Ancient Labor Laws

In honor of the American holiday of Labor Day, here are just two examples of ancient labor laws from the Hebrew Bible:


Sabbath (Deuteronomy 5:12-15)
Observe the sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to theLord your God; you shall not do any work—you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you.15 Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.

Many are more familiar with the sabbath rationale given in the Exodus 20 version of the ten commandments and the famous seven day creation story in Genesis 1.  But Deuteronomy gives a different reason for observing the sabbath: because the Israelites knew what it was like to be exploited laborers.  Notice that sabbath is to be observed by the whole household, including slaves and animals.

Pay Up! (Leviticus 19:13 and Deuteronomy 24:14-15)
". . . you shall not keep for yourself the wages of a laborer until morning."

"You shall not withhold the wages of poor and needy laborers, whether other Israelites or aliens who reside in your land in one of your towns.You shall pay them their wages daily before sunset, because they are poor and their livelihood depends on them; otherwise they might cry to the Lord against you, and you would incur guilt."

Israel's White Collar Criminals

If a priest breaks the law does that make her a "white collar" criminal?  (Sorry, if you're looking for good jokes a blog on the ancient world is probably not the place you're going find them)

I recently prepared a sermon on Amos 8:1-12, a passage that includes the Hebrew prophet Amos' vision of the summer fruit basket (see our discussion of that here) and one of his many condemnations of the rich oppressing the poor.  When we read a text like that from the perspective of the ancient historian, we might wonder what exactly the wealthy were doing in Amos' 8th century context to oppress the poor.  What did "trampling" on them look like?  What was the nature of ancient white collar crimes?