BiAS 7 – The Bible and Politics in Africa
the fatherless and widows against those who would neglect and exploit
them.”
A society based on the teaching of righteousness is therefore a just soci-
ety. “The conceptualisation of what organised society should be was built
upon the transmitted values of wisdom which include religious, com-
munal, parental, judicial and individual ethical values” (Nel 2000:322).
Nel further demonstrates that righteousness, and with it a sense of jus-
tice, must be part of a person’s values, and not the position a person
takes because of the law. He writes: “Law without wisdom has often in
human history become the tool of oppression. Righteousness becomes
the slave of ideology” (Ibid.:326). This tuition that brings an inbred sense
of justice was not done at schools in biblical times; it was done by the
father and the mother, as noted by Finsterbusch (2004) and De Vaux
(1973). Even in the time of Jesus the daughter’s education was still done
by the mother. By then boys enjoyed an education at the synagogue until
they were 13 and considered men (Alexander & Alexander 1973:94).
The tuition of children on religious matters was, however, not exclu-
sively in the hands of the parents. Children were part of the people, of
the covenant assembly, and took part in the festivals. They were part of
the assembly gathered before the Lord (see Finsterbusch 2004:73-76). It
is logical that they learned matters concerned with religion and about
what the law of God required from an early age. Neumann-Gorsolke
(2004:179-187) understands Psalm 8:2 as the result of such teaching:
children and infants praising the Lord makes the enemy realize what
power the word of the Lord has, and therefore it is evident what the
teaching to children meant in the survival of the nation of Israel.
Jones (1987:27) says that for Jesus “ethics are an element in one’s whole
response to the revelation given by God of his will for human life”, and
refers to the passage in Hosea 6:6 where the prophet gives God’s words
to the nation: “I desire mercy and not sacrifice.” This particular theme is
one that echoes through the whole of the Old Testament. There is a
development away from the importance of sacrifices towards the impor-
tance of a “theology of the heart”. When Jerusalem and the land of Israel
are taken away from the nation of Israel by Babylon, the cry at the end of
the Book of Lamentations is clear: “Restore us to yourself, O Lord, that
we may return.” There is no doubt that this means a theology of hope
(compare Renkema 1988 and 1993) deeply grounded in a theology of the
heart (Compare Hunter 1995). In several verses Lamentations demon-