Bible Study on Investing

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The Bible says to diversify your crops so that if one crop fails another will produce. 

Solomon in the Bible says cast your bread on the waters, and it will come back to you in greater quantities:

Ecclesiastes 11:1 - 2:

Cast your bread upon the waters,
For you will find it after many days.
Give a serving to seven, and also to eight,
For you do not know what evil will be on the earth.

Mark Twain, ever the sarcastic one, responded and unwisely turned it around:

"Behold, the fool saith, 'Put not all thine eggs in the one basket' which is but a manner of saying, 'Scatter your money and your attention,' but the wise man saith, 'Put all your eggs in the one basket and... watch that basket.'" (2010 Article.)

Diversification is actually wiser, recognized even without reliance on the Bible. Ben Graham wrote in The Intelligent Investor:

For most investors, diversification is the simplest and cheapest way to widen your margin of safety

The Bible also shows examples of leaving a land if you foresee a famine (crop failure) and you will have in the end protected your lands. This is in 2 Kings 8. A widow received all her land back after following Elisha's commands to leave for 7 years to avoid a famine.

Paper Money: Goethe Says The Work of the Devil

A play was written two centuries ago called "Faust" by a famous German poet named Goethe. In his play, there is a scene where the Emperor, who sold his soul to the Devil, Mephistopheles, is lacking money and asks the Devil to create it. The Devil accepts this task and a prototype note is created and multiplied a thousand times by magicians overnight. The Chancellor then gives the Emperor the note that has turned an ill into a good.

It is equally wise not to rely upon paper monetary systems or non metallic forms of money. We need to diversify away from paper currency. This lesson is implicit in the story of Joseph who set aside grain so that when the money failed - the wood coins of Egypt, and Egypt could not buy grain abroad with such funny-money during a famine, Joseph still had grain  resources upon which he saved the people of Egypt and his own family. Gold or silver would also presumably be useable to barter for food in such a crisis, but Egypt did not lay any aside, it appears.