”He that by usury and unjust gain increaseth his substance, He shall gather it for him that will pity the poor.“
Proverbs 28:8
This passage has a personal significance to me as I have spent a fair amount of time invested into researching it. Please permit me to walk you down a long winding path and see if you can help me find the answer:
The verse implies interest on a loan is unjust. It is not clear if this is speaking about personal loans from one person to another only or if lending institutions are included.
Some people speculate usury is considered high interest on a loan. We are not discussing the technicalities of who is allowed to charge interest on a loan or how high the interest rate has to be or whether compounding interest is what unjust gain refers to. The passage is not for those purposes.
The concept behind the words in the verse is this:
There is a higher power which controls the money flow. If you are taking more than you should to increase your wealth then you are compiling money for someone else who will have pity on those who are downtrodden.
It is noteworthy the passage does not specify who it is which uses the money to give back to the poor.
Perhaps we would like to think there is a Robin Hood somewhere taking from the wealthy to give back to the poor.
Maybe we would like to think those who govern are in the position to tax the rich to give to those in need.
There are those who believe it is their duty to re-allocate funds by forcing the wealthy to pay so the poor can be fed.
There is a major flaw in all of these thought processes. If Robin Hood is taking, the government taxing or movements forcing the wealthy to pay- they are guilty of unjust gain; which starts the process all over again with those entities being the “Bad Guys.”
This leaves a quandary. Who should re-allocate the unjust gain to give to those in need? How should they go about it? Why don’t we see it happening?
It is my opinion it happens all around us every day and we do not see it because the entity which does the work moves with an unseen hand. Allow me to show a couple of examples:
I think of the stories surrounding the George Mueller homes. For example, one morning the Orphanage was out of milk. There was a knock at the door. A milk cart had broken down and the milk was going to spoil. The driver asked if the children could use the milk instead of it going bad. This is not to say the Milk Man had been extorting people and God punished him by having him break down by an Orphanage; this is simply an example of how coincidence can easily be overlooked.
Think about the men and women running scams or those cheating and stealing from the elderly or vulnerable. Think about how many miserable souls are lying and cheating their way into more money thinking they are going to gain from their conniving, the sad truth is they are not growing in value because the foundation they are building their life on is full of voids, it will crumble one day when they are in need.
Back to the verse.
The two examples above showcase the bookends of volumes which could be said about how resources move based on and controlled by an unseen force, some call this the invisible hand of the market.
That answer did not satisfy me. Several years ago I started a small research project looking for where this money came from and where it went to. I started with Payday loan companies, looked at Banks, researched Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, looked into HUD (Housing and Urban Development), went on a deep dive into High Density Residential Properties, watched Churches and other Non Profits who help the poor and do outreach programs. Worked heavily in outreach programs and after about 10 years I was no closer to seeing who got the money from those who were gaining by usury and unjust means.
Where the government was involved, their records are extensive. I can honestly say they do a fantastic job of record keeping. It I could not find a correlation. Same with private business, no correlation. So I came to a few conclusions:
- I should probably not try to make a living as a financial accountant.
- Perhaps if I hired a professional firm to conduct this research they could find what I could not.
- This verse seems to be an enigma in an accounting sense, so perhaps the suggestion being made is that the invisible hand which moves the market is predicated on this passage. Perhaps we see boom and bust economics because there is an hand which cannot be seen steering.
One day, I may have the financial resources to employ a team of professionals to find this link between those who gain unjustly and usury to those who pity the poor.