48 Shoftim 2025

They were to appoint judges and officers for the towns to make judgments. Deuteronomy 16:18 NKJV says, "You shall appoint judges and officers in all your gates, which the LORD your God gives you, according to your tribes, and they shall judge the people with just judgment." The Bible talks about how to make these judgements. For example, the 10 Commandments talk about some of the things they were to make judgments on. Other places in the Torah include other types of judgements. For example, Leviticus 19:35-36 NKJV says, "You shall do no injustice in judgment, in measurement of length, weight, or volume. You shall have honest scales, honest weights." So, when you sell something, you are to be forthright about what you are selling and not sell people short. As you can see, we might imply other things from this such as the need for a free market system with honest representation for what is sold. There is no need for price control because people expect to get what they are paying for. Those who cheat others are stealing from them.

Price control does not work. In New York City, they enforce price control on some rentals. This causes some owners to abandon their buildings because they cannot keep them up because they cannot charge enough to cover their costs. Only more expensive properties are immune to price control and therefore, the rich are able to find places to live, but the poor are not able to find places to live because low income rentals are scarce. I used to live in the New York City area and whole sections of the city had become abandoned. 

 There is a need to know all the specifics on how to do business properly and the Bible provides us with a model for that. Here is another example. 

Leviticus 19:13-15 NKJV says, You shall not cheat your neighbor, nor rob him. The wages of him who is hired shall not remain with you all night until morning. You shall not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling block before the blind, but shall fear your God: I am the LORD. You shall do no injustice in judgment. You shall not be partial to the poor, nor honor the person of the mighty. In righteousness you shall judge your neighbor. 

Essentially, a worker is due the wages that was agreed upon in a timely manner. The places I worked for gave me my wages at a specified time that I agreed to at the end of the month in some cases or in others, every two weeks. I expected to get paid and if they did not pay me, I could take them to court.

Many of the laws in the United States are actually based on concepts from the Bible. Countries that do not set up free market systems are often poor and sometimes cause their people to starve. For example, if a country controls the price of something too low, that reduces the incentive for providing that item. This creates shortfalls for that item. Say if it is the price of meat that is controlled, then if there is a shortage, few people would be willing to provide meat because the people providing could lose money and not be able to provide food for themselves. Countries that are controlled by the Communist Religion experience this the most. I know of someone who went to Cuba and when he went into a store to buy meat, they had no meat. It turns out that the Bible has some very important values for us.

Sometimes there are concepts in the Bible like do not put a stumbling block in front of a blind person. It would seem to be a heartless thing to do, but that is not the only thing this could apply to. We should also not cause others to stumble. So, we could be kind and encouraging in some instances in order to help others succeed. Often, a person is trained to do a job. This allows them to have the opportunity to perform the job as expected and give the employer just work for our pay. Also, we should not cause another person to sin and therefore be a stumbling block to them. There are countless ways this can be properly applied. We should never give an al