Behar: economics

 Rashi says:  מה ענין שמיטה אצל הר סיני : What does Shmitah have to do with Mount Sinai, why are we informed that the laws of the Sabbatical year were given near Mount Sinai? Weren't all the laws given on Mount Sinai,? But the details of Sabbatical  and Jubilee were given at Mount Sinai.

These laws of land use , land-lordship, and social welfare were given  to liberated slaves in a desert, 40 years before the land was conquered.  The law is  not ad hoc.  A welfare state ( Gd provides Manna and guidance for camping) anticipates its capitalist  ( perhaps feudal) evolution A situation in which people possess land is one in which there are rich and poor, masters and servants, owners and the bought.  But these rules are set in advance of that, no vested interests  (Even if they were actually recorded later, they are projected in this way to convey the idea of  disinterest.)

The laws protect the inheritance of land.  The land cannot be sold, it reverts to the ancestral owner ( Joshua's assigned, not the Canaanite)  at the jubilee.  The (rented) land is protected from depletion by the Sabbatical year.  The land is protected by prohibitions.

The poverty ( which, presumably, accompanies the loss of land) is to be fixed by voluntary acts ( positive commandments),. A less secure arrangement.

Workers on the bottom
Bosses on top
This kind of stuff
Has got to stop.
You know , yow know,
we need a Revolution now

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