Category: Behar

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Parsha Behar – Apostolic Readings, Links, and Videos

New Testament passages to study with Torah portion Behar (Leviticus 25:1-26:2), plus links to commentary and videos.

Reading

  • Leviticus 25:1-38
    • Matthew 6:19-34
    • Luke 4:16-41
    • Ephesians 1:11-14
  • Leviticus 25:39-26:2
    • John 13:12-20
    • Romans 3:21-31
    • Ephesians 6:5-9
    • Colossians 3:1-17

Additional Reading

Videos Related to Parsha Behar

  • Everyone Serves Multiple Masters – Everyone serves multiple masters all the time, so what did Yeshua mean when he said “No one can serve two masters” in Matthew 6:24? Yeshua frequently used hyperbole in his teachings and this is a good example. He was using an exaggerated statement to teach this principle: When there’s a conflict in the instructions of two masters, what determines who you will obey? Is it money, security, prestige, etc.? Or is it God, the ultimate arbiter of all right and wrong?
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Genocide, Slavery, and the Heart of Man

Jennifer H. Lau's autobiography of her childhood during the Cambodian Genocide, Beautiful Hero: How We Survived the Khmer Rouge
You can buy Beautiful Hero at Amazon.

Everyone knows about the Holocaust, in which many millions of Jews, Romani, Slavs, and other “undesirables” were systematically exterminated by the Nazis during World War 2, but that was neither the first nor the last atrocity of its kind.

In 1975 the Khmer Rouge, a communist revolutionary group under the leadership of Pol Pot, took control of Cambodia. They executed the wealthy, professional, educated, and foreign people, and enslaved many millions of the poor and working classes. For around five years, they terrorized, murdered, and starved their own people.

As with all genocides, the numbers will never be known with any certainty, but the Khmer Rouge probably killed around two million people.

I recently read Jennifer H. Lau’s autobiography of her childhood during that terrible time, Beautiful Hero: How We Survived the Khmer Rouge. Throughout this detailed and intimate story of her family’s survival under extraordinarily harsh conditions, I was constantly struck with how vicious ordinary people can be and how kindness often comes from unlikely sources.

Impoverished subsistence farmers became benefactors. Next door neighbors became executioners. Protectors became thieves. Arch enemies became saviors.

People are fickle and desperation drives reasonable people to horrific behavior. No nation or race is exempt. Every people has been guilty at one time or another, and the same stories emerge from every genocide.

We have lived in such amazing peace and prosperity in America for so long that it’s easy to forget it isn’t normal. We have lulled ourselves to sleep and to dream that we are immune to the ubiquitous human tendency to force our will on others, to use people like just another resource to be consumed and discarded as needed.

Even as America prospered throughout most of the 20th century, the rest of the world reeled from genocide after genocide. The Khmer Roughe in Cambodia, the Nazis in World War 2, the Soviets in numerous times and places, the Ottoman Empire against the Armenians and Greeks, and so many others. There were genocides in every other century too, of course; modern technology just made us so much more efficient at it.

However, no matter which century, no matter which group of people are killing which other group, every genocide has this one inevitable fact in common: The belief that some people have absolute authority over others. The people exist for the benefit of the state or the party or the king, and the superior has the right to force the inferior to work, to relocate, to contribute, to live, or to die.

Although some forms of government (communism, for example) are founded on the belief that one person or group of people can have unlimited authority over other people, every form of government can be infected by this disease. It starts small: one person prospers, while another person suffers, so a third decides to take from the first in order to feed the second. It’s only fair. But once you have decided that you have a right to redistribute property based solely on your own (or the majority’s!) determination of what is fair or necessary, the only remaining moral barrier to redistributing life itself is entirely imaginary. If, in my own mind, I have a right to my neighor’s labor and property based on a vote or a pragmatic determination of my own, then I have a right to his life as well.

Every tree is known by its fruit, and communism is one of the most clearly evil schemes of government ever devised by man. There is no such thing as a decent, honest communist. By definition, they are thieves and murderers, at heart if they haven’t yet gained enough power to make their dreams into reality. Socialism is communism for people who haven’t completely killed off their consciences yet, and pure democracy merely distributes the guilt over more heads.

