Liberty

"And they praised the God of their fathers, because he had given them freedom and liberty." — 1 Esd. 4:62.

"Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty" — 2 Cor. 3:17.

"Ye shall … proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof." — Lev. 25:10.

Frederick Verinder: My Neighbor's Landmark: Short Studies in Bible Land Laws (1911) — 4: The Year of Jubilee: Land and Liberty

§ 2. So far, then, as the first settlers in the land of Canaan were concerned, they all had a fair start. Wage slavery and undeserved poverty were unknown. The legislator was able to contemplate the possibility of an ideal state of society "when there shall be no poor among you; for the Lord shall greatly bless thee in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance to possess it"; but "only if thou carefully hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do all these commandments which I command thee this day." So long as the Law was kept, no Hebrew need toil for sweated wages for a brother Hebrew. By his own labor, under the Law which secured to him the equal right to the use of the earth, he could produce all that he needed, without being beholden to or controlled by any one else. Under such a Law, the worker's wages consisted of the whole of his product. He was not compelled to share what he produced either with a landlord or with an exploiter of labor. "Whoso keepeth the fig tree shall eat the fruit thereof?" "They shall build houses and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them. They shall not build, and another inhabit; they shall not plant, and another eat; for as the days of a tree are the days of My people, and Mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labor in vain, nor bring forth for trouble." "The husbandman that laboreth must be the first to partake of the fruits." "Who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? . . For it is written in the Law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? Or saith He it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written that he that ploweth the land plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope." ... Read the whole chapter, including footnotes

Frederick Verinder: My Neighbor's Landmark: Short Studies in Bible Land Laws (1911) — Chapter 6: Compensation

§ 4. The Hebrew laws applied to the special case of rights in land the spirit of those general maxims of English law which declare that no man ought to be enriched by another man's loss, or to obtain an advantage by his own wrong. To "set back" one's neighbor's landmark was a crime against God, Who had given him an equal right in the land, and against the neighbor, who was being robbed, of his just rights; a summa injuria against which the Law hurled a curse and the prophets denounced a Woe! Neither Lawgiver nor Prophet would have tolerated for a moment the notion that this invasion of a fundamental human right could only be rectified by awarding compensation to the invader. It was not in accordance with the ethical principles of Hebrew law that a man should be compensated when he ceased to profit by his own wrong at the expense of his fellow-citizen's rights. The housebreaker, the cattle-thief, the trespasser on another man's pasture, had to make, at the very least, full restitution to the man upon whom he had inflicted loss. Why should this principle cease to apply, or be actually reversed, when it was a question of depriving another of the right upon which his living and his liberty were dependent? It is only in modern England, after centuries of landlord usurpation, that such a perversion of ethical principle can be advocated. There is no trace of such a view in the O.T.

Nor in the New. We read that Zacchæus was "chief among the publicani" — a class of men who enriched themselves by unjust extortion (Luke 3:12, 13) under a vicious method of indirect taxation; "and he was rich." He came under the influence of Jesus. Then, immediately —

"Zacchæus stood, and said unto the Lord, Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if have wrongfully exacted aught of any man, I restore fourfold. And Jesus said unto him, To-day is salvation come to this house" (Luke 19:1-10, R.V.).

His first Christian impulse was to make direct and generous restitution to those whom he knew he had wronged personally, and to make what general restitution he could to the unknown victims of the system by which he had unjustly become rich. Apparently it never occurred to this unsophisticated convert that "the poor" ought rather to compensate him for leaving off his profitable but wrongful exactions. ... Read the whole chapter, including footnotes

Frederick Verinder: My Neighbor's Landmark: Short Studies in Bible Land Laws (1911) — 7: Justice

§ 7. Yet there was a certain element of narrowness which tended to limit the practical application of the law of Justice in O.T. times, in spite of the frequent attempts of legislators and prophets to break through bounds which were cramping their expanding ethical and religious conceptions. But not until our Lord, in one of the most dramatic passages in the Gospels, showed that even the apostate, excommunicated, half-caste Samaritan — the traditional enemy, since the Exile, of the orthodox Jew — was a "neighbor," and therefore to be loved as oneself; not until the Apostle of the Nations, following his Master, and even quoting a Greek poet in support of a Christian dogma, formulated, for Jew and Gentile alike, the doctrine of the Brotherhood of Man, founded on the universal Fatherhood of God — not till then did the Mosaic Law of Justice reach its full development and expression.

When the old Law said, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," the context usually shows that "neighbor" means merely "fellow-citizen." But the same words in the N.T. always have an infinitely wider meaning, for Christ has told us that every man is our neighbor. To love one's neighbor as oneself is "the royal law according to the Scripture" It is the only legitimate restraint upon our liberty, because "love worketh no ill to his neighbor: therefore love is the fulfilling of the Law." It is at once the foundation, the outcome, and the test of our love for God; for he that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. … If we love one another, God dwelleth in us. … He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?" ... Read the whole chapter, including footnotes

Henry George: Moses — Apostle of Freedom (1878 speech, San Francisco)

Let the mistakes of those who think that "man was made for the Sabbath," rather than "the Sabbath was made for man," be what they may; that there is one day in the week that the working people may call their own, one day in the week on which hammer is silent and loom stands idle, is due, through Christianity, to Judaism – to the code promulgated in the Sinaitic wilderness.

It is in these characteristics of the Mosaic institutions that, as in the fragments of a Colossus, we may read the greatness of the mind whose impress they bear – of a mind in advance of its surroundings, in advance of its age; of one of those star souls that dwindle not with distance, but, glowing with the radiance of essential truth, hold their light while institutions and languages and creeds change and pass.

That the thought was greater than the permanent expression it found, who can doubt?

Yet from that day to this that expression has been in the world a living power. From the free spirit of the Mosaic law sprang that intensity of family life that amid all dispersions and persecutions has preserved the individuality of the Hebrew race; that love of independence that under the most adverse circumstances has characterised the Jew; the burning patriotism that flamed in the Maccabees and bared the breasts of Jewish peasants to the serried steel of Grecian phalanx and the resistless onset of Roman legion; that stubborn courage that in exile and in torture held the Jew to his faith. It kindled that fire that has made the strains of Hebrew seers and poets phrase for us the highest exaltations of thought; that intellectual vigour that has over and over again made the dry staff bud and blossom. And passing onward from one narrow race it has exerted its power wherever the influence of the Hebrew scriptures has been felt, It has toppled thrones and cast dawn hierarchies. It strengthened the Scottish covenanter in the hour of trial, and the Puritan amid the snows of a strange land. It charged with the Ironsides at Naseby; it stood behind the low redoubt on Bunker Hill.

But it is in example as in deed that such lives are helpful. It is thus that they dignify human nature and glorify human effort, and, to those who struggle, bring hope and trust. The life of Moses, like the institutions of Moses, is a protest against that blasphemous doctrine current now as it was three thousand years ago, preached oft times even from Christian pulpits – that the want and suffering of the masses of humankind flow from a mysterious dispensation of providence, which we may lament, but can neither quarrel with nor alter. Let those who hug that doctrine themselves, those to whom it seems that the squalor and brutishness with which the very centres of our civilisation abound are not their affair, turn to the example of that life. For to them who will look, yet burns the bush; and to them who will hear, again comes the voice: "The people suffer: who will lead them forth?"

Adopted into the immediate family of the supreme monarch and earthly god; standing almost at the apex of the social pyramid which had for its base those toiling millions; priest and prince in a land where prince and priest might revel in all delights – everything that life could offer to gratify the senses or engage the intellect was open to him. ... Read the whole speech