Many have heard and quoted the second half of Proverbs 13:22, which says, “A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children’s children: and the wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just.” What does that look like when the wealth of the wicked is stored up for the just? Are there examples of this in the Bible? In the Old Testament, we can see a wealth transfer in the form of reparations given to the Israelites upon their departure from Egypt. There is also a long-promised wealth transfer of Canaan (the land of milk and honey) to Abraham’s descendants. This milk and honey clause from Ex 3:8 implies that the people in the land were rich, but throughout the Torah, we are also told of their sinfulness. And some of Jesus’ parables also allude to this transfer, such as the Parable of the 3 Servants (Matt 25:14-30) or the Parable of the 10 Servants (Luke 19:11-27).

In Genesis 15:13-16, God foretells to Abraham that his seed will be persecuted and enslaved. The persecution includes Isaac (by Ishmael [Gen 21] and Abimelech [Gen 26]) and Jacob (by Esau [Gen 27-28] and Laban [Gen 30-31]) in the land of Canaan. Then Jacob moved to Egypt, and sometime after Joseph died 71 years later, they were enslaved (Ex 1:8). God promised that Egypt would be punished and they would let Israel go. The Israelites would be enriched on the way out (Gen 15:14). Furthermore, in Gen 15:16, God says this will happen four generations from the time Israel (Jacob) and his family left Canaan for Egypt in Genesis 46. The first generation is Kohath, then Amram, then Moses (the 40-year wilderness generation), then Joshua, who leads them into the promised land. Then God tells Abraham he won’t be around for any of this and will be long dead, and explains that he can’t do it now because the sins of the Amorites (people living in Canaan) have not warranted their destruction yet.

God allowed these sinful people to prosper to first show mercy for the few righteous in the land, and secondly, prepare the land for Abraham’s descendants, so that it would be a blessing and not a burden. On the first point, the Amorites were likely considered righteous enough in the time of Abraham, as they allied with him to rescue Lot (Abraham’s nephew) from Chedorlaomer’s army, as recorded in Genesis 14. However, most of the righteous Canaanites had disappeared around 430 years later, when Moses led Israel out of Egypt. There are a few people like Rahab who ended up joining the Israelites when they conquered Jericho (Joshua 2). She is in the lineage of Jesus (Matt 1:5). On the second point, when the Israelites are leaving Egypt, God promises to drive out the Canaanites with terror. Still, he won’t do it all at once because the land will become desolate and inhabited by wild animals (Exodus 23:29). In other words, milk and honey aren’t going to sustain and produce themselves. The people of Canaan have to be blessed and favored by God in taking care of the land, despite their wicked behaviors, so that the righteous will have something of value to inherit. That is why God says in Deut 6:10-11, “I will give you cities that you did not build, houses richly stocked with goods you did not produce, water from cisterns you did not dig, and food from vineyards and olive trees you did not plant.”  These things were stored up for his people, which means that rather than an immediate punishment for all of Canaan (like Sodom and Gomorrah), he blessed them in their planting so that the Israelites would inherit their harvest.

Exodus 12:34-36 illustrates the wealth transfer via reparations that God promised to Moses in Exodus 3:21 and to Abraham in Genesis 15:14. God granted the Israelites favor with the Egyptians. The Egyptians gave them anything they asked for (clothes, gold, silver, etc.) as they departed after the Passover plague. In other words, they were scared of all of the plagues, so they wanted to be done with the Hebrews. The Israelites went to Egypt as refugees because of a famine in Canaan. They were taken care of because of Joseph’s status, but then became slaves after he died. Three generations after entering Egypt, they were persecuted and enslaved by the Nationalist Egyptians, and it even got worse when Moses first intervened (Exodus 5). God stepped in and fulfilled his promise to free Israel from Egypt, and he made them rich along the way. God made a covenant promise to bless them entirely if they kept their end of the covenant. However, God warned them that their sins would cause a curse instead of a blessing, and the Israelites did not entirely heed that warning. The third generation (including Moses) was prohibited from entering for 40 years because of their stubbornness and lack of faith in God, in addition to constant failure to follow God’s instructions in the wilderness (Numbers 14:20-24, Deut 32:48-52). Meanwhile, the fourth generation, led by Joshua and Caleb, entered Canaan, “the land of milk and honey,” to claim the wealth (Numbers 13:27) of the wicked Canaanites, which had been stored up for them.

In Ezekiel 18:23-28, God states that He doesn’t delight in punishing the wicked and desires them to repent so that He can show them mercy. In contrast, he will forget the good deeds of the righteous if they turn to sin and don’t repent and come back. The Israelites were exiled from the land by foreign empires (Assyria and Babylon) because they failed to keep God’s instructions (Lev 18:28 and Lev 20:22). This is a just punishment since God used them to execute justice against the Canaanites in the same way. Abraham pleads with God to spare the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 18, arguing that if there were at least 10 righteous people in them, God would spare them. However, in Genesis 19 we see that only Lot and his two daughters were considered righteous since Lot rebelled against the rape-hazing ritual that the Sodomites were engaged in, by attempting to rescue the angels. Similarly, in the story of Jonah, the prophet is sent to Nineveh and told to warn them to repent for their sins; and, much to his surprise, they did, and were spared judgment. Jesus references both of these stories in the Gospel when trying to get the Israelites of his time to repent (Matt. 10:11-15, Matt. 11:23-24, and Matt. 12:41).

