Under the Mosaic law, it was permitted for the poor to pick up the gleanings of the harvest. The rule is still observed (at time of writing) in Palestine. I notice that a poor widow has been following the harvesters all day, methodically gleaning straw by straw. By the time the western sun dips down behind the Carmel range, filling all Galilee with delicate shades of color, the widow is wending homeward with three or four fat sheaves.
Through faulty reasoning, this modern Ruth has decided to give the threshing floor a wide berth where a small percentage would be taken as tax. “What are three or four sheaves to a great government?” seems to be her line of argument. But it so happens that this very day the governor of Nazareth has ridden over to visit the village. He is an abrupt young Australian who served here in the first Great War. The woman, bowed beneath the weight of her sheaves, her eyes fastened to the ground, is traversing the last narrow alleyway leading to her stone hovel, when, to her great surprise and consternation, she finds herself confronting the governor.
“What is this? Where are you taking these sheaves?” he demands.
The woman pleads her poverty and widowhood, but the officer of the law is adamant. Soon many heads are thrust from neighboring doors to listen to the angry chiding. As he turns away, he bids her appear, without fail, at the local court at Nazareth on the following morning.
That evening, as we addressed the villagers who had gathered on the rooftop of our host’s house in the moonlight to hear the Gospel story, we heard some rather unfavorable comments about the harsh conduct of the British governor.
Next morning, the widow came to my host’s house to borrow a donkey, placing upon it the sheaves she had gleaned the day before. We saw her wending her way slowly, and no doubt sadly, up the steep ascent from Cana to Nazareth.
At the court, the governor was still adamant. “If I acquit you, others will do the same thing. No! The law must be carried out. You must know you have no possible right to take wheat home from the harvest field. I must fine you twelve piastres!” (about 60 cents). Then with a quick, almost unobserved movement, as he calls for the next case, he flings twelve piastres from his own purse across to the clerk, bidding him in an undertone to make out a receipt in favor of the poor lawbreaker. Completely mystified, the woman does not know for what reason she has received the paper.
No wonder there was much discussion that night in Cana concerning the strange case of the widow and her fine.
“These English are very strange people,” said certain of the wiseheads of the village.
“Who before in the history of the land ever heard of a judge who wanted to fine himself?”
Once more, stillness has descended upon the sleeping village of Cana. From my bed on the rooftop, I can look down upon the whole enchanting scene, and again I muse upon the widow and her fine. Is it not a delightful epitome of the Gospel story? We, the poor ones of earth, bowed down from the gleanings from this world’s field, our eyes bent downwards as we traverse, with guilty conscience, the crooked byways of sin, we, too, have run full into the arms of Justice! What have we to say for ourselves? Our case is indeed desperate, for “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” But I heard those stanzas of the prophet Isaiah: “But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:5-6).
Thank God! The penalty has been paid in full at Calvary. There was another Judge who wanted to fine Himself!
J. W. Clapham was for many years a missionary in Israel (then called Palestine). This article is from Palestine, the Land of My Adoption, pp. 113-115.