Day 194.
Woe to those who decree iniquitous decrees, and the writers who keep writing oppression, to turn aside the needy from justice and to rob the poor of my people of their right, that widows may be their spoil, and that they may make the fatherless their prey! (Isaiah 10:1, 2 ESV)
One of the reasons for judgment coming upon Israel is their unjust treatment of the poor. We find this injustice to stretch all the way up to the writers of the laws of the land. They have denied the poor their “right.” That right is the gleaning of the fields after the harvest. Landowners were to reap the harvest but not glean to the edges of their field so that the poor had some provision. This was not a handout, as he poor gleaned and threshed their own grain. It gave them a means of self sufficiency and dignity in terms of work. Somehow the people in power were denying the poor this right and thus judgment was decreed.
