Combating the Downward Spiral of Poverty: Lessons from Leviticus 25:35-22 and Its Implications for Modern Day Poverty Alleviation Efforts of the Church
Joseph Adasi-Bekoe 
Issue: Vol.5 No.14 Issue Article 16 pp.2658-2671
DOI: https://doi.org/10.38159/ehass.202451416 | Published online 29th November, 2024
© 2024 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the CCBY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Going downward, the spiral of poverty is common among the majority of the world’s poor whose lives are marked by the experience of being in and out of poverty. Relying on an exegesis of Leviticus 25.25-32, this article studies how the laws of Yahweh helped ancient and agrarian Israel prevent this common experience. The exegesis reveals that the text in Leviticus consists of four units, each describing a type of destitution that has the potential, if not handled carefully, to push a poor person down the downward spiral of poverty. The crisis that the laws anticipate appears to progress, first with a fellow Israelite who out of financial difficulty sold his land. The second envisages a person who survives on leased land from another Israelite. The third anticipates survival by means of debt enslavement to a fellow Israelite. The final law is aimed at helping the situation of debt enslavement to a non-Israelite. In all these cases of destitution, group identity, residence or location is important in determining the type of assistance and the people who qualify to assist. The laws call on all members of the community to act proactively to relieve neighbor’s poverty whenever one exhibits signs of poverty.
Keywords: Leviticus, Poverty, Church
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Rev. Joseph Adasi-Bekoe (PhD) has been a minister of the Ghana Baptist Church since 2007. He served as an Associate Pastor of the Trinity Baptist Church in Kumasi and is now the senior Pastor of the Charismatic Baptist Church in Accra. Joseph also teaches Theology at the Ghana Baptist University College. He is married to Esther and they have been blessed with four young Adults.
Adasi-Bekoe, Joseph. “Combating the Downward Spiral of Poverty: Lessons from Leviticus 25:35-22 and Its Implications for Modern Day Poverty Alleviation Efforts of the Church,” E-Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences 5, no.14 (2024):2658-2671. https://doi.org/10.38159/ehass.202451416
© 2024 The Author(s). Published and Maintained by Noyam Journals. This is an open access article under the CCBY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
