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The filet mignon of the word, part 14, The law of gleanings

Moses says in Deuteronomy 24:19,

¹⁹ When you reap your harvest in your field and have forgotten a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be for the alien, for the orphan, and for the widow, in order that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.

We see this law put into practice in the book of Ruth, while she gleaned in the field of Boaz. Ruth 2:15 and 16 says,

¹⁵ When she rose to glean, Boaz commanded his servants, saying, “Let her glean even among the sheaves, and do not insult her. ¹⁶ And also you shall purposely pull out for her some grain from the bundles and leave it that she may glean, and do not rebuke her.”

Boaz was extra generous with Ruth, going beyond the requirement of the law. He actually instructed his reapers to pretend to forget some sheaves along the way. It is a good example of love, which does not violate the law but exceeds its righteous standard.

God’s Direct Covering

Gleanings were given to the alien, orphan, and widow, who all had one thing in common. They had no covering, no kinsman redeemer. So God provided such covering Himself, showing us that if believers have no “covering” in a church, God becomes their covering. He takes their case when they cry unto Him (Exodus 22:23).

And so also, when David’s parents forsook him on account of Saul’s threat, God covered him directly. David wrote in Psalm 27:10,

¹⁰ For my father and my mother have forsaken me, but the Lord will take me up.

When David was an outlaw being pursued by King Saul, his parents had to renounce him in order to protect their own inheritance in Bethlehem. As a spiritual orphan, David received special protection and training from God Himself. He was adopted into God’s household and thus became a “son of God,” and God became his covering.

When we see that all such “aliens, widows, and orphans” are adopted by God when they come into the Kingdom and join themselves to His covenant, we can then begin to understand Isaiah 56:3-8, which speaks of aliens and eunuchs being given “a name better than that of sons and daughters.”

The law of gleanings is one of God’s ways of providing for those who are under His direct covering.

Remembering Israel’s Oppression in Egypt

Moses continues in verses 20-22,

²⁰ When you beat your olive tree, you shall not go over the boughs again; it shall be for the alien, for the orphan, and for the widow. ²¹ When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, you shall not go over it again; it shall be for the alien, for the orphan, and for the widow. ²² And you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt; therefore I am commanding you to do this thing.

Once again, the law of gleanings is something that the Israelites ought to appreciate, having been aliens themselves in the land of Egypt. Their treatment at the hands of the Egyptians was God’s lesson to them about how NOT to treat aliens—and by extension, widows and orphans as well.

The Corners of Your Field

Moses had already established the law of gleanings earlier, with an extra detail, as we read in Leviticus 19:9 and 10,

⁹ Now when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very corners of your field, neither shall you gather the gleanings of your harvest. ¹⁰ Nor shall you glean your vineyard, nor shall you gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the needy and for the stranger. I am the Lord your God.

This gives us a few more instructions about gleanings. Not only were the reapers to leave any sheaf behind that they forgot, but they were also to leave the corners of their fields for the needy to reap. Likewise, in gleaning one’s vineyard, if they dropped some of the grapes, they were to leave the droppings on the ground for the needy. This law is repeated in Leviticus 23:22, but with no further details.

The corners of one’s field were devoted to God and its fruit was given to the poor, the widows, the orphans, and the aliens. The principle behind this law is also portrayed in a related law regarding the corners of a man’s beard. Leviticus 19:9 speaks of the corners of the field, while verse 27 speaks of the corners of one’s beard (sideburns). These laws are found in proximity to each other for a reason.

The “face of the earth” (as in Genesis 6:1) was a Hebrew term that related one’s face to a grain field. The corners of a beard, prophetically speaking, picture the corners of that field. It was not mandated in the law that any man have a beard, for even Joseph was shaved when he was presented to Pharaoh (Genesis 41:14); but if he did, he was not to have a goatee. Cutting sideburns was the prophetic equivalent of harvesting the corners of one’s field and depriving the poor of the sustenance that God intended for them.

