Standing in a dusty field near Fresno, the owner of the land complaining about political agendas says,
“We are simply going to starve ourselves and probably the rest of the world.”
Woe to those who join house to house; They add field to field, Till
no place Where they may dwell alone in the midst of the land! In my
hearing the LORD of hosts “Truly, many houses shall be desolate,
Great and beautiful ones, without inhabitant. For ten acres of
vineyard shall yield one bath, And a homer of seed shall yield one ephah.”
(Isaiah 5;8-10)
Reading Isaiah this morning, and in Chapter 5 verses 8-10, he takes to task those who multiply land to keep as their private world by keeping others from using the land to live.
It is similar to today, we know that Bill Gates has a desire to buy as much land as he can to stop men from using it. Many liberal politicians want to make laws outlawing the ownership of land do they can keep people in the cities where they are easy to control.
Five things GOD gave all men, free will, land, water, air, and sun. Throughout history evil men have tried their best to stop others from enjoying all five. Today is no different than the past. Evil men want to control all four of these so they can control us.
GOD gave the land to all men, and even instructed Moses to divide the land so all of the Israelites could have their own property. Yet through out history evil men who wish to control others claim our rights come from the king, not GOD. Thus the king would institute laws limiting our GOD given rights.
God knew this would happen, this is why HE had Moses institute a year of Jubilee for the Israelites, so that every 50 years the land would return to the original families. This protected the right of family land ownership.
Yet by the time Isaiah lived men disregarded the practice, with the rich and powerful made it so the poor could not utilize the land to live off. This is not much different to today. Not saying it is wrong to own much land, but when it is done just so one can own it just to keep others from benefiting from it, it becomes an evil thing. GOD does not want us to be hoarders of wealth, regardless of how it is determined.
We live in a society that thinks possessions is all that matters, he who dies with the most sins, when in truth it is those who own much that will find it difficult to get into heaven.
Just as the rich man who did not follow Jesus, because he was told to sell everything and follow HIM, it was not that he had much, but rather what he owned became his gods.
God warned us about gathering in cities, and today men prefer to live in cities rather than till the land. Yet as the generations go by, many live impoverished in cities with little leans to survive do to tax laws, and political agendas that support the worship of the earth, that can limit people from even holding onto their own property, taxes and bank foreclosures can force one to sell property and land that has been in the family for generations. This is an evil, which Isaiah speaks against here.
I came across this commentary by Sir Edward Strachey, Bart on selfishness that I found interesting.
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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 fulfillment 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 neighbors 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 endeavored 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.)
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