Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Leviticus · About this commentary
Proclaim Liberty
Leviticus 25:8-24
8 “‘You shall count off seven Sabbaths of years, seven times seven years; and there shall be to you the days of seven Sabbaths of years, even forty-nine years. · WEB
Every fiftieth year land returns to its original family and slaves go home, and the trumpet that starts it sounds on the day of atonement.
Seven sevens of years are counted, and the fiftieth is set apart. You shall make the fiftieth year holy, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants Leviticus 25:10.
Two things happen. Each of you shall return to his own property, and each of you shall return to his family. Land goes back to the household that originally held it, and people sold into service go home.
The timing of the announcement is the detail that gives the institution its character. The trumpet sounds on the tenth day of the seventh month. On the Day of Atonement Leviticus 25:9.
On the day the nation's sins are removed, the nation's debts are canceled. The two are set on the same date, and nothing in the chapter explains the connection because nothing needs to: people who have just been forgiven release what they hold over others.
What the jubilee does economically is prevent permanent dispossession. In an agrarian society, debt ends with land changing hands, and land is the only means of production; within a few generations that produces a landless majority. The fiftieth year breaks the accumulation before it becomes hereditary.
And it changes what a sale is. According to the number of years after the Jubilee you shall buy from your neighbor... for he is selling the number of the crops to you Leviticus 25:15–16. Land cannot be bought outright at all. What changes hands is a number of harvests, priced by how many remain, and the buyer knows the date it reverts.
Twice in that paragraph the same warning is attached: you shall not wrong one another Leviticus 25:14 Leviticus 25:17. The obvious abuse is a strong party exploiting a weak one's ignorance of the count, and the law names it.
The ground of the whole arrangement is stated in one sentence, and it is the most important in the chapter.
The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; for you are strangers and live as foreigners with me Leviticus 25:23.
Nobody in Israel owns any land. They are tenants of an owner who has not sold, and the word used of them is the same word the book uses for the resident foreigner they are commanded to love. A nation about to take a country is told, before it arrives, that it will be living there as guests.
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