The section of land his father gave to the Prodigal Son was only turned over to him to be used for the welfare of the whole family.

Saturday, 3/18/17

We all have our favorite lines from Our Lord’s beautiful story of the Prodigal Son. Let me just touch on a way in which Jewish law added to the immorality of what the boy did.

Back before Moses died in 1200 B.C., he sent surveyors into the Promised Land to divide it into eleven sections of somewhat equal value. Then, Moses assigned a town of each section to the Tribe of Levi that was to provide the priests for all the tribes\.,

Moses then called in the leaders of the eleven other tribes, and he had them cover their eyes while they chose which section of land would belong to their tribe. Jerusalem went to the tribe of Judah, and the land just north of that went to Benjamin.

After that, the leaders of each family in each tribe drew lots to see what land would forever belong to that family. When a father of a family was approaching the end, he divided the family land into sections, with an extra section, called the Birthright going to the oldest son.

The ownership of those lands never passed over to the sons, They only had the right to try their own kind of farming to increase the yield for the whole family.

The first sin of the Prodigal Son consisted of his selling his family’s land to outsiders. His older brother saw that as a very criminal act.