Human conduct and behaviour are understood to have a bearing on land, and conversely, land occupancy demands a particular quality of life-style.
This association between life-style and land is found in scattered references through the books of Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy; but these references occur in sufficient number to command notice and have shown a point of view that is unique to the Bible. For a glimpse of this association between land and life-style we look in turn at moral and cultic responsibilities, specific rules relating to land use, and the cultic festivals which had an agricultural orientation. A discussion of these moral, economic and cultic regulations will clarify the theological aspects surrounding land.
As to moral, civil and cultic instructions, their association with the land needs first to be established biblically and then assessed. Various statutes are announced for observance at the time of entry into the land, often introduced by a general statement of which Deuteronomy 12: 1 is typical:
‘These are the statutes and ordinances which you shall be careful to do in the land which the LORD, the God of your fathers, has given you to possess’ (cf.
11:31-32; 4:5, 14; 5:31; 6:l). From these statements it is obvious that a prescribed form of conduct is appropriate for life in the land. Thus the land is not only a promise or a gift; fulfilled responsibility is integral to land tenure.
‘the land fall into harlotry and the land become full of wickedness’ (Lv.
19:29). Shedding of blood pollutes the land and no expiation for it is possible, except the death of the murderer (Nu. 35: 29-34). A man who is hanged for an offence is not to remain on the tree into the night-he must be buried, for a ‘hanged man is accursed by God; you shall not defile your land which the LORD your God gives you for an inheritance’ (Dt. 21:23). Divorce is permitted, but not the remarriage of the husband to his divorced wife who has already married another. Not only is such a practice an abomination before the LORD, but it will ‘bring guilt upon the land’ (Dt. 24:4). Marriage and family ethics are not in themselves associated directly with land-yet violations of these family-related moral and civil regulations are said to defile the land. In what sense? In the sense that Yahweh dwells in the midst of the land (Nu. 35:34). And in another sense also. Land is the ‘middle term’
between Israel and Yahweh. Land is a tangible symbol of Yahweh. It would not be conceivable that Yahweh could be defiled, therefore the negative consequence could best be stated by saying that the land will be defiled. So close is the association between Yahweh and land that an infraction against Yahweh has the effect of polluting or defiling the land. The land therefore symbolizes in a forceful way Israel’s relationship with Yahweh.
Yet it is not only Israel, to whom the Torah belongs, who defiles the land:
the Canaanites who are strangers to the Torah have by their abominations defiled the land. Israel is cautioned not to defile herself with such things as child sacrifice, for ‘by all these the nations . , . have defiled themselves; and the land became defiled’ (Lv. 18:24-25). Pollution of self and pollution of land result from unlawful behaviour. Even apart from revelation the non- Israelite should know to abstain from such sexual perversion as bestiality and homosexual activity and from human sacrifice. These evils defile the land. Though they did not possess theTorah, peoples outside Israel are held responsible for their conduct in the land. It is not therefore that the land is rendered impure because of its relation to Israel. Again, it is defiled almost in its own right, or, perhaps more accurately, because of the close relationship of the land to Yahweh.
These regulations range broadly. They deal with governance, for they speak to the possibility of the people’s desire for a king and give direction for the establishment of a monarch (Dt. 17:14). Cities of refuge are to be established for murderers in the land as a part of the civil-law complex regulating blood revenge (Dt. 19:7). Religious and moral instruction in the Torah is to be undertaken in a family setting, and Moses, visualizing a permanent residence, commands that ‘these words’ are to be written on the doorposts of the house and on the gates (Dt. 6:9). Dietary instructions are also given (Dt. 12:20ff.). To occupy the land, as in modern occupancy of rental property, a willingness to submit to regulations of the owner is required. Israel is not at liberty to set its own behaviour guidelines.
Residence in the land means paying attention to what is fitting in the land.
But the case for law and land association is stronger than the words
‘fitting’ or ‘propriety’ indicate. Wrong behaviour, for instance, is not only unbecoming but it defiles the land. Harlotry is forbidden, for example, lest
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The case for the interdependence between moral behaviour and land is even stronger than the preceding discussion has suggested. There is more to be said than that obedience to Yahweh is fitting in the land and that disregard of Yahweh’s instruction defiles the land. Continued occupancy of the land is itself conditioned by observance of the law. This means on the one hand that by faithful adherence to the admonitions, Israel can continue in the land. Motivation for such observance of law includes the promise of continued residence: ‘All the commandment which I command you this day you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land’ (Dt. 8: 1). Moses says: ‘Justice and only justice you shall 109
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follow, that you may live and inherit the land which the LORD your God gives you.’ Obedience to the law brings blessings, which, as the catalogue of blessing indicates, are primarily prosperity and fruitfulness in the land (Dt.
