The Law of the Neighbor
The Law does not order worship and conscience alone: it shapes the whole life of the people, its courts, its work, its lands, its debts, its poor. These precepts the Church calls judicial make Israel a just society, in the image of the holiness of its God. They unfold, in the concreteness of precise laws, the great commandment to love the neighbor as oneself, and they carry everywhere the same memory: Israel was a slave, and God set it free; let it then treat the weak as God treated it.
Justice for All
The Law wants first an upright justice, equal for all, that nothing may bend. It forbids the judge to let himself be bought, to lie, or to yield before the powerful, and it engraves this demand in a word that has remained famous. “Justice, and justice alone, is what you shall pursue, so that you may live and take possession of the land that the Lord your God is giving you.” Deuteronomy 16:20 This justice extends first to those who have no one to defend them, the widow, the orphan, and the stranger without right or kin in the land. The Law protects them by recalling to Israel its own history. “You shall not pervert the justice due to the immigrant or the orphan, and you shall not take the widow’s garment as a pledge. Remember that you were a slave in Egypt.” Deuteronomy 24:17-18 The people that were oppressed must not become oppressors in their turn. “You shall not mistreat the stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall not mistreat any widow or orphan.” Exodus 22:20-21
Care for the Poor
The heart of this social law is the protection of the weak, down to the most daily gestures of work and money. At harvest time, the owner must not gather everything: he leaves to the poor and the strangers the edge of his field and the fallen fruit, so that they may glean and live by their labor. “you shall leave them for the poor and the resident alien. I am the Lord, your God.” Leviticus 19:9-10 The poor laborer must be paid the same day, without his wages being withheld a single night, for he needs them to eat. “Each day you shall give him his wages, and do not let the sun set on this debt, for he is poor and waits for it with all his heart.” Deuteronomy 24:14-15 One lends to the poor without drawing interest or profit, not to grow rich on his misfortune, but so that he may rise again and live among his own. “Take from him neither interest nor profit, but fear your God, so that your brother may live beside you.” Leviticus 25:35-36 And if one takes a man’s cloak in pledge, it is returned to him before night, for it is his only covering; the Law goes even this far into detail, because God hears the cry of the poor man who is cold. “If he cries out to me, I will hear him, for I am compassionate.” Exodus 22:25-26
The Sabbatical Year and the Jubilee
The Law inscribes justice even into time and the land, to prevent misery from settling in forever. Every seven years the sabbatical year returns: the land rests, its cultivation is given up, and debts are remitted. “Every seven years, you shall grant a release of debts… every creditor shall release what he has lent to his neighbor.” Deuteronomy 15:1-2 Thus no one remains crushed by an endless debt, and the poor go free again. At the end of seven times seven years comes at last the jubilee, the fiftieth year, when a general release is proclaimed. “you shall proclaim liberty in the land for all its inhabitants. It shall be for you a jubilee: each of you shall return to his property and return to his family.” Leviticus 25:10 Lands that were sold return to their families, slaves regain their freedom: nothing accumulates forever in the same hands, and the gaps are set back to zero. The foundation of this bold law is that the land does not belong first to men, but to God, who entrusts it without anyone becoming its absolute master. “the land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine, and with me you are only resident aliens and passing guests.” Leviticus 25:23
The Heart of These Laws: To Love the Neighbor
Beneath each of these rules beats one same principle, which the Law states in full words in the very midst of its social precepts. “You shall love your neighbour as yourself. I am the Lord.” Leviticus 19:18 All this legislation flows from it and leads back to it: it teaches one to see in the other, above all in the weakest, a brother to be loved as oneself, and to make generosity not an optional gesture, but a demand of the covenant. Christ will carry this precept to its full measure. In telling of the Good Samaritan, he shows that the neighbor has no border, that he is also the stranger and the enemy fallen on the side of the road, and that the love of neighbor is the very face of the love of God. What the Law asked of one people, the Gospel asks of all, and without limit.