With activities and production all administrated up, timed to the second, counted to be sure it all got done, Egypt sure wasn't the place God promised to Abraham. The exodus desert's shifting sand couldn't be the place–what can you plant, what on earth will grow in such an arid space? That place of promise had to be land you could seed, nurture, and harvest; fertile ground that would provide the most basic human need. To paraphrase Walter Brueggemann, "Justice is important, but dinner is essential"
For immigrants from almost everywhere, the New World's open prairies became the main incentive for leaving the familiar {in some case even their families} in order to make stable new lives for themselves as farmers. Scripture and experience demonstrate how a well-tended garden eventually grows into a city, yet some agricultural land must remain for people to be fed.
15The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. 16And the Lord God commanded the man, "You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; 17but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die." Genesis 2
22As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease. Genesis 8
Food and farming are so necessary, God explained the land belonged to him, was a not-for-sale loan to humanity; land was not and still is not human "property." The gift of tillable ground came with a charge, a commandment to farm it well.
I need a song, but the spring is for sowing.
A word to the wise that the earth must provide.
A tune to unravel the riddle of growing;
First things first when you get to the land.
by Peter Yarrow and Peter Zimmel // Lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.
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