(Deuteronomy 28:12) The Lord will open to you his good treasury, the heavens, to give the rain to your land in its season and to bless all the work of your hands. And you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow.

This verse in Deuteronomy reveals the heart of the biblical theology of wealth and the biblical understanding of the covenant. God’s covenant with Israel through Moses was designed to set Israel apart as the priestly nation, a people uniquely sanctified and drawn near to God in order that it might convey the blessing of God to the nations. Throughout the scriptures, we see the special concern which God and the Israelite prophets have for the Gentiles. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob preach to the Gentiles, gathering them into the household and bringing them under the covenant. Others who were not brought under the covenant nevertheless worshiped the God of Heaven to whom the patriarchs were bound. God told Moses that His purpose in the plagues was the revelation of His power and the proclamation of His Name to the ends of the earth, and indeed, in Exodus 12, a great mixed multitude of Gentiles shares in the blessing of the exodus and the inheritance of the land of promise, being circumcised in Joshua 5 at Gilgal.

Indeed, according to Genesis 12, this is the principal end towards which the covenant is directed, that “in you shall all the families of the Earth be blessed.” The New Testament shows this blessing enacted in Jesus the Messiah. The remnant of Israel is the root onto which the Gentile branches are grafted. As Isaiah 27 tells us, a remnant will be saved, and then Israel will “shoot forth” and “fill the whole world with fruit.” But how, precisely, shall the nations be redeemed? Jesus in Matthew 28 instructs the apostles to “teach all nations”- not merely a few individuals from all nations, but the nations themselves. At Babel, both language (speech) and lip (religious confession- “I will not take their name on my lip”) were divided, and Zephaniah 3 shows us an age where language remains diverse but lip stitched together. Isaiah 19 shows us the age where Israel is a blessing on the earth and four out of five cities speak the “lip of Canaan” in contrast to Genesis 18-19 when four out of the five cities of the plain were unrighteous and destroyed. The opening act of this project comes at Pentecost, and flows out from Jerusalem.

All of this should make clear that the kingdom of God is not merely for a tiny remnant within the nations. Instead, God wishes to redeem the nations as nations: creating blessed, Christian civilizations, who “search out” the mysteries which God has “concealed” in the creation- the “glory of kings”, as Solomon teaches in Proverbs 25:2. This is the “glory” which “kings” (who in Revelation refer to all Christians, made “priests and kings” before the throne) “bring into” the city of God, the New Jerusalem, in Revelation 21. The civilizational aspect of the Christian mission means that there is of necessity a Christian concept of economics. To speak of an economy means to speak of the development and exchange of things and services valued by others. Value is a “subjective” concept, in that the same object might be worth nothing to one person and a hundred dollars to another. Such things can take any number of forms: they can be great works of art and beauty, books of academic study, technology meant for recreation, or services of labor.

The recognition of the necessity of a Christian concept of economics leads one to realize that the Bible is filled to the brim with economic language. The Lord Jesus teaches in parables which concern lending, the capitalization of wise investments, and debt. The prophets speak of Israel’s spiritual state by referring to the devaluation of precious metals being used as currency. Moses in Deuteronomy speaks of a sound financial status as a sign of divine blessing upon the nation as a result of faithfulness. In the Apocalypse, we are told that the Harlot prohibits the faithful from “buying or selling” as Jesus invites the faithful to “buy from me gold refined by fire.” St. Paul speaks of the “riches” of divine glory. Much of this is allegorical, as St. Seraphim points out- wealth is a reference to grace, and the acquisition of the grace of the Holy Spirit is described in terms of becoming wealthy. Yet, the allegorical always has a concrete and literal referent, and the allegorical does not cancel the literal. What is the concrete implication of the biblical teaching on wealth?

Let us consider for a moment the nature of wealth. Wealth is not something which is merely moved around, as if one person’s financial success is another person’s financial doom. New wealth is created. When God made the world from nothing, He created a finite amount of raw material. In the six days, God forms and fills that material, shaping it into the creation destined to be the inheritance of Adam’s family. At the climax of the six day creation, God made man as the Image of God. In context, this entails that man was to imitate God’s own actions. Hence, God creates Adam before He plants the garden of Eden, planting the garden before Adam’s eyes, as if to show him how it’s done. And as God named His creation in Genesis 1, Adam perceives the intrinsic natures of beasts and names them accordingly in Genesis 2. Adam, as the Fathers and the Scriptures teach us, was a spiritual infant. He was naked. Infants are born naked, but a fully grown man is clothed. Adam was not meant to be naked forever. Instead, when he was prepared, he would eat of the Tree of Knowledge (”good and evil” as in 1 Kings 3, refers to the wisdom to rule as king), take up royal vestments, and rule on his throne as the Likeness of God. Revelation reveals the destiny of the saints, not as naked, but as robed in the glory of God and Christ. Genesis ends with a glorified and true Adam- Joseph, ruling in the land of Goshen, which, Genesis 13 informs us, is like the garden of Eden. Whereas Adam stole the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil before he was ready, Joseph, through a lifetime of suffering and prayer, has become wise and learned good and evil through patient endurance: “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.” This status and wisdom is reflected in the royal garments given to him by Pharaoh.

How does this relate to Adam’s task, which is the ultimate task of the church as the reborn family of Adam? When God gives mankind its commission, he tells them to “subdue the earth.” The word for “subdue” is the same word for “conquer” which is used in Joshua 18 to refer to Israel: “the whole land [the same as the word for “earth”] lay subdued before them.” Israel is a corporate Adam whose history is intricately woven into the destiny of Adam and his family. Israel’s conquest of Canaan was by the sword, and the language used to refer to the Canaanites’ perception of Israel (fear and dread) is used to refer to Noah’s relationship with aggressive beasts in Genesis 9- a republication of Genesis 1 in a new context, further confirming the thematic and literary link. Yet, this mode of exercising dominion operates only in a postlapsarian world. What would this have looked like apart from the fall? Indeed, what does it look like now, in a world not only fallen but redeemed? What does it look like in our world, where death is present but does not reign, watching helplessly as Christ’s Kingdom swallows it up with life?

