SIN THAT DEMANDS PAYBACK: SIN BECOMES BIG BUSINESS

SIN THAT DEMANDS PAYBACK

SIN BECOMES BIG BUSINESS

After the exile to Babylon, which was a great commercial centre of trade, both the Hebrew language and metaphors changed. Sin took on a decidedly commercial aspect as a debt to be repaid rather than as a burden carried. This Babylon effect infected the understanding sin, righteousness, and judgement.

This became significant for the meaning of redemption; a significance that we still carry with us today. Debt to be repaid required an agreement. Bonds of such agreement with terms of repayments were recorded on clay tablets and stored in the royal treasury. When this debt had been repaid, the clay tablet would be broken to signify cancellation of the debt and the indebtedness of the debtor.

There was however another way that this could be repaid. The newly crowned or victorious ruler would as celebration, or to gain favour and support of the populace, replace these debt bonds with funds from the royal treasury. We find this story portrayed in the rich man who writes off the debts of a servant.

Such debt bonds would then be brought from the treasury and ceremoniously broken to signify the cancellation of any amounts owing. Out of this custom grew the belief in a Messiah who would also break the ‘bonds of sin’ and that debt accrued by sin which was the cause of all Israel’s hardships.