3.2. Economic Equality and Its Significance for Social Equality. The Absence of Castes and Class Distinctions. The Position of the Tribe of Levi

As the foundation of the economic well-being of his state, Moses placed agriculture. The choice of such a foundation for the state belongs more to the lawgiver himself than to the people, who in their prior history had little acquaintance with agriculture. Although the first men—Adam, Cain, and Noah—already engaged in the tilling of the earth, in the subsequent patriarchal period the predominant occupation was animal husbandry, as is evident among other things from the history of Abraham. There are reports that Isaac and Jacob also engaged in agriculture (Gen. 26:12; 37:7), but evidently their chief occupation was nonetheless animal husbandry—so much so that, upon their migration to Egypt and despite the Egyptians’ aversion to animal husbandry, the brothers of Joseph, in answer to Pharaoh’s question about their occupation, replied: “Your servants are shepherds, both we and our fathers” (Gen. 47:3). Animal husbandry remained the chief free occupation of the Israelites in Egypt as well, as is evident from the fact that the brothers asked Pharaoh for permission to settle in the land of Goshen precisely in view of its suitability for animal husbandry, and they were famed as the best herdsmen—so much so that Pharaoh himself chose from among them overseers of his own flocks (Gen. 47:4–6). Animal husbandry was likewise of necessity the occupation of the people during the forty years of wandering in the desert. Thus the idea of founding the state chiefly on agriculture belongs to Moses. Both the geographical conditions of the land and higher considerations of statesmanship served as the incentive for this. Palestine in antiquity was distinguished by extraordinary fertility (Gen. 26:12), and by that very fact already called its inhabitants to exploit its produce through the cultivation of the soil. Fertile land, to be sure, also provides advantages for animal husbandry; but animal husbandry requires, in addition, large tracts of land, whereas Palestine, designated for the habitation of the Hebrew people—with its population of three million—did not offer such advantages for animal husbandry. Judging by the size of the population, the land allotments could not be large, and consequently, in order to obtain a sufficient quantity of produce for subsistence, it was necessary to engage in the working of the land—in agriculture. But even greater significance in the founding of the state on agriculture was possessed by higher considerations of statesmanship. The people of Israel had until that time been a nomadic tribe, not yet having firm foundations of civil order—in a condition that made a proper political life impossible. But now it had received a higher calling: it had become the “kingdom” of Jehovah, the chosen people, destined to serve as the guardian and propagator of the highest principles of history. Therefore the nomadic life, which was held in contempt by the civilized world of that time (Gen. 46:34), could not befit the elevated position of the people: it was to begin a new, cultured life, and therefore in place of the nomadic way of life—necessarily bound up with animal husbandry—it was to choose the agricultural way of life, as one possessing more potential for social development. For the purposes of the state, agriculture offers incomparably more advantages than animal husbandry: it develops a love of labor—the chief lever of social development—attaches men to the land they inhabit, and thereby on the one hand makes possible the establishment of definite principles of civil order, while on the other it develops love of country, or patriotism—which is the soul of the state—in short, it provides all the conditions for the development and strength of the state. These conditions the lawgiver evidently had in view when founding his state upon agriculture. But agriculture itself can truly serve the good of the state only when it is founded on economic justice, by virtue of which each member of the state must be accorded equal ownership of land and full enjoyment of all the produce of his hands. The ancient states did not know such justice: land was ordinarily owned only by the privileged castes, while the remaining castes, having no land, were by necessity placed in a slave-like economic dependence on the first, tilled their lands, and themselves received, naturally, not the full sum of the products of their labor, but only what the landowning castes allotted them—that is, just enough not to die of hunger. Hence the striking extremes of wealth and poverty, luxury and destitution, with which we encounter in the ancient Near Eastern states even in periods of their greatest flourishing. The Mosaic state knew no such injustice. In founding the state on agriculture, the lawgiver at the same time ordered it by provisions through which it could become a source of equal well-being for all. Since all members of the people participated in the covenant with Jehovah, and since one of the conditions of the covenant on Jehovah’s part was the granting of the Promised Land, it was natural that all members of the state were to share equally in the land—there were to be no arbitrary seizures, nor legally established advantages of some over others. Basing himself on this theocratic principle, the lawgiver divided the land equally among all Israelites. Only large collective units of the people—tribes, clans, and families—were taken as the unit of land division (Num. 26:55; 33:54), but the division was conducted in such a way that a more numerous tribe received more land and a less numerous tribe received less (Num. 26:54), so that in the end, upon the secondary division of the portions allotted to one or another tribe or clan, equal shares could result for each Israelite (male), as head of a private household. Under such an order of land tenure, each Israelite was the owner of a certain defined portion of land, from which he could receive the full sum of produce generated by his free labor. And since the land was to serve as the primary source of well-being, the proportionate distribution of land among the Israelites necessarily presupposed equality of property or economic equality. If upon settling in the land the previously accumulated wealth (in livestock) of certain individuals could have given them an advantage over others who had no livestock, such a violation of economic equality was precluded—as Saalschütz observes—by the fact that precisely the tribes wealthiest in livestock remained in the lands on the far side of the Jordan and were as it were separated from the main body of the people, where the statehood grounded in the theocratic principle was chiefly to develop, and therefore could not exert influence on its economic relations (Num. 32:1 ff.).

