Troublesome Topic: THE LAND CAN BECOME POLLUTED

Numbers 35:33 says that “bloodshed pollutes that land and atonement cannot be made for the land on which blood has been shed except by the blood (the execution) of the one who shed it.”

This may have to do with the fact that man came from the dust of the ground, into which God breathed life. Blood carries life. The life of a human being, represented by blood, cannot go back where it came from, the earth, unless it is through a method that God ordained. When a human takes another human life, he has played the role of God. The ground becomes polluted or unclean when forced to accept this unnatural death. If the ground is forced into an unnatural condition, it will cease to function according to its nature – i.e. as God designed it to function regarding the production of crops, grasses and trees. That is what is meant by the land expelling its inhabitants – if the land becomes polluted, forced into an unnatural or abnormal state, it will not function normally in the production of crops, and if the people have no harvests they will have to move elsewhere.

There is also an obvious connection here to the story of Cain killing Abel and the ground crying out to God about having to absorb Abel’s blood. In mercy to Cain, God did not kill Cain, thus the ground and its inhabitants continued to pay the price for Abel’s death. However, at that time, there was plenty of land available, so they were able to move to another place and start farming again.

It was not just bloodshed that polluted the land, there are a number of other forms of wickedness in the Bible that are said to pollute the land.

The connection between man and the land that supported him was physical, spiritual, and emotional. Today many of us live separated from the land; we let others do the farming and raising of animals, etc. We may love to go to parks, but we don’t directly see the connection between a cursed land and the judgment of God on people. However, I think such punishment is true even if it is not visible directly in crop yields due to other influencing factors. The point is that there is punishments for sin and it often affects our lives and the lives of others in ways we may not perceive.