NOTES for Deu 15:11

Upon attentive reading of the Torah, it turns out very often that some of its provision refute absolutely the widely spread conceptions, and the hopes not less widely spread. The assertion concerning poor people, who in the people of God (quite as in any other people also) "shall never cease", in the century "of the fight against poverty" (a fight though, alas, more often declarative than real) sounds discouraging.

Of course, it is easy to find in the Bible an explanation of so pessimistic vision on the possibility of a general prosperity: the fall corrupted the relationships of man not only with God, but also with the world created by Him, and now man has to feed from the ground, which formerly fed him willingly "by the sweat of his brow" by having food for himself with struggle and often teetering on the brink of survival. And the attempts to increase the exploitation of the nature in order to receive more, return against the fallen humanity with ecological problems. And the Torah gives in this respect no universal, economic, political recommendations or whatever it may be again. It calls only to mutual help, which allows minimizing the consequences of the fall for the human society. Such a recipe can show itself a little bit archaic to the modern man.

But, if one thinks, hardly we can invent something more modern and timely. It is indeed about this love, which is also current today, as it was current in the time of Moses, and in the time of the earthly life of the Savior. About the love, without which, unfortunately, no plan works and fail the ambitious projects of the general prosperity, seeming so thoughtful and irreproachable on the paper. About the same love, which, at the end of the way, opens to us the Kingdom, where there will be no poor people.