Leviticus 19: What the Owner Is Told Not to Finish

"Are you going to pick those, or are they just going to sit there?"

The woman next door asked me that over the fence on Thursday, one hand on the post and her eyes on our crabapple tree, which has been dropping fruit on both sides of the property line since August. I had a call at one, so I told her what was true. They sit there every year. She asked if she could take them for jelly, the ones on her side and the ones on mine, and I said take all of them.

Leviticus 19:9 was waiting for me a few days later.

What Leviticus 19:9-10 tells the owner to do

And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither shalt thou gather the gleanings of thy harvest.

Leviticus 19:9

Read it slowly and you'll see the owner is never told to give anything, only to stop short. "Wholly" does a lot of work in that verse, because he still reaps his field, and the rule only takes the corners and whatever drops. Verse 10 does the same thing to the vineyard: he doesn't go over it a second time and he doesn't "gather every grape of thy vineyard." Then the reason, which is a short one: "thou shalt leave them for the poor and stranger: I am the Lord your God."

I'd like to call the tree a corner I left standing, but I never decided anything about it, and the verse seems to want the owner to know the corner is there and leave it on purpose. Fair enough if you read it more generously than I do.

Ruth 2 is where most of us have seen this rule working, and the detail I'd never lined up before is that the law gets her into the field and doesn't do the rest. She has to ask. She tells Naomi she'll go and gather ears of corn "after him in whose sight I shall find grace" (Ruth 2:2), and in verse 7 she asks the servant set over the reapers for leave to do it. He says she has worked from morning until now, with a short rest in the house.

Then Boaz does more than the law requires, and you can see exactly where. He tells his young men to let her work "even among the sheaves" (2:15), which is inside the harvest and nowhere near the corner. And in verse 16 he says "let fall also some of the handfuls of purpose for her, and leave them." Handfuls of purpose. The owner is now dropping grain on the ground where she'll find it, which is a good deal more than leaving the corner. She takes home about an ephah of barley (2:17), a measure that turns up again in Leviticus 19:36.

Deuteronomy 24:19-22 gives the harvest rule again, for the sheaf you forgot and the olive tree you've already beaten and the vineyard, and it ends with the same reason Leviticus 19 gives for the stranger.

Verse 15 warns against favoring the poor

After verse 9 I expected the chapter to keep leaning toward the poor, and verse 15 is where it stops.

Verse 13 says the wages of a hired man "shall not abide with thee all night until the morning." Deuteronomy 24:15 puts it as "neither shall the sun go down upon it," and gives the reason, that the man is poor and "setteth his heart upon it." I work in payments, where money sits in a pending state for a couple of days and no one thinks of that as holding anything. Verse 13 allows one night.

Then verse 15, the one I'd have bet the other way on:

Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment: thou shalt not respect the person of the poor, nor honour the person of the mighty: but in righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbour.

Leviticus 19:15

The poor get no thumb on the scale, and neither do the powerful. My reading, and it's only mine, is that the chapter has two different jobs in mind. The field belongs to the owner, so what he leaves there is his to leave. The bench belongs to nobody in particular, and a judge who tilts it toward the poor man has done the same wrong as one who tilts it toward the rich.

Verses 35 and 36 come back to the scale itself: "Just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin, shall ye have." There's the ephah again, the same measure Ruth carried home.

What is "love thy neighbour as thyself" sitting next to?

I used to hear verse 18 as the chapter's summary, a line that rose above all the little rules around it. I'd say now that the little rules are the summary, and verse 18 is where the chapter says so out loud.

Look at what comes before it. Verse 16: no talebearing. Verse 17: "Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart: thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbour, and not suffer sin upon him." And then verse 18 begins with what you aren't to do, no avenging and no grudge. Only then does it arrive at

...but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the Lord.

Leviticus 19:18

The command comes at the end of a list of things a person does or doesn't do, and nothing in the chapter stops to describe a feeling. I find verse 17 the harder half. Hating in your heart is ruled out, fine, but so is the quiet alternative of saying nothing, and I'm much better at silence than at a rebuke that's meant for the other man's good. I can carry a grudge a long way without anyone noticing. The verse seems to have a view on that.

Jesus quotes verse 18 in Matthew 22:39 as the second commandment, "like unto" the first, and says in the next verse that on the two "hang all the law and the prophets." So it was already in Leviticus before it was in the Gospels, sitting between a rule about talebearing and a rule about mixed seed. Paul tells the Thessalonians they don't need him to write to them about brotherly love, then asks them to do more of it anyway, which I went through in 1 Thessalonians 4.

Who is the stranger in verses 33 and 34?

But the stranger that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.

Leviticus 19:34

It's the same words as verse 18 with the stranger put in the place of the neighbor, and then a reason. The reason given is that you were one yourself, which is a stranger argument than saying they deserve it. Deuteronomy 24:22 does the same thing at the end of the harvest rule: "thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt: therefore I command thee to do this thing."

Ruth called herself a stranger in 2:10, "seeing I am a stranger," and she was one, a Moabitess in Bethlehem.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Leviticus 19:18 ask for a feeling or for conduct?

Conduct, as far as I can tell from the verse. It comes right after no revenge and no grudge, and verse 17 has just told you what to do about the brother you're tempted to hate. If a feeling follows, good, but the text spends its words on the doing.

Do Latter-day Saints still keep the mixed seed and mixed cloth rule in verse 19?

They don't, because the Book of Mormon teaches that the law of Moses was fulfilled in Christ (3 Nephi 12:17-18), and Nephi says the people kept it until then and that it has "become dead unto us" (2 Nephi 25:24-25). The moral commandments in the chapter carry forward, and Jesus picks one of them up himself in Matthew 22.

Is Leviticus 19 about social justice?

The phrase isn't in the chapter, and I wouldn't hang a modern argument on it. What the chapter has is wages paid on time, a judge who doesn't take sides, honest scales, the deaf and the blind, the old, the stranger and a corner of the field left uncut.

Why does a chapter about fair wages also forbid eating with the blood?

I don't know the reason for the order. Verse 2 addresses "all the congregation of the children of Israel," not just the priests, so the ritual rules and the neighbor rules are handed to the same people in the same breath. Verse 26 touches blood again, which Leviticus 17 goes through at more length.

Read verses 9 through 18 in one sitting and count how few of them ask you for money. Then go back to verses 33 and 34 and ask who counts as the stranger in your ward or your office.

— D.