But economic well-being depends not only on the quantity of land but also on the quantity of labor applied to it, on thrift, and on a multitude of private, accidental conditions. And since industriousness, thrift, and other qualities depending on the personal characteristics of different individuals are naturally not the same for everyone, the well-being that depends on them also cannot constantly remain at the level of equality given at the time of land division: the well-being of some, thanks to their industriousness and thrift, gradually rises, while the well-being of others, thanks to their opposite qualities, declines. Gradually developing in these opposite directions, the well-being of some may rise to the point where they acquire the means to purchase additional parcels with which to begin farming on a larger scale, while others, by contrast, fall into such poverty that they are no longer able to work even their own parcels, and therefore, in order to obtain something for them, are forced to sell them. Hence, while some become large landowners, others become entirely landless, and after consuming the money received for their sold parcels, by necessity must go to work for the former, and thereby fall into economic and personal dependence on them. Such is the ordinary process of the development of economic inequality. In the Mosaic state, however, such inequality was not to have a place, since it would have disrupted the equality of the state’s members before Jehovah and would have violated the covenant with Him in which all had equally participated. Therefore the lawgiver surrounded land tenure with such provisions that, thanks to them, the process of developing inequality just described was subject to significant restrictions. This process attained its full force only in the case where the land—the principal source of well-being—was the full property of its owner, so that he could dispose of it entirely as he saw fit and consequently could also sell it. But such full ownership of the land was incompatible with the supreme headship of Jehovah, who alone is the full owner of the land, while the Israelites are only His tenants. “The land is mine,” says Jehovah; “you are strangers and sojourners with me, therefore the land shall not be sold in perpetuity” (Lev. 25:23). By virtue of this law an Israelite could sell his parcel only until a certain time—until the jubilee year, in which the sold parcel was returned to its original owner (Lev. 25:13), thereby restoring equality in land tenure. Under such an order of things economic equality could not in general be significantly disrupted, and in any case the extremes of wealth and destitution, of a landowning aristocracy and a proletariat, could not arise. The maintenance of as much economic equality as possible was also directed, as has been shown above, by many other provisions and institutions in the Mosaic state.