Two aspects of the Adamic task stand out. First, the task involves a spatial expansion of dominion. God created Adam and promised them the entire creation- but their dominion was at first exercised only in a small slice of that world, in the land of Eden. This is recapitulated in the history of Israel, the corporate Adam. All the families of the Earth will be blessed in Abraham, but they are only given direct control over a small slice of the world, the land of Palestine. The geography of the creation is marked out by four rivers. A spring wells up in at the top of the holy mountain, Mount Eden. It flows downwards into the garden of Eden, and there divides into four. The number four is associated with the entirety of created reality, as in the “four corners of the earth” and the “four winds of heaven.” This fourfold river delineates the borders of their world. When Genesis 2 describes the lands delineated by these rivers, several lands are described, but we are given additional notes about two. Eden is a land where food is produced in the garden, and Havilah is a land with precious metals and stones. This theme appears later in the Bible where Israel produces food and exchanges it with other lands for mutual benefit. Understanding this will become important as we proceed, for it helps to clarify the meaning of agricultural symbolism in biblical history and prophecy.

In Revelation 21, when we are shown the City of God, we find that it integrates the resources of both these lands. It contains within it a garden which produces abundant fruit and leaves for the healing of the nations, but its streets are also paved with gold and its walls studded with precious stones. The dimensions are only compatible with a cube or a pyramid, and the downward flow of the river in the city makes clear that this city is a pyramid: the kingdom of God in Daniel 2 is described as a mountain which gradually expands to fill the entire creation. Revelation 21 shows us the entirety of creation, filled with God’s presence and assimilated into the church-city of God. This church-city of God is the place for the reconciliation of the nations- the nations each retain their own languages, cultures, and unique beauties, but they are stitched together through the Holy Spirit to create a many-colored fabric where their distinction is accentuated precisely through their oneness, as God is in the Holy Trinity.

And thus we return to Genesis, for this is where the theme originates. We are told that the river from the holy spring on Mt. Eden “divided” into four to mark the boundaries of the lands. The next time we see that word in the Bible, it is in Genesis 10, where the nations are “divided” from their initial home on Mt. Ararat. Each of the nations comes to occupy its own land as its distinct language develops a unique culture with unique attributes. The unity-in-diversity which God desires for those nations is shown in Isaiah 2, when the eschatological City of God is lifted upon God’s holy mountain. The nations each come to Zion to receive the word of the Lord- and we are told that they “flow to it.” That is the word used of a river, grounding this prophecy in the theology which unfolds in Genesis 1-10.

The first aspect, then, of Adam’s task was the multiplication of the human family and its diversification into many national families, a point on which God insisted at Babel. This brings us to the second aspect of Adam’s task, for it is integrally related to the first. I noted above the connection of the nation, the land, and the natural resources belonging to each nation. Of course, the natural resources are not significant to the nation in their raw form- gold is not mined already hammered out as a street for the New Jerusalem. Seed for wheat is not the same as bread. Instead, humans fulfill their task as co-creators with God, who move the world from goodness to perfection, by grasping the raw material of the world and developing it into something greater.

Remember that the land of Palestine, in the Bible, is the thematic successor to the land of Eden. Its natural resource is fertile land for the production of food. Thus, the themes in scripture surrounding Israel’s agriculture and food production can be applied to the development of the natural resources of other lands. This is a crucial point. We saw that Adam, even before the fall brought suffering and death into the world, was summoned to “conquer” it. We have seen that the means of that conquest involved population growth, the development of distinct cultures and national families, and the settlement of new and unique lands. Conquest and creation are in fact associated concepts: in the ancient world, creation stories were often described in terms of a cosmic battle. In Genesis, we are told that God enjoyed His sabbatical rest (enthronement) at the completion of His six day creation, just as we are told that Israel entered sabbatical rest (the reception of their inheritance) at the conclusion of military victories. Thus, man’s commission as the Image of God to complete the work of creation is described in terms of conquest. What was the weapon of this prelapsarian conquest?

The answer is found, among other places, in 1 Samuel 13 and Isaiah 2. In 1 Samuel 13, we are told that Israel had no weapons of war because the Philistines removed their blacksmiths. This problem is remedied by their use of agricultural tools:

(1 Samuel 13:20-22) But every one of the Israelites went down to the Philistines to sharpen his plowshare, his mattock, his axe, or his sickle, and the charge was two-thirds of a shekel for the plowshares and for the mattocks, and a third of a shekel for sharpening the axes and for setting the goads. So on the day of the battle there was neither sword nor spear found in the hand of any of the people with Saul and Jonathan, but Saul and Jonathan his son had them.

Likewise, in Isaiah 2, we are told that at the victory of Zion, the nations will transform their weapons of war into agricultural tools:

(Isaiah 2:4) He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide disputes for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.

Many, when reading this text, focus on what disappears- weapons of war- but pay little attention to the tools which come into existence. In fact, the thematic link between weapons and tools is highly significant, and it is the key to answering our question about the nature of the prelapsarian (and ecclesial) conquest and providing the foundation for the Christian concept of economics. I mentioned above the creative heart of man’s task as Image of God. His commission is to complete God’s work of creation. Having seen God glorify the desert into a garden, Adam was called to beautify the world and plant gardens of his own. And indeed, when Noah takes his place as a glorified Adam (a king, to whom is entrusted the power of life and death in Genesis 9), he does precisely this: planting a vineyard as God planted a garden, and resting in his tent as God rested in His world.

Given that this is the case, the significance of the tool becomes apparent. A tool is a means to extend dominion over the world. Man takes hold of the raw material of the world created by God, and by means of his intentionality, purpose, and intelligence, shapes it into something other than raw material, into something which can enable the further fulfillment of man’s intent for the world. A tool enables the world to be developed and shaped more efficiently and more quickly. In Israel’s case, the tool is an agricultural tool, because Israel is the land for food. But in the case of a nation filled with precious metals, tools which enable the mining and hammering of such metals occupy the same position.

The economic significance of this is apparent when we consider what this entails in terms of wealth. I noted near the beginning of this article that while the amount of raw material in the world remains the same, new wealth is created. Tools reveal how this is true. No new raw material is created, but what is added to the world is the rationality and the activity of man, the Image of God. Raw gold ore is worth much less than a finely hammered gold sculpture, even though the same raw material is involved. Thus, an integral part of man’s task in the conquest of the world is the constant increase of its value by the application of mind and energy to transfigure it into something more sophisticated, more purposeful, and more beautiful.

