Leviticus25chapter 25

Leviticus 25:1-2

The chapter is placed at mount Sinai, and the first sabbath it commands belongs to the ground. Exodus 23:10 and 23:11 had already ordered a fallow seventh year for the sake of the poor and the beasts. Here the same year is called a sabbath unto the LORD, so the soil is given a rest of its own and the reason given for it is God rather than need.

Leviticus 25:3-5

Six years of sowing and pruning, and a seventh with neither. The phrase used of the weekly rest at Leviticus 23:3, a sabbath of rest, is used here of a year, so the week that governs a man is laid on his field. What comes up on its own that year is left standing, which means the owner keeps his hands off a crop he did nothing to plant.

Leviticus 25:6-7

The fallow year opens the field to everyone standing on it. The owner, his servant, his maid, his hired man, the stranger who lives with him, his cattle and the wild beasts all eat from the same ground on the same terms. For one year in seven the difference between the man who holds the deed and the beast in the hedge is the distance to the food.

Leviticus 25:8-9

Seven sabbaths of years are counted out, seven times seven, and the count closes at forty and nine. The trumpet is then sounded on the tenth day of the seventh month, which Leviticus 16:29 fixed as the day of atonement, so liberty is proclaimed on the one day of the year the nation's sin has been carried away. The word jubile occurs here for the first time in Scripture.

Leviticus 25:10-11

Two returns are commanded in one verse, every man to his possession and every man to his family, so the year restores land and household together. The phrase proclaim liberty occurs here for the first time in Scripture and only twice more in the whole Bible, at Isaiah 61:1 and at Jeremiah 34:8, where Zedekiah proclaims it and the nobles take their servants back again. Luke 4:18 and 4:19 have Jesus reading that Isaiah verse in the synagogue and stopping at the acceptable year of the LORD, and named writers including Chuck Missler read it as jubilee language.

Leviticus 25:12-13

The year is called holy, and the only activity it lists is eating what the field gives. Whether the trumpet fell on the forty-ninth year or on a fiftieth that followed it is argued among the commentators, since verse 8 ends the count at forty and nine while verses 10 and 11 say fiftieth. The Mishnah, the rabbinic law code compiled around AD 200, works this chapter out in the tractate Arakhin, and the Babylonian Talmud at Arakhin 32b holds that the jubilee ceased to be observed once the tribes were carried away. Scripture itself never narrates a jubilee being kept.

Leviticus 25:14-16

Nobody in Israel buys land. The price is set by the number of harvests left before the jubile, many years raising it and few years lowering it, so every sale is a lease priced by the crops still to come. The command against oppression is laid on both sides of the bargain, the man selling and the man buying, since either one can use the calendar against the other.

Leviticus 25:17-19

What holds a man back from squeezing his neighbour here is the fear of God rather than a court. Verse 17 closes with I am the LORD your God, and in this book that sentence carries the weight of a reason. Safety in the land is then promised twice in two verses, and it is fastened to keeping the statutes rather than to walls, treaties or armies.

Leviticus 25:20-22

The text raises the objection a farmer would raise and answers it in his own words. A blessing on the sixth year is promised to bring fruit for three years, so obedience in the seventh rests on a harvest already in the barn. Leviticus 26:34 and 26:35 say what happens where that trust fails, that the land will enjoy her sabbaths while her people are elsewhere, and 2 Chronicles 36:21 counts the seventy years of exile on exactly that reckoning.

Leviticus 25:23-24

Every property rule in the chapter stands on this sentence. The land is mine, and Israel holds it as strangers and sojourners with its owner, which is the same pair of words the book uses of the resident foreigner living among them. A tenant has nothing to sell in perpetuity, so a right of redemption is granted over the whole territory, and the word redemption occurs here for the first time in Scripture.

Leviticus 25:25-26

The poor man's ground is bought back by a relative. The Hebrew calls that relative the goel, the man whose kinship gives him both the right and the duty to recover what his brother lost, and Ruth 3 and 4 works the office out as a story with Boaz standing in it. The English word kinsman first occurs at Numbers 5:8, so the thread runs through the Hebrew word and the act rather than through the English. Job 19:25 and Isaiah 59:20 apply the same word to God.

