With the return of self-described socialists to the American political scene, some have taken to reaching for Scripture to justify their political preferences. Scott Shay, while rejecting their readings of the Bible, explains that its prescriptions can’t easily be pigeonholed into modern categories:

The Bible . . . favors partial economic redistribution and legal regulations on the economy. . . . Unlike any other sacred text of its time, the Bible commands Israelites, who were overwhelmingly farmers, to set aside part of their harvest to be gathered by the poor, and to pay compulsory taxes, which were then redistributed to support the less fortunate. If a farmer did not follow these biblical laws, his crops were not kosher for buying or eating.

Further, the Bible required that farmers leave their land fallow every seventh year and allow anyone to harvest from it. [It also] required the release in the sabbatical year of Jews who had sold themselves into slavery to pay debts. But in a most astonishing directive to prohibit income inequality, the Bible instituted the return of all purchased properties to their original families every 50th year (the jubilee), so that everyone would have a more or less equal share. This provision applied to the king as well.

However, . . . the Bible [simultaneously] advocates a free market. The jubilee was not only a law of economic redistribution. It is more fundamentally a law against monopoly. Indeed, the jubilee ensured that Israelites would remain independent farmers, privately owning the means of production. Within this framework, farmers, like the patriarchs [of Genesis], took business initiatives, entered into contracts, and had no qualms about making money. In some cases, for example, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and some talmudic rabbis accumulated [considerable] wealth.

Perhaps most importantly, writes Shay, the Bible cautions that government leaders

are always susceptible of corruption, as recent socialist economies, such as Venezuela’s, have tragically shown. Even the wise King Solomon became corrupted by too much wealth and power. And sadly, today’s leaders are no King Solomons.

This week, there have been numerous unconfirmed reports about the fate of Esmail Qaani, who is the head of the Quds Force, the expeditionary arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Benny Avni writes:

On Thursday, Sky News Arabic reported that Mr. Qaani was rushed to a hospital after suffering a heart attack. He became [the Quds Force] commander in 2020, after an American drone strike killed his predecessor, Qassem Suleimani. The unit oversees the Islamic Republic’s various Mideast proxies, as well as the exporting of the Iranian revolution to the region and beyond.

The Sky News report attempts to put to rest earlier claims that Mr. Qaani was killed at Beirut. It follows several reports asserting he has been arrested and interrogated at Tehran over suspicion that he, or a top lieutenant, leaked information to Israel. Five days ago, the Arabic-language al-Arabiya network reported that Mr. Qaani “is under surveillance and isolation, following the Israeli assassinations of prominent Iranian leaders.”

Iranians are desperately scrambling to plug possible leaks that gave Israel precise intelligence to conduct pinpoint strikes against Hizballah commanders. . . . “I find it hard to believe that Qaani was compromised,” an Iran watcher at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, Beni Sabti, tells the Sun. Perhaps one or more of [Qaani’s] top aides have been recruited by Israel, he says, adding that “psychological warfare” could well be stoking the rumor mill.

If so, prominent Iranians seem to be exacerbating the internal turmoil by alleging that the country’s security apparatus has been infiltrated.