Interfering With A Person's Livelihood

With malicious intentionality or some other motivation, interfering with a person's livelihood—when the job itself is not wicked—is a form of mistreatment that strikes at their very ability to survive or have a life of comfort.  The Bible does not say to not obstruct a person from making a living as directly as the wording of "Do not obstruct a person's career unless their profession is immoral."  It does not have to.  What it does say of direct relevance would be found in two passages from the Torah, Exodus 21:18-19 and Deuteronomy 24:6.  The situations covered in each text relate to obligations that are far broader in scope and ramification than just the two exact circumstances mentioned.

Exodus 21:18-19—"'If people quarrel and one person hits another with a stone or with their fist and the victim does not die but is confined to bed, the one who struck the blow will not be held liable if the other can get up and walk around outside with a staff; however, the guilty party must pay the injured person for any loss of time and see that the victim is completely healed.'"

Deuteronomy 24:6—"Do not take a pair of millstones—not even the upper one—as security for a debt, because that would be taking someone's livelihood as security."

The first, Exodus 21:18-19, is a crucial passage about a particular kind of physical assault, a largely separate issue.  Still, restitution for time the victim had lost would include time they would or could have engaged in professional labor to make money for themselves.  The assault and injury, though not of a lethal or permanent nature and thus deserving of neither capital punishment (Exodus 21:12-14, 20-21) nor Lex Talionis (Exodus 21:22-25), deprives them of opportunities that should not have been robbed from them whether or not they were going to earn money.  Again, while not strictly or primarily about depriving someone of work or the resulting monetary means of survival, such a thing is within the literal scope of the passage.

The second passage, Deuteronomy 24:6, says not to take the instrument a person uses to make a living as security for a debt, the example of a millstone being given in the text, precisely because that would hinder their livelihood.  Thus, the Bible does condemn even more blatantly than in Exodus 21:18-19 the interference of one person in another's ability to make money by nonsinful methods.  Not even debts are justification for taking from a person that which they rely on in order to survive without resorting to theft or reliance on the arbitrary generosity of others.  Of course, even if someone was to lose their ability to work, the Bible prescribes a number of safety nets for the poor (Exodus 22:25-27, Leviticus 19:9-10, Deuteronomy 15:1-18, 24:14-15, and so on) so that no man or woman is without a divinely prescribed or permitted means of softening or escaping poverty altogether, with or without regular professional labor.

If killing a man or woman in a rapid act outside of allowances like justice (Exodus 20:13, 21:12-14, 20-21, Deuteronomy 19:11-13, and so on) or even negligently allowing them to be killed by a danger one expected or was warned of (Exodus 21:28-32, Leviticus 19:16, Deuteronomy 22:8) is a capital sin, then it should not be surprising that intentionally interfering with their livelihood so that they can avoid a slow death by starvation is of course a great immorality.  A person's flourishing, as long as it does not come about due to sin, should not be obstructed, as their livelihood is a way to stabilize their flourishing as a being made in God's image and to provide for any dependent family members.  As with so many other things, Biblical prescriptions about restitution for minor assault and not taking millstones as a security for debt address so much more than just these exact scenarios.