While preparing another blog on the 613 commandments of the Old Testament, I was reading some of them given in Leviticus. One of them about gleaning, in Leviticus 19:9-10, brought back old memories. It reads “When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner.”
 It brought back memories of when my cousin and I gleaned the corn field of a nearby farmer, something I hadn’t thought about in many years. It must have been about 1957, because my cousin had just gotten his driver’s license meaning he was 16 and I was 14. There had been a lot of wet weather during the corn harvest, and the farmer couldn’t get into this field, which was very rich bottom land (probably as rich as any land in Indiana), until late in the year. As a result the corn picker (not a combine) missed a lot of ears. He asked if we wanted to pick, by hand, the ears that the picker had missed, most of which were on the ground. It was hard work and our hands almost froze in the December cold; however, in two days we were able to pick two heaping pickup truck loads. I don’t remember the price of corn at the time, but I do remember that it seemed like a windfall. I doubt if the farmer had ever read the commandment; he just wanted the corn picked up, because the ears would sprout the next season and become weeds.

 One of my favorite books of the Bible is the book of Ruth; it implicitly says a lot about love: Ruth’s love for her mother-in-law (mother-in-law!) Naomi, the love of Ruth and Boaz, and finally the love of God (“your God will be my God”). Gleaning plays a major role in the story. After Ruth and Naomi return to Bethlehem, Ruth gleans in the fields of Boaz to provide food for her and Naomi. Boaz notices her and the rest is history. Clearly Boaz was following the commandment.

 Today, most of us would subsume this commandment under “Love your neighbor as yourself,” but it does give us some insight into loving our neighbors. Anyone who has seen the vast and endless fields of corn and soy beans in the Midwest would say that literally following this commandment is impractical today. Some food banks have, however, tried to organize volunteers to glean special crops – usually root crops such as potatoes and sweet potatoes. Despite its impracticality, the forgotten commandment does tell us that part of loving our neighbors is making sure that they have the basics. It also tells us that our neighbors are the poor and the foreigners. If we combine the commandment with the story of Ruth, we also learn that we should treat those unfortunate with dignity.

Read Ruth 2:1-16, and remember: God loves YOU unconditionally.

Jim

Today’s Reading: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ruth+2%3A1-16