Now we have begun to approach a Christian concept of economics. With this having been established, we can turn to the nature of the covenantal blessings promised to Israel. While, strictly speaking, these blessings were promised to Israel under the terms of the Sinai covenant, when we understand them properly, we can make applications to the new covenant and their relationship to God’s oversight of Christian civilization. We must remember that the crude concept of blessing and curse attributed to the so-called “deuteronomists” is not actually what is revealed in the texts of scripture, including those texts alleged to have been composed by this “deuteronomic” school, such as the Book of Kings. A superficial reading of the Old Testament suggests that obedience is instantly rewarded with blessing, which functions as an incentive for good behavior as well as its reward. A careful reading of the Old Testament, however, reveals a much more sophisticated- and more compelling- understanding of the nature of divine blessing which falls neither into naivete (”if you obey today, you’ll get rich tomorrow”) nor into cynicism masquerading as faith (”God’s providence is so inscrutable that no justice is evident in history”). While I will not address comprehensively the nature of divine providence in biblical history, I do wish to correct a common misunderstanding of divine blessing in scripture.

As I alluded to above, it is usually assumed that the promises of wealth (in Israel, which produced its wealth by agriculture, good harvests meant wealth) and large families were designed to function as incentives for obedience to the covenant. This, in turn, leads to the assumption that the blessings might well be something else- or indeed, nothing at all. Their significance, in this construction of biblical theology, is merely that they are pleasant for the recipient, which brings about good behavior. But the purpose and nature of these blessings is far deeper and more important. There are two truths which lie at the core of the biblical teaching on covenantal blessing. First, the blessings promised are largely, though not entirely, an organic result of obedience to God’s commandments rather than a special act of God disrupting the normal order of His providence. Second, the blessings of the covenant are part of a feedback loop which allows them to compound exponentially. Or, to put it in economic terms, these blessings are capital which can be reinvested into covenant faithfulness, producing an exponentially greater blessing later as the value of the “stock” increases. We will consider these two truths in turn.

First, as is especially reflected in Proverbs, wisdom integrally leads to blessing. God asks us not to worship money, to deal honestly with others, and to avoid greed. What kind of behavior does this produce? This produces financial behavior likely to generate long-term returns even as the short-term returns may be less than those received by those who manage their wealth sinfully. Consider the way in which people manage their stocks. Those over-committed to wealth become emotionally attached to the money they place in stock. They become distressed at sudden drops in the market and the resultant decrease of their wealth. Their management is erratic, and they are much more likely to sell off stock during a market decline because of their panic- even though a dispassionate consideration of the market would lead a person to retain the stock and wait for the market to recover. Ironically, then, a person who cares less about their wealth is more likely to accumulate it.

A person who is greedy is more likely to take significant and unwarranted risks with their wealth. The only situation in which a person gambles large amounts of money is when they are so enticed by the possibility of huge returns that they set aside dispassionate, rational consideration of the relevant probabilities. Even if they do not gamble literally, if a person is unsatisfied with the gradual but consistent accumulation of wealth in conventional investment, they may try to invest substantial capital in high-risk, potentially high-return stock: an investment more likely to produce losses than gains. Finally, a person who deals dishonestly with others will gain more money in the short term. Deception and financial hucksterism will initially produce high returns at the expense of others. Over time, however, they gain a reputation for dishonesty and their personal credit with others collapses. They find that fewer and fewer people are willing to deal with them financially, and eventually lose more than they gain. A person like Bernie Madoff is a quintessential example of this. After many years of wealth accumulation through dishonesty, it evaporated within days as his personal credibility was destroyed. The speed at which the wicked gain their wealth is noted by Solomon in Proverbs 13 when he states that the wicked lay up their wealth for eventual acquisition by the righteous. Throughout scripture, the wicked are often first past the gate, but the righteous are the long-term heirs. The first city was built by Cain, but the eternal city is built by Christ. The first musical instruments were crafted by the house of Cain, but it is David who arranges the enduring Levitical orchestra.

We should note, however, that not every one of God’s blessings is “organic” in the sense described above. We should not describe these other blessings as “interventions” in history so much as we should understand them as the transposition of God’s providential governance of creation into another musical key. The so-called “laws” of nature are really patterns of nature- regularities which are descriptive rather than prescriptive. The ultimate cause of the regularities is the direct operation of God in the world. That such operations are regular is not mechanical, but musical. Recall that creation is associated with battle- according to Chronicles, the Israelite orchestra went out with Israel when they battled their enemies. As Lewis understood in The Magician’s Nephew, the underlying nature of God’s creative work is song. Thus, the Spirit, which was present as the agent of creation in Genesis 1:2, is the Spirit of music, as St. Paul tells us in Ephesians: “Be not drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.” In terms of the regularities with which we are familiar, our shoes and clothes wear out as we use them. Yet, during Israel’s sojourn in the wilderness, their shoes and clothes did not wear out. For those born and raised during this period, this was merely the normal ordering of the world. So also for these blessings.

In various places, God describes how He will bless Israel for faithfulness to the covenant:

(Exodus 23:25-26) You shall serve the Lord your God, and he will bless your bread and your water, and I will take sickness away from among you. None shall miscarry or be barren in your land; I will fulfill the number of your days.

Here, Israel is promised a special protection from miscarriage. Theologically, this is a reversal of the curse of Genesis 3, where childbearing is a time of pain, death, and travail. In Israel’s ritual system, this means, according to Leviticus 12, that childbirth entails eighty days of uncleanness, reduced to forty days for boys through the blood of circumcision. Concretely, this means regular natural population growth, a blessing again articulated in Deuteronomy 28:

(Deuteronomy 28:4) Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground and the fruit of your cattle, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock.

The association of a rising population and a good harvest is interesting, and is rooted in the literary features of Genesis 1, where the first reference to “fruitfulness” is in the creation of “fruit-trees fruitbearing fruit.” We sometimes are blinded to the literary design of Genesis 1 through its familiarity, but the similarity in language is intentional. Man is to “be fruitful, and multiply”, associating them with the fruit trees and grain plants created on the third day. Thus, we hear in Psalm 1 that the righteous man is like a tree planted by streams of water, and Jesus describes the “good fruit” produced by a true prophet of God. We will discuss the association in more detail below.