Many people criticize God’s Law because it allows a form of slavery. Yes, God recognizes authority, but he also says that all authority is only delegated by him and only temporarily and for limited purposes. Kings, priests, judges, husbands, fathers, mothers, and elder siblings have legitimate authority over other people, but that authority is always strictly limited. In God’s Law, life and property are sacrosanct. Nobod–not even a king–has the right to take another person’s life, labor, or property without a clear divine mandate or a conviction after a trial.

Of course, people, who reject God, also reject his law and, necessarily, all objective standards of morality. There can be no absolute law without an absolute Lawgiver. They say we have “evolved” beyond slavery and the archaic mandates of the Bible.

They are deluded.

We have not evolved. We are the same murderers and slavers that we have been from the beginning. The only difference is that we have accumulated knowledge and technology and more refined justifications for our atrocities.

If that sounds too grim a prognosis for you, then you need to read Mrs Lau’s book.

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How to Treat a Destitute Brother

You shall open wide your hand to your brother... Charity among believers

Bad things happen. It rains on the just and the unjust alike, and fellow believers will come on hard times. We’ve all known someone (and probably know someone still today!) who is so poor that he can’t afford the basic necessities of life. He’s homeless, wears worn out clothes, or can’t afford to buy food for his family.

How much should I help? At what point does help stop being helpful? How should I give charity? Should I donate to an organization? Should I give charity at all?

These are hard questions, and probably can’t even be answered thoroughly without an intimate knowledge of the person’s specific circumstances, but the Bible does give us some basic guidelines on how to help someone in need. Leviticus 25 gives one of the clearest sets of instructions.

“If your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself with you, you shall support him as though he were a stranger [ger: a foreigner living in Israel, whether a naturalized Israelite or a temporary visitor, such as a migrant laborer] and a sojourner [toshav: an Israelite who is temporarily landless], and he shall live with you. Take no interest from him or profit, but fear your God, that your brother may live beside you. You shall not lend him your money at interest, nor give him your food for profit. I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan, and to be your God.

“If your brother becomes poor beside you and sells himself to you, you shall not make him serve as a slave: he shall be with you as a hired worker and as a sojourner. He shall serve with you until the year of the jubilee. Then he shall go out from you, he and his children with him, and go back to his own clan and return to the possession of his fathers. For they are my servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt; they shall not be sold as slaves. You shall not rule over him ruthlessly but shall fear your God.”

Leviticus 25:35-43

This passage isn’t talking about someone who can’t afford a new television or a nice car. It’s good to be generous to all people, especially to those less fortunate than yourself, but that’s not the issue at hand here. These instructions concern someone who is truly destitute, in desperate need of food, clothing, and shelter for himself or his family.

The basic rules for dealing with a destitute brother can be summarized as below.

The Treatment of a Poor Israelite

  1. Support him like a ger and a toshav. See the Leviticus quote above for more detail on what ger and toshav mean. There are a number of rules given for how to treat a ger, and only a few about a toshav, but all of the rules for the toshav are included with the ger, so we only need to talk about the ger. I’ll go into more detail below on exactly how we are supposed to support them.
  2. Do not lend to him interest. If he asks to borrow money or material, give it to him if you can spare it, and don’t demand any interest. Elsewhere, we are told to lend to our brothers on the honor system, without expecting repayment. (See also Deuteronomy 15:7-11.)
  3. Sell food to him at cost. God has additional rules on providing the poor with food, but, at the very least, we are forbidden from selling food to the destitute for a profit. This doesn’t mean we have to give every person who claims to be poor a steep discount at the grocery store. Remember that these rules apply to the truly destitute, to those who can’t afford to buy even the most basic foods, not to people who can afford rice and beans, but prefer pizza and ice cream.
  4. If you buy him as a slave, treat him as a hired worker, and release him in the 7th year with generous gifts. Slavery is nominally illegal in the United States today (except as punishment for a crime), so this law doesn’t apply directly. A person could certainly borrow his way into a very bad situation, especially with non-dischargeable debt, like student loans, but even in those cases, he only has the threat of slavery (prison) hanging over his head, and strictly speaking hasn’t sold himself. (See also Deuteronomy 15:12-18.)

The first rule is meaningless without further explanation, so I’ll go into that more below, and the fourth rule doesn’t apply in today’s United States. However, rules two and three apply, but are followed so rarely as to be almost unheard of.

