Let's Do The Numbers
Photo by Tyler Easton on Unsplash
As often as I can, I listen to Kai Ryssdal in his NPR program, “Marketplace.” As every listener knows, Ryssdal has a feature every night in which he says, “Let’s do the numbers.” This is the moment when he reviews the market gains and/or losses for the day. Thus I borrow my title from his show. I have been thinking about numbers as a way of telling the story of our common life. That inescapably has led me to consider “living by the numbers” or “telling by numbers” in the Bible.
It has occurred to me that in the Bible the character who most prominently (and most successfully?) lived by numbers is King Solomon. So here are Solomon’s numbers as reported in his narrative, running from the smallest to the larger, to the largest numbers. I am not sure I got them all, but here are enough to see what it was like for Israel’s great king to be remembered via numbers as one who lived by and for the numbers:
120 talents of gold (I Kings 10:10);
200 large shields (10:16);
300 concubines (11:3);
420 talents of gold (9:28);
550 work supervisors (9:23);
600 shekels of gold (10:16);
600 talents of silver as the cost of a chariot (10:29);
666 talents of gold (10:14);
700 princesses (11:3);
1005 songs (4:32);
1400 chariots (10:26);
3000 proverbs (4:32);
3300 work supervisors (5:16);
12,000 horses (10:26);
22,000 oxen sacrificed (8:63);
30,000 forced laborers in Israel (5:13);
70,000 laborers (5:15);
80,000 stonecutters (5:15); and
120,000 sheep sacrificed (8:63).
It is easy enough to see that Solomon lived by the numbers and for the numbers. For good reason he had in his inchoate bureaucracy secretaries (Elihoreph and Ahijah) (sopherim) and a recorder (Jehoshephat) (mazkir) (I Kings 4:3). One could imagine that “cabinet meetings” were largely decisions about numbers concerning income and expenditure, and the implications of these numbers for grand royal plans.
We can identify accent points among these numbers:
1. It was all about money! His regime was funded by a predatory tax system (see 4:7-19, 12:1-19), and by aggressive trade as an arms dealer. Everything was an exhibit of wealth accumulated by the king.
2. It was all about security! Thus we imagine that Solomon’s regime is a forceful forerunner of “the security state” of our own time in which vast resources were invested in security, here in the form of chariots and horses.
3. It was all about the maintenance and control of a huge work force that worked in constructing fortresses and grandiose royal buildings (I Kings 7:1-21). The endless building projects required a great work force, much of it consisting in the enslavement of Solomon’s own Israelite people (Kings 5:13). This in turn required a large company of work supervisors, so that one can conclude that his aggressive labor policies fittingly reprised those of Pharaoh, his father-in-law (see Exodus 5).
4. We may well imagine that Solomon’s exhibit of wealth and his limitless compulsion for acquisition culminated in his collection of women as wives and concubines. Thus his extended harem was an extended exhibit of his wealth and no doubt of his virility as well. The collection of women often turns out to be the ultimate exhibit of power for men who endlessly accumulate and acquire, often ad seriatim.
5. Given Solomon’s urge to self-exhibit, it is not surprising that even his worship of the state God, YHWH, (who was rooted in old tribal traditions that were alien to Solomon) should evoke more of his grandiose energy. Thus in addition to the exhibitionist propensity of his temple, his over-the-top sacrifice of sheep and oxen at the dedication of his temple must have been a powerful (even if bloody!) reminder that his extravagance knew no limit: 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep in a day (I Kings 8:63)! We may judge that he would have had no comprehension of the prophetic assertion of Micah 6:8 concerning justice, kindness, and humility; but he would have reveled in the extravagance of Micah 6:7 concerning “thousands of rams” and “ten thousand rivers of oil.” He likely would not have noticed that the prophetic lines are ironic.
