Government and the Patriarchs

Yes, the Old Testament is way too big and deep to confront the whole thing in a blog post--probably way too big and deep for a thousand of them, but let's get a taste of the experience of the Patriarchs.

To start, God tells Noah (Genesis 9:6) that if a man sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed.  This is widely viewed as the first charter of government, since vengeance on the murderer presupposes one authorized to carry out that vengeance equitably.  Let's see how it worked out for the patriarchs.

In Genesis 19, we find the men of Sodom using political unity to attempt to gang-rape visiting angels, a move we ought to characterize as "the King of Sodom not exactly doing what God told Noah."  Later on, both Abraham and Isaac came to believe that their lives would be forfeit because kings of Egypt and Philistia would murder them for their wives.  This turned out to be an overstatement, but reality is that these kings did seem to view any pretty young thing that came their way as a possible addition to their harems.  Government wasn't exactly working out well for many, to put it mildly.

Most intriguing to me is a scenario that plays out starting in Genesis 41, when Joseph interprets Pharaoh's dream and becomes, in effect, prime minister of Egypt.  Put mildly, it's the closest thing we have to the modern welfare state in the Bible; for seven years, 20% of the grain harvest (Egypt's major source of wealth) was stored up against a coming famine.  It's not clear how it was done; Matthew Henry suggests Pharaoh bought it out of his own money, suggesting monstrous wealth for the time to buy all that grain and build granaries where the wetness of the Nile could not corrupt it. 

If Henry is right, it still suggests about a 10-15% effective tax on the people of Egypt in supporting Pharaoh's wealth--again, it was an agrarian nation, and it wasn't Pharaoh working all those grain fields.  Otherwise, it was at least a 20% levy on agriculture, possibly on top of other taxes Pharaoh levied.  There is no comment about popular response to the taxation, or what austerity measures Pharaoh and Joseph may have implemented to fund these programs.  I can personally imagine Joseph telling his boss "hey, lay off the wars for a time while we make sure we can feed our people, OK?"

Whatever the implementation and the popular response, it achieved two things.  First of all, Egypt and her neighbors didn't starve.  Second, a temporary 20% tax became a permanent 20% tax (chapter 47), and the people became more or less slaves (at least servants) of Pharaoh--which explains both the Pyramids and many events in Exodus.  It also explains Egypt's persistent wars of conquest--there's that empire thing again!

Hayek would, of course, call this "The Road to Serfdom," and there is a very interesting question about how someone who knows God would do this.  Why was it that Joseph did not simply warn the people that seven years of famine were coming, and let them take precautions and avoid the loss of their wealth?  The only way I can reconcile this is to posit that Joseph knew that Egyptian society was debauched, and that this was the only course of action that would save their lives and perhaps bring them to repentance.

In other words, Joseph's story is evidence that big government is intended for people incapable of self-government--exactly what Hayek and our own Founding Fathers would have told us from their understanding of the classics.  We could find out that the welfare state is exactly what our nation needs at this time, but in light of this story, we probably ought not be proud of it.