The only people who give interest free loans to the poor are close family members, but God says that everyone who has the money to lend should be ready to do it. Not only should we lend freely, but we must be ready to forgive the loan in the shemitah year no matter how much he has repaid. How bizarre and revolting that feels to American sensibilities!

Yet this is how God wants his people to treat one another.

There are many places where you can buy new clothing at (or near) wholesale prices and used clothing at far below retail, but there aren’t many places where you can buy food at cost. Grocery stores will often reduce the price of goods that are near the end of the shelf lives, but they don’t reserve those products for the destitute. They are sold on a first-come, first-serve basis, just like the rest of their stock.

Some restaurants and grocery stores will donate old or excess products to charities, but that’s not exactly the same thing. Giving away food is fine–and even commanded–to an extent, but that shouldn’t be the only option available to the poor. Handouts and government welfare programs shouldn’t be the primary means of supporting the poor. Jobs and low-cost necessities promote better habits while maintaining self-respect.

So what about the ger?

The Treatment of a Ger

Remember that a ger is a foreigner who has joined himself to Israel, but has no land of his own, or else a foreigner who is temporarily living with Israel. Some of these commandments also include the toshav, who is a temporarily landless or itinerant Israelite, but there are no rules for a toshav that do not also apply to a ger.

  1. May celebrate some feasts and must celebrate others. (Exodus 12:48-49, Leviticus 16:29, Deuteronomy 16:1-17, 26:1-19)
  2. Required to keep the weekly Sabbath. (Exodus 20:10, 23:12, Deuteronomy 5:14)
  3. Not to be treated like a slave…unless he is a slave. (Exodus 22:21, 23:9)
  4. Not allowed to eat blood. (Leviticus 17:12)
  5. May eat animals that died of natural causes or was killed by another animal. (Leviticus 17:15, Deuteronomy 14:21)
  6. Abstain from sexual immorality. (Leviticus 18:26)
  7. May glean the corners and leavings of the fields. (Leviticus 19:10, 23:22, Deuteronomy 24:19-21)
  8. Love him as yourself. (Leviticus 19:33-34)
  9. Must not blaspheme the name of God. (Leviticus 24:16)
  10. May worship and bring offerings. (Numbers 15:14-16, Numbers 19:10, )
  11. Must keep and be protected by the same standards of justice as the native-born. (Leviticus 24:22, Numbers 15:26, 35:15, Deuteronomy 1:15-16, 24:17, 27:19)
  12. Give him food and clothing if he needs it. (Deuteronomy 10:18-19, 14:29)
  13. Must keep all the commandments (Deuteronomy 31:9-13)

How Charity Works in God’s Kingdom

There are times for outright charity, times to make things available to whomever is willing to do the labor, and times to hire and offer produce at a discount. Which option is appropriate in any given circumstances will depend on the individuals involved, and nobody can know that except those individuals. There is no one-size-fits-all solution that can be dictated from thousands of miles away. Charity should be local and almost always voluntary. (That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give to people far away, only that you should start near at home.)

Note also that Biblical charity comes with some strings attached. Everyone in Israel is expected to keep God’s commandments, and those who refuse are to be cut off. In some cases that might mean exile or shunning, and in some it might mean death. I’m not saying that charity should be dependent on perfect behavior or that anyone should keep a score sheet to determine eligibility. What I mean is that no Israelite should ever be expected to support financially an enemy of God or Israel.

To be eligible for charity from Israel, one must be eligible to live among Israel, which primarily means keeping God’s appointed times and Sabbaths, and abstaining from sexual immorality, idolatry, and blood. Interestingly enough, the three prohibitions are the exact same requirements that James and the council of Jerusalem gave for new converts to come into fellowship in Acts 15.

God requires his people to give charity generously. Although he didn’t specify any penalty for not giving to the poor, he commanded it multiple times. The Prophets, Yeshua, and the Apostles all repeated those instructions.

Give to people you know personally. Give to charities that uphold God’s standards. Give to the poor, widows, orphans, and sick. Charity is not an option for God’s people, but charity shouldn’t be indiscriminate and irresponsible, either. Whenever possible, it should be local, personal, and relational.