28: l-14).
But if blessing follows obedience, curse within the land and even deportation from it will result from disobedience (Dt. 28: 15-68). Lack of rain, defeat by enemies, internal confusion and disease are only a few of the disasters which may be expected, and the ultimate disaster, apart from ruin, is that ‘you shall be plucked off the land. . . And the LORD will scatter you among all peoples’ (Dt. 28:63-64). Again, such drastic treatment as removal from land is not reserved only for a people like Israel with a revealed Torah. It was because of the sinfulness of the Canaanites that they were expelled from -the land (Lv. 18:24). Indeed, so much are these infractions directly against the land that the land personified is described as vomiting out Canaanites (Lv. 18:24). The threat for Israel too is that unless she keeps the statutes and the ordinances, the land may vomit up the people in it (Lv. 20:22-26). By this one is to understand that violation of norms is so reprehensible that, quite apart from Yahweh’s displeasure, the land itself cannot tolerate them: the land will spew out the population.
It may seem at first glance that the stipulations accompanying the gift of the land make the land not altogether a gift. A few passages indeed give the impression that obedience to God’s ordinance was a condition of entry into the land (e.g. Dt. 8:l). But these are not to be understood as qualifying people in a fundamental sense for the gift; rather they are to be taken, as are the many statements cautioning Israel lest through disobedience they forfeit the right to continue on the land, as accompanying the gift. To a gift, even a gift totally the result of grace, there is not inconsistently attached stipulation for its use. A British company director who at his death left i33,000, specified that iS,OOO be given to each of his two grandchildren-provided they did not spend the money on motorcycles. This twentieth-century example, while not the norm for interpreting ancient Israelite practice, may still illustrate the basic principle that a gift may have conditions. The land gift was unique in that Yahweh remained the owner. He disposed of it, but not in a final sense by giving it over to Israel. As the proprietor of the land, his right to make stipulations, along with his claim to Israel, is everywhere assumed. Life in the land can continue provided a certain life-style, one marked by obedience, is maintained.
The subject of life-style is far too large to survey with any depth, but the regulations about land use can move us from generalities to specifics and can illustrate the tenor of conduct pleasing to Yahweh.
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a. Sabbath and jubilee
Two regulations dealt with land use: the sabbath and the jubilee. From Mount Sinai Moses issued this instruction: ‘When you come into the land which I give you, the land shall keep a sabbath to the LORD' (Lv. 25:2; cf.
23:lOf.). By this, as the explanation which follows shows, is meant that whereas for six years the land is to be sown and vineyards cultivated, in the seventh it is to be fallow. There is to be no seeding of the land, and vineyards are not to be pruned, nor is there to be reaping of that which grows by itself.
The practice of leaving the land fallow for the purpose of rejuvenation was not uncommon among Israel’s neighbours. The reason for such a practice in Israel, however, takes a decidedly different shape. The sabbatical year is for the benefit of the poor and for the benefit of wild life, ‘that the poor of your people may eat, and what they leave the beasts may eat’. This purpose could be achieved if for individual farmers the seventh year came at different times. In Leviticus there is assumed a universal and uniform observance of the fallow year. But the purpose, while humanitarian, is not exclusively so.
A religious motivation is announced in the terminology, ‘a sabbath to Yahweh’. The land, by being left fallow, bears witness to Yahweh’s ownership. The direct link between Yahweh and land is left intact; the land’s rest is not disturbed by human intervention of tilling.
It is argued by some scholars that Dt. 15: l-3 couples a regulation about the release of all debts every seven years to the command to fallow the land.
While complicated in details, Deuteronomy 15: l-3 is best considered not as a cancellation of debts generally but as a case where land was mortgaged to a creditor. In the seventh year the creditor was not to demand annual payment of the land’s harvest. This provision, also humanitarian, allowed the debtor some hope of meeting his obligations. If a loan were taken in the sixth year and not fully paid, it would not be payable till after the harvest of the eighth year, thus giving the impoverished Israelite an extended period of credit. The sabbath for the land was for Yahweh (Lv. 25:2) and the practice of charity to the debtor was also performed ‘before Yahweh’ (Dt. 15:2). The sabbath regulation, while clearly given as an obligation unto Yahweh, pointed two ways: to the land, and to the debtor whose land had been encumbered. Failure to observe these statutes is given as reason for drastic action of God’s removal of people from the land (Lv. 26:32-33,43; 2 Ch.
