FOOTNOTES:

[1] Political philosophy has much to say in favour of laws and institutions, at certain periods of a nation’s growth, for encouraging, or at least permitting, the disposition of its members to found families, to be maintained by hereditary possessions in land. Yet, if this disposition be not kept within bounds, those who are influenced by it will “join house to house, and field to field, till there be no place;” till the race of small landholders, yeomen, and partly independent tenants, is swallowed up by a few rich despots. To prevent this evil among the Hebrews, Moses directed as equal a division of the land as possible in the first instance, among the 600,000 families who originally formed the nation; and provided against the permanent alienation of any estate, by giving a right of repurchase to the seller and his relations, and of repossession without purchase at the Jubilee. The story of Naboth illustrates the effect of these laws in forming an order of sturdy, independent yeomen; but it must also be taken as an instance of the habitual breach of the same laws by the rich and powerful (cf. Micah ii.; Neh. v. 1–13; 2 Chron. xxxvi. 21); as they in like manner disobeyed that respecting the liberation of slaves at the Jubilee (Jer. xxxvi. 8–16). In England, where the Norman conquest accumulated all the land in the hands of a few nobles, the like accumulation has been opposed—however imperfectly—by laws in their form exactly opposite to those of Moses; by the permission to cut off old entails, and the prohibition to make new ones except for one generation, and by allowing land to be bought and sold like other commodities.—Strachey, pp. 65, 66.

[2] The covetous man is like a spider. As in this, that he does nothing but lay his nets to catch every fly, gaping only for a booty of gain. So yet more, in that while he makes nets for these flies, he consumes his own bowels; so that which is his life is his death. If there be any creature miserable, it be he; and yet he is least to be pitied, because he makes himself miserable. Such as he is I will account him; and will therefore sweep down his webs, and hate his poison.—Hall, 1574–1656.

Covetous worldlings will hardly spare the poor some of their fire to warm them, some of their water to drink, some of their ground to lodge on, though it were no more hurt to them than the lighting of a candle at their torch.—Adams, 1653.

[3] Let us remember that it will be to small purposes to enjoy these worldly pleasures of sin for a season, and in the end plunge ourselves into everlasting death;—that the world’s music is but the syren’s song, which allures us to make shipwreck of our souls on the rocks of sin, and while it tickles the ear it wounds us to the very heart;—that though the cup which it offers be of gold, and the drink sweet in taste, yet it is deadly poison in operation; for they that drink thereof are so lulled asleep in pleasures and security, that they never awaken out of their spiritual lethargy; or if they do, yet like Sampson, without strength to resist the spiritual Philistines, after the world (like Delilah) has lulled them awhile in her lap of carnal pleasures.—Downame, 1642.

Covetousness.

v. 8–10. Woe unto them that join house to house, &c.

Covetousness is—I. Ruinous to the individual.[1] II. Mischievous to society. III. Offensive to God. IV. Certain to be punished. 1. Here, by disappointment and loss (Prov. iii. 33).[2] 2. Hereafter, by exclusion from heaven (1 Cor. vi. 10; Eph. v. 5).[3]—J. Lyth, D.D.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The love of money can never keep good quarter with honesty; there is a mint of fraud in the worldly breast, and it can coin lies as fast as utterance.—Adams, 1653.