Issues: Poverty and Wealth

Biblical Background

What does the Bible say about poverty and wealth?

Proverbs 10 verse 15 - "Having lots of money protects the rich but having no money destroys the poor"."The wealth of the rich is their fortress; the poverty of the poor is their calamity."

Proverbs 19 verse 17 - " When you give to the poor, it is like lending to the Lord and the Lord will pay you back". "If you help the poor, you are lending to the LORD - and he will repay you!"

Proverbs 30 verses 8 - 9 - "Don't make me either rich or poor, just give me enough food for each day. If I have too much, I might reject you (God) and say "I don't know the Lord". If I am poor, I might steal and disgrace the Name of my God. "Give me neither poverty nor riches! Give me just enough to satisfy my needs. For if I grow rich, I may deny you and say, "Who is the LORD?" And if I am too poor, I may steal and thus insult God's holy name."

Proverbs 23 verse 21- "Those who drink and eat too much become poor. They sleep too much and end up wearing rags." "Do not carouse with drunkards and gluttons, for they are on their way to poverty. Too much sleep clothes a person with rags."

The Bible points out the dangers of both undue wealth and poverty and the responsibility of people to use resources wisely. People have a responsibility to use part of their wealth to provide for the poor, as this is God's work being carried out by his people.

One way the Bible shows how this could be done was by farmers allowing people to glean in their fields - that is they left grain, for example, at the edges of their fields to give poorer people opportunity to reap this for themselves freely. This continued in the time of Jesus Christ. There is a great short story in the Bible that shows this in action in the book of Ruth (Ruth was an ancestor of Jesus Christ) and the story takes place in Bethlehem (his birth place) - which means "house of bread".