Communism

The biblical pattern filed under "Communism" is not the modern political program but the older shape from which that program borrowed its vocabulary: a community in which possession is held with an open hand, in which the land is not finally the owner's, and in which the abundance of one is in steady motion toward the want of another. The picture is built from divine ownership of the ground itself, a legal calendar that periodically empties accumulation back into the families it came from, a standing claim of the poor and the sojourner on the edges of every harvest, and a New Testament collection in which Paul names "equality" as the goal between the churches.

The Land Is Yahweh's

The starting premise is that no Israelite owns anything outright. The land that any family farms is held under a prior claim: "the land will not be sold in perpetuity; for the land is mine: for you⁺ are strangers and sojourners with me" (Lev 25:23). The same note runs through the Psalter and the prophets — "The earth is Yahweh's, and the fullness of it; The world, and those who dwell in it" (Ps 24:1); "The silver is mine, and the gold is mine, says Yahweh of hosts" (Hag 2:8). David, ordering the offerings for the temple, gives this its sharpest form: "all things come of you, and of your own we have given you" (1 Chr 29:14). Property in scripture is therefore always returned property — what is given back from a hand that did not first own it.

The Jubilee and the Release

That theology is given a calendar. Every fiftieth year Israel is to "proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants" (Lev 25:10), and "in this year of jubilee you⁺ will return every man to his possession" (Lev 25:13, supplement). The mechanism behind it is kinsman-redemption: when a brother grows poor and sells part of his holding, "his kinsman who is next to him will come, and will redeem that which his brother has sold" (Lev 25:25, supplement). If no kinsman can buy it back and the man himself cannot, the land sits in the buyer's hand only "until the year of jubilee: and in the jubilee it will go out, and he will return to his possession" (Lev 25:28). Even a prince's gift to a slave reverts at the year of liberty (Eze 46:17). Accumulation has a ceiling, and the ceiling is a trumpet on the day of atonement.

The seventh-year release sits on the same axis. Israel is told not to harden the heart against a poor brother — "you will surely open your hand to him, and will surely lend him sufficient for his need" — and warned not to calculate the year of release into a refusal: "your eye is evil against your poor brother, and you give him nothing; and he cries to Yahweh against you, and it is sin to you" (Deut 15:7-9, supplement). When the Hebrew slave is freed in the seventh year, he is not sent away empty: "you will furnish him liberally out of your flock, and out of your threshing-floor, and out of your wine press" (Deut 15:14).

The Standing Share at the Edge of the Harvest

Alongside the calendar there is a permanent perimeter. The corners of the field are not the owner's to reap; the gleanings are not his to gather; the fallen grapes are not his to retrieve. "You will leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am Yahweh your⁺ God" (Lev 19:10, supplement). Deuteronomy spells it out three times — sheaf, olive, vine — and ties it to memory: "you will remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt: therefore I command you to do this thing" (Deut 24:22, supplement). The poor and the sojourner do not depend on the goodwill of the landowner; they have a standing claim, written into the harvest law itself.

Almsgiving and the Hand of the Brother

What the law leaves at the edge, the wisdom literature presses into the heart. Ben Sira makes the duty plain and the failure ugly: "do not mock at the life of the poor… do not snort at the misery of the soul who lacks… do not trouble the insides of the oppressed, And do not withhold a gift from your indigent" (Sir 4:1-3). The poor man's curse, when he has been turned away, reaches God: "his Rock will hear the voice of his cry" (Sir 4:6). The positive form is to "save the oppressed from his oppressors" and to "be as a father to the fatherless, And in the place of a husband to widows" (Sir 4:9-10, supplement). The same hand-out gesture comes through repeatedly: "to the needy, hold out your hand; So that your blessing may be complete" (Sir 7:32); "Treasure the poor and do not give to the proud" (Sir 12:7); "Help the poor for the commandment's sake" (Sir 29:9); "Store up alms in your store-chambers, And it will deliver you from all affliction" (Sir 29:12). To withhold is no minor failure — "The bread of the needy is the life of the poor, He who deprives him of it is a man of blood" (Sir 34:25).

