07/28/2008
Leviticus 19:9 - 10 (HCSB) 9“When you reap the harvest of your land, you are not to reap to the very edge of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. 10You must not strip your vineyard bare or gather its fallen grapes. Leave them for the poor and the foreign resident; I am the LORD your God.
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The passage above comes from a section of the law that deals with social responsibilities. However, it is easy for us to read through these two verses and completely miss their meaning because we do not understand some of the words, nor do we understand the concept. Let us now look at the verses more closely, because they do have meaning for us, even today.
First of all, let me explain what “gleaning” is. When the harvesters would go through a field, they would cut the wheat (for instance) as quickly as possible and bundle it into sheaves, which would later be gathered and thrashed. Inevitably, some of the grain would fall to the ground and not be collected into a sheave.
Also, remember that all the fields of that day were fallow. They didn’t have ploughs as we do today and so their fields were not all nice and square as we sometimes see in pictures. Their fields would have rough edges and those edges would often blend into areas of field grass or other brush. So the harvesters would not go to the edges in order for the sheaves to have only the wheat.
So, then, with these in mind; what are the verses above saying to us?
“Do not be so stingy with your produce that you pick up every fallen kernel or go into the edges of your field to pick the grain from the rough.“
“But, I’m not a farmer” you may say.
The point is; that in those days, the poor would come into the fields and pick up the uncollected grain (gleanings) and would also go into the edges to collect grain from the rough. Leaving the gleanings and the edges uncollected was a charitable act. Those families who had no fields of their own could come and find grain.
Now interestingly, the farmer was not told to go deliver a bushel of grain to the poor. The poor still had to put forth effort. In fact, collecting the gleanings and edges was more laborious than the main harvest. But by contrast, the poor had not participated in preparing the soil, in the sowing, or cultivation.
So you see, allowing the poor to collect the gleanings and edges was, in a sense, welfare.
Likewise, we need to have a charitable heart. First we need to make sure we aren’t so greedy as to neglect those in need. Secondly, we should allow those in need the dignity of earning a reward for their labor.
Jeff Justus
Cleff Publishing
www.cleffpublishing.com
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