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The Mesad Hashavyahu ostracon

Era 6 · The First KingsProverbs

Investigation: Money, Credit, Justice and Vulnerable People

Surety, landmarks, scales, grain, interest, wages and kings

Proverbs 6:1–5; 11:1, 15, 26; 20:10, 16; 22:7, 22–28; 23:10–11; 28:8; 29:4, 14; 31:8–9 · Lesson 40 of 42 · 15 min story

Israel was an agrarian society of villages and family land, with markets, merchants, royal taxes and creditors. A bad harvest could force a family to borrow seed or silver against its land, its clothes or its children (Nehemiah 5:1–5; 2 Kings 4:1). Proverbs speaks into that world.

The Mesad Hashavyahu ostracon
Authentic ancient artifactThe Mesad Hashavyahu (Yavneh-Yam) ostracon, late 7th century BC: a harvest worker asks for his garment back. Israel Museum.Image credit

Continue the journey

Journey of a PassageProverbs 11:1; 20:10, 23: "A false balance is abomination to the LORD""A false balance is abomination to the LORD: but a just weight is his delight." Honest weights are treated as a religious matter three times in Proverbs (11:1; 20:10, 23; compare 16:11).
More from this lesson

Journey of a Passage

  • Proverbs 11:1; 20:10, 23: "A false balance is abomination to the LORD" →"A false balance is abomination to the LORD: but a just weight is his delight." Honest weights are treated as a religious matter three times in Proverbs (11:1; 20:10, 23; compare 16:11). All the library's witnesses agree on the wording. Archaeology supplies the setting: hundreds of inscribed Judahite stone weights.
  • Proverbs 22:28; 23:10; Deuteronomy 19:14: "Remove not the ancient landmark" →"Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set." The boundary stone (gevul) marked a family's inherited field. Moving it stole land. The law forbids it (Deuteronomy 19:14; 27:17), Proverbs repeats the warning (23:10, adding "enter not into the fields of the fatherless"), and the Egyptian Instruction of Amenemope has a whole chapter against moving field boundaries.
  • Proverbs 28:8: Interest, unjust gain and the poor →"He that by usury and unjust gain increaseth his substance, he shall gather it for him that will pity the poor." Two Hebrew words for interest, neshekh ("bite") and tarbit ("increase"), are those of Leviticus 25:36–37. The library's Hebrew shows a ketiv/qere in the second word. The witnesses agree in sense.
  • Proverbs 31:8–9: "Open thy mouth for the dumb" →Lemuel's mother tells her son: "Open thy mouth for the dumb in the cause of all such as are appointed to destruction. Open thy mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and needy." The witnesses agree in substance. A queen mother's charge defines a king's duty: to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves.

Why this matters to the rest of Scripture

  • Interest and the pledged cloak.
  • Debt and servitude in Judah.
  • False balances and the needy sold.