He who is not satisfied with a little, is satisfied with nothing.
~Epicurus
In the amazing account of the events of Genesis fifteen, the one incident that gets almost no attention is, surprisingly, not what Abram said to God, but a prophesy that God Himself makes. When Abram asks how he could know that his descendants would own the land, Jehovah answers that he should “Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed for four hundred years . . . then in the fourth generation they will return here, for the wrongdoing of the Amorite is not yet complete” (VV 13 and 16).
The reader smiles knowingly to himself realizing that God referred to the Egyptian bondage and moves on. But what is the iniquity of the Amorite that wouldn’t be complete for over 400 years? What kind of iniquity is worse than all the travails of Egyptian culture and slavery that would be visited on Abram’s descendants in the meantime? The Egyptians had iniquity in spades: sorcery, pantheism, bestiality (the code of Hammurabi of similar time and region prohibited it), child sacrifice, and idol worship. (Leviticus 18 is clear that the land of Canaan also had these problems.)
Egypt was a monarchy whose ruler was worshipped as a god. All the people were slaves to Pharaoh and owned no land—maybe worse than the Hebrews. (As they were leaving Egypt, the Israelite women were told to plunder their “neighbor and the woman who lives in her house for articles of silver and articles of gold, and clothing” Ex 3:22 Apparently all the slaves lived together.)* They were in a communist-type dictatorship. Joseph had destroyed the Egyptian middle class.
For the Amorites to be worse, that had to have been some serious iniquity!
* It is of interest that a mixed multitude left Egypt. Had the others put blood on their doors in defiance of their Egyptian masters? Did they eat the Passover lamb which would have been an abomination to the Egyptians?
What do we know about the Amorite that might give us some clues exposing coming iniquity? Well, first we learn in Genesis chapter ten that he was the fourth son of Canaan, who was Ham’s fourth son. (Interestingly, when Israel inhabited the land, the land that the Amorites had held went to Judah, also a fourth son.) Amorite means mountaineer or prominence, and they were the most powerful of the Canaanites. Therefore Amorite might refer to all Canaanites at times.
Next, we learn in Genesis chapter fourteen that they were trusted allies of Abram. In fact, they were the best of allies, willing to go with Abram’s band of 300 against the four armies with Chedorlaomer. Remember that Chedorlaomer had come into the region to wreak vengeance on cities that had stopped paying him tribute, so attacking him carried a real risk to everyone involved.
We also remember that the land occupied by Abram and the neighboring Amorites could not support both Abram’s and Lot’s herds. It supported one to prosperity, but not both. The people living in the land included Perizzites—people who had begun to live in villages. When Israel came back to inhabit the land after four hundred years in Egypt—time that the land was in Amorite control—it was a land “flowing with milk and honey”.
The twelve spies that Moses sent out reported very large walled cities. You build walls around cities to keep other people out. They want in because you have wealth. Not only had the villages grown into cities, but the economy of the region had grown to the point of wealth that had to be defended. Adding wealth to a region requires trade outside the region, and trade requires produce.
Part of that wealth was in agriculture. The Amorites were very successful horticulturist, having developed grapes that required two men to transport a cluster. Large cities imply robust surrounding agriculture because the people living in cities don’t grow anything. They do refine what is brought to the city, increasing its value. Merchant’s and merchandise add wealth to the region. A middle class grows out of what was once wandering tribes.
What always happens concurrently with this prosperity, regardless of the economic system that is being used, is unequal distribution of that prosperity. There will always be the very rich and those with little. In our own last decade, the title of the city with the most billionaires has gone back and forth between capitalist New York City and communist Moscow.
The twelve spies that Moses sent out reported very large walled cities. You build walls around cities to keep other people out. They want in because you have wealth. Not only had the villages grown into cities, but the economy of the region had grown to the point of wealth that had to be defended. Adding wealth to a region requires trade outside the region, and trade requires produce.