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Surviving through Trials, Prospering by Faith

The LORD spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying, (2) “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When you come into the land that I give you, the land shall keep a Sabbath to the LORD. (3) For six years you shall sow your field, and for six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its fruits, (4) but in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a Sabbath to the LORD. You shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard. (5) You shall not reap what grows of itself in your harvest, or gather the grapes of your undressed vine. It shall be a year of solemn rest for the land. (6) The Sabbath of the land shall provide food for you, for yourself and for your male and female slaves and for your hired worker and the sojourner who lives with you, (7) and for your cattle and for the wild animals that are in your land: all its yield shall be for food.
Leviticus 25:1-7

And if you say, ‘What shall we eat in the seventh year, if we may not sow or gather in our crop?’ (21) I will command my blessing on you in the sixth year, so that it will produce a crop sufficient for three years. (22) When you sow in the eighth year, you will be eating some of the old crop; you shall eat the old until the ninth year, when its crop arrives.
Leviticus 25:20-22

Every seventh year, called the Shemitah, God wants the land to rest from laboring for mankind. He promised that if his people allow the land to rest in that year–no sowing or reaping–then he would provide a triple harvest in the sixth year, enough to still be eating it in the ninth year.

This can all be a little hard to grasp when you don’t live in an agrarian culture, so I charted it out to see why we would need a triple harvest in the sixth year when we are only supposed to skip planting and harvesting in one year.

  • The GREEN BARS represent the time from planting until harvest.
  • The YELLOW BARS represent the harvest period.
  • The BLUE BARS represent the time in which that year’s grain harvest is stored and used.
  • The GRAY BARS represent the periods in which the fields are left fallow or are growing other crops.

The barley crop is in a darker shade than the wheat.

As you can see, the barley and wheat crops are planted beginning around the month of Cheshvan, roughly around October, and grow for 4-8 months before harvesting. The barley begins to ripen around the end of Adar and the beginning of Nisan, which is around March or April.

According to Leviticus 23:10-14, no barley from the new harvest may be eaten until after the wave offering that is done a few days after Passover. This wave offering is sometimes called Early Firstfruits.

The wheat harvest begins almost two months later at the beginning of the month of Sivan, just before the holiday known as Pentecost, Shavuot, or Later Firstfruits.

Each of these harvest periods lasts from one to two months, and that grain has to last until after Passover the next year. The crops from year 5 are stored and eaten up until the harvest of year 6.

Barley and wheat were the primary staple crops of the ancient Near East, including Israel. They were the main source of calories for almost everyone. Although God allows the people to eat what grows of its own in the 7th year, he does not allow mass harvesting for sale or storage, and there wouldn’t be a lot of grain growing on its own. Since there is no planting or harvesting in year 7, the harvest from year 6 has to last at least two full years or people will begin to starve.

If the people follow this plan, God promised that there would be a triple harvest in the 6th year. Why triple if only two years are required to get through the Shemitah year? Because a double harvest is the bare minimum to survive, and God wants to reward his people for their faithfulness. He doesn’t want us to barely get by.

In its plainest sense, this law only applies to those living in the land of Israel, and it requires that you leave your fields fallow in the 7th year and only eat what you have stored up and what grows on its own without cultivation. Don’t buy fresh produce at the grocery store. Don’t import avocados and tomatoes from Mexico. Just trust divine Providence.

However, the principle applies more broadly: God rewards those who trust in him and demonstrate their trust by keeping his commandments, even when they don’t make sense.

The rewards of the Kingdom of God are not stored up for the religious, the popular, the powerful, or even for those who suffer the most. There is nothing virtuous about self flagellation. No, the rewards of the Kingdom are stored up for those who trust in God.

I’m not saying that you will always be rich. Sometimes God makes you poor, like in the seventh year, so you’ll learn to trust in him more. Sometimes he makes you sick or takes away everything you have, like Job, but he only does it so that you will have the opportunity to grow into the great man or woman of God that he knows you can be.

Consider Joseph. When he was young, he was tactless and possibly a bit foolish, but he trusted God. Despite that trust, his brothers betrayed him and sold him into slavery. In Egypt, he was abused, slandered, and imprisoned.

He thought he would become the patriarch of a large and wealthy family. Instead he became the top prisoner in a dungeon, and a servant to white-color criminals. Despite many years of injustice and misery, Joseph kept his faith that God was in control and that justice would ultimately prevail.

But then Pharaoh had a nightmare that no one could interpret, and one of those criminals remembered the young Hebrew seer who worked in the prison. Joseph was brought up from the pit and–after thirteen years!–rewarded with status and wealth beyond anything he had ever dreamed.

