Week 27 Isaiah 5
Isaiah says that destruction is certain for you who buy up land so others have no place to live… What would this look in 2024?
Let’s say I’m a rich guy and I buy up properties & houses and then improve them so I can sell them to lower-income people at affordable prices so they get started and get ahead and eventually succeed. Nothing much wrong with buying to help others who can’t.
The other option – the kind that Isaiah is talking about – is more like this. Let’s say I’m a rich guy and I buy up a lot of properties. Poor people can’t afford a house so they have to rent space from me. And I keep my rents high enough that my renters are stuck. They never get ahead. But I do.
It’s a slightly different situation but I heard about a billionaire who’s buying up a lion’s-share of the farmland south of the border. I wonder why.
It’s possible he’s going to grow affordable crops so that poorer people don’t get ripped-off and have to go hungry during a food-crisis. Nothing much wrong with that.
But if he’s buying land so he can a) control agricultural production and b) set high food prices and c) make a big profit so that d) poor people can barely afford food? Well then he’ll be in the driver’s seat. But according to Isaiah only temporarily.
Note: quote from Isaiah 5:8 (NLT). Reading report end-of-June: 679 of 1189 chapters = 57%.