Leviticus 25:2-55 Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them, When you come into the land which I give you… All men ultimately get their living out of the soil. There never will be a process by which the original elements that enter into food will be manufactured into food. We may fly in the air, or travel around the earth with the sun; but we shall never take the unorganised substances that form grass and grain and the flesh of animals, and directly convert them into food; they must first be organised into vital forms. Hence, questions pertaining to land are the most imperative that come before men. To get man rightly related to the soil, in such a way that he shall most easily get his food from it, this is the underlying question of all history, its keynote and largest achievement. The chief struggles in all ages and nations have turned upon this relation. There are two forces at work in the matter, both proceeding out of what seems almost an instinct for ownership of the soil. The earth is our mother, and she woos us perpetually to herself. To own some spot of land, and be able to say, "This is mine," is one of the sweetest of personal feelings; it declares our kinship with this natural world that nurses our life and upholds our feet. These two forces that draw men to the soil are, first, a natural, almost instinctive sense of keeping close to the source of life, as a wise general does not allow himself to be separated from his supplies. The other force is the pride and greed and love of power of the strong. Here is a triple-woven force out of which has sprung by far the greater part of the injustice and oppression that have afflicted the race. The possession of the soil is the surest exponent and standing-ground of worldly force. Everything else may fail: the hearts of men, coined treasures, ships and houses, bonds and promises to pay, but so long as society keeps a man in the possession of land he is so far forth strong; he has a place to stand in, the fortifications built by nature, and the arms and defences that spring perpetually out of the earth; he realises the fable of Antaeus. The remarkable feature of the Jewish Commonwealth is its anticipatory legislation against probable, and otherwise certain abuses. The struggles of other nations, and the skill of statesmanship, have been to correct abuses; in the Jewish Commonwealth they were foreseen and provided against. There are no words to express the wonder felt by the student of social science as he first measures the significance of that feature of the Jewish state known as the year of jubilee. It is little understood, hidden away in an uninteresting book, stated in ancient and blind phraseology, a thing of long past ages, nevertheless it remains the most exalted piece of statesmanship the world has known — an example of social sagacity, and broad, far-reaching wisdom, such as we look for in vain in the annals of any other nation. It settled at the outset the problem that no other people ever solved except through ages of struggle and revolution. The Hebrew nation existed under the consciousness of a covenant with Jehovah. It would be petty criticism that pried into the origin of this belief, moved by contempt at the seeming presumption of this little nation of fugitive slaves — petty and narrow indeed! It were wiser and more scientific to regard every nation as under covenant with God, if it but had the wisdom to know it. That this nation discerned the eternal fact, and wrought it into the foundations of their State, only shows its insight into the nature of the State, and its receptivity of inspired truth. It does not lessen the wisdom of this legislation that it probably did not meet the exigencies of the later development of the nation, nor even that its details may have become a hindrance in the more complex state of society that followed the captivity when it probably ceased to be enforced. Its wisdom is to be found in its previsionary features, in its reversal of ordinary history, that is, it planted the nation on equal rights at the outset instead of leaving them to be achieved by struggle, and in its assertion of the general principle that it is wise to keep the body of the people as near the source of their subsistence as possible. It was not given up until it had educated and grounded the nation in those conceptions of practical righteousness that are found in the pages of the prophets, through whom they have become the inspiration of the world. Its design and effect are evident. It was a bar to monopoly of the land. All greed and pride in this direction were limited. One might add field to field for a series of years, but after a time the process ceased and the lands went back to their original owners. The purpose was to make such a habit unprofitable, to keep the resources of society evenly distributed, to prevent the rich from becoming too rich and the poor hopelessly poor, to undo misfortune, to give those who had erred through sloth or improvidence an opportunity to improve the lessons of poverty, to prevent children from reaping the faults of their parents; one generation might squander its portion but the next was not forced to inherit the consequences. Though a political measure, it is informed with spiritual significance. It is throughout instinct with mercy. It taught humanity. It rebuked and repressed the great sins. It was in keeping with the underlying fact of the national history which was deliverance, and, as well, with the central idea of the world, which is redemption, redemption from evil however caused and of whatever kind. It was an assertion of perpetual hope, hope which, though long delayed, comes at last to all, and every man returns to the possessions his Creator gave him. It was in its profoundest meaning a prophecy wrought into the practical economy of a nation. It shadows forth the recovery from evil, the undoing of all burdens that weigh down humanity, the eternal inheritance awaiting God's children when his cycle is complete. This ancient piece of statesmanship is full of pointed lessons for these modern times. It cannot be reproduced in form, but it still teaches the ever necessary lesson, float nations and corporations and individuals are always forgetting, that the world belongs to all men by the gift of God. It teaches the wisdom of showing mercy to the poor and unfortunate, and the unwisdom of permitting endless monopolies and limitless increase of wealth. It is the business of the State to see that these things are restricted, as both right and safe, as necessary for the rich as for the poor. The methods employed may sometimes seem to lack in technical justice, but there is a righteousness that lies back of formal justice. As the world goes, the forms of justice are apt to become the instruments of oppression in the hands of the avaricious, the proud, and the strong. These three always lie in wait to oppress the poor, the humble, and the weak; and their choicest instruments are those legal forms and institutions that are necessary to society. But they have their limits by a law which is above all such laws and formal institutions. When wealth oppresses the poor, or keeps them at the mere living point, when monopolies tax the people, whenever a few own the soil, however legal the form of possession, when there is any process going on by which the rich are growing richer and the poor poorer, there is a Divine justice above all formal justice, that steps in and declares that such processes must stop. (T. T. Munger.) Parallel Verses KJV: Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye come into the land which I give you, then shall the land keep a sabbath unto the LORD. |
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