A Collection of Biblical Passages on Wealth and Poverty

For many people, it can be surprising to learn how very much the Bible talks about matters of wealth and poverty. Many of our churches simply don't talk about this topic much (and unfortunately, often when they do, they do so poorly). But, just to give you an idea, in the NIV, the Bible mentions...

"money" 114 times
"wealth" 124 times
"poor" 178 times
"poverty" 20 times
"greed/greedy" 25 times

By way of comparison, the Bible mentions...

"sexual" 54 times
"sexually" 8 times
"adultery" 46 times
"prostitute" 74 times
"lust" 31 times

Now, of course, simple numeric comparisons like this are not the be all/end all of Bible study, but still, it is abundantly clear that matters of how we live and spend our money are a MUCH talked about topic in the Bible. And so, I am in the process of compiling a fairly exhaustive list of these passages.

I am entirely sure that someone has done this before and done a better job of it. For instance, I know that there are entire books written on the topic of what the Bible has to say about wealth, poverty and how to live in a material world. I'm a fan of Ched Myers' little booklet, The Biblical Vision of Sabbath Economics, for instance.

Unfortunately, I have been unable to locate one source on the interwebs that has an exhaustive listing all in one place of all the Biblical passages that deal with wealth, poverty and economic justice issues. This is what I'm attempting to do here.

These posts all originated over at my paynehollow blog and many of them have comments. I've created this blog just to have one page to go to that just lists these passages. It is not an ENTIRELY exhaustive listing, since the topic is vague and broad enough to encompass a lot. But I hope it will give a fairly good listing. Feel free to make suggestions.

The Bible and Economics

A Collection of Biblical Passages on Wealth and Poverty