We can see the wealth transfer in the Gospels laid out in some parables, such as the parable of the three servants in Matthew 25:14-30. In this parable, a wicked servant fails to invest his master’s money and buries it, while the faithful servants invest and multiply the master’s money. The evil servant is fired, and his money is handed over to the highest servant. Luke 19:11-27 has a similar parable of 10 servants that displays the same scenario. Luke’s recorded parable includes some people who hate the master because he was being crowned king over them. The rebels call the master unjust for taking the wicked servant’s one coin and giving it to the righteous servant who had 10 coins, instead of the middle servant who had only 5. The master treated the wicked servant like one of the rebels and had them all executed. Jesus concludes by saying, “…and to those who use well what they are given, even more will be given. But from those who do nothing, even what little they have will be taken away.” This demonstrates that God expects His people to utilize what He gives them for His purposes (Rom 8:28-30), and in doing so, they will store up treasures in heaven (Matt 6:19-21, Luke 12:12-14). Meanwhile, those who don’t live to serve God are in sin and will lose what they have on earth, and it will be given to those who are doing what is right.

With that being said, God’s word makes promises to prosper his people, but we are warned not to let wealth replace God, that would be sinful, and that wealth can be taken away and given to someone else. The Israelites used their reparations from Egypt to make a golden calf and worshipped it right in front of God at Mt. Sinai (Exodus 32). In Luke 12:13-21, Jesus tells the parable of the rich fool in response to a greedy man in the audience asking Jesus to tell his brother to hand over his inheritance. Jesus responds by telling him to watch out for his greed, because life is bigger than what a person owns, and then tells him a parable. In the parable, a wealthy man brags about his wealth and plans on building bigger barns to store up more. God tells the rich man that he will die that night, and no one will inherit his wealth. Jesus concludes the parable by emphasizing the point that we should focus on storing up heavenly treasures rather than earthly ones. 

Jesus said you cannot serve two masters when talking about wealth (mammon) vs God in Matt 6:24. In Matthew 6:19-21 and Luke 12:33-34, he says your treasures are where your heart is and so store up treasures in heaven by loving your neighbor and keeping God’s commands, rather than just earthy treasures which will fade away or can be stolen. Ill-gotten gains are not worth it, and we shouldn’t be so money-hungry that we will sin for it; this is a product of worshipping Mammon. This is the corrupt tax collector Zacchaeus, who promised to give back four times the amount he had taken, along with the original amount, after having dinner with Jesus (Luke 19:1-10).

Lastly, who is “the just”? Romans 1:17, Galatians 3:11, and Hebrews 10:38 all quote Habakkuk 2:4, which says, “Behold, his soul which is lifted is not upright in him: but the just shall live by his faith.” If “the just” are those who live by faith, then what is faith?

Heb 11:1 says, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” In both Luke 12:22-34 and Matt 6:25-29, Jesus points out how God provides food for the birds and clothing for flowers. He continues that we are not to worry about what we eat or wear because God will provide for us since we are worth more than lilies and sparrows. He says these worries dominate the thoughts of unbelievers (the unrighteous), but believers (the righteous) are first to seek the Kingdom of God (Mat 6:31-33, Luke 12:30). Those who are God’s children, which means they have his spirit (John 1:10-13, 1 John 3:9-10, Rom 8:7-17), can expect him to provide for them because they are in covenant. Jesus says in Matt 7:9-11, “If you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him.” All we need to do is enter into a covenant with God, follow His instructions, and trust Him to keep His covenant promises. He will then take care of those who seek Him (the faithful and righteous), even if that means transferring the wealth of rebels.

Psalm 37 repeats a motif that the righteous should trust in the lord and be patient because the wealth of the wicked won’t matter when they are destroyed.

One of many repetitions of this idea throughout the Psalm:
Psalm 37:7 Be still in the presence of the Lord, and wait patiently for him to act. Don’t worry about evil people who prosper or fret about their wicked schemes. 8 Stop being angry! Turn from your rage! Do not lose your temper— it only leads to harm. 9 For the wicked will be destroyed, but those who trust in the Lord will possess the land.

This means we shouldn’t be bitter or jealous of others having more. The purpose of wealth transfer is to place it in the hands of those who are responsible. This is not something God does for just anyone. Bitterness and jealousy will not move God to give us wealth. He provides for our needs because he loves us, and we are worth more than animals; however, giving us wealth is for a purpose greater than ourselves. One last note about this is that the health doesn’t have to change hands. A wicked person with wealth can be saved, which means they receive Jesus and the Holy Spirit, and are in a covenant with God; therefore, they are declared righteous because they have received Jesus. Thus, the wealth was transferred from the wicked to the righteous without changing hands because the person’s heart was changed.