Leviticus25chapter 25

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.

Matthew Henry places the blast at the close of the Day of Atonement, so the year of release opened at the end of a day spent humbling and afflicting the soul for sin. Joy followed directly on grief. The people who had just mourned their sin heard a voice of joy and gladness.

Leviticus 25:10-11

Verse 10 sends each man back to his property and clan, so the year restores land and household together. The words "proclaim liberty" occur here first and again at Isaiah 61:1 and Jeremiah 34:8, where Zedekiah proclaims it and the nobles take their servants back. Luke 4:18-19 has Jesus reading that Isaiah verse in the synagogue, and writers including Chuck Missler read it as jubilee language.

The Hebrew word is yobel, and Adam Clarke judged its literal meaning uncertain. Josephus explained it as liberty, and Clarke answered that liberty names the purpose of the year and leaves the word itself unexplained. The fallow rules of verse 5 apply again.

Leviticus 25:12-13

The year is called holy, and its only listed activity is eating from the field. Commentators dispute whether it fell in the forty-ninth year or a fiftieth, since verse 8 ends the count at forty-nine and verses 10 and 11 say fiftieth. The Mishnah treats it in tractate Arakhin, the Babylonian Talmud at Arakhin 32b says the jubilee lapsed once the tribes were exiled, and Scripture never narrates one kept.

Verse 10 gave this return first, and the sales of verses 14 to 16 depend on it. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown call it a law of entail, a rule that keeps an estate in one line of heirs, and it kept the tribes distinct and their genealogies recorded. They add that Christ's tribe and family were known by it.

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.

Albert Barnes reads the count as a count of harvests, priced at the average value of a year's crop. The sabbatical years in the span were deducted from the series, since a fallow year yields nothing to sell. Each seventh year counted for nothing.

Matthew Henry sets out the sum as the clear yearly value of the land, multiplied by the years left until the Jubilee. Buyer and seller both work from that one figure, which verse 17 then guards with the fear of God. Henry binds both parties to that value.

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.

The condition and the promise of this verse return at Leviticus 26:3 and 26:5, where following the statutes brings rain and harvest and ends with dwelling securely in your land. Chapter 26 then lists what disobedience costs.

Matthew Henry reads the word for safety as outward safety and inward confidence together, so that the people are quiet both from evil and from the fear of evil. The promise answers in advance the question verse 20 puts.

Leviticus 25:20-22

The text puts the farmer's objection in his own words, "What will we eat in the seventh year", and answers it. A sixth-year blessing yields a crop for three years, so obedience in the seventh rests on a harvest in hand. Where that trust fails, Leviticus 26:34-35 lets the land enjoy its Sabbaths in the people's absence, and 2 Chronicles 36:21 counts the seventy years of exile that way.

Jamieson, Fausset and Brown argue from the law to its source. No legislator, they say, would stake his character on a law as singular as the sabbath year unless he knew he acted under divine authority, and no people would stop farming without having seen the promise kept. The promise was open to testing every seventh year.

The three years of verse 21 are counted out here. The sixth year's crop feeds the fallow seventh, then the eighth while the new seed grows, and then the stretch until the ninth year's harvest is gathered. Adam Clarke called the provision a miracle that left no room for deception.

Leviticus 25:23-24

Every property rule in the chapter rests on this sentence, where God says the land "is Mine" and Israel holds it as "foreigners and residents with Me". That pair is the book's own term for the foreign resident among them. A tenant has nothing to sell permanently, so redemption is granted over the whole land, and the word redemption appears here for the first time in Scripture.

Albert Barnes defines the redemption here as the power to recover land for the family that first held it. On his reading no human authority could take an estate from that family for good. The right attaches to every holding in the land.

Leviticus 25:25-26

The poor man's ground is bought back by his nearest of kin, the Hebrew goel, whose kinship gives him the right and the duty to recover it. Ruth 3 and 4 tells the office as a story with Boaz, and since the King James first says kinsman at Numbers 5:8, the thread runs through the Hebrew word. Job 19:25 and Isaiah 59:20 apply the same word to God.

The law allows for a poor man with no kinsman able to act. His own later prosperity is the second way back. Verses 48 and 49 set the same order for a man sold into service, first a relative and then the man himself if he prospers.

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.

Released is the word the chapter uses for land here, for village houses at verse 31, for Levite houses at verse 33, and for a man and his children at verses 41 and 54. One verb covers field and family. The buyer holds the field only until that year.

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.

Albert Barnes explains the exception by who lived in walled towns. Most city houses were held by craftsmen and traders, whose wealth lay in their trade and their goods. The one year of verse 29 is the seller's only chance.

John Gill records the Jewish rule that a village was judged by its state in the days of Joshua, so a village walled later still counted as open. Such houses follow the law of the fields. Gill cites Jarchi that they went back to the original owners freely, with nothing paid.

Leviticus 25:32-34

The tribe holding the least land gets the strongest tenure in the chapter. A Levite may always redeem his house, it returns at the Jubilee, and the pastureland around the Levitical cities may never be sold. Numbers 35:1-8 gives them forty-eight cities in place of a tribal inheritance and Joshua 21 lists them, so this rule keeps the sanctuary's servants from losing their little ground.