The disparity is a function of degrees of willingness to accept delayed gratification, differing work ethics, strength of family and micro community support systems, emphasis on education and training, stabilization of property ownership, and conventions like primogeniture, i.e., the firstborn inherits all the real estate. (One of the reasons the potato famine was so devastating to Ireland in the 1840s was that Ireland did not recognize primogeniture. When a father died the land was divvied up amongst all the siblings resulting in everyone living on small parcels, each with a house. That required very energy dense food be produced on the dwindling available arable land. Enter the potato, which worked well enough until a fungus-like organism hit the crops and destroyed three quarters of the food supply over the next seven years.)
Small advantages can become large ones. In his book Outliers, Malcom Gladwell describes the Canadian hockey development program. Once a year the most promising youth, and this starts very early, are brought into summer camps where they receive instruction, do drills, and get increased rink time. At that early age the difference in being born in January versus December has a big effect on skill level and thus the likelihood of being selected for camp. Once at camp the advantage is strengthened, and the disparity grows.
I was curious as to how this plays out, so I looked up the only Canadian hockey player whose name I know. Wayne Gretzky (found by Googling only “Wayne G” 23 years after he retired) was born on January 26.
How those two groups—the rich and the poor— interact determines how well society functions. Prosperity requires some system of maintaining property rights. This can be done with standing armies and alliances as in medieval Europe and dynastic China, or by rule of law as has slowly developed in varying degrees over time and experience. The lack of property rights and rule of law is what places third world countries in the third world.
Prosperity is infectious. No sooner than a person accumulates some wealth than he starts looking for ways to double it. This does not end for some. John D Rockefeller, one of the world’s all-time richest men and founder of Standard Oil, was once asked how much money was enough. He famously replied, “ One dollar more.”
The results are mixed: the trickle-down effects from the go-getters are real, as is the steam rolling of anyone who might be in the way. Both are prominent features of the Rockefeller fortune. This is readily seen in world economies today with large corporations regularly being caught producing shoddy or dangerous products, polluting the environment, and withholding important information that would be detrimental to their profits.
Meanwhile, the have-nots see the increasing disparity of outcome and seek, then demand, change. Theft and robbery become riots and mayhem. An economy that can invent trade routes, a monetary system, and accounting can also invent embezzlement, fiat currency, and scams. Profits tend to hammer away at honesty. The olive oil gets diluted, and the coins get a little lighter.
While the Amorites were enhancing their net worth, Israel was enslaved and bitterly oppressed. Male babies were thrown into the Nile. Their work week was seven days. They were under brutal control. Egyptian hieroglyphics show that a weaver who missed one day of work received fifty lashes.
God told Abram all this would happen years before it started, and centuries before it developed into full bore prosperity for the Amorites and slavery for Israel. He knew what was coming—”know for certain” He told Abram when he had asked for assurances about the land—and He apparently thought the Egyptian slavery to be a better option than uncontrolled prosperity rife with greed, selfishness, and consuming desire for more.
Jehovah’s first lesson in the transition from slavery to becoming a nation is a surprise—He led them into the desert. It would be two years before they reached Kadesh Barnea and their first opportunity to enter the Promised Land. Twenty-four months of living in tents and moving everything they had from camp to camp. Seven hundred and thirty days of keeping sand and dust out of their possessions.
The Oregon Trail, a five-to-eight-month ordeal, was strewn with possessions the pioneers initially thought they could not live without, but realized that they were obstacles that they could not live with. Israel got the same crash course in needs versus wants, useful or just pretty.
When God brought Israel out of slavery, he also gave them laws so they could start their society based on the understanding that prosperity always brings inequality of result, and that the inequality needs to be addressed. In fact, He gave laws that did not take effect until Israel was back in the Promised Land and gave them to the third generation, who would never be back on the land.
