Home in the Bible Housing justice is not a modern political concern; it is woven into the tradition from the beginning. From Genesis to Revelation, scripture returns again and again to the question of home: who has one, who doesn’t, and what God demands of those with the power to provide homes to those who have none. “ The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; with me you are but aliens and tenants.” (Leviticus 25:23) The Jubilee law commands that land cannot be permanently bought or sold, because it belongs to God, not to any human owner. Every 50 years, land returns to its original families. In other words, to treat housing as a commodity—something to be accumulated, speculated upon, and withheld—contradicts God’s order. The earth is God’s, and we are its stewards, not its owners. “Thus says the Lord: In the place where dogs licked up the blood of Naboth, dogs will also lick up your blood.” (1 Kings 21) 1 Kings 21 tells the story about how King Ahab wants Naboth’s vineyard. When Naboth refuses to sell his ancestral land, Ahab’s wife, Jezebel, arranges false charges against him, and Naboth is killed as a result. The king then seizes the property. The prophet Elijah’s condemnation is swift and total: God has seen what was done, and there will be consequences. The story illustrates that state-sanctioned displacement is not a modern invention. It has been around as long as there have been powerful people to take advantage of the less powerful, and scripture has always named it as sin. “Is not this the fast that I choose . . . to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house?” (Isaiah 58:6–7) In this passage from Isaiah, God rejects the people’s fasting and religious observance as empty performance. The fast God chooses looks different: loosing the bonds of injustice, feeding the hungry, and bringing those who are experiencing homelessness into your house. Rather than being depicted as extraordinary generosity or optional charity, it is the baseline of faithfulness.
“They shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid.” (Micah 4:4) The prophet’s vision is specific: everyone sitting safely under their own vine and fig tree. Home in this vision represents security, dignity, and peace as well as shelter. It is the freedom to rest without fear of displacement or violence. This is what God intends for every human being. “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” (Matthew 8:20) When a scribe offers to follow Jesus wherever he goes, Jesus responds: the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. Jesus knew homelessness from the inside. The God who became human became, in part, a person without stable housing. “There was a rich man . . . who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table.” (Luke 16:19–31) The parable of the rich man and Lazarus is a story about proximity and indifference. Lazarus lies at the rich man’s gate, homeless and hungry, every single day. The rich man’s sin is not that he is cruel; it is that he does not see. Jesus tells this story as a warning: Indifference to the unhoused person at our gate is a moral failure with eternal weight. “There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold.” (Acts 4:34) The earliest Christian communities took seriously what it meant to follow a homeless Christ. In Acts, believers held things in common and distributed to each as any had need. This was ecclesial practice: the church as a community that actively ensures its members have what they need to live with dignity, including a place to live.
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