The verse gives its own reason: the houses in the Levitical cities are the Levites' possession among the Israelites. For them a house holds the place a field holds in the inheritance of the other tribes. Their houses always come home.

Jamieson, Fausset and Brown tie this land to Numbers 35:4 and 35:5, pasture for the Levites' cattle and flocks, and call it a permanent endowment for the ministry. Matthew Henry sets it beside Genesis 47, where even the Egyptians preserved the land of their priests. The ground was fixed for good.

Leviticus 25:35-36

A countryman sliding into poverty is to be helped before he sells anything, and he is treated as a foreigner or stranger would be. Interest on a loan to him is forbidden outright, and the reason given is the fear of God. Verse 36 states the purpose, "that your countryman may live among you", so the loan keeps a man alive in the community.

Adam Clarke explains that usury, the King James word here, first meant any payment for the use of a thing, and he sends the reader to Exodus 22:25. Matthew Henry limits the rule to loans made for the relief of the poor and allows a share of profit on money borrowed for land or trade. A free loan, Henry says, can equal a gift.

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.

The verse names three acts of God in a row: bringing Israel out of Egypt, giving Canaan, and being their God. The last clause returns at Leviticus 26:12 and 26:45. Adam Clarke draws from the exodus God's claim on the person of every Israelite, which verse 42 states.

Leviticus 25:39-41

An Israelite who sells himself is kept as a hired worker until the Year of Jubilee. Exodus 21:2 had set six years for a Hebrew servant, and commentators read the two rules together, the six years running from each sale and the Jubilee freeing anyone still serving. He leaves with his children for the property of his fathers, so the release restores his ground with his freedom.

The poor Israelite keeps the standing of a worker paid for his labour, with a fixed end to his service. Verse 23 used resident of all Israel before God. Albert Barnes calls the law a check applied periodically to the tyranny of the rich.

Matthew Henry records the Jewish account that servants due for release feasted and wore garlands for ten days before the horn sounded. He links the year to the joyful sound of Psalm 89. Henry read the release as a type, an event in the law that pictures a later one, of the freedom from sin that Christ gives.

Leviticus 25:42-43

The rule rests on a prior ownership, since "the Israelites are My servants" claims the people as verse 23 claimed the land. Harsh rule is forbidden and the fear of God is put in its place, so the check on the stronger party is his regard for God. Paul takes this up at 1 Corinthians 7:23, telling those bought with a price not to become slaves of men.

Albert Barnes grounds the command in ownership: the LORD was the Master of His people, so harsh rule over a Hebrew trespassed on His rights. The ban on ruling harshly returns at verses 46 and 53.

Leviticus 25:44-46

Slaves bought from the nations pass to the buyer's sons as property, while a poor Israelite goes free at the Jubilee. Exodus 21:16 makes kidnapping a capital crime, Deuteronomy 23:15-16 forbids returning a runaway, and named writers read the law as limiting a practice then universal. Paul sends Onesimus back to Philemon as a beloved brother and lists kidnappers among the lawless at 1 Timothy 1:10.

Verse 44 named the surrounding nations as one source, and this verse adds the families of foreigners living in Israel, even those born in the land. Albert Barnes lists how such servants came to be held: as captives of war, as a penalty for crime, or by purchase from foreign dealers. They fall outside the release of verse 41.

The verse turns on the word brother, which the chapter uses of the poor Israelite at verses 25, 46 and 48. John Gill reads the law as drawing bondservants from other nations and never from Israel. The ban of verse 43 is stated here a second time.

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.

Matthew Henry reports a Jewish distinction: a man sold to an Israelite could buy himself back, while his relatives had no right to do it for him. When the buyer was a foreigner, the Jews said the relatives were pressed to redeem him, and failing them the public purse did it. Sale to a foreigner raised the family's duty.

The circle of redeemers widens from a brother to an uncle, a cousin and any close relative from his clan. The Jubilee returns him to that clan at verse 41. John Wesley notes that even a foreigner settled in Israel had no power to keep a Hebrew servant from this right.

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.

The original price is the base of the sum. With many years left before the Jubilee, most of that price goes back to the buyer. John Wesley reads the allowance as credit for the years already served, at the rate paid to a hired servant.

With the Jubilee near, the ransom shrinks to a small sum. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown set out the reckoning as the years left until the Jubilee multiplied by the current wage of labour, with the amount paid to the master.

Leviticus 25:53-55

The Israelite in a foreigner's house is treated like a man hired yearly, under his neighbors' eyes, and the Jubilee frees him and his children whether or not anyone paid. Verse 55 repeats verse 42, that the Israelites are God's servants because he brought them out of Egypt. The chapter's whole law rests on two claims, the land belongs to God at verse 23 and "They are My servants" here.

Albert Barnes takes the phrase in any of these ways as the redemption by kin or by the man himself of verses 48 and 49. Where neither happens, the Jubilee frees them. Barnes held that the longest term was six years, as under a Hebrew master at Exodus 21:2.

they are my servants: The claim of ownership is stated twice in one verse. Adam Clarke read Israel here as a typical people, a nation whose history pictures those who are children of God by faith in Christ. Those, he adds, are sons as well as servants.