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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadPaul Kretzmann Commentary - Leviticus 25:8 - 25:24
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The Year of Jubilee
v. 8. And thou shalt number seven Sabbaths of years unto thee, seven times seven years; and the space of the seven Sabbaths of years shall be unto thee forty and nine years.
v. 9. Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month, which formally opened this special Sabbatical Year; in the Day of Atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout all your land. After the solemn quiet of the day on which all the people afflicted their souls, and after the great rites of the annual propitiation had been completed, probably at the end of the evening sacrifices, the glad sounding of the trumpets proclaimed the Year of Jubilee.
v. 10. And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof. This proclamation of freedom from the toil and drudgery which came into the world as a consequence of sin was most fitting just after the great reconciliation of the people with the covenant God had been completed. Twice in every century two fallow years followed upon each other, and the land had an opportunity to recover its strength. It shall be a jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family, as the further ordinances prescribed.
v. 11. A jubilee shall that fiftieth year be unto you; ye shall not sow, neither reap that which groweth of itself in it, nor gather the grapes in it of thy vine undressed, as in the Sabbatical Year, v. 4.
v. 12. For it is the jubilee; it shall be holy unto you; ye shall eat the increase thereof out of the field, directly from the stalks, from the vine, from the trees, without harvesting or storing in granaries.
v. 13. In the year of this jubilee ye shall return every man unto his possession, to the land which had been in the possession of his family from the beginning.
v. 14. And if thou sell aught unto thy neighbor, or buyest aught of thy neighbor's hand, ye shall not oppress one another, not overreach or practice fraud;
v. 15. according to the number of years after the jubilee thou shalt buy of thy neighbor, and according unto the number of years of the fruits he shall sell unto thee;
v. 16. according to the multitude of years thou shalt increase the price thereof, and according to the fewness of years thou shalt diminish the price of it; for according to the number of the years of the fruits doth he sell unto thee. By this rule the price of the land was regulated according to the number of crops still remaining till the next Tear of Jubilee: if the buyer would get many crop, the prince was high; if the purchaser would get but a few crops until the land had to be restored to its original owner, the price was low.
v. 17. Ye shall not therefore oppress one another by overreaching contrary to this commandment; but thou shalt fear thy God; for I am the Lord, your God, whose punishment was sure to strike the offender.
v. 18. Wherefore ye shall do My statutes and keep My judgments, both the special precepts and those based upon the natural law of love, and do them; and ye shall dwell in the land in safety, securely, free from all care and worry.
v. 19. And the land shall yield her fruit, and ye shall eat your fill, not merely enough to sustain life, but a surplus, and dwell therein in safety.
v. 20. And if ye shall say, What shall we eat the seventh year? Behold, we shall not sow, nor gather in our increase.
v. 21. Then I will command My blessing upon you in the sixth year, and it shall bring forth fruit for three years. The crop of the forty-eighth year would be sufficient for all their needs, not only during the forty-ninth, as a regular Sabbatical Tear, but also during the fiftieth, as the Jubilee Year, to the harvest of the fifty-first year, in fact.
v. 22. And ye shall sow the eighth year, at the time of the fall rains, and eat yet of old fruit until the ninth year; until her fruits come in, ye shall eat of the old store.
v. 23. The land shall not be sold forever, with a clear, absolute title to the purchaser; for the land is Mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with Me, the Lord's lessees in holding any real estate. No person could hold farm land absolutely, if he purchased it between years of jubilee, any purchase in reality being only a temporary lease for a number of years.
v. 24. And in all the land of your possession ye shall grant a redemption for the land; the seller was always to have the right of redeeming the land which he had sold, as shown in the regulations following to the end of the Chapter. Christians mill also never lose sight of the fact that they are but strangers and pilgrims here on earth, that they hold their possessions only by the bounty of the Lord, and that their true home is above.