Leviticus 25
The Sabbath Year for the Land 1–7
The Fiftieth Year of Jubilee 8–17
Assurance of Provision in the Land 18–22
Redemption of Land and Property 23–34
Laws Against Oppression and Usury 35–38
Laws Concerning Hebrew Servitude 39–46
Redemption from a Foreign Owner 47–55
Bible text: King James Version (1769 Blayney text) · Public domain
Study Notes for Leviticus 25
Verse 2
the land keep a sabbath unto the LORD — The sabbath belongs to the land itself (shabath, to cease) and is ‘unto the LORD’, as the weekly one is. It is spoken at Sinai (v.1) for a land not yet entered. Its neglect is answered in Lev 26:34–35: the land is to ‘enjoy her sabbaths’ while it lies desolate, and 2 Chr 36:21 records that it ‘enjoyed her sabbaths’.
Verse 4
a sabbath of rest — Shabbath shabbathon, the full-rest phrase used of the weekly sabbath (Lev 23:3) and the Day of Atonement (Lev 16:31), is here applied to a whole year. After six years of sowing and pruning (v.3) the ground lies still, ‘that the poor of thy people may eat’ (Ex 23:11).
Verse 6
shall be meat for you — ‘Meat’ is ochlah, food. What the land bears untended (v.5) feeds the owner, ‘for thy servant, and for thy maid, and for thy hired servant, and for thy stranger that sojourneth with thee’, and in v.7 the cattle and beasts as well. Ex 23:11 adds the poor and ‘the beasts of the field’.
Verse 8
seven sabbaths of years — Seven times seven years make forty-nine, and the fiftieth follows (v.10). The count is the pattern of Lev 23:15–16, where ‘seven sabbaths shall be complete’ and ‘fifty days’ are numbered to the new meat offering. There the count runs in days, here in years.
Verse 9
the day of atonement — The blast begins on the tenth day of the seventh month. The ‘trumpet’ is the shophar and the sound a teruah, an alarm-blast; the day is the one on which ‘the priest make an atonement for you, to cleanse you’ (Lev 16:30). The liberty of v.10 follows it.
Verse 10
proclaim liberty — Deror, liberty, is also the word of Isa 61:1, ‘to proclaim liberty to the captives’, which Christ read in the synagogue at Nazareth (Luke 4:18–21). Yobel, the ‘jubile’, is a ram’s horn, as in Josh 6:4. In Jer 34:8–17 the same liberty is proclaimed and then taken back.
Verse 15
the number of years of the fruits — What is sold is a count of harvests: ‘according to the multitude of years thou shalt increase the price… and according to the fewness of years thou shalt diminish the price’ (v.16). The price falls as the jubile nears; the same reckoning governs a field sanctified to the LORD (Lev 27:18).
Verse 17
thou shalt fear thy God — v.14 forbids oppression between buyer and seller, and v.17 repeats the command with its reason. ‘Fear thy God’ closes three commands in this chapter, at vv.17, 36 and 43, each concerning someone at another’s mercy: the seller of years, the poor brother, the servant.
Verse 20
What shall we eat the seventh year? — This is the question the law itself expects. Christ names the same worry: ‘take no thought, saying, What shall we eat?’ (Matt 6:31). The answer comes in the next verse, a blessing that the LORD ‘will command’.
Verse 21
I will command my blessing — The verb is tsavah, to command, as in Deut 28:8, ‘The LORD shall command the blessing upon thee in thy storehouses’. The sixth year’s crop is to carry through the seventh and beyond the eighth year’s sowing: ‘ye shall sow the eighth year, and eat yet of old fruit until the ninth year’ (v.22).
Verse 23
the land is mine — This is the ground of all these laws. Israel holds the land as ‘strangers and sojourners with me’ (ger and toshab), the pair David uses before the LORD (1 Chr 29:15; Ps 39:12). ‘For ever’ is tsemithuth, a cutting off, found only here and in v.30. Ps 24:1 states it of the whole earth.
Verse 25
to redeem it — Ga’al is to act as the near kinsman. The one who does so is the go’el: Naomi calls Boaz ‘one of our next kinsmen’ (Ruth 2:20), and Boaz brings the field to the nearer kinsman at the gate (Ruth 4:1–6). Jeremiah’s cousin comes to him with ‘the right of redemption’ of the field at Anathoth (Jer 32:7–8).
