"On Mount Sinai, Israel is given the law and called to be a people whose collective life is antithetical to that of any empire. If the empire is a place of slavery and death, then Israel is called to be a people of jubilee, where slaves are released and life renewed. The laws God gives point to such an end: laws regarding care for the foreigner, orphans, widows, and the poor; laws of gleaning; laws forbidding the charging of interest, the keeping of a collateral pledge and the withholding of wages overnight; laws for seeing that one's kin do not fall into slavery; and laws of redemption for slaves and for the land. All of these things are counter to the idealogy of empire, which relegates foreigners, orphans, widows, the poor and slaves to particularly demeaned positions in the midst of an already demeaned humanity. While the empire is preoccupied with images that represent its own power and hegemony, Israel is called to image a counterreality in a countercommunity. While the empire is frantically caught up in the management of production and consumption, Israel is called to a sabbath keeping that acknowledges the gift character of its life in the land. And while the empire is sustained on the backs of slaves and an economics of oppression, a sabbath keeping Israel images its God by caring for the poor, the stranger and the sojourner, the widow and the orphan. The care for the marginalized - those who have no standing ground in the community - is antithetical to the constant striving for power, dominance and hierarch that characterizes the empire. Israel is called to be an alternative socioeconomic witness to the empire."Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmat, Colossians Remixed, p.66 and 67