freedom means “from debt”

Ancient peoples found it necessary to forgive debts periodically, to prevent society from being torn apart.

As David Graeber writes in Debt: The First 5,000 Years:

“Mesopotamian  city-states were dominated by vast Temples: gigantic, complex  industrial institutions often staffed by thousands – including everyone  from shepherds and barge-pullers to spinners and weavers to dancing  girls and clerical administrators, [and these Temples owned many of the  assets of the city-state]. …

We don’t know precisely when and  how interest-bearing loans originated, since they appear to predate  writing. Most likely, Temple administrators invented the idea as a way  of financing the caravan trade. This trade was crucial because while the  river valley of ancient Mesopotamia was extraordinarily fertile and  produced huge surpluses of grain and other foodstuffs, and supported  enormous numbers of livestock, which in turn supported a vast wool and  leather industry, it was almost completely lacking in anything else.  Stone, wood, metal, even the silver used as money, all had to be  imported. From quite early times, then, Temple administrators developed  the habit of advancing goods to local merchants – some of them private,  others themselves Temple functionaries – who would then go off and sell  it overseas. Interest was just a way for the Temples to take their share  of the resulting profits.

However, once established, the  principle seems to have quickly spread. Before long, we find not only  commercial loans, but also consumer loans – usury in the classical sense  of the term. By C2400 BC it already appears to have been common  practice on the part of local officials, or wealthy merchants, to  advance loans to peasants who were in financial trouble on collateral  and begin to appropriate their possessions if they were unable to pay.  It usually started with grain, sheep, goats, and furniture, then moved  on to fields and houses, or, alternately or ultimately, family members.  Servants, if any, went quickly, followed by children, wives, and in some  extreme occasions, even the borrower himself. These would be reduced to  debt-peons: not quite slaves, but very close to that, forced into  perpetual service in the lender’s household – or, sometimes, in the  Temples or Palaces themselves. In theory, of course, any of them could  be redeemed whenever the borrower repaid the money, but for obvious  reasons, the more a peasant’s resources were stripped away from him, the  harder that became.

The effects were such that they often  threatened to rip society apart. If for any reason there was a bad  harvest, large proportions of the peasantry would fall into debt  peonage; families would be broken up. Before long, lands lay abandoned  as indebted farmers fled their homes for fear of repossession and joined  semi-nomadic bands on the desert fringes of urban civilization. Faced  with the potential for complete social breakdown, Sumerian and later  Babylonian kings periodically announced general amnesties: ‘clean  slates,’ as economic historian Michael Hudson refers to them. Such  decrees would typically declare all outstanding consumer debt null and  void (commercial debts were not affected), return all land to its  original owners, and allow all debt-peons to return to their families.  Before long, it became more or less a regular habit for kings to make  such a declaration on first assuming power, and many were forced to  repeat it periodically over the course of their reigns.

In Sumeria, these were called ‘declarations of freedom.’ – and it is significant that the Sumerian word amargi,  the first recorded word for ‘freedom’ in any known human language,  literally means ‘return to mother’ – since this is what freed debt-peons  were finally allowed to do. …

Nehemiah was a Jew born in  Babylon, a former cup-bearer to the Persian emperor. In 444 BC, he  managed to talk the Great King into appointing him governor of his  native Judaea. He also received permission to rebuild the Temple in  Jerusalem that had been destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar more than two  centuries earlier. In the course of rebuilding, sacred texts were  recovered and restored; in a sense, this was the moment of the creation  of what we now consider Judaism.

The problem was that Nehemiah  quickly found himself confronted with a social crisis. All around him,  impoverished peasants were unable to pay their taxes; creditors were  carrying off the children of the poor. His first response was to issue a  classic Babylonian- style ‘clean slate’ edict – having himself been  born in Babylon, he was clearly familiar with the general principle. All  non-commercial debts were to be forgiven. Maximum interest rates were  set. At the same time, though, Nehemiah managed to locate, revise, and  reissue much older Jewish laws, now preserved in Exodus, Deuteronomy,  and Leviticus, which in certain ways went even further, by  institutionalizing the principle. The most famous of these is the Law of  Jubilee: a law that stipulated that all debts would be automatically  cancelled ‘in the Sabbath year’ (that is, after seven years had passed),  and that all who languished in bondage owing to such debts would be  released.

‘Freedom,’ in the Bible, as in Mesopotamia, came to refer above all to release from the effects of debt.”

(thanks to Delancey Place for the excerpt)