6. Given the endless exhibit of his success, it does not surprise that the king is a prominent “patron of the arts” in his sponsorship of proverbs and songs, perhaps with the maintenance of a guild of “the wise” (his own house intellectuals), along with temple choirs (see I Chronicles 25:1-31). When we consider all six facets of this royal exhibit, we can see that Solomon’s public piety clearly was part of his passion for big numbers. We can conclude, further, that living by the numbers means an incessant quest for “more,” and thus growth, expansion, and predation in every dimension of society were the order of the day. It seems plausible, if not likely, that definition by numbers (big numbers!) must have sapped whatever “human” energy for justice and righteousness that may have been present in the regime. The numbers function for Solomon to ensure his accumulation, acquisition, and predation, a show of his self-sufficient power.
Surely there is some fine irony in the fact that of only two Psalms dedicated to Solomon (the other one is Psalm 127 that speaks of a generative man) is Psalm 72 that speaks as a charter for a just king by whose practice of justice for the poor and needy will sustain a successful domain:
Give the king your justice, O God,
and your righteousness to a king’s son.
May he judge your people with righteousness,
and your poor with justice.
May the mountains yield prosperity for the people,
and the hills, in righteousness.
May he defend the cause of the poor of the people,
give deliverance to the needy,
and crush the oppressor…
May he have dominion from sea to sea,
and from the River to the ends of the earth.
May his foes bow down before him,
and his enemies lick the dust.
May the kings of Tarshish and of the isles render him tribute,
may the kings of Sheba and Seba bring gifts.
May all kings fall down before him,
all nations give him service (Psalm 72:1-4, 8-11).
The narrative of Solomon fully and dramatically contradicts the hopes and promises of the Psalm, suggesting the high social cost of living by the numbers.
With a Solomonic accent on big numbers, I looked to see about big numbers in the New Testament. As far as I know, we get only two big numbers for Jesus, both concerning his miracles of food:
Those who had eaten the loaves numbered five thousand men (Mark 6:44).
Now there were about four thousand people (Mark 8:9).
It is no wonder that he is perplexed that his disciples did not yet understand about the bread:
They said to one another, “It is because we have no bread.” And becoming aware of it, Jesus said to them, “Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes, and fail to see? Do you have ears, and fail to hear? And do you not remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?” They said to him, “Twelve.” “And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?” And they said to him, “Seven.” Then he said to them, “Do you not yet understand?” (Mark 8:16-21).
Likewise in the Book of Acts there are two big numbers:
So those who welcomed his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand persons were added (Acts 2:41).
But many of those who heard the word believed; and they numbered about five thousand (Acts 4:4).
These numbers might have caused Solomon to be envious. A closer look suggests that these numbers in the gospel narrative and in the Book of Acts serve a purpose very different from the numbers of Solomon. Whereas the big numbers for Solomon are self-promotional, the big numbers in the New Testament point away from the agents of them (Jesus, Peter and the other apostles, and then Peter and John) in order to exhibit the generous governance of God. In both of these latter cases the numbers, moreover, attest to the reach of God’s gift, both of bread and of new life outside the reach of the Roman Empire. Thus in both cases the numbers are transformative, restorative, and emancipatory, a wholesale contrast to the numbers of Solomon that brought with them nothing of transformation, restoration, or emancipation.
My impetus for looking into these numbers at all was an engagement with Steven Conn, Nothing Succeeds Like Failure: The Sad History of American Business Schools (2019), and his scathing review of the Harvard Business School and, by implication, Business Schools in general. Conn opines that the Business Schools in fact have no substantive curriculum, and no body of literature or research that matters to the programs. Indeed, he judges that the purpose of the Business School, with much camouflage, is to make money, and to educate students in the arts of acquisitiveness, even when those arts extend to predatory practices. Thus Conn concludes:
For the most part, the institutionalists had made no attempt to hide their political agendas. The neoclassicists who followed them, on the other hand, pretended that they had no policies at all. After all, complex equations have no ideology. By extension, the public policies that flowed from their work, a flow that began in earnest in the 1970s, were packaged as similarly free of ideology. That of course, was and remains utter nonsense. One newspaper had smirked as far back as 1889 that “this science of political economy…is subject to change at the polls on election day by the will of the people,” and that was no less true in 1989. Yet few of these economists acknowledged that scientific “objectivity” might be less straightforward and more problematic than they insisted it was—even as physicists and other scientists were becoming more aware of the contingent nature of their own work. What the neoclassicists sold, then, amounted to morality tales masquerading as mathematics. (110).
