NOTES for Lev 25:1-24

The Lord’s words from the book of Leviticus about ownership of land sound especially relevant today: “The land shall not be sold forever, for the land is Mine.” This could be regarded as a manifestation of God’s will in the dispute, if the question did not lie on a somewhat different plane. Our laws do not speak of the land belonging to God. He does not figure in them at all as a subject of civil law. In our understanding, land can belong either to the state or to private individuals. And it is certainly wrong to identify the state with God. This concerns more than legal problems. We are generally inclined to forget that everything belongs to God, even if we believe in Him. Absorbed in earthly concerns, we forget that commercial and monetary relations are merely an imperfect means of ordering responsibility for the material world, which we use only as God’s “tenants.” Neither money nor food nor the means of production, nothing that we possess, belongs to us forever. The earth with all its riches can only be the object of our care; only then will God be able, through it, to feed, clothe, and warm every one of us.