Leviticus 25:27-28

Where no relative acts, the seller may buy his own field back by counting the years and paying the overplus, which is the pricing of verse 15 run backwards. Where he can do neither, the jubile does it for him and he pays nothing. The land comes home because of the year rather than because of the money.

Leviticus 25:29-31

A house inside a walled city is the one property in Israel that can be sold outright. It stays redeemable for twelve months and after that belongs to the buyer through his generations, while houses in unwalled villages count as fields and go out at the jubile. What the law guards is the family's share of ground, so a dwelling with no field under it falls outside the guard.

Leviticus 25:32-34

The tribe holding the least land is given the strongest tenure in the chapter. A Levite may redeem his house at any time and it returns at the jubile even when the buyer is another Israelite, and the pasture around the Levitical cities may never be sold at all. Numbers 35:1 to 35:8 assigns them forty and eight cities in place of a tribal inheritance, and Joshua 21 lists them by name, so this rule keeps the men who serve the sanctuary from losing the little ground they hold.

Leviticus 25:35-36

A brother sliding into poverty is to be relieved before he sells anything, and the standard set for his treatment is the way a resident stranger is treated. Interest on what is lent to him is forbidden outright, and the reason attached is the fear of God. Verse 36 states the purpose plainly, that thy brother may live with thee, which makes the loan an act of keeping a man alive in the community rather than a transaction.

Leviticus 25:37-38

Money and victuals are both named, so the rule reaches the two things a poor man actually borrows. The reason given is the exodus, that the God speaking brought them out of Egypt and gave them Canaan and is their God. A people handed a country they did not buy are told to lend to each other on the same footing.

Leviticus 25:39-41

An Israelite who sells himself is handled as a hired servant and serves until the jubile. Exodus 21:2 had already set six years as the term for a Hebrew servant, and the commentators read the two rules together, the six years running from each sale and the jubile releasing anyone still in service when it sounds. He goes out with his children and returns to the possession of his fathers, so the release restores his ground along with his freedom.

Leviticus 25:42-43

The ground of the rule is a prior ownership. They are my servants is the same claim made over the ground at verse 23, and a man already owned by God is beyond another man's power to sell. Ruling with rigour is forbidden and the fear of God is put in its place, which is the second time in the chapter that the check on the stronger party is what he thinks of God. Paul takes the sentence up at 1 Corinthians 7:23, ye are bought with a price, be not ye the servants of men.

Leviticus 25:44-46

Modern readers stop here, and the passage says what it says. Bondmen bought from the surrounding nations are held as property and passed to the buyer's children, while an Israelite in the same poverty walks free at the jubile, so the law states two terms and puts them side by side in one paragraph. Exodus 21:16 makes stealing a man a capital crime and Deuteronomy 23:15 and 23:16 forbid handing back a runaway slave, and named writers read the Mosaic legislation as limiting an institution already universal in the ancient world. The New Testament works at the same point, with Paul sending Onesimus back to Philemon as a brother beloved and listing menstealers among the lawless at 1 Timothy 1:10.

Leviticus 25:47-49

The redeemer of verse 25 returns, working now on the man instead of the field. The right to buy him back is listed by degrees of nearness, an uncle, an uncle's son, any that is nigh of kin, and last the man himself if he ever gets the means. Nehemiah 5:8 records Jews doing this in practice, buying back brethren who had been sold to the heathen.

Leviticus 25:50-52

The ransom is arithmetic. Years are counted from the sale to the jubile and priced at the wage of a hired servant, so what changes hands is the value of the work left in him. It is the calculation the chapter used on a field at verses 15 and 16, applied to a person, and it protects the buyer as well as the man being redeemed.

Leviticus 25:53-55

The chapter ends where it began, on the question of who owns what. The Israelite in a stranger's house is treated as a man hired by the year, the neighbours are made responsible for watching how he is used, and the jubile takes him out with his children whether or not anyone paid for him. Verse 55 repeats the claim of verse 42, that the children of Israel are servants to God because he brought them out of Egypt, and it closes with I am the LORD your God. Two sentences carry the whole law of this chapter, the land is mine at verse 23 and they are my servants here.