While appeal to “differential equations and lots of graphs” yielded the impression of objectivity and intellectual innocence, in fact the ideological tilt of such programs are easy enough to detect, namely, the making of money. Thus Conn sees that the great preoccupation with numbers is not just mathematics, but “morality tales.” It is the morality of a neo-liberal persuasion that justifies making money at the expense of public wellbeing.
Conn goes on to mock the pretense of Business Schools with their scarcely concealed agenda by quoting Philip Delves Broughton:
I write as the carrier of an MBA from the Harvard Business School—once regarded as a ticket to riches, but these days more like the scarlet letters of shame…We MBAs are haunted by the thought that the tag really stands for Mediocre But Arrogant, Mighty Big Attitude, Me Before Anyone and Management by Accident. For today’s purposes, perhaps it should be Monsters of the Business Apocalypse (155).
Readers may remember that a bit ago I wrote that with its new grand building, the Columbia University Business School was seeking a focal point beyond making money in order to render more public good. Clearly in the sober judgment of Conn, the Business Schools have not yet seriously departed from an ideology that justifies the accumulation of generous private wealth. It is not difficult to see that the big numbers in the differential equations and graphs serve a purpose not unlike the big numbers of Solomon that served only his predatory appetite.
We are not surprised to observe that Jesus is the very antithesis of the big numbers of Solomon. Thus in his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus ponders the anxiety of his disciples and the provisions made by the creator that will sustain creaturely life; he declares:
Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these (Matthew 6:27-29).
It turns out that except for the two ‘wonders” of his “wonder bread,” Jesus was quite content with small numbers;
two sons (Luke 15:11);
ten lepers (Luke 17:12);
twelve disciples (Mark 10:41; ten plus two!).
And so the same when the early church could settle for only seven deacons (Acts 6:3).
It is not a surprise that the church, after the manner of Jesus, is committed to the work of transformation, restoration, and emancipation. It is not a surprise that this work cannot be done “wholesale.” The work requires patience, attentiveness, and long-term engagement with those with whom we minister. To be sure, the church is sometimes bewitched by the big numbers of the world, and yearns for more members, more dollars, and more programs. The church sometimes yearns to be “successful” when measured by the numerical fascinations of our society. But we know better! We know better because the Lord of the church has shown us and taught us differently. He exhibited a patient strategy of investing with those disregarded in our numerical world. In this time of the church’s diminished social importance, we may pause to recognize that the church’s measure of faithfulness and effectiveness is very different from that of Solomon or of the Harvard Business School. When seventy disciples returned to Jesus with exuberant excitement over their good work of healing the sick and casting out demons, even they do not cite numbers in their report to Jesus (Luke10:17). Even so, in his response to their exuberance, Jesus cautions his disciples about being overly impressed with the force of their good work. Rather, he invites them to notice “that your names are written in heaven.” That is enough, that they were useful vehicles for the transformative, restorative, emancipatory work of the Spirit. He does not ask them for numbers, but takes notice of their faithfulness.
The contrast of Jesus to the number-crunchers, ancient and contemporary, readily calls to mind the Talmudic saying in which Jesus is rooted:
Save one life and you save the world.
That ancient saying was notably revivified by Oscar Schindler in his rescue work of jeopardized Jews. In fact the saying is often reperformed by those who are not bewitched by numbers, but who yield to the summons to do proper human work. Next time you hear Kai Ryssdal on “Marketplace,” remember that there are extensive spheres of our common life that are not measured by “the numbers.” We might judge that the great either/or in this matter is clear and stark:
accumulation, acquisition, predation
or
transformation, restoration, emancipation.
