In the first post I mentioned how the Israelites came to have a land ownership heritage that involved each and every family in Israel. There may have been a problem from the beginning since the first generation of Israelites decided to leave some of the territories unconquered. I have to assume, though, that the Israelite readiness to leave the Canaanites alone had something to do with their satisfaction with the territory they possessed. So the likely result was that all the families willingly claimed a smaller territory. The motivation for the family who won a territory by lot would be that, if he split with another family, then he wouldn’t have to risk his life in war.
So you apparently had a system of hereditary land ownership in which you could lease the land for as much as 50 years but you could not sell or lose it permanently.
Since God gave the land he made rules about it. Like so:
When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, neither shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest (Leviticus 19.9).
And when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, nor shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the Lord your God (Leviticus 23.22).
When you look at the book of Ruth, you see an example of this law in action. Property owners do seem to have some authority about who gleans (maybe). It is not clear that there were civil penalties matching these laws. In the Pentateuch the “laws” include moral instructions. Sometimes these instructions involve how certain actions may or should be punished, but other times they involve no penalties.
The point, apart from civil sanctions, would be that God leased the land to his people and wanted them to act in a certain way towards others who were needy with that land. Likewise:
If you go into your neighbor’s vineyard, you may eat your fill of grapes, as many as you wish, but you shall not put any in your bag. If you go into your neighbor’s standing grain, you may pluck the ears with your hand, but you shall not put a sickle to your neighbor’s standing grain (Deuteronomy 23.24-25).
Jesus and his disciples got in trouble for taking advantage of this law on the Sabbath. I commented on the account in Mark’s Gospel here.
I don’t find anyone wanting to actually follow these laws. The vast majority of our population would not be helped by them most of the time. People who bring up these laws as an argument against the free market want to use them as license for other kinds of laws that are quite different.
TO BE CONTINUED