Usufruct

Frederick Verinder: My Neighbor's Landmark: Short Studies in Bible Land Laws (1911) — Chapter 2: First Principles: "The Earth is The Lord's"

"For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; God Himself that formed the earth and made it; He hath established it, He created it not in vain, He formed it to be inhabited: I am the Lord; and there is none else." So, in the Jewish tradition of the beginnings of the human race, as in other early traditions, the story begins with a man and a woman in a garden; with Land and Labor. It is the will of God that man should satisfy his bodily needs by the exercise of his labor upon the material which He has so abundantly provided. "It is good and comely for one to eat and to drink, and to enjoy the good of all his labor that he taketh under the sun all the days of his life, which God giveth him; for it is his portion"; "it is the gift of God." For man is so made, that he has nothing but the land to live from, nothing but labor — his own or some one else's — to live by.

"So God created man in His own image, … male and female created He them. And God blesses them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. … Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree; ... to you it shall be for meat. … And God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good."

But Adam was not the owner of the Garden of Eden; he only had the use of it, upon conditions. When those conditions were violated, "the Lord God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden, to till the ground whence he was taken," and to till it sorrowfully and in the sweat of his face.

If, therefore, God, the sole Landowner, has given the land to "the children of men" — i.e. to the whole human race in its widest extension through time and space — it follows that no single generation, still less any single individual, has absolute ownership in land. It is not the right of property in land, but the right to use land — limited by the equal right of every one else, now and for ever, to use land — that God has given to man. No man can claim land as "his very own," "to do as he likes with," e.g. to sell. "The land shall not be sold for ever; for the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with Me," saith the Lord. No man could sell land "for ever" for any man's interest in it was only a life-interest; a temporary usufruct, and not a permanent, absolute ownership. It is only the interest of the race that is perpetual. "The days of the life of man may be numbered; but the days of Israel are innumerable." For God has given the land — i.e., the use of it — not to any particular class or generation of men, but to all generations of mankind. ... Read the whole chapter, including footnotes

Frederick Verinder: My Neighbor's Landmark: Short Studies in Bible Land Laws (1911) — Chapter 3: The Meaning of the Landmark

What the Israelites required, therefore, in order to embody in practice the general principle that God had given them equal rights to the use of the earth, was that the Law should secure them the right of equal access to the land of Canaan for the purpose of exercising their labor upon it. The land belonged in usufruct (subject to the sovereign rights of the unseen King) to the whole Nation; every family in the Commonwealth had equal rights in it. The natural and easy way for giving effect to those equal rights, under the circumstances of their time and place, was by an equal division of the land itself among all the families of Israel.

The process by which the division was to be carried out was prescribed beforehand by Moses. A census of the people, by tribes and families, was taken in the plains of Moab on the south-eastern border of the promised land. A body of representative men, specially selected — not unlike what we should now call a Royal Commission — was charged with the duty of dividing the land. It consisted of one representative from each tribe under the presidency of Joshua ben Nun and Eleazar the Priest. To secure fairness of division as between the tribes, the final apportionment was to be by lot. Every tribe, and every family in each tribe (Levi only excepted), had its proportionate share of the common heritage. "To many thou shalt give the more inheritance, and to few thou shalt give the less inheritance; to every one [of the tribal chiefs] shall his inheritance be given according to those that were numbered of him." Even in those early times, we find, in connection with the division of the land, a remarkable recognition of women's rights.

The records of the actual division in accordance with these "commandments and judgments of Moses" are to be found in the Book of Joshua. A commission of survey was appointed (three men from each tribe); a report was drawn up; and "Eleazar the priest, and Joshua the son of Nun, and the heads of the fathers of the tribes of the children of Israel divided [the land] for an inheritance by lot in Shiloh before the Lord, at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. So they made an end of dividing the country."

§ 7. Josephus tells us that the land was not divided into equal areas, but according to its value for agricultural purposes; though whether he was preserving an ancient tradition or merely putting a probable gloss upon the existing record is not easy to determine. However, the passage is worth transcribing —

"So [Joshua] sent men to measure their country, and sent with them some geometricians, who could not easily fail of knowing the truth, on account of their skill in that art. He also gave them a charge to estimate the measure of that part of the land that was most fruitful, and what was not so good; for such is the nature of the land of Canaan, that one may see large plains, and such as are exceeding fit to produce fruit, which yet, if they were compared to other parts of the country, might be reckoned exceeding fruitful, yet if they be compared with the fields about Jericho, and to those that belong to Jerusalem, will appear to be of no account at all. And although it so falls out, that these people have but a very little of this sort of land, and that it is for the main mountainous also, yet does it not come behind other parts, on account of its exceeding goodness and beauty: for which reason Joshua thought the land for the tribes should be divided by estimation of its goodness, rather than the largeness of its measure, it often happening that one acre of some sort of land was equivalent to a thousand other acres"

§ 8. The boundaries of the family allotments were carefully marked, and the sanctity of those "landmarks" — the outward and visible signs of the equal right to the use of the earth — as protected by the public and solemn denunciation of a curse against him who should dishonestly tamper with them. The whole Nation was convened in solemn assembly on Mounts Gerizim and Ebal. To adopt the language of the modern newspaper, the Levites proposed to this mass meeting a series of resolutions, to which the people gave them unanimous assent. Those resolutions classed the removal of the landmark — the infringement of the equal right of access to land — with these social sins which bring a curse upon the Nation; with the sins which break up families, which reduce men to the level of the brute; with idolatry, adultery, and incest; with the perversion of justice, and treacherous murder, and the crime of the hired assassin. For, to the Hebrew, the landmark was a sacred symbol. But it was not the symbol of private "property" in land.

