently consulted when the issue of poverty has been discussed in the Euro-American biblical scholarship.
Here, I include just a few works from African scholars who put into conversation economic issues in the Hebrew Bible with their modern contexts. Mtshiselwa (2016) explores the story of Naboth’s vineyard and Jehu’s revolution in conversation with Xhosa folktales to highlight economic injustice in South Africa. Ademiluka discusses the issue of reputation in Proverbs (2018) and Job’s cries of nakedness (2022) to interrogate the corruption in the Nigerian context. Chitsulo (2015) examines the role of the wicked in the book of Habakkuk in conversation with the economic role of elites in Malawi. Olanisebe (2015) explores the plight of a widow in 2 Kings 4 with the economic deprivation of Nigerian widows. Ramantswana (2017) examines the landlessness of the Levites in conjunction with the issue of colonial dispossession of land in South Africa, while Rugwiji (2017) studies the land debate in ancient Yehud in conversation with the role of agricultural land in averting poverty in Zimbabwe.
Modern economic contexts are surely no less important considering the growing economic issues in various parts of the world (particularly in the Southern Hemisphere). However, doing justice to this topic will need to be the task of another article.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
This article was written during my externship at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. I thank Margaret Aymer and the faculty at the Bible department, who have graciously supported my visit. I also thank Roger S. Nam, who shared his prepublication article, Matthew J.M. Coomber for a stimulating discussion in the research phase of this article, Rebekah C. Rochte for editorial assistance, and Kelly J. Murphy, the editor who has kindheartedly accommodated my extension request.
