Division of Labour

"The greatest improvements in the productive powers of labour, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgment, with which it is anywhere directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour... As it is the power of exchanging that gives occasion to the division of labour, so the extent of this division must always be limited by the extent of that market."

Wealth of Nations

This made me think of the tower of Babel:

"The whole earth was of one language and of one speech. It happened, as they traveled east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they lived there. They said, "Come, let's build us a city, and a tower, whose top reaches to the sky, and let's make us a name; lest we be scattered abroad on the surface of the whole earth." Yahweh came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men built. Yahweh said, "Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is what they begin to do. Now nothing will be withheld from them, which they intend to do. Come, let's go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.""

Genesis

There they had a great market and so supposedly a great division of labour and so there was really nothing, in material terms, they could not do. God didn't like it, because what they did was bad, but still we should, I believe, understand the principle of division of labour, and to turn all possible productive powers to good. Thus doing we could probably be a little more in cunning like the cunning snakes.

About Dishonest Scales

"The use of metals in the rude state was attended with two very considerable inconveniences; first, with the trouble of weighing, and secondly, with that of assaying them. In the precious metals, where a small difference in the quantity makes a great difference in the value, even the business of weighing, with proper exactness, requires at least very accurate weights and scales. The weighing of gold, in particular, is an operation of some nicety."

Wealth of Nations

This passage reminded me of the Old Testament prophets admonitions of using wrong weigths and scales. It must have been a real problem:

"Shall I be pure with dishonest scales, And with a bag of deceitful weights?"

Micah 6:11

Now there are many different ways of fraud, but certainly by understanding that the weigths and scales at the bottom speak of the same question of fraud we can bring the old prophets to bear on our present difficulties:

"The opportunities for knavery are certainly more numerous than they were."

Principles of Economics

So, let us remember:

"Just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin, shall you have. I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt."

Leviticus 19:36

"You shall not have in your bag diverse weights, a great and a small."

Deuteronomy 25:13

"A false balance is an abomination to Yahweh, But accurate weights are his delight."

Ecclesiastes 11:1

"Honest balances and scales are Yahweh's; All the weights in the bag are his work."

Ecclesiastes 16:11

"Differing weights and differing measures, Both of them alike are an abomination to Yahweh."

Ecclesiastes 20:10

"Yahweh detests differing weights, And dishonest scales are not pleasing."

Ecclesiastes 20:23

The Antiquity of the Book of Job

I found this interesting passage in the classic of economics, The Wealth of Nations:

"In the rude ages of society, cattle are said to have been the common instrument of commerce; and, though they must have been a most inconvenient one, yet, in old times, we find things were frequently valued according to the number of cattle which had been given in exchange for them. The armour of Diomede, says Homer, cost only nine oxen; but that of Glaucus cost a hundred oxen. "

This made me think of the fact that the wealth of Job is expressed in animals, a detail that I have considered rather strange up to now, since I have thought that the Book of Job is not so old and because Abraham already used money to buy the place in Makpelah:

"My lord, listen to me. What is a piece of land worth four hundred shekels of silver between me and you? Therefore bury your dead."

Ephron to Abraham

But it seems that the Book of Job is indeed very old:

"His possessions also were seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred she-donkeys, and a very great household; so that this man was the greatest of all the children of the east."

From the Book of Job