Jesus talked a lot about money… often about debt. Today we start a series of reports looking at the words of Jesus and the Bible about finances.
Debt is a major theme in the Bible that goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden.
In Genesis 3:13 after Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, God sought them out. We read, “Then the LORD God said to the woman, ‘What is this you have done?’ And the woman said, ‘The serpent deceived me, and I ate.’”
The Hebrew word for what the woman said the serpent did to her typically means to deceive, but a different conjugation implies indebtedness. In addition, the noun form of the word also refers to debt.
Jerry Bowyer writing in Crosswalk.com writes, “The existence of some sort of debt aspect to the fall of man is consistent with later biblical commentary on redemption, in fact, the idea of redemption itself automatically comports with a debt theme. Long association of words such as redemption with religious sensibilities has so conditioned us that we become immune to the obvious financial overtones of the act of redemption.”
Likewise for the idea of ‘ransom.’ Ransoms are paid, often to buy people out of slavery associated with unpaid debts.
Bowyer concludes that debt is an important issue in the Bible and retroactively helps to shed light on the original story of the garden.