Isaiah 5:8-10

Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field

The selfish landowner

Selfishness, or the making self the centre to which all things are to tend, is the great sin in all ages and peoples.

As soon as national institutions have awakened the sense of personality and the feeling of self-respect, the desire of accumulating wealth grows with them. And in no form is it more liable to abuse than in connection with the possession of land. Men desire, by an almost universal instinct, to possess property in land, with its healthy occupations and interests, so varied and multiplied by the living powers of nature, and with its important political and social rights which grow up with the duties which are specially connected with it; for this kind of property demands the fulfilment of more, and more obvious duties than any other, while it confers corresponding rights and powers by bringing a man into more complete personal relationship with his neighbours than is possible in the crowd of cities and the whirl of city trades. Yet, since the land cannot be increased in quantity, its possession by one man is the exclusion of another, and the Hebrew laws endeavoured to meet this difficulty by special provisions, the breach or evasion of which the prophet now denounces in his first “woe” on the selfish landowner. He who can join house to house and lay field to field when he knows, and long has known, face to face, the very man, wife and child whom he has dispossessed, and can drive out by his own simple act his fellow men to be desolate in their poverty, in order that he may be alone in his riches, may expect a punishment proportioned to his crime. (Sir E. Strachey, Bart.)

Nemesis

The prophet heard, ringing in his ears, the declaration of Jehovah, the King of the land, that the great and fair palaces should become as desolate as the peasants and yeomen’s cottages which had made place for them--the vineyard of ten acres yield but eight gallons of wine, and the cornfield shall give back but a tenth part of the seed sown in it. (Sir E. Strachey, Bart.)

The Mosaic legislation

Moses directed as equal a division of the land as possible, in the first instance, among the 600,000 families who originally formed the nation; and provided against the permanent alienation of any estate by giving a right of repurchase to the seller and his relations, and of repossession without purchase at the Jubilee. (Sir E. Strachey, Bart.)

Land laws

In the Channel Islands the acreage to be owned by one individual is limited. In Norway the law provides that the heirs of anyone who has parted with his property may buy that property back at sale price within a term of five years. (F. Sessions.)

Hebrew land laws

The Hebrew legislation further prevented the exhaustion of the soil and the fruit trees, by enforcing fallow and rest during every seventh year. The offerings of first fruits really constituted a kind of land tax, payable to Jehovah as Over-Lord, and tending to prevent the conversion of folk land into “thane’s land,” or king’s land. The legislation placed Jehovah’s tenants under a poor law, which compelled cultivators to leave the gleanings of the crops, and all that the fallows of the seventh year Sabbaths produced spontaneously in those prolific fields, for the support of the needy. By the limitations of the right of private ownership,--a right that was not denied, and was frequently exercised,--every man was taught his responsibilities to his fellows. The theory was, as someone has written: “Brotherhood in the enjoyment of a Father’s bounty.” (F. Sessions.)

“Land grabbing”

“Land grabbing”and “evictions” may be new terms, but they are century-old sins. (F. Sessions.)

The land question

The land question is as old as history. The Hebrews were hardly out of the wilderness before laws were enacted to prevent the strong from getting more land than anyone ought to possess. The land laws of Moses occupy a large place in his legislation. The prevention of monopoly in land was clearly in the mind of the Hebrew lawgiver. In Isaiah’s time the nation had recovered from poverty and grown rich, and the wealthy and ruling classes had begun to grasp the earth. They would have tried to fence in the air and pack the sunlight in barrels, if they could have done so. The spirit that would monopolise land would monopolise light if it could. Against this awful wrong the voice of the Lord rings its condemnation. Four things belong to man as man, and anyone who tries to prevent their being used for the service of humanity is a sinner against the universe and against God. Those four things are: the earth, the air, the water, and the light. Every man has a right to live, and no one can live as he ought without free access to earth, air, water, and light. Isaiah brought the people to this one point--this land belongs to God, and you are using it as if it were yours to do with as you please. And that is all that need be said today. The land, like the air, belongs to God; and if to God, then to humanity; and it is our business to find out, as all easily can if they will, how the great Owner of all the earth would have men use that which must be the home of all His creatures. Of one thing, however, we may be sure. He never intended that a few big lions should get possession of all the forests, so that there should be no comfortable places left for the rabbits, the sheep, and the cattle, except in holes in the ground; and He never intended that a few strong men should get possession of all the fertile, healthful, and beautiful]portions of earth, so that the rest of humanity--the artists, the artisans, the literary men, and those who work with their hands--should be obliged to live in cellars and attics and hardly know what is meant by that great and dear word home. (Amory H. Bradford, D. D.)

A woe on monopolists

I. THE SIN. Their fault is--

1. That they are inordinate in their desires to enrich themselves, and make it their whole care and business to raise an estate, as if they had nothing to mind, nothing to seek, nothing to do in this world but that. They never know when they have enough, but the more they have the more they would have. They cannot enjoy what they have, nor do good with it, for contriving and studying to make it more. They must have variety of houses, a winter house and a summer house; and if another man’s house or field lie convenient to theirs, as Naboth’s vineyard to Ahab’s, they must have that too, or they cannot be easy.

2. They are herein careless of others; nay, and injurious to them. They would live so as to let nobody live but themselves. They would swell so big as to fill all space and yet are still unsatisfied (Ecclesiastes 5:10).

II. THE PUNISHMENT. That which is threatened as the punishment of this sin is--

1. That the houses they were so fond of should be untenanted, should stand long empty, and so should yield them no rent, and go out of repair. Men’s projects are often frustrated, and what they frame answers not the intention.

2. That the fields they were so fond of should be unfruitful. (M. Henry.)

Unpatriotic monopolies

In 1650, while Cromwell was prosecuting his campaign against Charles II in Scotland, he wrote the Speaker of the Parliament, urging the reformation of many abuses and added, “If there be anyone that makes many poor to make a few rich, that suits not a commonwealth.” (C. Knight’s England.)

Greed pauperises the soul

A farmer said “he should like to have all the land that joined his own.” Bonaparte, who had the same appetite, endeavoured to make the Mediterranean a French lake. Czar Alexander was more expansive, and wished to call the Pacific “my ocean”; and the Americans were obliged to resist his attempts to make it a close sea. But if he had the earth for his pasture, and the sea for his pond, he would be a pauper still. He only is rich who owns the day. (R. W. Emerson.)

Covetous persons are

Covetous persons are like sponges, which greedily drink in water, but return very little, until they are squeezed. A covetous person wants what he has, as well as what he has not, because he is never satisfied with it. (G. S. Bowes.)

Folly of covetousness

If you should see a man that had a large pond of water yet living in continual thirst, not suffering himself to drink half a draught for fear of lessening his pond; if you should see him wasting his time and strength in fetching more water to his pond, always thirsty, yet always carrying a bucket of water in his hand, watching early and late to catch the drops of rain, gaping after every cloud, and running greedily into every mire and mud in hopes of water, and always studying how to make every ditch empty itself into the pond; if you should see him grow grey in these anxious labours, and at last end a careful thirsty life by falling into his own pond, would you not say that such a one was not only the author of his own disquiet, but was foolish enough to be reckoned among madmen? But foolish and absurd as this character is, it does not represent half the follies and absurd disquiets of the covetous man. (Law’s Serious Call.)