“For six years you shall sow your land and gather in its yield, but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, that the poor of your people may eat; and what they leave behind the beasts of the field may eat. You shall do likewise with your vineyard, and with your orchard.” Exodus 23.10, 11

The final side of the pentagon of Biblical justice is distributive justice. This requires that members of a community take into consideration the needs of their neighbors and be willing to distribute of their own property in order to meet those needs.

The poor will always be with us, and, in certain ways, it will always be our responsibility to provide for them. In Scripture the seventh-year Sabbath and the gleaning laws made it possible for the poor to care for their needs by taking responsibility to gather from what their neighbors had provided for them.

The people of Israel also were to provide from their resources for the needs of the local clergy. Because priests and Levites were busy attending to the spiritual needs of the community, and owned no land of their own, they required contributions from the people, in the form of tithes, to meet their daily needs.

Other kinds of distributions including allowing travellers to pluck grain or fruit from one’s fields as they journeyed (but they must not fill their bags); allowing farm animals to eat part of what they were trampling or grinding; and leaving food and producers of offspring for wild beasts.

This form of justice demonstrates the overflowing love of God, Who gives freely and abundantly to those who deserve only His wrath, and Who seeks the wellbeing and edification of even the most downcast and despised of men.

For a practical guide to the role of God’s Law in the life of faith, get The Ground for Christian Ethics by going to www.ailbe.org and click on our Book Store.