The other blessing of this sort is rain, and Deuteronomy 11 makes a special note of distinguishing the nature of water in the land of promise from the nature of water in Egypt:

(Deuteronomy 11:10-15) For the land that you are entering to take possession of it is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you sowed your seed and irrigated it, like a garden of vegetables. But the land that you are going over to possess is a land of hills and valleys, which drinks water by the rain from heaven, a land that the Lord your God cares for. The eyes of the Lord your God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year. “And if you will indeed obey my commandments that I command you today, to love the Lord your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, he will give the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the later rain, that you may gather in your grain and your wine and your oil. And he will give grass in your fields for your livestock, and you shall eat and be full.

While in Egypt, the amount of water was almost entirely predictable through the annual flooding of the Nile- the famine at the end of Genesis was potentially a devastating catastrophe precisely because of Egypt’s reliance on this regular cycle. In the promised land, by contrast, there was a more visible and direct dependence on God’s purposeful and providential care. Throughout Genesis, the promised land was a land of famine after famine. The land of milk and honey seemed to be the land of fruitlessness and death. The fruitlessness of the land corresponded to the fruitlessness of the wombs of Sarai, Rebekah, and Rachel, and God’s covenantal work resurrected both, transforming Israel into a populous nation and the land into a land of grape-clusters and rich harvests.

Let us now turn to the second aspect of the covenantal blessings- their intrinsic relationship to the covenant and their potential for compounding and exponentiation. Our consideration of this will then lead us into direct consideration of the biblical notion of financial capital and its relationship to the covenant. Above, I pointed out that Israel was promised protection from miscarriages, which would result (given the number of children lost in the womb or at birth in the ancient world) in significant population growth. As I have discussed in my other articles, a covenant simply refers to the nature of a relationship. Israel had a covenant with God as the bride of the Lord and family of God. The texts which signified and enacted the covenant described the terms of this relationship. Israel was tasked (as the wise bride is in Proverbs) with the stewardship of God’s household and promised as a consequence the inheritance, first of the land and then of the world. Both of these aspects relate to the exercise of dominion which defines man’s character as Image of God- man is the mediator of God’s presence into the creation, and Israel was God’s special mediator to the nations. The blessings were designed to cement Israel’s dominion over the land and primacy among the nations (as Deuteronomy says: “the head and not the tail”).

Population growth is, as Gary North says, a tool of dominion. Exodus 1 clearly reflects this truth. Israel had come into the land of Egypt as a nation (including all of those Gentiles who had been adopted into the household and attached to Jacob’s caravan- remember that Abram had a private army of 318 men and had circumcised all in his household) of about ten-thousand. Within 215 years (the clock of 430 years begins with Abraham, as Paul states in Galatians- half of this is spent in Palestine, half in Egypt), that nation had grown to approximately two million, with 600,000 men. In a nation of Egypt’s size, this is of enormous significance. Some estimates say that this would have constituted a third of the population. I tend to think that modern historians underestimate ancient population sizes, and would guess that it constituted around 15%, which is still of enormous proportional significance, given that Israel retained their cultural and linguistic (as they spoke Hebrew rather than Egyptian as their first language) distinctness. The growth of the population is described in terms taken from Genesis 1, they are “fruitful” and “multiply.” Pharaoh’s fear precisely concerns their dominion: their size and success entailed that they would be able to defeat the Egyptians if they so wished.

Considered in reference to the inheritance of the land of Palestine, rapid population growth would have a number of concrete impacts. First, it would have increased the human capital available in Israel. The amount of potential labor would have increased, which increases, within certain limits, the productivity of Israel’s economy. An increasingly productive economy means a geopolitically rising nation, as it is able to produce essential goods (in this case, food) at highly competitive prices which can be exported to other lands. If you are buying your food from Israel, you cannot afford to sever your national relationship with Israel. Moreover, due to the peculiar laws of inheritance operative under the old covenant (we will discuss this in more detail at another time), where the same lines of descent were required to maintain the same plots of land, the individual inheritance would become smaller and smaller over time, especially given the massive population growth that would have resulted from strict obedience to the covenant. The plots of land would very rapidly become far too small to subsist on. While this sounds bad, what it actually incentivizes is the leasing of land to other families, including Gentiles, and the rapid scaling of the agricultural economy as Israelites move into the cities while retaining the title to their family plot of land. [Remember at this point that we are not discussing what happened historically, but what would have happened if Israel obeyed the covenant.]

Population growth of this kind is exponential, meaning that the actual residence of the descendants of Abraham increases over time. Consider that in Genesis the first piece of land to be inherited by the family of Abraham is purchased rather than conquered. Indeed, the word for “wealth” in Deuteronomy 8:17 and elsewhere is also the word for “army” in Exodus 14:9 and elsewhere, suggesting a deep connection between the two concepts and further illuminating the nature of the conquest appointed to man in Genesis 1. As the population of a faithful Israel booms and as their wealth accumulates, Israelite families both need more land and are able to bid at highly competitive prices for what would today be called “prime real estate” outside their own borders. This has the ultimate impact of expanding the borders of the nation. Borders and boundaries are both essential to private property and national identity. One’s home is the private property of the family, while a national homeland is the private property, so to speak, of the nation considered corporately.

Lest you think that I’m wildly outside of the biblical text at this point, notice that the prophets repeatedly describe a phenomenon just like this when speaking of the restoration of Israel and the messianic age. Isaiah 54 describes how, after the Suffering Servant works His work and marries the formerly barren Zion, Zion becomes exceptionally fruitful (these are the “offspring” seen by the Servant in Isaiah 53:10), which means that Israel “stretches out” her boundaries. The expansion of the national homeland belonging to a righteous covenant people further extends the covenant: more land means more capital means more expansion. If one projects this cycle forward, eventually the entire Earth (and universe) is populated and under the rule of the Kingdom of God. Again, we are considering here the unrealized hypothetical of perfect obedience bringing about the promised blessing. Even though this was never realized, considering this hypothetical demonstrates how the divine purpose of the covenant (righteous dominion) is organically realized by organically exponentiating blessings.

