Fallen Into Knowledge

Leviticus is unrelenting. There are a total of five sentences of narrative in the book (24:10-12, 23), the rest is entirely taken up in laws. Dr. Sailhamer once mentioned that he thought that the experience reading the laws reflects the oppression of living under them.

I was struck again by how concerned God is that the land itself enjoy a sabbath rest - in chapter 26, amidst a list of curses that God will bring upon an unrepentant Israel, and after Israel is driven from the land, it reads,

Then the land shall enjoy its sabbath years as long as it lies desolate, while you are in the land of your enemies; then the land shall rest, and enjoy its sabbath years. As long as it lies desolate, it shall have the rest it did not have on your sabbaths when you were living on it. (vs.34-35)

God’s concern - and ownership - of the land has far reaching implications for the economic life of Isreal. The Year of Jubilee, in which the land is re-distributed and returned to its ancestral hands, and in which slaves are freed, is a ground rule of Israel’s economy - the land itself is never really sold, but “it is a certain number of harvests that are being sold.” (25:16) Finally, God comments,

The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine: with me you are but aliens and tenants. Throughout the land that you hold you shall provide for the redemption of the land. (25:23-24)

The sabbaths - the days, the sabbath years, and the year of jubilee - are connected to God’s concern for justice and his concern for the poor: these institutions are economic as much as they are religious.

Although I do not want to be understood as arguing for the institution of these on a national scale - America might very well respond with Pharaoh, “Who is the Lord that I should heed him?” - I wonder how often America has co-opted the church’s responsibility to “march to a different economic drummer.” We have, to an uncomfortable degree, believed in the inherent “goodness” - almost religiously - of the “free market.” And yet Leviticus stands in opposition to such belief.

The Christian church, which is called “the Kingdom of God” and called to order its life after God’s agenda, has also to look after God’s economics.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 23rd, 2007 at 9:17 pm and is filed under Ecology, Economics, Lent. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.