You’ve planted your crops, hoed the weeds, and prayed for rain. Now it’s time for the harvest. And the Lord says, after all your hard work, you are not to try to get every bit of the yield for yourself. “When you reap your harvest in your field and forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it; it shall be left for the alien, the orphan, and the widow, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all your undertakings” (Deuteronomy 24:19).

The version of this law we read a couple weeks ago in Leviticus is similar: “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the Lord your God” (Leviticus 19:9-10). At harvest time, the crops at the edges of the field, and the fallen sheaves or grapes and the individual grains of wheat on the ground: all of these are there for the impoverished and the foreigners, for the widows and orphans, who can go and pick up this food. The two passages remind us that the identity and blessing of our God call us to this practice.

And there’s also a rule for gleaners before harvest time. “If you go into your neighbor’s vineyard, you may eat your fill of grapes, as many as you wish, but you shall not put any in a container. If you go into your neighbor’s standing grain, you may pluck the ears by hand, but you shall not put a sickle to your neighbor’s standing grain” (Deuteronomy 23:25-26). Before harvest time you can’t gather up your neighbor’s crop and take it home with you; but if you’re hungry you can eat.

The Law of Gleaning thus recognizes that even in the Land of Milk and Honey, illness and misfortune happen: which might mean that any of us could end up in poverty and hunger. If that happens, we don’t get something for nothing, food without effort: we have to go and pick up the food, maybe scouring the ground for individual fallen grains after the crop has been harvested. And if this year we are the ones who have received the blessing on our produce, we are not to claim it all for ourselves: we must leave some for the poor to glean. “Remember that you were a slave in Egypt; therefore I am commanding you to do this” (24:22).

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Again and again you command us to care for the poor, O Lord: the widow, the orphan, the foreigner in our midst. That is hard for us; we want every bit of what we raise to be for ourselves. Remind us what it is to go hungry: give us hearts of compassion, glad that we have enough, glad for the poor to have a share as well.