The other major blessing promised to Israel, in domestic terms (I will address a faithful Israel’s role in the international order below), is agricultural success. Above, we discussed how God divided the world into different lands, each occupied by different nations and each given a distinct set of natural resources. The land of Israel, as Eden, was a land specialized for food production- that this was the case outside the garden of Eden is seen in Genesis 4 where we observe farms and animal husbandry. As Cain’s civilization expands, we observe that they begin to become accomplished in the development of other resources such as mining and metalworking. We should understand agricultural success, given the land’s specialized productive purpose, as equally applicable to other kinds of toolmaking and resource development. Assets, after all, are convertible. Food can be exchanged for metals. As civilization develops and integrates, convertibility accelerates substantially with standardized currency. Thus, what is said about agricultural productivity applies not merely to grains, but to musical instruments, cars, and computers by implication.

While there is undoubtedly much to explore in these texts, for our purposes what is said in Deuteronomy 28 with regard to agriculture is self-explanatory. God will give the rain necessary to produce regular and abundant harvests on the condition of Israel’s obedience. Disobedience will produce famine, like the famine observed at the beginning of Ruth. Food is a thing of universal value: every living human needs to own some food, or else they will die. This is obvious, but important to make explicit, given that value is essentially subjective: you can only sell a thing if somebody else wants to purchase it, and your ability to sell it at a given price depends on the willingness of another person to buy it for that price. Even as food is a thing of universal value, there is only so much a person can eat. That is to say, it is not a thing of unlimited value given a limited population. Hence, given our hypothetical scenario of total obedience, there is going to be excess capital in Israel which can be sold off through exports. It is at this point that we can engage the covenant’s implications for Israel’s status in the international order.

Before we discuss this in detail, let me make one note concerning the language used. It is imperative that one acquire an intuitive sense of the flexibility of the Bible’s symbolic grammar. Warfare, for example, seems on its face to be a terrible, violent, bloody thing. And at times, it is. But when the Bible speaks of warfare, there is a certain flexibility in terms of its application that is not arbitrary, but intentional in the Bible’s theology and prophecy. For example, in Revelation 9, we are told that an army of horsemen slew “a third of mankind.” What does this mean? First, these horsemen should be understood in light of Revelation 6 (which is based on Zechariah 1-6) and Revelation 19. In Revelation 19, Jesus Christ emerges with a heavenly army behind Him, riding forth to strike down the nations. Yet, the kind of warfare described here is not warfare involving literal blood, generals, and battle strategy. The sword which strikes down the nations comes from the mouth of the Lord. This is the word of God, proclaimed to the nations, the word described by St. Paul in Hebrews as a two-edged sword. His striking down of the nations is the conversion of the nations. They are slain indeed, but they are slain in baptism and resurrected in glorified, converted form.

The White Horse on which Jesus rides comes from Revelation 6, where four horsemen ride out to make warfare. This, in turn, is based on the visions of Zechariah 1-6, where the Angel of the Lord (the preincarnate Christ) is enthroned upon one of four horsemen, which go forth in Zechariah 6 to conquer Babylon (the Spirit being set at rest in the “north country” of Babylon). These four horsemen are identified with the four winds of heaven, which, in turn, is identified with the people of God- the Spirit went to dwell with the Israelite exiles in Ezekiel 8, and the windy Spirit made the people of Israel windy, spreading them out to witness to the Gentiles. The four horsemen of Revelation 6 thus describe the four stages of the gospel’s progress in a given society, which I have discussed in more detail elsewhere. Likewise, in Revelation 16, we are shown the “kings from the sunrising” crossing the Euphrates in an invasion of the land. It is Christ who is the rising sun, and those in Christ are described in Revelation as kings. The Euphrates is the border of the land of promise. Putting these things together, we see that the invading army is the church, that their object of conquest is the church’s promised inheritance, that is, all nations and the whole creation, and that the mode of their conquest is not the blade but baptism.

Returning to Revelation 9, this points us towards a reading which at first seems unintuitive but is ultimately revealed to be perfectly organic, and indeed, the only interpretation which makes sense of each aspect of the biblical text. “Mankind” is a reference to the Jewish people of AD 30-70. Jesus was crucified in AD 30, and the apostles were given a special mission: to bring the message of the glorified Jesus to the entire nation Israel, so as to invite them to repentance and call forth those Jews who were faithful to God under the old covenant. By AD 70, then, we can be assured that the only Jews in Jerusalem celebrating the old covenant had heard the gospel of Jesus the Messiah and expressly rejected it.

The use of “mankind” to refer to Jews comes from Daniel 7, where the two sides of the nation Israel are revealed. The “one like a son of man” is said to signify the inheritance of the saints. It is the faithful Jewish remnant who inherits the kingdom. The opposite of the “one like a son of man” is the little horn with “eyes like the eyes of a man” and “a mouth speaking great things.” What has two eyes and a mouth? A man. Just as St. Paul in Romans 9-11 describes the divine purpose in the Seed of the Woman in Israel (”the remnant according to the election of grace”) and the Seed of the Serpent in Israel (”the rest”), in Daniel 7 we see the two aspects of the Jewish people described in parallel terms. Nebuchadnezzar’s favor towards the Jews is represented at the beginning of the vision when the lion of Babylon is made to stand up (see Daniel 4) and given the heart of a man. Thus, to conquer means to slay in baptism and mankind refers to the Jews.

Why a third? Zechariah 13 tells us that two thirds of Israel will be struck down and one third will survive and be glorified. The literary play is clear. Zechariah and John, looking at the same event, describe it in contrasting terms. Zechariah refers to their survival, while John refers to their baptismal death. When we allow these to roll together, the meaning of the text in Revelation 9 is clear. Christ puts His Spirit on the church, which evangelizes the Jewish nation. A third of the Jewish nation is baptized, put to death, and resurrected in Christ. Two thirds reject Him and are destroyed in AD 70. The use of warfare to describe conversion and the peaceful development of the Kingdom of God comes, as described above, from Genesis 1-3, where mankind’s population growth and development of creation and culture is described as a military conquest.