If the state thus consisted of equal landowners with an equal source of well-being, then of course neither could the various classes of the people, distinguished from one another by differences in economic well-being and social position, have developed. In this respect as well, the Mosaic state presents a striking contrast to other ancient states. In the latter, inequality once formed was consolidated by law, which recognized as normal that structure of social life by which certain classes—having seized all power and all the land—were regarded as if born for power and wealth, while others were regarded as born for slavery and destitution. Hence the formation of castes, which constitutes a flagrant violation of the rights of the individual. In the Mosaic state, operating under the theocratic principle, such a trampling of individual rights had no place. Here, just as all participated in the covenant with Jehovah at the founding of the state, so all were to enjoy equal rights in the state they had founded. Here all members of the state were equally free citizens and, in their development, were not hampered by any restrictions. Civil equality was conditioned by equality before the law. Since the lawgiver is Jehovah, before whom all are equal, His laws are of course the same for all—and this equality before the law was carried through with such consistency that it was recognized even for the sojourners living among the Israelite people. “There shall be one law and one ordinance for you and for the stranger who sojourns with you,” says the lawgiver (Num. 15:16; 15:29; Lev. 24:22; Exod. 12:49). Consequently, in the Mosaic state there were no persons without rights—such as those presupposed, for example, by the Roman laws on slaves, which laws entirely deny personhood to slaves and reduce them to things, and such as would be entirely at the mercy of the arbitrary will of others, as, for example, wives and children were among the Romans, who were in complete dependence on their husbands and fathers. Here, on the contrary, the law recognized full personhood for all members of the state and correspondingly secured and protected the rights of all equally. A master who mistreated his slave lost all authority over him and was obligated to let him go free. Here parents had no authority over the lives of their children, and the father’s power—in contrast to Roman laws—was restricted to the point that he could not even dispose of the inheritance at his own discretion, but was obligated to conform to the defined laws of inheritance. In general, the rights of the sexes were also equal. Resting on economic equality, this juridical or civil equality attained full meaning and strength. Hence the absence in the Mosaic state of a division into castes in the Eastern sense of that word. But the principle of equal rights was carried even further here: not only are there no castes in the Eastern sense, but there is not even a general division into estates in the sense of privileged and non-privileged classes. Neither hereditary aristocracy and democracy such as existed in ancient Greece, nor division of the people into fully enfranchised patricians and politically unequal plebeians such as was permitted by Roman legislation, nor feudalism in the medieval sense—none of this is known to Mosaic legislation: it grants social equality to all citizens.

The only distinct estate in the Mosaic state is that of the priests and Levites, who descended exclusively from the single tribe of Levi. But closer examination does not permit assigning to this priestly estate the same significance that priestly castes had in the analogous case among other peoples. While those castes formed special classes—set apart by their very origin (from a deity)—endowed with all manner of civic and political rights and privileges that placed them above other estates, and consequently gave them enormous political significance and an elevated social position, in the Mosaic state all the rights and privileges of the priests belong exclusively to the religious sphere, and by no means to the social or political. The very separation of the tribe of Levi exclusively for religious service, in the meaning of the Mosaic law, was conditioned by the desire to have always ready servants of Jehovah—raised from childhood in reverence and awe toward their calling—although even with such a separation the class of priests did not have exclusive significance, because the people of Israel in their entire composition are “a holy people,” “a kingdom of priests” (Exod. 19:5–6; Deut. 7:6). As regards the social and political sphere, the rights of the priestly estate even suffered restrictions in comparison with the rest of the people. Thus in economic terms they were placed in a lower position than the people, because at the division of the land they were not given land allotments (Num. 26:62). With respect to the means of material provision they were thus placed in dependence upon the people—they subsisted from the altar, from tithes, and from gifts (Num. 18:20–24; 18:8–32). The socioeconomic position of the tribe of Levi is sufficiently defined already by the fact that the law, when speaking of the support of widows, orphans, sojourners, and the generally disadvantaged members of the state, always mentions among them also “the Levite” (Deut. 14:27–29; 16:11–14). In civic terms the rights of the Levites were also restricted. True, they sometimes occupied the offices of judges (Deut. 17:9), but these offices were not their exclusive prerogative—they were granted to them only by virtue of their close familiarity with the law; judges were principally elected from the people itself (Exod. 18:25–26; Deut. 1:13–16). From properly state affairs they were entirely excluded, so that we do not see their participation even in the general national assemblies of the state, and from their number there was no representative in the assemblies of “the chosen men of the community, heads of the tribes of their fathers, leaders of the thousands of Israel” (Num. 1:16)—though at the same time the high priest, as the person of highest religious rank in the theocratic state, stood in important cases at the head of the court, which had a theocratic character (Num. 27:2; 2 Chron. 19:8–11). In general, as is evident from what has been set forth, even if the tribe of priests existed as a separate estate, in any case this did not violate the general social and political equality: all members of the state had equal rights in the state.