Do the gleaning laws allow civil government to coerce individuals or businesses to give up wealth or other private property?/zh

⮜ 已回答的问题

原来的问题（我擅自扩大了范围）是：

圣经》中的拾遗法是否授权民间政府强迫超市或餐馆把他们的废弃食物送给穷人？

在圣经时代，扔掉完全好的食物的想法对人们来说是一个陌生的概念。只是我们现代的繁荣（在某些国家）让我们可以奢侈地以这种方式浪费食物。

志愿慈善是圣经的一个重要主题。但这个问题不是关于志愿慈善的。

食品服务/销售企业(如超市和餐馆)的业主应考虑将多余的食物提供给有需要的人，而不是将其扔掉。然而，我们也必须认识到这种慷慨行动的内在成本（和风险）。举例来说，想想看，如果你把上一次节日庆祝晚餐的剩饭剩菜送人，你会付出多少代价（仅从时间上来说）。现在，把这个比例扩大到一整年的餐馆晚餐。

如果有人吃了经过超市或餐馆控制的食物后生病，企业主的风险涉及到承担法律责任。如果你把感恩节的剩菜剩饭送给了一些无家可归的人，两周后因为他们感染了食物中毒，而他们又将其归咎于你在备餐时的疏忽，那么你会怎么做？

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:

1. 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)
2. 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.
3. 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.