The second biblical theme with a flexible meaning is slavery. At first, slavery sounds like it is necessarily a bad thing, involving forced, hard labor with no pay. Yet, like warfare, the grammar of biblical symbolism is flexible and permits multiple meanings. The most obvious example of such flexibility is the dynamic language used to describe slavery and freedom in the New Testament. Paul describes himself as a “slave” (the translation “servant” obscures the force of the word used) of Christ Jesus. He describes, on the one hand, “slavery to Sin”, which is death. When Paul says “the wages of sin is death”, he refers to the payment given out by Sin, the hard slavemaster. Sin is a way of referring both to the personal character of the Serpent, who is named “Sin” in Genesis 4 and said to crouch at the doorway and the sinful deeds worked at the urging of the Serpent and to the increase of his dominion. To be enslaved to sin is to receive death as a wage.

The alternative to slavery to Sin is freedom- even so, this freedom is also described as slavery. It is slavery to Christ. This, as is to be expected, finds its origin in the Old Testament. According to Exodus 21, at the end of seven years, when the Israelite slave is expected to be released, if the slave loves his master and wishes to become a permanent part of the household, he can be adopted into the household and become a permanent slave. He stands at the doorway and his ear is bored open. This is the circumcision of the ear, where the ear is opened up to hear the voice of the master. That it occurs at the doorway is important because the doorway is the symbolic place of birth- which is why Hannah and Sarah receive birth announcements at doorways. The slave is reborn as a son of the household, a permanent member of the family. Similarly, in Galatians, we are shown two dimensions to the slavery which existed under the old covenant. On the one hand was the light yoke on Israel under the Sinaitic order- here, the spiritual childhood of Israel is described as a kind of slavery. A child, like a slave, is simply to listen to the instruction of the head of household and obey. The other side of slavery- the harsh, brutal side, was endured by those Gentiles who went after other gods and worshiped those who “by nature were not gods.” These are the demonic forces which worked through and continue to work through crude idolatry.

Why have I just spent so much time demonstrating the conceptual flexibility of the language of warfare and slavery? I have done so because it is these two concepts which frame Israel’s relationship with the nations, and it is only through understanding the flexibility of those two concepts that we can understand how it is that Israel is elected as the light and blessing to the nations even as she is described as their conqueror and slavemaster.

It is at this point that we can look at the passage quoted at the beginning of this article and understand the nature of the development of Christian civilization. We have seen that obedience to the covenant would result in population growth and the rapid accumulation of excess capital produced by the efficient and abundant agricultural produce which is exported to the nations at a competitive price, enriching the nation Israel and leading to the peaceful expansion of their borders through the buying up of land.

(Deuteronomy 8:17-18) Beware lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.’ You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers, as it is this day.

The covenant, if obeyed, will indeed win Israel great wealth- but the purpose of this wealth is to “confirm His covenant.” That wealth is not to be squandered, but invested productively so as to further fulfill the divine commandments. The accumulation of this wealth produces a situation in which Israel becomes, for lack of a better phrase, the world’s investment bank.

Skip bracketed section if you are already convinced that business loans with interest are not identical with usury and understand their economic function.

[I should briefly comment on the nature of what is called “usury”, as it is sometimes thought that interest on loans is inherently oppressive and should be charged under no circumstances. In reality, though, the Bible forbids the charging of interest only on charity loans. Loans that are given to the poor or economically troubled for the sake of their wellbeing are zero-interest loans which are cancelled in the Jubilee year. The prohibition on interest does not apply to what one would call a business loan. Interest simply describes the price of time. A thing is more valuable (remembering that value is intrinsically subjective) when it is given today instead of five years from now. The payment of interest on a loan is the purchase of that time: you are able to access capital more quickly.

In fact, business loans are essential to a well-functioning and growing economy. Here’s an example of why: a business receives an order for 10,000 dollars worth of product. However, in order to fulfill that order and receive the profit, the business needs 3,000 dollars in order to produce it, money which it does not have. A profit of 7,000 dollars is contractually guaranteed, but without the initial investment of 3,000 dollars, it doesn’t matter. That is where a loan comes in. As the profit is contractually guaranteed, it is a low-risk loan with a low rate of interest. The business purchases the use of the 3,000 dollars, invests it towards the production of the promised good, sells that for 10,000 dollars, and repays the loan with 50 dollars interest. Under this system, everybody wins: with capital more easily accessible, it becomes easy to fund startups and increase productivity and innovation. Those who provide loanable funds also win, because they receive interest as payment. And the customer wins, as they have easier access to a wider variety of goods. That is why interest qua interest is not the same as usury.]

Here is the text we began with:

(Deuteronomy 28:12-14) The Lord will open to you his good treasury, the heavens, to give the rain to your land in its season and to bless all the work of your hands. And you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow. And the Lord will make you the head and not the tail, and you shall only go up and not down, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you today, being careful to do them, and if you do not turn aside from any of the words that I command you today, to the right hand or to the left, to go after other gods to serve them.

There are many interesting dimensions to this text, and its theological rootedness in the whole story of Scripture is very rich. First, note that the rain from heaven is described in financial terms. The heavenly rain which waters Israel is God’s investment capital. God, as it were, loans out money to Israel. The rain from heaven waters the Earth, and Israel produces a rich harvest. God’s investment capital has produced wealth for Israel. Two things happen. First, God receives a handsome annual return on His investment- this is the tithe, where every year, one tenth of the increase of produce (this is essentially an income tax, though nobody forces property-owners to obey this commandment) goes to God. God loans out money, when His investment creates wealth, we pay Him the tithe as a return. In the New Testament, we see this language in Romans: in Romans 4, we are told that the one who works according to the flesh counts his “wages” (compare the “wages of Sin”) as “not according to gift, but according to debt.” In other words, he considers that God is indebted to him. Romans 8 flips this on its head: “We are debtors, but not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh.” God has redeemed (bought us back) us from slavery to Sin by the Spirit and in baptism- this creates a permanent debt to God which we pay back to Him for eternity by good deeds. This is one of the implications of the flexibility of the concept of slavery in the Bible. God’s glorious grace places us in perpetual debt slavery, which we receive with joy, saying as the slave in Exodus 21 “I love my master” and opening our ear to hear His voice.

