But because of the Jubilee, the servant appears before the king, who cancels his debt. This story would be quite encouraging if it stopped there. But it was told at a time when Jesus was facing opposition to the Jubilee from the majority of his fellow Jews, sometimes even from very humble ones. The rest of the story reflects his bitter disappointment in the face of this rejection.
Upon meeting one of his fellow servants, who owed him about twenty-five dollars, the newly freed slave refuses to grant his debtor the same jubilean privilege that set him free. He seizes him by the throat and says, “Pay what you owe.” Denounced by his fellow servants, the unforgiving servant is arrested and taken before the king. The Jubilee is no longer applicable for such an unmerciful and thankless man. He must be sold along with his wife and children to pay for his debts. There is no divine Jubilee for those who refuse to practice it on earth.
The jubilean practice of forgiving debts had one very serious drawback, which is addressed in Deuteronomy 15:7–11. A too frequent occurrence of the remittance of debts tended to freeze credit. As the sabbatical year approached the rich were increasingly hesitant to loan money to the poor for fear of losing their capital. This stinginess paralyzed the economy and hindered their profits. Because of this, some of the most orthodox rabbis, even champions of the restoration of the Mosaic Law such as Hillel and Shammai, hesitated to require a strict application of the Jubilee.
The rabbis, and in particular Hillel, eventually came up with a solution to this problem. The solution was called the prosbul.4 Prosbul probably comes from the Greek pros boule (a deed carried out before a law court). According to the Gittin tractate of the Mishnah (iv, 3), Hillel gave the creditor permission to use a court as his attorney in recovering a debt that the sabbatical year had abolished. By means of this subterfuge, loans with interest, which had been abolished by the Mosaic Law (Exod. 22:25) and limited in duration by the provisions of the sabbatical year, once again became possible. The rich, and particularly the Pharisees, whom Jesus accused of “devouring widows’ houses,” used this measure to its fullest.
The Mishnah has preserved a text which refers to the prosbul: “I (so and so) transfer to you (so and so), the judges (in such and such a place), my right to a debt, so that you may recover any amount which (so and so) owes me, at whatever time I will so desire.” The prosbul was then signed by the judges and the witnesses.
Jesus was an avowed adversary of the prosbul. Usually, Jesus is pictured as an opponent of the sabbatical laws. But in this case, the opposite is true. When it was a question of bringing out the humanitarian intentions of the Mosaic Law, Jesus was even more radical than the Pharisees.5 If this were not the case, Jesus’ continuous confrontations with the Pharisees would lose all meaning, especially if they merely centered on religious practices. In reality, the conflict went much deeper than that. It revolved around the nature of justice.
“What is goodness?” the Pharisees would ask themselves, and they would answer with a multitude of detailed ordinances in the midst of which they lost the essential truth.
“What is goodness?” Jesus would ask. His answer was to go back to the essential thrust of the Mosaic Law, without detouring through the scribes’ elaborate interpretations. Jesus’ radicalism was exactly the opposite of forgoing the Law. When Jesus retorted that God made the Sabbath for man, he meant: “God set the Jews free by taking them out of Egypt. The sabbatical year, like the Sabbath, must be put into practice. It was made to set people free, not to enslave them.” That is why the prosbul, as well as all other regulations added to the Law to alter its liberating and revolutionary character, provoked Jesus’ indignation.
But the question remains: how can one avoid freezing credit if the lure of profit is taken away? In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus gave his answer. The rich must prove themselves generous by eradicating their desire to be reimbursed, because God will take the matter into his own hands.
And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even “sinners” lend to “sinners,” expecting to be repaid in full. But…lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful…Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. (Luke 6:34–38)
In all this the honesty of the debtor must coincide with the generosity of the lender. The debtor should not hide behind the protection of the sabbatical year in order to escape his own obligation. Again, the Sermon on the Mount contains two striking paragraphs where Jesus points out possible solutions to the problem upon which Hillel and the Pharisees had stumbled.
Hillel would tell the worried creditor: “Take your claims to the court. Your money will be restored to you there.” Jesus tells the careless debtor not to wait for a court summons to repay his debt: “If someone [your creditor] wants to sue you [using the prosbul] and take your tunic6 [which he holds as a pledge for the debt you have not repaid], let him have your cloak as well” (Matt. 5:40). Prior to this, Jesus advises, “Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still with him on the way, or he [using the prosbul] may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. I tell you the truth, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny” (Matt. 5:25). According to the parallel passage in Luke 12:52–59, Jesus asks, “Why don’t you judge for yourselves what is right?” His disciples should avoid court proceedings altogether. Why should they rely on the courts to decide whether or not it is right to pay their debts?7
The other parable with a jubilean teaching, the parable of the dishonest steward (Luke 16:1–9), also revolves around the peasants’ status in Jesus’ time. Due to the extortions of King Herod – as well as those of his son and the Roman occupant – most of the older proprietors had lost their independence. Forced to mortgage their property in order to pay their taxes, they had been driven into semi-slavery. The taxes in oil and wheat that they paid to their masters often amounted to half or more of their harvest.
The peasants’ conditions in Israel were aggravated by yet another evil: the owners’ absenteeism. A hierarchy of middlemen (toll-gatherers, publicans, customs officials, stewards, and managers) had the task of collecting debts. They extorted from the sharecropper arbitrary sums of money that exceeded the rent, debts, and taxes they actually owed. The poor were always in the wrong. They could rely on no one because the stewards presented falsified accounts to their masters. With the help of these accounts, they were able to accumulate what Jesus called “unrighteous mammon.” It was by constantly seeking these unjust riches that the stewards lost their genuine riches, namely, the friendship of their fellow citizens.
This parable tells how a landowner discovered the dishonesty of his steward. Not only did the steward plunder the sharecroppers, he also stole from his master to whom he showed falsified records. Once his cheating had been discovered, the steward began to feel the pangs of conscience. He understood that he would never be able to reimburse the entire amount of his swindling. But he decided at least not to require of the sharecroppers exaggerated amounts they had not yet paid. He then erased the amount by which he had unjustly increased their debts. Jesus describes him calling the debtors together and reducing their debts to their correct amount: fifty measures of oil instead of a hundred, eighty measures of wheat instead of a hundred, etc.
Such a decision certainly increased the steward’s insolvency. It forced him into poverty. But by acting as he did, he would acquire genuine riches, that is the thankfulness and friendship of his previous victims. Poor among the poor,