36:21).
A second ordinance that dealt especially with land use is the jubilee. The instructions about jubilee also require that the land be left fallow, not only every seven years but during the fiftieth year, namely after seven sevens of years (Lv. 25:8ff.). It was unlike the seventh fallow year in that in the jubilee year the land was to revert to the family that originally claimed ownership.
An impoverished Israelite, once he had mortgaged his land and his crops, I I I
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might find it necessary to ‘sell’ the land to his creditor, and even if a relative redeemed it, the unfortunate Israelite would still in all likelihood be working it for the benefit of his kinsman (Lv. 26:36ff.). The purpose of the kinsman provision was to retain the land within the particular family of the clan; otherwise descendants of the unfortunate Israelite would be condemned to be property-less. The jubilee year, coming every few generations, was to remedy this eventuality, for in the jubilee year, even had the land remained in the clan through redemption, it was now to be returned to the particular family within the clan. The jubilee year also had provisions for the release of slaves. It is therefore clear that the regulations of the jubilee affected the economic life of a people by demanding magnanimous action by the well-to-do for the benefit of the less capable or unfortunate man.
Without such a provision as a jubilee, territories of a clan could come into the hands of a few families, and the remaining clans people would be serfs.
The jubilee aimed at the preservation of household units, ensuring their economic viability. The land belonged inalienably to the householder. This right of the household landowner to regain his property was not due to some belief about the right of property per se, but a belief in land as a gift from Yahweh, whose regulation stabilized the people’s relationship with each other and with their God. It is not hard to see that in the Old Testament,
God and Israel’s land
GOD
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ISRAEL LAND
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God’s design: land land, Israel and Yahweh belonged together, and that in this triad the rights of the family were particularly safeguarded.”
6. Festivals
With such agricultural practices as the sabbath year and the jubilee year, a life-style characterized by non-exploitation of land and of people was incul- cated. A considerate and caring attitude was encouraged.
In addition a set of festivals, primarily agricultural, established yet another orientation and life-style attitude: thanksgiving and joy. Instruc- tions about these festivals appears in each of the four law books (Ex. 23; 34;
Lv. 23; Nu. 28; Dt. 16).
All of the three major annual festivals, each a week long, were held in con- nection with the harvest from the field. The festival of unleavened bread was held in the spring of the year immediately following the passover obser- vance. Scheduled for the beginning of the barley harvest in late April/early May, its important feature was the baking and eating of unleavened bread.
The bread of the harvest was deliberately not prepared with yeast, so that the firstfruits would be eaten untouched by a foreign element. The second festival, called a feast of harvest in the book of Exodus but more commonly a feast of weeks (Dt. 16:10), came fifty days after the sickle was first put to the spring grain. It was observed at the end of the wheat harvest, corre- sponding to our month of June. At this time the firstfruits of the farmer’s labour were presented before Yahweh. Either the whole crop, the first of several in the agricultural year, or the first fruits of the barley grain harvest preserved from their first cutting to the end of the season, were brought to the sanctuary. The third agricultural festival was the feast of ingathering, known also as the feast of booths or tabernacles, because of a provision that during the week people should live in tents. This festival followed the day of atonement in the month of October, and centred on the harvest of fruits, especially olives and grapes.
Though agrarian-based, these festivals were not pagan orgies. They were religious occasions. In all three, males of the country were to present them- selves at the sanctuary. Although social in character, with feasting and cele- bration, these were more than social events. The festivals were festivals ‘to Yahweh’. The religious orientation emerged in the presentation of animal offerings to Yahweh and also in the gift of first fruits of the grain and fruit to Yahweh. The detailed instruction for such a presentation of agricultural produce is given in Deuteronomy 26: 1, and, while given for the particular occasion of the very first harvest, the instruction may also have been ritually
‘“I am Indebted for material in this chapter and for the diagram to C. J. H. Wright’s careful analysis of regu- I.ltwns governing land, ‘Family, Land and Property in Ancient Israel-Some Aspects of Old Testament Social Ethics’ (unpublished dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1976).
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applied, especially at the feast of weeks and the feast of ingathering.
At these festivals the Israelite was not to appear before Yahweh empty- handed (Ex. 34:20; 23: 15). The worshipper with his produce in his basket would appear before the priest and begin his statement by saying: ‘I declare this day to the LORD your God that I have come into the land which the LORD swore to our fathers to give us’ (Dt. 26:3). After rehearsing the history of his people, with emphasis on Yahweh’s grace to them, he concluded with the words: ‘And behold, now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground, which thou, 0 LORD, hast given me.’ The priest either set the basket before the altar (Dt. 26:4) or waved the sheaf before Yahweh (Lv. 23: 10-l 1,20).
