The Poor

The Hebrew Bible uses a cluster of words that shade into each other but have distinct nuances:

(1) Anav (עָנָו, the humble, the poor-and-meek; related to anah, to be afflicted, humbled): the primary word in the Psalms for the poor who are also the faithful remnant, those who have been brought low and whose hope is in YHWH alone. Numbers 12:3 uses anav for Moses ("Moses was very meek, more than all people on the face of the earth"). The Psalms of the anawim (the lowly ones), Psalms 9-10, 25, 34, 37, 40, 69, are those in which YHWH is the defender of the humble. Isaiah 61:1 ("to bring good news to the poor/anawim") is cited in Luke 4:18.

(2) Dal (דַּל, the weak, the thin, the socioeconomically vulnerable; from the root dalal, to hang low, to be brought low): the poor who are structurally disadvantaged. Proverbs 19:17: "Whoever is generous to the poor (dal) lends to the LORD, and he will repay him for his deed." Amos uses dal repeatedly for those crushed by economic exploitation.

(3) Ebyon (אֶבְיוֹן, the destitute, the needy, the one who desires what they do not have; from avah, to want, to desire): the thoroughly destitute. Deuteronomy 15:11: "For there will never cease to be poor (ebyon) in the land. Therefore I command you, 'You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor (anav and ebyon) in your land.'"

(4) Rash (רָשׁ, the poor, the reduced): the person of reduced means, often contrasted with the rich. Proverbs 22:2: "The rich and the poor meet together; the LORD is the maker of them all."

The Torah provides a set of structural protections for the poor that are built into the social order of Israel:

(1) Gleaning rights (Leviticus 19:9-10, "When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge... and you shall not strip your vineyard bare... you shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner"). Ruth 2 is the narrative illustration: Ruth gleaning in Boaz's fields is the Torah's gleaning law in action. The poor are not merely given charity; they are given the means to earn their own food with their own labor.

(2) The third-year tithe (Deuteronomy 14:28-29, "At the end of every three years you shall bring out all the tithe of your produce in the same year and lay it up within your towns. And the Levite, because he has no portion or inheritance with you, and the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, who are within your towns, shall come and eat and be filled, that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands"). The triennial tithe is specifically for the Levite, the stranger, the orphan, and the widow, not for the temple treasury.

(3) The Sabbath Year (shemitah, Deuteronomy 15:1-11, every seventh year, debts are cancelled): "At the end of every seven years you shall grant a release. And this is the manner of the release: every creditor shall release what he has lent to his neighbor." The structural compression of debt every seven years prevents the permanent entrenchment of poverty.

(4) The Jubilee (Leviticus 25:8-55, every fiftieth year, land returns to ancestral families): the economic reset that prevents permanent landlessness. No Israelite family can be permanently dispossessed of the ancestral inheritance that is their share in the covenant land.

The Psalms are saturated with YHWH's advocacy for the poor. Several psalms are specifically "psalms of the anawim", where the poor cry out and YHWH defends them:

Psalm 9-10 (a single acrostic poem): "For the needy shall not always be forgotten, and the hope of the poor shall not perish forever" (9:18). YHWH is described as the one who "does not ignore the cry of the afflicted" (9:12).

Psalm 34:6: "This poor man (anav) cried, and the LORD heard him and saved him out of all his troubles." Psalm 34:18-19: "The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD delivers him out of them all."

Psalm 68:5-6: "Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation. God settles the solitary in a home; he leads out the prisoners to prosperity."

Psalm 72:12-13 (a royal psalm): "For he delivers the needy (ebyon) when he calls, the poor (anav) and him who has no helper. He has pity on the weak (dal) and the needy (ebyon), and saves the lives of the needy." The just king of Psalm 72 is defined by his advocacy for the poor, and this royal psalm is typologically messianic: the king who perfectly fulfills this description is the Messiah.

Luke 1:46-55, the Magnificat (Mary's song), is the first New Testament announcement of the reversal of the poor's condition: "He has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate (tapeinos, the low, the humble, the poor); he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty" (1:52-53). Mary's song draws directly on the language of 1 Samuel 2 (Hannah's prayer) and the Psalms of the anawim: the one growing in her womb is the answer to every cry of the poor in Scripture.

Luke 4:18-19, the Nazareth Sermon: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor (ptochois). He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." Jesus quotes Isaiah 61:1-2 and applies it to himself. The "year of the Lord's favor" is the Jubilee year, the year of release, of debt cancellation, of return to the land. Jesus declares the eschatological Jubilee has arrived.

James 2:1-7: "My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory... If you pay attention to the one who wears fine clothing and say, 'You sit here in a good place,' while you say to the poor man, 'You stand over there,' or 'Sit down at my feet,' have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?" James applies the theology directly to the church's seating arrangements: the church that honors the rich and dishonors the poor is acting against the grain of the gospel.

The Sanctum reads the theology of the poor as a non-negotiable dimension of the biblical witness: YHWH is the father of the fatherless and protector of the widow (Psalm 68:5); the gospel is announced to the poor first (Luke 4:18); the church that honors wealth over need has made itself a judge against the grain of the gospel (James 2). The Sanctum's study of Scripture is inseparable from the question of who is at the center of the biblical story: the answer is consistently the anawim, the humble poor who cry out and find that YHWH hears.