111 LANDMARK.-- An object such as a stone, a heap of stones, or a tree with a mark on its bark, intended to mark the limit of a field, a farm, or the property of an individual. In Palestine, these landmarks are scrupulously respected; and in passing along a road or pathway one may observe from time to time a stone placed by the edge of the field from which a shallow furrow has been ploughed, marking the limits of cultivation of neighboring proprietors. . . . In Egypt, the land had to be remeasured and allotted after each inundation of the Nile, and boundary-stones placed at the 'junction 'of two properties. A collection of such objects is to be seen in the Assyrian Room, British Museum." --Prof. Edwd. Hull in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, iii. 24.

... Read the whole chapter, including footnotes

Frederick Verinder: My Neighbor's Landmark: Short Studies in Bible Land Laws (1911) — 4: The Year of Jubilee: Land and Liberty

§ 7. The price paid on such "sales" was naturally based upon the number of years that were to elapse before the next Year of Jubilee: so many years' purchase of the usufruct.

And if thou sell ought unto thy neighbor, or buyest ought of thy neighbor's hand, ye shall not oppress [R.V., wrong] one another. According to the number of years after the Jubilee thou shalt buy of thy neighbor, and according unto the number of years of the fruits [R.V., crops] he shall sell unto thee. According to the multitude of years thou shalt increase the price thereof, and according to the fewness of years thou shalt diminish the price of it: for according to the number of the years of the fruits [R.V., for the number of the crops] doth he sell unto thee" (Lev. 25:14-16).

Once more we note the astonishing modernity of the ancient Law. For, if the testimony of Josephus is to be believed, the Hebrew legislation had already drawn a distinction between "land" and "agricultural improvements," and had already recognised the principle of compensation for tenants' improvements.

"When the Jubilee is come, which name denotes liberty, he that sold the land, and he that bought it, meet together, and make an estimate, on the one hand, of the fruits gathered, and, on the other hand, of the expenses laid out upon it. If the fruits gathered come to more than the expenses laid out, he that sold it takes the land again; but if the expenses prove more than the fruits, the present possessor receives of the former owner the difference that was wanting, and leaves the land to him; and if the fruits received, and the expenses laid out, prove equal to one another, the present possessor relinquishes it to the former owner."

That is, if the outgoing tenant has spent more on the land than he has got out of it, he receives compensation for his unexhausted improvements. ... Read the whole chapter, including footnotes

10. The Promised Land and the Kingdom of God

The Promised Land, like Eden, is a place of unhindered scope in which to glorify God and manifest his will. But it is not the Kingdom of God. It represents liberation from external bondage — from oppression and restricted access to material opportunity. It is the temporal matrix within which the Kingdom may find full expression. But it is not itself the Kingdom. Although it is a heresy that locates this Kingdom exclusively in the afterlife or an ethereal paradise, Jesus declared it to be "not of this world" (John 18:36) but "within" (Luke 17:21). It is no reproach to Henry George that he lost sight of this distinction between the Promised Land and the Kingdom of God, enraptured by his vision of a just society:

With want destroyed; with greed changed to noble passions; with the fraternity that is born of equality taking the place of jealousy and fear that now array men against each other; with mental power loosed by conditions that give to the humblest comfort and leisure; and who shall measure the heights to which our civilization may soar? Words fail the thought! It is the Golden Age.... It is the culmination of Christianity — the City of God on earth, with walls of jasper and gates of pearl! It is the reign of the Prince of Peace!

By equalizing opportunity, political and economic liberation tend to draw both poor and rich into the middle class. As an expression of social justice, this constitutes a genuine advance, ethical as well as material. But it is no easy guarantee of spiritual gain. Middle-class traits include virtues such as industry, thrift, restraint, commercial and professional rectitude, but, on the other hand, low prudentialism, self-satisfaction, and an inclination to regard material well-being as a sign of righteousness. Hence, even in the Promised Land, what Paulo Freire calls "conscientization" (roughly, consciousness-raising through social commitment), emphasized and refined by liberation theology, must continue although in a different vein. The Kingdom of God will flourish only when outward liberation gives rise to inward liberation, a victory over the limitations of the bourgeois ethos.

"The Earth Is the Lord's" (Psalm 24:1). This statement tells us something about God. He is attached to the land and loves it. He is not a spiritual abstraction oblivious to the Wasteland in which we live. God is the maker of the world of eating and sleeping, working and begetting. It also tells us something of our place in this world. With God as the true owner of the earth, every person has a right to the produce which equitable usufruct yields to his or her efforts.

To recognize that "the earth is the Lord's" is to see that the same God who established communities has also in his providence ordained for them, through the land itself, a just source of revenue. Yet, in the Wasteland in which we live, this revenue goes mainly into the pockets of monopolists, while communities meet their needs by extorting individuals the fruits of their honest toil. If ever there were any doubt that structural sin exists, our present system of taxation is the proof. Everywhere we see governments penalizing individuals for their industry and creativity, while the socially produced value of land is reaped by speculators in exact proportion to the land which they withhold. The greater the Wasteland, the greater the reward. Does this comport with any divine plan, or notion of justice and human rights? Or does it not, rather, perpetuate the Wasteland and prevent the realization of the Promised Land?

This not meant to suggest that land monopolists and speculators have a corner on acquisitiveness or the "profit motive," which is a well-nigh universal fact of human nature. As a group, they are no more sinful than are people at large, except to the degree that they knowingly obstruct reforms aimed at removing the basis of exploitation. Many abide by the dictum: "If one has to live under a corrupt system, it is better to be a beneficiary than a victim of it."

But they do not have to live under a corrupt system; no one does. The profit motive can be channeled in ways that are socially desirable as well as in ways that are socially destructive. Let us give testimony to our faith that the earth is the Lord's by building a social order in which there are no victims. ... Read the whole synopsis