The tithe is the theological core of the Eucharist. This is why it is called “Eucharist” or “Thanksgiving.” God gives us the creation as a gift. He provides the rain by which we cultivate it and develop it during the six-day workweek. That development of the world produces an increase in wealth- wealth being, essentially, not just currency but assets. The human task in creatively transforming and maturing the world is an increase in its value. A ten percent tithe of that increase is given to God. Because the transformation of agricultural produce is the symbolic representative of all such creational development, it is consecrated together with Bread and Wine- Wine signifying man’s exaltation to rule over the world under God as His sons. Hence, in the Divine Liturgy, the tithe is offered up after the gifts have been brought forward and consecrated. The tithe, in currency, is joined together with the Eucharist. The Eucharist is called by Jesus the “offering of remembrance” because it is the ritual act by which we call on God to remember His covenant.

When the Lord refers to it in these terms, He is referring to the “Tribute Offering” of Leviticus 2. Leviticus 2 describes the Bread of the Tribute Offering- Wine is added, though not consumed, once Israel comes into the land. The ingredients of the Tribute are a reference to Exodus 25, which refers to Israel’s contributions to the construction of the holy place. Israel has accumulated extensive wealth by despoiling Egypt. According to Exodus 25, the Israelites thus offer up this wealth- however much their heart stirs them to do so- to God for the construction of His house. This connects with the phrase universal to all ancient Christian liturgy: “lift up your hearts.” As Moses said in Deuteronomy 8- when you accumulate wealth, do not let your heart be “lifted up” against God and imagine that your own hand has gotten you this wealth. Rather, give thanks to God, in the understanding that it is His hand which has gotten you this wealth. Rather than lifting up your heart against God, lift up your heart to God in the tithe, offered in the Eucharist. The tithe is the return on God’s investment (heavenly rain corresponding to the Spirit, linking the allegorical and concrete applications of biblical teaching on wealth) and a productive Christian civilization faithful in tithing to God weekly will produce a church with deep pockets, able to fund the projects integral to its divinely appointed mission, from charity to evangelism. It is, in the terms of Exodus 25, used for the construction of the Holy Place. The Tribute Offering is made up of grain, incense, and oil, matching the three key features in the Holy Place: The Bread of the Presence, the Incense Altar, and the Menorah lit by the Holy Oil.

The Eucharistic aspect of these texts finds its ultimate origin in Genesis 1-3. Genesis begins with God’s creation of the “heavens and the earth”, a reference to God’s invisible throne-room followed by the material world which He shapes over the six days- the sky-heaven of the second and fourth days being a visible symbol of the Throne-Room made in 1:1. Solomon thus distinguishes between the “Heavens” and the “Highest Heavens”, and St. Paul in Colossians 1 when quoting Genesis 1:1 identifies the heaven there as the invisible heaven with the angelic host. Throughout the creation days, God creates distinct pairs whose end is to be integrated into one, climaxing with the dyad of male and female. The ultimate destiny of heaven and earth is their integration- this is accomplished by Christ, as we are told in Ephesians 1 and see eschatologically in Revelation 20-21. Genesis 2 then speaks of man as the “generations of” the heavens and the earth. Every other use of this phrase (see Genesis 5:1-2) refers to offspring, and the meaning here is clear: man is the son of the heavens and the earth, the joining together of the Spirit of life and the dust of the ground. He is, as the Fathers teach, a microcosm. Genesis 2 literarily recapitulates Genesis 1, and the language here tells us that man is the vessel by which heaven and earth are stitched into one.

In the same context, we are told that the grain plants had not yet sprouted (not that they had not been created- as a careless reading suggests) because it had not yet rained and there was no man to cultivate the ground. God then brings up a spring at the top of mount Eden to water the world and creates a man who will use that water to cultivate it. This, in other words, is the way in which that goal- the union of heaven and earth- will be accomplished- by the bringing of the Eucharist, which symbolizes man’s development of the creation in general, as we discussed above with reference to these rivers. Matching the reference to grains at the beginning of Genesis 2-3, the curses articulated at the end refer to them: “by the sweat of your nose you shall eat bread.” Throughout Genesis, then, we see several famines. At the conclusion of each famine is a harvest, either a literal agricultural harvest or a great increase in wealth, as we see in Genesis 12- providing yet more support that agricultural harvests represent a productive increase in wealth more generally.

The end of Genesis is the proleptic fulfillment of Adam’s task. Joseph is the sign of the last Adam, who wisely discerns between good and evil, is freely offered royal vestments after submitting patiently to God’s instruction through suffering, who brings forth a massive harvest, and who feeds the Gentiles with bread and wine. Indeed, that harvest is a sign of the gathering in of the nations. On Israel’s calendar, the Feast of Tabernacles is also called the Feast of Ingathering- it celebrates the gathering in of the agricultural harvest, and on that day, seventy bulls are sacrificed, corresponding to the seventy nations of the world. Zechariah 14 shows us the conversion of the nations in the context of this great harvest.

This brings us to the final portion of this article: we have seen how the rain which produces the great harvests is described as a loan from God’s treasury, an investment for which the tithe is the return. This shows us how Israel- and the Christian civilizations which inherit that covenant- blesses the nations and ultimately disciples them. Just as God invests from His great wealth to develop the creation through Israel, so also Israel lends out to the nations and productively develops them. This is described both as servitude and as conquest- yet as we have seen above, these concepts are intentionally flexible so that they can be used to denote blessing as well as curse.

Debt, in the scriptures, is a form of slavery. If one is indebted and cannot repay the debt in assets or currency, then one goes into debt slavery. The rationale for this is simple: without assets or currency, one still possesses an intrinsic ownership of one’s labor. Labor is value, which is why you can buy it on the market with wages. Debt slavery is simply a way of repaying debts with the value one possesses ownership of. As St. Paul described, quoted above, we are indebted eternally to Christ, so we are His slaves- but, as Jesus says, His yoke is easy and light. To indebt another person to yourself is also a mode of conquest. Remember what was said above: the word for “wealth” is the same word as “army.” Loaning out funds constitutes a kind of conquest, which connects with what I stated above about the extension of the kingdom. The inheritance of the land by the sons of Abraham begins with Abraham’s peaceful purchase of property from the Philistines. Jesus’ purchase of His church is His conquest of the world, as described in Revelation.

