At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)
“Much food is in the tillage of the poor: But there is that is destroyed for want of judgment” (Proverbs 13:23).
“Much food is in the fallow ground of the poor, and for lack of justice there is waste” (Proverbs 13:23, NKJV).
“The fallow ground of the poor would yield much food, but it is swept away through injustice” (Proverbs 13:23, ESV).
There are two possible things going on with this proverb, and as we consider the way the world around us tends to go, I think that both of them are.
The bottom line is that there is plenty of food for those who are poor, but something interferes to take it away. Those two things I have in mind could be injustice perpetrated on the poor by the fat cats, on the one hand, or mismanagement of available resources by the poor themselves. In the former case, the want is the result of oppression, and in the latter case, the lack is the result of laziness or stupidity.
For the Marxist it would always be the former, and for the hippie-puncher it would always be the latter, along with a brusque admonition about the need to get a job. In the biblical world, it is either or both, depending on the circumstances.
James tells us about employers who are in a position to withhold wages from their day laborers, and so the Lord takes up the complaint of those laborers (James 5:4). In this case the distress has an external cause. But then Proverbs also has plenty to say about those whose own laziness brought the dearth down upon their own heads (Prov. 6:10-11; 24:33-34). Biblical Christians take care to avoid thinking just one way or the other.
At the same time, Hernando de Soto, the Peruvian economist, showed in his book The Mystery of Capital that in impoverished countries there is more than enough wealth above ground to take care of everyone. The problem is that in countries where envy is common, the wealth has to spend its time in hiding, and the results are very sad.
