Abraham was very rich. Isaac was richer. Jacob was richer still. Their households numbered in the thousands. They commanded private armies and made treaties with kings. Job, the man of God, was the richest man in the East, with livestock alone valued in the tens of millions in today’s money.
All of this is plainly written in the text of Scripture. It is not hidden. It is not ambiguous. And yet, for generations, the church has managed to read right past it, as though the words were printed in invisible ink.
The question is not whether the patriarchs were fabulously wealthy and powerful. That is beyond dispute. The question is: why can we not see it?
The Eye, the Mind, and the Heart
We see the world through our eyes, but what we notice is determined by something deeper. Between the mind and the heart, our vision is moulded and shaped, highlighting the things we value and obscuring the things we deem worthless.
Everyone has experienced the phenomenon of buying a new vehicle and suddenly seeing that same model everywhere. The Jeeps and Chevys are skipped over as irrelevant while our eyes dart to the next matching model on the horizon. Our heart directs our vision.
Could it be that someone has rewired the Christian heart so that we fixate on poverty and weakness when we read Scripture, as if they were in themselves virtuous, while viewing wealth and power as morally tainted and beneath notice? Why else would we wince at and skip over every mention of gold, silver, armies, and alliances in the lives of the patriarchs?
The Pagan Oil Spill
The New Testament church was born into a pagan sea of philosophy penned by Greek and Roman writers. One of the most persistent lies to come from that world is the idea that material things, things we can see and touch, are inherently evil and low, while non-material or “spiritual” things are good and exalted.
St. Paul confronted this lie head-on. In 1 Timothy 4, he warns that in latter times some will depart from the faith, “giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons.” These demonic doctrines command people to “forbid to marry and to abstain from foods,” treating the material pleasures and responsibilities of life as things to be avoided.
This lie whispers: “The weaker your body, the stronger your spirit.” Minds tainted by the oil spill of classical Greek and Roman thought look upon wealth as morally suspicious in itself and vastly inferior to poverty. Business, the very activity that produces wealth through honest service in the marketplace, becomes an object of contempt. Capitalism is universally hated by all those whose minds have been turned by this demonic deception.
For both laymen and studied commentators, wealth becomes an encumbrance and an embarrassment, something to be glossed over in the text of Scripture. Perhaps this is why Jacob, the deal-maker, capitalist, and irrepressible businessman, continues to be so vilified. The Holy Spirit placed power and riches into the hands of His beloved saints, and we simply have to deal with it.
The Evolutionary Lie
Another relic of paganism contributes to our blindness: the doctrine of evolution. Not merely biological evolution, but the broader assumption that history is a story of inevitable progress, that each generation is smarter, wiser, and morally better than the one before.
Under this assumption, our parents know less than we do, their parents know less still, and by the time we get back to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, these men were foolish, primitive knuckle-draggers with nothing to teach the enlightened people of the twenty-first century.
Watch this evolutionary principle at work in the commentaries. A scholar notes Abraham’s deception before Pharaoh and declares: “How foolish you were, Abraham! You should have told the truth and God would have rescued you. My superior wisdom deems it so.” The commentator assumes without question that he is morally and intellectually superior to the father of the faithful, the friend of God. The particulars of Abraham’s life, his wealth, his power, his business empire, serve no purpose for such “enlightened” readers.
The Clergy Problem
With all these errors in the mix, and a kind of elitism in the church that insulates the clergy from correction by the laity, the mistakes and oversights of clergymen and commentators are simply passed on, or even amplified, from generation to generation.
The great patriarchs are scrubbed clean of the stench of trade and the smells of the stockyard. Only their “inner life” remains. They are presented in sermons and commentaries in the abstract, hovering three feet off the ground, recast as wandering mystics or remade in the image of the commentators themselves, who are so often poor or middle class.
Karl Barth, the twentieth century’s best-known “Reformed” theologian, openly dismissed the Old Testament law and covenant as irrelevant. Such influence from the theological elite has trickled down through seminaries and pulpits for generations, quietly stripping the material substance from the biblical text and leaving nothing but a vague, disembodied spirituality.
What We Stand to Lose
If we fail to see that God’s blessing made Abraham very rich, Isaac richer, and Jacob richer still, what does it matter?
It matters because we are tampering with the Word of God. Revelation 22:19 states: “If anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the Book of Life.” And if we add our own extra-biblical standard, a false morality where matter is evil and spirit is good, Revelation 22:18 warns: “If anyone adds to these things, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book.”
When we strip the wealth from Scripture, we have robbed the patriarchs and, in doing so, we have paupered ourselves and our posterity. When we disconnect God’s blessing from the swelling of Isaac’s coffers and the increase of his flocks and herds, we have remade him in our own meagre image. And when we fail to meditate on God’s Word as He has instructed, we have stolen from God Himself.
Like vandals who strip the lead from a church roof, keeping its outward form intact but causing the structure to let in water and slowly rot from the inside, those who strip the wealth and power from Scripture leave the church exposed to the rot of paganism. The forms remain, but the substance is greatly weakened.
The Remedy
Three biblical truths serve as bulwarks against these pagan lies.
First, the doctrine of creation. God made the whole world and every part of it. Matter matters to God. In Genesis 2, describing the rivers of Eden, the text says: “The whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good.” Wealth in its quintessential form is called “good” by God from the very beginning.
Second, the Incarnation. God took on human flesh, an impossible thought for pagans but a wondrous mystery to God’s people. Flesh and material things are forever good because God has forever taken on flesh. Whoever calls matter “bad” speaks the words of antichrist.
Third, the law and covenant. The first command is the dominion mandate: to have dominion over the animals and, by extension, the whole earth. Man’s God-given task ties him forever to the world of matter. The Ten Commandments give us our moral framework, not a pagan matter-bad, spirit-good dualism. And God blesses obedience to His commands with all good things, material and otherwise: long life, health, riches, and honour.
As we meditate on creation, incarnation, and the law and covenant of God, we restore the edifice of our minds. We shore up the cracks that let the winds of evil doctrine blow through us. We seal our minds again, and the acid rain of demonic deception rolls off into the gutter where it belongs.