Verse 29
a dwelling house in a walled city — A house sold in a walled city could be redeemed only for a year, and the verse says so twice: ‘within a whole year… within a full year’. The second phrase is literally ‘days’, the span of a year. The villages ‘which have no wall’ keep the field’s rules (v.31).
Verse 30
established for ever — The buyer keeps it ‘throughout his generations’, and it ‘shall not go out in the jubile’. ‘For ever’ is tsemithuth, the word that forbids selling the land in v.23, and the two verses are the only places it occurs. The field returns; the house in a walled city, once the year has run, does not.
Verse 32
redeem at any time — The Levites’ forty-eight cities, with their suburbs, were given from the other tribes (Num 35:2–8). Their houses could be redeemed ‘at any time’ (olam), and they went out in the jubile (v.33), ‘for the houses of the cities of the Levites are their possession among the children of Israel’.
Verse 35
then thou shalt relieve him — The poor man is ‘fallen in decay’ (mot, to waver or slip); chazaq, ‘relieve’, is to take hold and strengthen. The duty reaches ‘a stranger, or a sojourner’ as well as the brother, and the aim is stated: ‘that he may live with thee’, repeated in v.36. See Deut 15:7–8.
Verse 36
Take thou no usury — Neshek, interest on a loan. The prohibition covers a poor brother, as in Ex 22:25 and Deut 23:19–20, where interest may be taken of a stranger but ‘unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury’. The stated reason is ‘that thy brother may live with thee’.
Verse 38
to give you the land of Canaan — The LORD who ‘brought you forth out of the land of Egypt’ also gives the land, ‘and to be your God’. This is the promise to Abraham: ‘all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God’ (Gen 17:8). The laws that follow rest on both acts.
Verse 39
thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bondservant — Literally, he is not to be made to do ‘the service’ (’abodah) of a slave (’ebed). He stays ‘as an hired servant, and as a sojourner’ (v.40) and departs in the jubile with his children (v.41). Compare 2 Kgs 4:1, where a creditor comes ‘to take unto him my two sons to be bondmen’.
Verse 42
they are my servants — The reason for v.39 is that Israel already belongs to the LORD, who ‘brought forth’ (yatsa) the people from Egypt. They ‘shall not be sold as bondmen’. Paul argues from the same ownership: ‘Ye are bought with a price; be not ye the servants of men’ (1 Cor 7:23), and ‘servants to God’ (Rom 6:22).
Verse 44
of the heathen that are round about you — Bondmen and bondmaids may be bought from the nations (goyim) around, and v.45 adds the strangers who sojourn in the land. A servant bought for money was to be circumcised before he ate the passover (Ex 12:44). Over ‘your brethren the children of Israel’ no one is to ‘rule one over another with rigour’ (v.46).
Verse 47
sell himself unto the stranger — The same law now covers an Israelite sold to a resident foreigner (ger or toshab, the pair of vv.23 and 35). He keeps the right of redemption: ‘one of his brethren may redeem him’ (v.48), whether uncle, cousin or any near kin (v.49), or he may redeem himself if he is able.
Verse 50
the time of an hired servant — The price of redemption is reckoned back from the year of the sale to the jubile, as a hireling’s term; ‘the years of an hireling’ is a phrase for exact counting (Isa 16:14). Many years left means a larger sum, ‘few years’ a smaller (vv.51–52), and the master ‘shall not rule with rigour’ (v.53).
Verse 54
he shall go out in the year of jubile — If no kinsman redeems him, the jubile frees ‘both he, and his children with him’. ‘Go out’ is yatsa, the verb of the property that ‘shall go out in the jubile’ (vv.28, 30, 31, 33) and of ‘brought forth’ from Egypt (vv.38, 42, 55): one verb names both the exodus and the release.
Verse 55
my servants whom I brought forth — The chapter closes where v.42 began: the children of Israel are the LORD’s servants, so none can be another’s for good. The declaration ‘I am the LORD your God’ ends the law of the jubile as it ended the opening laws (v.17), and echoes Ex 20:2, ‘which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt’.