HEBREW WORD STUDY – GLEANING – LAQAT לקט
Deuteronomy 24:21: “When thou gatherest the grapes of thy vineyard, thou shalt not glean [it] afterward: it shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow.
Ruth 2:23: “So she kept fast by the maidens of Boaz to glean unto the end of barley harvest and of wheat harvest; and dwelt with her mother in law”
Gleaning was a practice commanded under Hebrew Law. The corners of a field were not to be harvested any parts of the field overlooked for harvesting was to be left for the poor, widows, orphans and strangers i.e., foreigners. In Psalms 37:25 David says that he has never seen the righteous forsaken nor his seed left begging for bread. What he was referring to was that if the righteous follow the laws of God the poor, needy, orphans and widows would be provided for so they would not have to beg for bread. Gleaning was one such means of provision. A person was not just handed his daily bread, he had to work for it if physically able, that is he had to go out to the fields and harvest it and pick it up and carry it home. The Bible’s best example of this is Ruth who was a widow and foreigner, already two strikes against her but she was still cared for.
The word gleaning in Hebrew is laqat which means to pick or gather. The word is based on an Assyrian word laqu for taking or gaining insight. In fact, the word laqat comes from the same Semitic root as laqach which is learning and being taught. Even today the English word gleaning has the idea of learning. I often talk about what I glean from studying the Talmud.
Many have questioned why I refer to Jewish literature such as the Talmud, Mishnah Rabbah, and the Targum. After all, what have we to gain from a people of another religion who have rejected the Messiah? Are not our teachers just as good as their teachers and at least our teachers are not teaching things unchristian? Well, for one thing, the Jews were the first Christians. Jesus was Jewish who came not to destroy the law but to fulfill the law. The Jews worship the same God we do, the God Jehovah. For that matter so do the Muslims, they also worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They just have a different perspective of God Jehovah than we do. Just as the Jews have a different perspective of God than that of many Christians. Since the Jews were chosen to preserve the teachings of God Jehovah and we will be blessed if we bless them and cursed if we curse them (Genesis 12:3), I am paying much attention to God’s chosen people. For me blessing, the Jewish people are respecting their faith and practices. I am not Jewish so I do not celebrate their feast like Passover or Succoth. That belongs to them. Rosh Hashanah and the Torah belongs to all of us so I will gladly share in that. For the Torah as is the whole Old Testament belongs to all of us and who should be the ones to help explain the Old Testament and its Hebrew language but the people of the Old Testament and Hebrew language.
So every day I, as a stranger or foreigner to the Jewish people, go the fields like Ruth and glean from the planting and developing of the seeds of Torah by the Jewish people and harvest around the corners. Many times when a farmer would harvest he would overlook some stalks of grain, these two were to be left for the cleaners. To me, those stalks are the deeper teachings of the Jewish people found in the Talmud, Mishnah, Rabbah and other works. I don’t take from that which belongs to the Jews, but only that which overlaps into my Christian faith.
With these gleanings, I am learning things about God, the Holy Spirit and Jesus, the New Testament that I would not normally get from my own teachers. The Jewish sages and Rabbis are God’s people, we are called to bless them. That means to respect them, honor them and if we listen to some of their teachings we will be blessed in our own walk with God.
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i have been enjoying your content for a couple of years now, but have been unable to leave comments.
You wrote a good article here, and i understand everything can’t be in a short posting. However, i wanted to point out that , in speaking to the Samaritan woman, Jesus said “Salvation is from the Jews.” (John 4:22) i wouldn’t go so far as to consider this a command to study Hebrew writings, but an indication that, as you have found, it is beneficial and not evil.
I’ve learned by observing how Jewish people live (how they divide the year, celebrate holidays, treat family, etc) and by listening to Jewish rabbis speak of many topics that have to do with the wisdom of how to live, the nature of reality, etc. I very much admire Jewish people for how wise they are in some respects, and especially for how they wrestle with the Bible; Christians, in my experience as a pastor’s child and contact with many churches and Christians in the US and Europe, tend to be rather, well, inflexible and somewhat small-minded.. they learn some aspects of Christian theology and get stuck there, don’t think much about it (I suppose for fear of perhaps losing their faith) and feel threatened by any discussion on what they see as settled or accepted. Since childhood, I learned that I had better not ask any difficult question – you can often see the worst side of a Christian when you ask difficult questions, they push you out and turn their backs quite viciously sometimes. Jewish people on the other hand are not afraid of the hard questions.. I admire that very much about them. I wish I could understand why even the orthodox Jews are so much more elastic compared to Christians in the way they interact with Scriptures.
I love sharing on the nature of the language because it’s conducive to creating a more holistic, Hebraic mindset rather than the western black and white western way of thinking. In my opinion, this is what makes the difference. Laura (Chaim Bentorah Ministries)