עמוס, פרק ח׳, פסוק ו׳

Greed often drives those in power to exploit the most vulnerable members of society, turning human lives into mere commodities. In ancient marketplaces, wealthy merchants orchestrated calculated schemes of economic manipulation, pushing the lower classes into total subjugation. Through deceit and theft, these merchants drained the poor of their resources and starved them. Driven by desperate hunger and extreme distress, the impoverished were forced to sell off their fields and vineyards. Once all their property was gone, they had no choice but to sell their own bodies into slavery just to secure food [אבן עזרא, מצודת דוד, רד״ק, מלבי״ם]. Ultimately, the wealthy purchased the poor themselves as slaves [מצודת דוד, מלבי״ם, רד״ק, ביאור שטיינזלץ].

This cruelty escalated even further when dealing with the destitute, individuals whose financial ruin was deeper than that of the ordinary poor [מלבי״ם]. The merchants acquired these broken individuals for a shockingly trivial amount, a sum as insignificant as the cost of a simple pair of shoes [אבן עזרא, מצודת דוד, מלבי״ם, רד״ק, ביאור שטיינזלץ]. Alternatively, this concept of shoes reflects the insatiable desire of the wealthy to step in and completely take over whatever meager assets the poor left behind [רש״י, רד״ק].

The ruthlessness of these merchants extended into the very food they sold. When sifting wheat, the chaff and useless debris naturally fall through the sieve [רש״י, אבן עזרא, רד״ק, ביאור שטיינזלץ]. Rather than offering clean grain, the merchants deliberately mixed this waste back into the wheat, forcing the poor to purchase the contaminated mixture [מצודת דוד]. In times of famine and soaring prices, the situation grew even worse. The merchants took this refuse, which under normal conditions was considered unfit for human consumption and only fed to birds, and sold it to the poor at unreasonably high prices. Crushed by starvation and the desperate need to survive, the poor had no choice but to buy it [רש״י, רד״ק, מלבי״ם].