LEV324 There seems to be some type of disagreement over the applicability of agricultural biblical commandments in the outside of Palestine, because even in the Babylonian Talmud, some rabbis saw some of them as applicable in the Diaspora. Hullin 137b. This controversy eventually led to a metaphoric understanding of some of the biblical agricultural commandments and the rabbinic reinterpretation of ethical principles for an urban market economy. So, one finds, for example, that from the agricultural commandments concerning peah, (the leaving of the "corners" of the field for the poor--(this and preceding verse) provided the rabbis with a basis for establishing norms for the treatment and welfare of the poor. (Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Matenot Aniyim, Chapters 1-10, especially chapter 7 where he diagrams the different methods of helping the poor.) The principles for the treatment and welfare of the poor established by Maimonides in his Mishneh Torah established norms for controlling the economic imbalances apparent in society as well as curbing the evil effects of this economic imbalance: i.e., total self-interest.