It’s hard to see the finish line when your course is through valleys, jungles, and swamps, but if we could always see exactly what reward lay at the end, we’d have no need for faith.

Great trials build great faith, and great faith brings great rewards, but the timing and the forms of trial and reward are God’s to decide, not ours.

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The Contempt of God

Fear God. There is no other way to have a healthy relationship with him.

You can read the Bible in many ways. You can read it silently or aloud, or you can listen to someone else read it. You can take it in pieces, by verse, section, or chapter, or you can take it in great big chunks, whole books at a time.

I recommend all of those. Your brain will process the text differently each time, partly because it’s entering by a different route.

My wife and I were driving home from visiting her family this last weekend, and to pass the time we listened to an audio version of the Gospel of Luke, pausing now and then to talk about some point or other. It’s about a five hour drive, so we got most of the way through the book before we got home.

One great thing about listening to the Bible this way is that it lets you see broader trends that you might otherwise miss.

For example, Luke liked to present dichotomies. Do this, not that. This thing, not that thing.

The humble, poor, kind, and obedient, not the rich, proud, disdainful, and disobedient. The worshipful prostitute, not the inhospitable Pharisee, Simon. Treasures in heaven, not treasures on earth. Rock, not sand. The one grateful leper, not the ten who were ungrateful.

I hadn’t noticed that before.

There is one example of these comparisons that connects to another pattern I heard in Luke: Foreign cities that have never heard the Gospel will fare better in the final judgment than will Israelite cities that refused to heed the great miracles that were done there.

People usually had intense emotional reactions to Yeshua’s miracles. They ran the gamut from joy to terror.

Except in Nazareth, Yeshua’s home town. At Nazareth, Yeshua did a few miracles, but their apathy and disbelief kept him from doing much more. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they said.

And he said, “Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his hometown.” (Luke 4:24 ESV)

Even demons had a more positive response than did Yeshua’s own family and friends. In Luke 4:34, a demon acknowledged his power and position: “I know who you are: the Holy One of God.” Then it obeyed him. In 8:28, another demon called him “Son of the Most High God” and begged him for mercy. In 9:42, yet another demon, who respected none of Yeshua’s disciples, immediately obeyed his command to leave.

What was the biggest difference between Nazareth and those demons? Familiarity.

The people of Nazareth knew Yeshua when he was a child. They grew up with him, and they saw him playing with other children. They knew his parents, his grandparents, and his siblings. They were comfortable with Yeshua, because they thought they knew him.

The demons, on the other hand, really knew him in a way that no mortal ever could. They didn’t like him, as I’m sure many of his neighbors did, but they knew the reality of his raw, unparalleled power, and they were terrified of him.

The people of Nazareth had no fear of the Holy One of God, the Son of the Most High, and so he could do nothing for them. Wherever the people feared God and the growing reputation of Yeshua–at Nain in chapter 7, for instance–he raised the dead, healed the sick, and drove out unclean spirits.

The only difference between Nazareth and Nain was the level of familiarity and comfort that the people had toward Yeshua. The people of Nazareth saw him as an odd but friendly boy, while the people of Nain had heard the amazing stories that were spreading across the countryside, and they were afraid. They approached him on the road eagerly, but nervously. When he healed their sick and raised their dead, they were astonished. They were both joyful and even more fearful than before.

Perhaps we don’t see the miracles they saw because we don’t see the God and Messiah that they saw.

Consider the songs we sing in our churches.

He touched me. He guides me. He’s my hope, my support, my rest. I love him dearly, and I’ll follow him everywhere. Yadda yadda.

There’s nothing wrong with those specific words; they’re all great sentiments. There are many Psalms that sound very similar. The problem is that they’re all sentiment and no fire. They’re all “Me and Jesus,” and very little glory and majesty.

Why don’t we sing more hymns like Psalm 9 (written by David)?

I will give thanks to the LORD with my whole heart;
I will recount all of your wonderful deeds.
I will be glad and exult in you;
I will sing praise to your name, O Most High.

When my enemies turn back,
they stumble and perish before your presence.
For you have maintained my just cause;
you have sat on the throne, giving righteous judgment.

You have rebuked the nations; you have made the wicked perish;
you have blotted out their name forever and ever.
The enemy came to an end in everlasting ruins;
their cities you rooted out; the very memory of them has perished.

