Day 36 -- Leviticus 24-25

We should say a word about the practice of stoning which mentioned in our reading for today—Leviticus 24:13ff. It was the ideal form of capital punishment in Israel because it was communal. It was done for the sake of the community by the community. Everyone took part in it, and so the blame for it fell on no single person any more than on any other.
The Law is brutally clear in this matter—“One who blasphemes the name of the LORD shall be put to death; the whole congregation shall stone the blasphemer” (24:15). So divine justice was satisfied, no blame could be attached to any single individual, and the body is buried in the act of stoning, so that no one was polluted by touching it. The punishment may seem extreme to us, but it makes sense within the world of Leviticus.
Yet the Law of Moses, which dealt so harshly to those who trespassed against the holiness of God, was intended to be just to all. Leviticus 24, verse 22 says--“You shall have one law for the alien and for the citizen; for I am the LORD your God.” Justice is justice. No favoritism is to be shown to those who are members of the Chosen People in matters of law.
Yet the People of the Promise are the LORD’s special possession. “For to me the people of Israel are servants; they are my servants whom I brought out from the land of Egypt,” God says in Leviticus 25, verse 55. Therefore, Israelites are not to hold others of their own nation as slaves (25:46). They are forbidden to take interest from each other on a loan (25:2). Cheating another member of the covenant people was the same as cheating the LORD and absolutely forbidden.
And the Land of the Promise to which the people were going, the land which God had given to Abraham and his descendents, that was also the LORD’s special possession. The Israelites were to regard themselves as shareholders in it—renters. It belonged to the LORD absolutely.
That understanding lies behind the ways in which time is sanctified in the reading for today. Every seventh year was to be a sabbatical year for the land, a year of release from bondage. The land was to lie fallow that whole year so it could rest. This reveals the very advanced notion that not only do people wear out, the environment does too.
And every fiftieth year was sanctified as a Year of Jubilee. This noble idea was so contrary to sinful human nature that it was never really fully realized in Israel. Nevertheless it is here to testify to the majestic wisdom of the Law.
In the Year of Jubilee all ancestral property was to return to the descendents of its original owners, and the people were to go back to the land. Leviticus 25, verse 13 commands—“In this year of jubilee you shall return, every one of you, to your property” (25:13). Land that had been sold was to be returned. Debts were to be forgiven. Slaves were to be ransomed. Everything was to return to the way of was when God first gave the land to Israel.
The laws setting aside the sabbatical year and the year of jubilee reveal not only a radical social agenda but also a very advanced ecological vision, all governed by the understanding that the land—and by extension the whole earth--belongs to the Lord, and that no one but God has an absolute claim to it.