Land as a divine responsibility

The land is a gift from God

Deuteronomy 26:5–9 NRSV

you shall make this response before the Lord your God: “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.

It is Israel’s inheritance

Deuteronomy 26:1 NRSV

When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it,

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Eleven full tribes share the inheritance

Numbers 26:52–55 NRSV

The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: To these the land shall be apportioned for inheritance according to the number of names. To a large tribe you shall give a large inheritance, and to a small tribe you shall give a small inheritance; every tribe shall be given its inheritance according to its enrollment. But the land shall be apportioned by lot; according to the names of their ancestral tribes they shall inherit.

Inherited land east of Jordan allotted by Moses

Numbers 32:33 NRSV

Moses gave to them—to the Gadites and to the Reubenites and to the half-tribe of Manasseh son of Joseph—the kingdom of King Sihon of the Amorites and the kingdom of King Og of Bashan, the land and its towns, with the territories of the surrounding towns.

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Inherited land west of Jordan allotted by Joshua and others

Numbers 34:17–29 NRSV

These are the names of the men who shall apportion the land to you for inheritance: the priest Eleazar and Joshua son of Nun. You shall take one leader of every tribe to apportion the land for inheritance. These are the names of the men: Of the tribe of Judah, Caleb son of Jephunneh. Of the tribe of the Simeonites, Shemuel son of Ammihud. Of the tribe of Benjamin, Elidad son of Chislon. Of the tribe of the Danites a leader, Bukki son of Jogli. Of the Josephites: of the tribe of the Manassites a leader, Hanniel son of Ephod, and of the tribe of the Ephraimites a leader, Kemuel son of Shiphtan. Of the tribe of the Zebulunites a leader, Eli-zaphan son of Parnach. Of the tribe of the Issacharites a leader, Paltiel son of Azzan. And of the tribe of the Asherites a leader, Ahihud son of Shelomi. Of the tribe of the Naphtalites a leader, Pedahel son of Ammihud. These were the ones whom the Lord commanded to apportion the inheritance for the Israelites in the land of Canaan.

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Levi receives no inheritance of land

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Israelite households to hold their inheritance in perpetuity

Numbers 36:7–9 NRSV

so that no inheritance of the Israelites shall be transferred from one tribe to another; for all Israelites shall retain the inheritance of their ancestral tribes. Every daughter who possesses an inheritance in any tribe of the Israelites shall marry one from the clan of her father’s tribe, so that all Israelites may continue to possess their ancestral inheritance. No inheritance shall be transferred from one tribe to another; for each of the tribes of the Israelites shall retain its own inheritance.’ ”

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The land remains under divine ownership

Leviticus 25:23 NRSV

The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; with me you are but aliens and tenants.

Responsibility to God for the land

Matthew 21:33–46 NRSV

“Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other slaves, more than the first; and they treated them in the same way. Finally he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.’ So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.” Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the scriptures: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes’? Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.” When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.

The tithe

The tithe of the land’s produce given to the Lord, is a kind of rent, a way of acknowledging his ownership.

Harvest festivals

Exodus 23:16 NRSV

You shall observe the festival of harvest, of the first fruits of your labor, of what you sow in the field. You shall observe the festival of ingathering at the end of the year, when you gather in from the field the fruit of your labor.

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Sabbath rest

Leviticus 25:1–7 NRSV

The Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying: Speak to the people of Israel and say to them: When you enter the land that I am giving you, the land shall observe a sabbath for the Lord. Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard, and gather in their yield; but in the seventh year there shall be a sabbath of complete rest for the land, a sabbath for the Lord: you shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. You shall not reap the aftergrowth of your harvest or gather the grapes of your unpruned vine: it shall be a year of complete rest for the land. You may eat what the land yields during its sabbath—you, your male and female slaves, your hired and your bound laborers who live with you; for your livestock also, and for the wild animals in your land all its yield shall be for food.

The Year of Jubilee

Leviticus 25:8–13 NRSV

You shall count off seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that the period of seven weeks of years gives forty-nine years. Then you shall have the trumpet sounded loud; on the tenth day of the seventh month—on the day of atonement—you shall have the trumpet sounded throughout all your land. And you shall hallow the fiftieth year and you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you: you shall return, every one of you, to your property and every one of you to your family. That fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you: you shall not sow, or reap the aftergrowth, or harvest the unpruned vines. For it is a jubilee; it shall be holy to you: you shall eat only what the field itself produces. In this year of jubilee you shall return, every one of you, to your property.

Responsibility to fellow Israelites in the land

Individual property rights to be respected

Deuteronomy 19:14 NRSV

You must not move your neighbor’s boundary marker, set up by former generations, on the property that will be allotted to you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you to possess.

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Violation of these rights severely condemned

Isaiah 5:8 NRSV

Ah, you who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is room for no one but you, and you are left to live alone in the midst of the land!

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Responsibility to the poor in the land

The fallow (sabbath) year

Exodus 23:10–11 NRSV

For six years you shall sow your land and gather in its yield; but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, so that the poor of your people may eat; and what they leave the wild animals may eat. You shall do the same with your vineyard, and with your olive orchard.

See also ; Debts probably include the labour of a debtor’s dependants, working to pay off his debt.

The Year of Jubilee

Leviticus 25:8–13 NRSV

You shall count off seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that the period of seven weeks of years gives forty-nine years. Then you shall have the trumpet sounded loud; on the tenth day of the seventh month—on the day of atonement—you shall have the trumpet sounded throughout all your land. And you shall hallow the fiftieth year and you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you: you shall return, every one of you, to your property and every one of you to your family. That fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you: you shall not sow, or reap the aftergrowth, or harvest the unpruned vines. For it is a jubilee; it shall be holy to you: you shall eat only what the field itself produces. In this year of jubilee you shall return, every one of you, to your property.

Harvesting conventions

Leviticus 19:9–10 NRSV

When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the Lord your God.

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The land reflects God’s blessing and curse

Blessing

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Curse

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