Thursday, October 1, 2026
Today the lenders of the world's largest governments set the price of money on their own terms, ignoring the good news on prices and the central bank alike, and every household and nation that lives on credit found out whose servant it is.
A Christian should read today's news as a demonstration of what debt does to the one who owes it, get as free of it as faithfulness allows, and refuse to profit from a neighbor's scarcity. Proverbs names the lender with a causative form, mal-VEH (malveh, מַלְוֶה): literally "the one who makes another borrow," the party who sets the terms, while the borrower is called EH-ved (ʿeved, עֶבֶד), the ordinary word for a slave. The prophet carries the same logic up to the scale of rulers: "Woe to the one who heaps up what was never his — for how long? — and loads himself down with pledges. Will not those who bite you rise without warning, and those who shake you awake, and you become their spoil?" (Habakkuk 2:6-7). The word for pledges, av-TEET (ʿavtit), occurs nowhere else in scripture; the King James line read it as "thick clay," while Darby and the American Standard read "pledges," and the context of creditors in the next breath favors the latter. Those creditors are no-sheh-KHEH-kha (noshekhekha), "your biters," from nah-SHAKH, the same root that gives Hebrew its word for interest. That is today's story stated plainly: governments that borrowed as though the bill would never come watched their lenders wake at once and demand more, whatever the inflation numbers said. For the household, the apostle's instruction is direct: "Let nothing stay owing to anyone, except to love one another" (Romans 13:8). The verb oh-FAY-leh-teh (opheilete) is a present imperative — keep on owing nothing — which makes the paying down of debt a continuing discipline, and frees the believer to owe the one debt no lender can call.
The second pattern in today's brief is scarcity managed for advantage. Crude is flowing again, yet the refined fuel that moves food and goods is short, nations are halting their exports of it, and a threat of more export bans hangs over allies. Scripture speaks to exactly this: "The one who locks away grain draws the curse of the nations, but blessing crowns the head of the one who brings it to market" (Proverbs 11:26). The word for those who curse is leh-OHM (leʾom), not a single wronged neighbor but a whole people. The proverb does not condemn trade or price; it condemns holding back a necessity so that others must pay the hoarder's terms. The ones who bear that cost are named in today's account as small hauling firms failing one after another — people whose livelihood is moving what everyone else needs. The faithful response is to name such withholding for what it is, whoever does it, and to be the one who brings goods to market rather than the one who waits for the price of desperation.
The third pattern is a building boom that has spent far beyond what it has earned, now financed in part by suppliers lending to their own customers so the customers can rent the suppliers' machines. Jesus addressed the builder directly: "Which of you, intending to raise a tower, does not first sit down and reckon the expense, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, once he has laid the base and cannot finish, every onlooker begins to mock him" (Luke 14:28-29). The verb is psay-FEE-zoh (psēphizō), from the small pebble used to tally a sum — a deliberate, physical counting before the first stone goes down. A loan that exists so a purchase can happen is a way of not counting: the cost is deferred until the tally can no longer be avoided. A Christian working in, investing in, or simply watching this boom should ask the builder's question before admiring the tower, and should hold wealth lightly, because "riches surely make themselves wings, and fly off like an eagle toward the heavens" (Proverbs 23:5) — a word for everyone who discovered this quarter that the paper sold to them as the safest on earth can lose its value too.