The people of Israel believed that God was the creator and owner of all land (Gen 1; 2). God promised Abraham that the land of Canaan would one day belong to his descendants, the people of Israel (Gen 15:7-21). That promise was repeated to Moses (Exod 3:7-10), the great leader who led the people out of slavery in Egypt and to the border of Canaan.

Each tribe in Israel, except the Levi tribe, was given land by God as an inheritance (see Josh 13:8—21:45). Land belonging to each tribe (Num 36:5-9) was to be passed to future generations through daughters as well as sons (Num 27:2-11). Land bought or sold was to be returned to the family that originally owned it in the “Year of Celebration,” which was to occur every forty-nine years (Lev 25:23,28; Num 25:8-17). This law was not always kept, but it reminded people that all land belonged to God. The law intended to limit the number of people who could become powerful by owning land and to decrease the number of poor people who could not provide for their families because they had no land.

Since the true owner of all land was God, land was to be treated with great respect (Lev 25:1-7). Those who had land were to use it to help supply the needs of others (Exod 23:10,11; Lev 19:9,10; 23:22; Deut 24:19-22). In this way the land provided an opportunity for people to show kindness to others, just as God had shown kindness to them.

When people disobeyed God, their actions were sometimes understood as making the land impure (Num 35:33-34). Penalties had to be paid and sacrifices made to make up for the shedding of blood and to make the person and the land clean again (Exod 21:12-36; Lev 4:1—5:19). The prophet Jeremiah said that Israel’s sins polluted the land and made it ritually unclean (Ezek 36:17-20). These sins were interpreted by a number of the prophets as the reason Israel and Judah would lose their land and suffer a time of exile (Isa 1:2-9; Jer 7:7-17; 10:17-21; Ezek 5:4-12; Hos 9:1-3; Mic 1:16).