This is how Israel (and the church, which is the renewed Israel) acquires dominion over the entirety of the creation. The faithful nation will “lend and not borrow.”

(Deuteronomy 15:6) For the Lord your God will bless you, as he promised you, and you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow, and you shall rule over many nations, but they shall not rule over you.

The one who lends is the ruler, but the one who borrows is the ruled. The curse for disobedience flips this: you will be indebted to the nations all around you. Being indebted to them means that they dictate the terms under which your society exists. As a modern example, look at the results of the state of Greece deciding to make a covenant with the European Union (a covenant, in the Bible, is understood to be a binding contract with mutual obligations)- Greece has been indebted to the European Union which has the sovereignty to dictate the terms under which the Greek state manages its economy and immigration policy. Exodus 21:8 uses the word for “rule” to denote ownership and the consequent sovereignty to dictate the terms of another person’s life. If you are dependent on another person to pay for your necessities, then they have the capacity to dictate rules to you, since if you refuse to obey, they can cut off the funds.

That’s the curse-side of it. You don’t want to be indebted to pagans who will place you under a harsh and severe yoke. But the blessed side is when Israel, the covenanted nation, lends to many nations and does not borrow. When Deuteronomy 28:12 describes the Lord “opening” the treasury of the heavens and pouring rain upon the land to produce a good harvest, it echoes Deuteronomy 15:8 to describe the faithful Israel “opening” its hands to lend to the one who needs the money. We are told that all the families of the Earth are to be blessed through the family of Abraham, and these texts in Deuteronomy 28 illuminate that blessing. Just as God’s opening up the treasury to Israel constitutes His blessing on Israel, so also Israel’s lending to many nations constitutes Israel’s blessing on them.

Israel becomes wealthy through the gift of the divine treasury. The heavenly rain waters the ground, which produces a plentiful harvest. This harvest creates excess capital which is then loaned out to the nations. Those nations are now indebted to Israel, which dictates the terms under which it loans the funds This is not necessarily a reference to the Israelite state- there was no central state in the period of the judges- this is a reference to the behavior of the whole nation. These funds are loaned out wisely, and the nations roundabout invest this capital to create productive economies of their own, using the profit to repay the loan. Israel’s economic dominance through her faithfulness to God’s covenant produces geopolitical dominance. This is what we see during Solomon’s Kingdom: the extraordinary wealth of the Kingdom of Israel provided it with enormous leverage, both politically and culturally. Thus, cultivating a strong relationship with the throne of David became an imperative for the kings of the nations.

Economic supremacy means massive cultural influence. Exports of funds and resources bring about extensive cultural interchanges, and since Israel’s wealth is a consequence of her faithfulness, this means that righteous influence flows out from Israel to the surrounding nations. And under the model of the revised chronology which I support, this is precisely what one sees. The New Kingdom of Egypt is filled with poetry and song closely paralleling the psalms of David and the proverbs of Solomon. The kingdom of Babylon sees the proliferation of laws influenced by the law of Moses. Within Kings, we see the close partnership which developed between Pharoah and the throne of David, and the “covenant of brotherhood” as Amos calls it that developed between Hiram of Tyre and David (and then Solomon). Particularly with Hiram and the kingdom of Tyre, we see how these relationships were initially predicated on trade, with mutual imports and exports playing an essential role in the construction of the Temple of Jerusalem. In the modern world, we see the profound influence exercised by Great Britain and the United States- both traditionally Christian cultures (though the US is a historically secular state in contrast with its culture) whose missionaries have gone all over the world and preached the gospel to millions of people. It was the technological development and investment capital which was exported all over the planet which brought about the hegemony of the two Anglospheric powers. Indeed, when one looks at historical Christian missions, Christian missions are exported as a result of a prosperous and dynamic civilization. Russia became Christian because of the power of the Byzantine civilization and economy, which extended its influence far beyond its own borders.

This dynamic exposes a fallacy which influenced Solomon in his later life- and which has influenced the behavior of states ever since. States and government officials come to believe that their geopolitical status and security is guaranteed by a large military. And indeed, there does seem to be a correlation between hegemony and military power. The United States is by far the most powerful state in the world, and it is by far the most militarily built up. Yet Moses warns the kings of placing their trust in armies in Deuteronomy 17, warning against building up standing armies- in the law, armies are only mustered for defensive purposes and a forced draft is forbidden. If this policy is implemented, it strongly discourages warfare that is not strictly necessary. In the latter part of his kingdom, Solomon uses the excess capital which he has built up to engage in the international arms trade and fund military activity. But the correlation is illusory.

In reality, it is wealth and productivity which brings a civilization to the forefront of world affairs. Their role is guaranteed by the goods and services they produce and export to other nations in blessing, not by forced military servitude. Accumulated wealth is then used to fund large militaries, which gives the mistaken impression that a military buildup is the cause of international hegemony. But in truth, it lays the foundation for civilizational and economic decline as finances are misappropriated away from productive uses and towards the military. Overextension takes its toll and military aggression brings about blowback which wounds the nation thus overextended. We see, therefore, that the nations with whom Solomon traded arms became severe trouble for him in his latter years and contributed especially to the decline and division of the kingdom of Israel after his death.

The biblical promise that the faithful nation will “lend to many nations” and not borrow is the key to integrating the civilizational aspect of the Great Commission, its evangelistic core, and its nature as the republication of the dominion covenant given to mankind in Genesis 1. For a people to be productive means that they fulfill their task as Images of God: taking the raw material of the world and increasing its value by pouring their energy (i.e. activity, energeia) and rationality (through the purposeful shaping of material into art, technology, and culture) into it. This is the creation of new wealth, which is exported to other nations, bringing Christian influence with it. The loaned funds, in turn, repeat the cycle in the nation which borrows them and wisely manages the wealth. They, too, develop the innate potencies of the world and glorify the creation, offering a tithe on the new value through the Eucharist, signifying their recognition that all things belong ultimately to the God who gives them existence.

This is the “leavening” of the lump of the world- the image which Christ uses to describe the Kingdom of God. Gradually, the yeast spreads throughout the entirety of the dough, developing its innate potency and baking it through the energy of the Spirit, the rich glory of God, into Bread, consecrated to God’s altar as thanksgiving.