Justice and redemption of debts in the Bible

Abstract

In the origins of Israel we find numerous juridical codifications that legislate the debt’s cancellation. The sabbatical and jubilee years, the judiciary spaces or the figure of the goel, arise from the need to maintain the essential principles that constitute Israel: donation, equality and freedom. Later on, these juridical figures, far from being abandoned, especially the one of the goel, are theologically reread by the prophets, from a messianic perspective. No wonder at all that Jesus himself would choose, as a program of his preaching, the justice, the forgiving of the debt, and the liberation from oppression. It is enough to read the The Lord’s Prayer, or to approach Jesus’ teaching in the parable of the merciless servant, to discover how the first Christian communities transmitted the forgiving and the justice, as an aspiration that never can be given up and essential to the Christian message.