The poor are to be given the opportunity to gain food on a yearly basis by the laws of Leket (any part of the harvest that is dropped is left) and Pe’ah (leaving the corner of the field unharvested). This is laid out in Leviticus 19:9 and repeated in 23:22 for emphasis. For even more emphasis, the first is laid out with the command “you shall be holy as the Lord you God is holy” and the second is amongst the descriptions of the feasts of the Lord that Israel celebrated yearly.
Leket is particularly pointed in this context. When you have so much in your hands that you cannot hold on to all of it, you are instructed to leave what drops. Americans, instead, rent storage units.
This provision for the poor is enhanced by the law of Shemittah which requires the land to lie fallow every seventh year, allowing anyone to harvest the volunteer crop. This might seem odd—letting strangers roam freely on the land you have worked hard to make productive—until you realize that Israel had been given the land fully developed by the Amorites.
In the seventh year the indentured slaves go free and the land is not worked. The landowner and his servant rest; God requires you to treat yourself like He has you treat your servant.
In the year following the seventh Shemittah there is a Jubilee year of Yovel when all ancestral land is returned, slaves are freed, and debts are forgiven.
There are safeguards built into this system. Leket, Pe’ah, and Shemittah provide food for those in need, but it is still in the field. To have food the poor must harvest it. Additionally, those buying land or acquiring slaves have the protection that prices are prorated based on how far away is Shemittah or Yovel.
Leviticus 23:15 lays out what is called the counting of the omer. The omer is an offering required before any of the harvest is eaten. It reminds us that we have the harvest because God’s sun shines on the crops and He sends rain to water them. In the desert after the exodus, the harvesting of manna each morning was a daily reminder of God’s provision. The omer takes the place of reminder from the manna.
Counting the omer covers the period from Passover to Pentecost. For Christians this represents a celebration of the Salvation which comes from the Resurrection until the outflowing of the Holy Spirit in Acts two. For Jews it represents the celebration of the process of the birth of their nation from the Exodus until Shavuot, the giving of the law at Sinai. But in the Torah, it is about the harvest of God’s great bounty: Passover is at the start of the barley harvest and Pentecost/Shavuot is at its end. The fall festivals are after the wheat and fruit harvests. The design is to keep our focus on God instead of the bounty.
Daniel Lowenstein developed an audio presentation for the AlephBeta’s Into the Verse series titled What’s So Meaningful About Counting the Omer (see alephbeta.org). In it he goes deeper into Leviticus chapters 15, 23 and 25 and shows the links through words (e.g., “flow”), phrases (“when you come to the land that I am giving you”), and counting to seven. He makes the case that a land “flowing with milk and honey” is a land of excesses and that the counting set in place before Israel took over that land was to reel in the excess, the selfishness, the greed.
“I think the Torah also wants to make sure the wealthy are thinking about their God-given prosperity in the right way,” Lowenstein says. “When that vision of your future switches from a nice option to something you’re invested in, to a need… then all of a sudden not having it stops being an option. You become afraid of losing it. You need to protect it. You might even think you need more to make your dreams a reality. So you seek even more wealth, you work harder.” One dollar more.
Greed and selfishness are spiritual slavery every bit as damaging as physical bondage. It seems God’s prospective is that they are worse—far worse. He was willing to use hundreds of years of enslavement to prepare Israel to accept laws to remind them, year by year, of the huge cost of the iniquity of the Amorite.
We live in a country that seems to be the same as Canaan circa the Exodus. In fact, most of the world seems like it is a copy of Canaan or wants to be. It took the Amorites four hundred years to get to the point of God’s judgement. Look back in history four hundred years from today to 1620 and we see the Mayflower setting sail for their own Promised Land. It was the start of what would be called the English Agricultural Revolution—maybe not too dissimilar to what happened in Canaan when it went from not supporting Abram together with Lot to great walled cities. Another one hundred years would pass until the Industrial Revolution. If the iniquity of the Amorite was complete after 400 years of growth and development, the world economy today can’t be much different.
We can learn from the Amorites, or suffer their fate.