The prophet Isaiah names the same duty under the rubric of true fasting: "Is it not to deal your bread to the hungry, and that you bring the poor who are cast out to your house? When you see the naked, that you cover him; and that you don't hide yourself from your own flesh?" (Isa 58:7). And the Mosaic ground stays under it all: "if your brother is waxed poor, and his hand fails with you; then you will uphold him: [as] a stranger [who is a] sojourner he will live with you" (Lev 25:35).

The Two Coats and the Sold Goods

The teaching carries straight into the New Testament. John the Baptist, asked what righteousness looks like, gives an almost mechanical answer: "He who has two coats, let him impart to him who has none; and he who has food, let him do likewise" (Luke 3:11). Jesus puts the practice on a more radical footing: "Sell that which you⁺ have, and give alms; make for yourselves wallets which do not wear out, a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief draws near, neither moth destroys" (Luke 12:33). Zacchaeus, hearing him, sets the tax-collector's restitution alongside it — "the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have wrongfully exacted anything of any man, I restore fourfold" (Luke 19:8). The early apostolic teaching keeps the same posture: "sharing to the necessities of the saints; given to the love for strangers" (Rom 12:13); "do good and to share do not forget: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased" (Heb 13:16).

The charge to the wealthy is not separation but redirection. Those rich in this present age are told "not to be highminded, nor have their hope set on the uncertainty of riches, but on God… that they do good, that they be rich in good works, that they be ready to distribute, willing to share" (1 Tim 6:17-18). The "good foundation" they are laying is laid by the same hand that gives away (1 Tim 6:19, supplement).

The Pauline Collection — "That There May Be Equality"

Paul's collection for the saints in Jerusalem gives the topic its most explicit New Testament shape. The Macedonian churches give in deep poverty — "the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded to the riches of their liberality" (2 Cor 8:2) — and they give "according to their power… yes and beyond their power, [they gave] of their own accord" (2 Cor 8:3). The procedure is regular and proportionate: "On the first day of the week let each of you⁺ lay by him in store, as he may prosper, that no collections be made when I come" (1 Cor 16:2). Paul's standard for the contribution itself is willingness, not amount: "if the readiness is there, [it is] acceptable according to as [a man] has, not according to as [he] has not" (2 Cor 8:12); "[Let] each [do] according to as he has purposed in his heart: not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loves a cheerful giver" (2 Cor 9:7).

The goal is named in a single word: equality. "For not that others may be eased [and] you⁺ distressed; but by equality: your⁺ abundance at this present time for their want, that their abundance also may become for your⁺ want; that there may be equality" (2 Cor 8:13-14, supplement). Paul reaches back to the manna: "He who [gathered] much had nothing over; and he who [gathered] little had no lack" (2 Cor 8:15). The result is not the donor's depletion but the donor's enrichment for further distribution — "you⁺ being enriched in everything to all liberality" — and the spillover is thanksgiving toward God, not toward the giver (2 Cor 9:11-12, supplement).

What Holds the Pattern Together

The pattern is not a program of forced expropriation; the gifts in 2 Corinthians are "of their own accord" (2 Cor 8:3) and the collection is "as he may prosper" (1 Cor 16:2). It is not, on the other side, a defense of accumulation; the land returns at the jubilee whether the holder wishes it or not (Lev 25:28), and the corners of the field are simply not the owner's to reap (Lev 19:10). What holds the two together is the prior claim named at the start — "the land is mine: for you⁺ are strangers and sojourners with me" (Lev 25:23) — and the practical instruction that follows from it: keep the hand open (Deut 15:8), share to the necessities (Rom 12:13), aim at equality (2 Cor 8:14), and remember that "all things come of you, and of your own we have given you" (1 Chr 29:14).