To fully understand this concept, one ought to study the laws regarding Nazirites, who were forbidden to cut their hair or shave their beards until the end of their vow (Numbers 6:5). Such a vow was done to cleanse and purify a person, and it correlated to a field being given back to nature. As the field became overgrown with weeds and trees, it became like a jungle. While this state appeared to be disorganized and unsubdued, it also allowed the land to be replenished naturally with nutrients in order to make it productive in the future.

While the Nazirite law depicted the “face of the earth” in the sense of creating a jungle-like state, the law about beards pictures a cultivated field in fulfillment of the mandate in Genesis 1:28 to subdue the earth and put it under the dominion of Jesus Christ. No man can fulfill this mandate apart from being obedient to His will, and His will is expressed in part by the law of gleanings.

God is not as concerned with men’s beards as He is with the spiritual meaning in its connection to the law of gleanings. In my opinion no man must have a beard, unless led by the Spirit to do so.

Gleanings and the Law of Love

The law gives us the basic teaching, but how do the prophets understand it? How is the law applied spiritually and prophetically? We find the answer in Micah 7, where the prophet laments over Israel because the law had been put away in favor of “the statutes of Omri.” Omri was one of Israel’s most powerful kings in its history, and he had instituted a new Law Code to replace the laws of God. So the prophet says in Micah 7:1 and 2,

¹ Woe is me! For I am like the fruit pickers and the grape gatherers [olelah, “gleaners”]. There is not a cluster of grapes to eat, or a first-ripe fig which I crave. ² The godly person has perished from the land, and there is no upright person among men. All of them lie in wait for bloodshed; each of them hunts the other with a net [cherem, “devotion”].

To glean is alal, and a grape gleaner is olelah. The word is also used in Arabic to denote a second drink to quench the remaining thirst that one might have after his first long drink. In Scripture we find Balaam using the same word in Numbers 22:29, where he accused his donkey of insulting him. The NASB reads, “you have made a mockery of me!” In other words, Balaam accused his donkey of overstepping his bounds and behaving badly.

Hence, the word alal has to do with going beyond boundaries, and when applied to gleanings it means going beyond one’s normal right to possess what one has produced. It is a law of love, expressed in one’s giving to the poor, the widows, orphans, and aliens, all of whom are under God’s direct covering.

So the prophet Micah laments over the fact that Israel had replaced the law of God with the laws of Omri and had thus overstepped the boundaries of the law of God. He expresses it in terms of grape gleanings. It is likely that Omri had abolished the law of gleanings, which then left the needy without sufficient sustenance. “The godly man has perished from the land” can mean that no Israelites were following the law of God anymore; or it can mean that the poor and needy, who are “the godly” in this case, had died of starvation or had been forced to move to another country.

Gleanings and the Elect

In a way, we are what we eat. Spiritually speaking, God’s elect are represented as the gleanings that they eat. From the standpoint of prophecy, the gleanings were given to the elect remnant, those under God’s direct covering, pictured as widows, orphans, and aliens.

Paul’s example of the elect in Romans 11:2-7 comes from the story of Elijah. And so Micah was lamenting as much as Elijah had done earlier, when he complained to God in 1 Kings 19:14,

¹⁴ … the sons of Israel have forsaken Thy covenant, torn down Thine altars and killed Thy prophets with the sword. And I alone am left; and they seek my life, to take it away.

In other words, the lawless Israelites persecuted and destroyed God’s elect. Micah complained that the good man had perished from the earth, while Elijah complained that he was the only one left who served the true God.

Of course, God then told Elijah in verse 18 that there were yet 7,000 in Israel who were true worshipers. Paul tells us in Romans 11:5-7 that these were the “remnant of grace” who were also called “the elect.” Whereas Israel as a whole had been “called” by God to administer the blessings of Abraham to the nations of the world, in reality only the elect remnant was truly “chosen” and obtained that promise.