But the LORD sits enthroned forever;
he has established his throne for justice,
And he judges the world with righteousness;
he judges the peoples with uprightness….

(Verses 1-8 ESV)

Or Psalm 76 (of Asaph, also from the ESV)?

In Judah, God is known;
his name is great in Israel.
His abode has been established in Salem,
his dwelling place in Zion.
There he broke the flashing arrows,
the shield, the sword, and the weapons of war. Selah.

Glorious are you, more majestic
than the mountains full of prey.
The stouthearted were stripped of their spoil;
they sank into sleep;
all the men of war were
unable to use their hands.
At your rebuke, O God of Jacob,
both rider and horse lay stunned.

But you, you are to be feared!
Who can stand before you
when once your anger is roused?
From the heavens you uttered judgment;
the earth feared and was still,
when God arose to establish judgment,
to save all the humble of the earth. Selah.

Surely the wrath of man shall praise you;
the remnant of wrath you will put on like a belt.
Make your vows to the LORD your God and perform them;
let all around him bring gifts to him who is to be feared,
who cuts off the spirit of princes,
who is to be feared by the kings of the earth.

Wow! What a God our Savior is!

God’s power is truly incomprehensible and it is all concentrated in the one man we know variously as Jesus and Yeshua. As Asaph wrote, our God, YHWH Elohim, is to be feared even by the most powerful men on earth. They are nothing to him. He brushes them aside like gnats.

We must never be overly familiar and comfortable with God. He is a consuming fire and a jealous God who will not stand by forever while his name is profaned and his people ignore his laws. Eventually, there will be an accounting, and every person will be repayed according to his deeds.

Many preachers today love to talk about how forgiving and gracious God is (And they’re right!), but they mistake his patience for apathy. They tell their flocks that God no longer cares about sin, that anything you do after the cross will never count against you. It’s all just love and bacon pancakes from here to the streets of gold.

Sin is a non-issue with God, but religious people make it a major issue. This is because they do not understand the new agreement. -Creflo Dollar

The Holy Spirit never convicts you of your sins. -Joseph Prince

In 2005, we were the first church in America to endorse marriage equality. We’re doing justice. -United Church of Christ

What nonsense! “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?” (Job 38:2) I know that those preachers have read the Bible, but they are truly the blind leading the blind, because they haven’t even seen what is so clearly written.

No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. -Yeshua (Luke 13:5 ESV)

Yes, our Lord is patient. Yes, he is forgiving. No, your good works will never earn you a place in heaven. But none of that means that his standards of behavior have slackened by a single letter.

God’s Law still stands today as the eternal measuring stick for those who would call themselves his people. There is no division in that Law. There is one Law for one People, and unless you repent, you too will hear those dreadful words one day:

And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’ -Yeshua (Matthew 7:23 ESV)

Trust in God’s faithfulness to forgive, in Yeshua’s blood that removes the stains of sin from our souls, but never forget that God is a force more powerful than anything today’s cosmologists have yet imagined, and he has rules for his house.

Go ahead and memorize Psalm 23–it’s beautiful and definitely worthwhile–but memorize Job 38 and 39 along with it.

Until we learn to fear God in all his power, I fear that we will never see his true power in our lives.

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We Are Not of This World

Leviticus 25:23-24

Ye are strangers and sojourners with me. God’s plan for the Promised Land was that it would be inextricably tied to a particular family. A tribe was allotted a defined region and within that region each family was assigned a particular piece of land according to the size of the family. Less productive land was assigned more generously. If a man died childless, there were provisions to ensure that his inheritance stayed within the family as much as possible. Within a few limits, what a man did with his land was completely up to him. Yet from this passage we can see that no one but God really owns the land. In fact, no one truly owns anything at all outright. Everything belongs to God and all authority, even that over our own bodies, is only delegated to us from Him. He blesses whom He will bless and He curses whom He will curse.

If you abuse the authority which God has given you, you should not be surprised when He takes it away. We speak in terms of “my” this and “your” that for the sake of simplicity, but in reality nothing is mine and nothing is yours. We are only strangers and pilgrims in our own lands.

We are only sojourners in this world and all we have is on loan from the Creator.
Harvest in the Promised Land. (Ruth and Boaz by Nicolas Poussin)