Is poverty a human consequence or from above?

Question

How to understand Deuteronomy 15:11. Is it a statement of human relationships and conventions or a spiritual statement? If it is the second, it raises a very thorny question, it kind of creates or allows poverty for charity to be manifested, I observe many atheists quoting this text and its objective as God creating difficulty to sell ease. How are we to understand the core of this text and its implications? Otherwise, we have to explain why there will always have to be poor people on earth, what prevents them from not having them?

Answer 1

Both, You can be destined for wealth though if you don't act on it, you wont get it, and and vis a vis, You can be destined for poverty and if you act to prevent it, it wont mean you will prevent it.

The Gemara in Shabbat 156b says that a person's destiny in Wealth, whom they will marry, their intellect, and when they pass on, will be decided by Hashem, nothing can change that unless you learn a lot of tora, and elevate yourself above the mazal.

Now I have to find the actual source that mentions that Hashem can't help idiots, As much as a joke that may seem, there's an actual statement within all seriousness.

Hope That Helps.

Answer 2

Chizkuni, Deuteronomy 15:11:1 [...] We have the word כי meaning “so that not,” in כי לא יחדל אביון “if perchance your actions were not sufficient to prevent the existence of destitute people among you.”

Ramban on Deuteronomy 15:11:1

Commentators have said that the meaning thereof is that the poor shall never cease out of the Land at any of all times, for there will always be poor in the Land, for it was apparent before Him that they will not do [to make possible] what he said to them, But there shall be no needy among you,303 if only thou diligently hearken unto the voice of the Eternal thy G-d to observe to do all this commandment.304 But it is not correct in my opinion, for the Torah may allude to what will be but it would not explicitly prophesy about them [the Israelites] that they will not fulfill the Torah, nor would he have commanded them [to observe the commandments while foretelling] that they would always transgress them. Forbid it! It is only by way of warning that he mentions [their transgressions]. The correct interpretation is that he says that it is impossible for the poor to cease so that none should ever exist. He [Moses] mentioned this because, having assured them that there would be no needy if they observe all the commandments he said: “But I know that not all generations forever will observe all the commandments in which case there would be no need to charge you concerning the poor, for perhaps, at some time, there will exist poor and so I command you about him if he will be found.”

Tur HaArokh, Deuteronomy 15:11:1

כי לא יחדל אביון מקרב הארץ, “for destitute people will not cease to exist within the land.” Nachmanides writes that some commentators (notably Ibn Ezra, whom he does not name in this context) write that Moses means that there never will be a time when no one is destitute in the land of Israel, seeing that Moses in his prophetic vision foresaw that the Jewish people would never observe Torah law in their entirety, without exception, so that the presence of a destitute person would be unimaginable. The law not to dun creditors at the end of the seventh year of the shemittah cycle therefore envisages such situations. Nachmanides finds this approach difficult, as it is not the custom of the Torah to engage in the kind of prophesy that accuses the Jewish people ahead of time of disloyalty to G’d without qualifying such a prophesy with a conditional phrase such as “if in the course of time, etc.” introducing such a prophecy. It is uncharacteristic for the Torah to legislate one of the basic commandments as something to be applicable to people who have been labeled beforehand by the Torah as deliberate sinners. He therefore prefers to explain our verse as follows: seeing that in spite of the blessings that accrue to you when you do observe the laws of the Torah, and the resultant affluence in the land it is practically impossible that sometime in the future there will be not be an instance of a destitute person, unable to repay his loan on time, one must not dun such a fellow Jew at the end of the shemittah year to repay his loan, but must forgive it.