The character of the festival as a festival to Yahweh was safeguarded through this ritual at the sanctuary in which through word and act Yahweh was acknowledged. The worshipper expressed his thankfulness and grati- tude to Yahweh.
Now it is highly significant that the speech the worshipper made at the presentation of his offering is a rehearsal of the deeds of Yahweh in history.
The dedication of the produce was motivated by recognition of Yahweh not so much as creator, but as deliverer. It was not as a creature who enjoys the yield of creation that the worshipper came before Yahweh, but as one who had experienced deliverance from oppression. His history was a history of salvation, and here the land is remarkably in focus. His ailing forefather Jacob migrated to Egypt with but a small family and without land. The population in Egypt had no land they could call their own. But now, the wor- shipper concluded, Yahweh had brought them into the land. The pagan worshipper by contrast addressed a god related to nature, from whom he ex- pected the benefits of fertility in field, flock and family. But in Israel these ideas of God so closely and so exclusively associated with nature are absent.
While Yahweh is a God of nature, and is so celebrated in the Psalms, he is a God of history; and his connection with the land is not only or even pri- marily as a God who makes it fertile, but as one who in response to his promise has brought his people to enjoy the abundance that the land offers.
To this God of history, the worshipper offered his thanksgiving.
Judged by the instruction in Deuteronomy, the festivals, while foremost festivals for Yahweh, were also festivals for the people. The males appeared at the sanctuary but the festivals involved all-sons and daughters, servants and Levites. The fatherless and widow are singled out for special mention, but, more arresting from a sociological point of view, the sojourner was also to participate in the celebrations (Dt. 26:11, 14). These celebrations were not to become exclusivist-the non-Israelite was to be included. The festi- vals, related so closely to the land, display, as did the land use regulations, a humanitarian concern. Israel was to recall that she had been a slave in Egypt (Dt. 26: 12). Love to God and love to neighbour came to expression in the 114
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festivals.
Finally, the mood of the three week-long annual festivals deserves mention. ‘You shall rejoice before the LORD your God’ (Dt. 16:ll). ‘You shall rejoice in your feast’ (Dt. 16: 14). ‘You shall rejoice before the LORD your God seven days’ (Lv. 23 :40). The imperative to rejoice, like the impera- tive to love, while strange, nevertheless indicates the basic posture for the Israelite. Philo, the Jewish philosopher-exegete of the first century A D, I described even the day of atonement as the ‘feast of feasts’. Israelite worship was a worship of joy and praise. In the light of the ancient Near Eastern I record and practice, no doubt, one scholar has gone as far as to say, ‘There is hardly a word so characteristic of the Old Testament as the word joy.‘“Festivals, as ordered by Yahweh, were an expression of this joyful mood.
Land, then, is more than acreage or territory. It is a theological symbol, through which a series of messages are conveyed. It is the tangible fulfilment of the promise. Land is a gift from Yahweh, and Israel, through preoccupation with it, has her attention continually called to Yahweh.
Land requires a specific and appropriate life-style. Responsibilities concerning social behaviour are enjoined upon the people for the time when they will occupy the land, and they are warned that disobedience defiles the land and may result in loss of their privilege of tenancy. The specific regulations about land use, such as the sabbatical year and jubilee, take ecological and humanitarian concerns into account. Finally the festivals, associated with the production from the land, once again link land and Yahweh, point to social responsibilities, and portray the joyful spirit in which this people lives its life on the land, always before Yahweh.
But if land is more than acreage or territory and symbolic of promise, gift, blessing and life-style, it is nevertheless still soil and territory. It has theological aspects, but it is not thereby an ethereal thing, nor should it be spiritualized. Land is real. Earth is spatially definable. Life with Yahweh takes place here and now. The quality of that life is all-embracing-it relates to Yahweh, to neighbour, to environment. Life with Yahweh cannot be compartmentalized, as though his interest lies only within a small area. No, his interest extends to the total man and to the total society and to the total environment. He is misrepresented, and his people’s life misshaped, if the wholeness of life is not emphasized. The promise of land and all that it signifies keeps the entire design rooted in history and is thoroughly reality- related. We shall find the this-worldly and earth-affirming aspect strong and marked once again in the wisdom literature, especially in Proverbs. In the New Testament, the concept of discipleship is equally all-embracing.
“Ludwig Koehler, Old Testament Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster; London: Lutterworth, lYSi’),
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