Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/397

 TREA TMENT OF INFERIORS IN ISRAEL 383

of the poor had intrusted the poor. They dared not let those who wronged them go unrebuked. Though humanitarian senti- ments had something to do with their labors for these inferiors, their position as prophets, as professed men of Jehovah, may have had more. If so, this gave, among other things, great social significance to their work.

A pertinent question arises just here in connection with the thought of the prophetic espousal of the cause of the poor. It has to do with the moral character, or religious status, of these unfortunates. Were they righteous persons, in whom the interest of the prophets was the more intense because they knew them to be righteous ? We come upon a class known as the righteous poor in the Psalms ; we may almost say that in the psalmody and the wisdom literature of Israel the words "poor" and "righteous" were practically, as used, synonymous. They certainly were often used to designate one and the same class of men those who were Jehovah-fearing, who wronged no man, and who, because they scorned to enrich themselves by conformity to standards which they considered reprehensible, or to do things that would have seemed to them like a betrayal of their faith in their God, remained poor, or became and stayed so.

This appears to be what we do find in the prophets, to some extent at least. Not all poor could have been righteous accord- ing to the prophetic standards ; but many of them unquestionably were. When a prophet speaks of the righteous as being sold for money and the poor for a pair of sandals (Amos 2: 6), we may conclude that the righteous referred to were themselves poor. Indeed, it is very likely that the last clause of this indictment was meant to be regarded as practically synonymous with the

first:

They sold the righteous for money, Even the poor for a pair of sandals.

It is presumable that the just, who according to another prophet were turned aside, were poor ; and that usually the righteous who were so frequently alluded to as made to suffer were the needy (Isa. 5:23; 57:1; Ezek. 13 : 22 : Hab. 1:4).

The data are of such a character that they cannot easily be