Les lois sur le glanage permettent-elles au gouvernement civil de contraindre des individus ou des entreprises à renoncer à des richesses ou à d'autres biens privés?
La question initiale (que j'ai pris la liberté d'élargir) était :
Les lois bibliques sur le glanage autorisent-elles le gouvernement civil à obliger les supermarchés ou les restaurants à donner leurs déchets alimentaires aux pauvres?
L'idée de jeter de la nourriture parfaitement bonne aurait été un concept étranger aux gens de l'époque biblique. Seule notre prospérité moderne (dans certains pays) nous donne le luxe de gaspiller ainsi la nourriture.
La charité volontaire est un thème biblique important. Mais cette question ne concerne pas la charité volontaire.
Les propriétaires d'entreprises de restauration/vente (comme les supermarchés et les restaurants) devraient envisager d'offrir tout excédent aux personnes dans le besoin, plutôt que de le jeter. Cependant, nous devons également reconnaître les coûts (et les risques) inhérents à cette action généreuse. Considérez, par exemple, ce qu'il vous en coûterait (en termes de temps seulement) de donner les restes de votre dernier dîner de fête. Maintenant, vous pouvez passer à des dîners au restaurant pendant toute une année.
The risks for a business owner involve incurring liability if someone becomes sick after they eat food which has passed through the control of the supermarket or restaurant. What if you gave away your Thanksgiving leftovers to some homeless person and got hit with a lawsuit two weeks later because they contracted food poisoning, which they attributed to your negligence in meal preparation?
Biblical law does not authorize the civil government to force this act of generosity upon a restaurant/supermarket owner, just as Biblical law doesn't authorize the civil government to force you to collect your leftovers from your own breakfast/lunch/dinner and distribute them to the poor. Here are three reasons:
- The Biblical gleaning law is not merely about "waste products/old food" -- it is about allowing hungry people to take perfectly good agricultural products from parts of someone's land, under certain conditions which are specified in the law (Deut. 23:24-25). Biblical gleaning law does not apply outside these scripturally-defined areas:
- yearly marginal agricultural produce (Lev. 19:9-10)
- produce from the land/orchards/vineyards which are "rested" in the seventh year (Lev. 25:4-7)
- Even the Biblical gleaning law was not "civilly-enforced" in the sense that there was a specified civil punishment for a landowner who harvested all of his bunches of grapes, or sheathes of grain. In fact, we know from history that Israel actually did violate this Biblical welfare law by refusing to fallow their land for many Sabbath years in a row. And this Biblical law violation was enforced by God himself (Lev. 26:43), when he exiled them from the land into Babylon.20 He carried those who had escaped from the sword away to Babylon, and they were servants to him and his sons until the reign of the kingdom of Persia, 21 to fulfill YHWH’s word by Jeremiah’s mouth, until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths. As long as it lay desolate, it kept Sabbath, to fulfill seventy years. 2 Chronicles 36:20-21WEB
On the other hand, there is a kind of "negative enforcement" of this law, because the civil government cannot be used to charge a gleaner with "trespassing" or "theft" either. The most a property owner can do is make the gleaner leave, and he cannot recover any small amount of food which was gleaned lawfully. - According to Biblical law, an animal that was found to have died "of itself" (without the blood being drained at death) was unclean for Israelites to eat (there wasn't necessarily anything unhealthy about it: the "uncleanness" was ceremonial). What did the law say to do with this "wastage"? 21 You shall not eat of anything that dies of itself. You may give it to the foreigner living among you who is within your gates, that he may eat it; or you may sell it to a foreigner; for you are a holy people to YHWH your God. You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk. Deuteronomy 14:21WEB
The owner of the dead animal could either give it to the sojourner at the gates (this is typically where people would beg for food) or sell it to a foreigner. Notice that this law does not specify any involvement by civil government.
