10 And let this fiftieth year be kept holy, and say publicly that everyone in the land is free from debt: it is the Jubilee, and every man may go back to his heritage and to his family.
The spirit of the Lord is on me, because I am marked out by him to give good news to the poor; he has sent me to make the broken-hearted well, to say that the prisoners will be made free, and that those in chains will see the light again; To give knowledge that the year of the Lord's good pleasure has come, and the day of punishment from our God; to give comfort to all who are sad; To give them a fair head-dress in place of dust, the oil of joy in place of the clothing of grief, praise in place of sorrow; so that they may be named trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, and so that he may have glory.
And you will have knowledge of what is true, and that will make you free. They said to him in answer, We are Abraham's seed and have never been any man's servant: why do you say, You will become free? And this was the answer Jesus gave them: Truly I say to you, Everyone who does evil is the servant of sin. Now the servant does not go on living in the house for ever, but the son does. If then the son makes you free, you will be truly free.
Saying that they will be free, while they themselves are the servants of destruction; because whatever gets the better of a man makes a servant of him. For if, after they have got free from the unclean things of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again taken in the net and overcome, their last condition is worse than their first.
But praise be to God that though you were the servants of sin, you have now given yourselves freely to that form of teaching under which you were placed; And being made free from sin you have been made the servants of righteousness.
And if he has no one to get it back for him, and later he himself gets wealth and has enough money to get it back; Then let him take into account the years from the time when he gave it up, and make up the loss for the rest of the years to him who took it, and so get back his property. But if he is not able to get it back for himself, then it will be kept by him who gave a price for it, till the year of Jubilee; and in that year it will go back to its first owner and he will have his property again.
And he came to Nazareth, where he had been as a child, and he went, as his way was, into the Synagogue on the Sabbath, and got up to give a reading. And the book of the prophet Isaiah was given to him and, opening the book, he came on the place where it is said, The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because I am marked out by him to give good news to the poor; he has sent me to make well those who are broken-hearted; to say that the prisoners will be let go, and the blind will see, and to make the wounded free from their chains, To give knowledge that the year of the Lord's good pleasure is come. And shutting the book he gave it back to the servant and took his seat: and the eyes of all in the Synagogue were fixed on him. Then he said to them, Today this word has come true in your hearing.
And as for you, because of the blood of your agreement, I have sent out your prisoners from the deep hole in which there is no water. And they will come back to you, O daughter of Zion, as prisoners of hope: today I say to you that I will give you back twice as much;
The Lord, the God of Israel, has said, I made an agreement with your fathers on the day when I took them out of Egypt, out of the prison-house, saying, At the end of seven years every man is to let go his countryman who is a Hebrew, who has become yours for a price and has been your servant for six years; you are to let him go free: but your fathers gave no attention and did not give ear. And now, turning away from evil, you had done what is right in my eyes, giving a public undertaking for every man to make his neighbour free; and you had made an agreement before me in the house which is named by my name: But again you have put shame on my name, and you have taken back, every one his man-servant and his servant-girl, whom you had sent away free, and you have put them under the yoke again to be your servants and servant-girls. And so the Lord has said, You have not given ear to me and undertaken publicly, every man to let loose his countryman and his neighbour: see, I undertake to let loose against you the sword and disease and need of food; and I will send you wandering among all the kingdoms of the earth.
Will the goods of war be taken from the strong man, or the prisoners of the cruel one be let go? But the Lord says, Even the prisoners of the strong will be taken from him, and the cruel made to let go his goods: for I will take up your cause against your haters, and I will keep your children safe.
And said, The Lord gave orders to my lord to make distribution of the land as their heritage to the children of Israel: and my lord was ordered by the Lord to give the heritage of Zelophehad, our brother, to his daughters. Now if they get married to any of the sons of other tribes of the children of Israel, then their property will be taken away from the heritage of our fathers, and become part of the heritage of the tribe into which they get married: and their heritage will be taken away from the heritage of our tribe. And at the time of the Jubilee of the children of Israel, their property will be joined to the heritage of the tribe of which they are part and will be taken away from the heritage of the tribe of our fathers. So by the direction of the Lord, Moses gave orders to the children of Israel, saying, What the tribe of the sons of Joseph have said is right. This is the order of the Lord about the daughters of Zelophehad: The Lord says, Let them take as their husbands whoever is most pleasing to them, but only among the family of their father's tribe. And so no property will be handed from tribe to tribe among the children of Israel; but every one of the children of Israel will keep the heritage of his father's tribe. And every daughter owning property in any tribe of the children of Israel is to be married to one of the family of her father's tribe, so that every man of the children of Israel may keep the heritage of his fathers. And no property will be handed from one tribe to another, but every tribe of the children of Israel will keep its heritage.
If he gives his field from the year of Jubilee, the value will be fixed by your decision. But if he gives his field after the year of Jubilee, the amount of the money will be worked out by the priest in relation to the number of years till the coming year of Jubilee, and the necessary amount will be taken off your value. And if the man who has given the field has a desire to get it back, let him give a fifth more than the price at which it was valued and it will be his. But if he has no desire to get it back, or if he has given it for a price to another man, it may not be got back again. But the field, when it becomes free at the year of Jubilee, will be holy to the Lord, as a field given under oath: it will be the property of the priest. And if a man gives to the Lord a field which he has got for money from another, which is not part of his heritage; Then the value fixed by you up to the year of Jubilee will be worked out for him by the priest, and in that day he will give the amount of your value as holy to the Lord. In the year of Jubilee the field will go back to him from whom he got it, that is, to him whose heritage it was.
And if a Levite does not give money to get back his property, his house in the town which was exchanged for money will come back to him in the year of Jubilee. For the houses of the towns of the Levites are their property among the children of Israel. But the land on the outskirts of their towns may not be exchanged for money, for it is their property for ever.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible » Commentary on Leviticus 25
Commentary on Leviticus 25 Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
CHAPTER 25
Le 25:1-7. Sabbath of the Seventh Year.
2-4. When ye come into the land which I give you—It has been questioned on what year, after the occupation of Canaan, the sabbatic year began to be observed. Some think it was the seventh year after their entrance. But others, considering that as the first six years were spent in the conquest and division of the land (Jos 5:12), and that the sabbatical year was to be observed after six years of agriculture, maintain that the observance did not commence till the fourteenth year.
the land keep a sabbath unto the Lord—This was a very peculiar arrangement. Not only all agricultural processes were to be intermitted every seventh year, but the cultivators had no right to the soil. It lay entirely fallow, and its spontaneous produce was the common property of the poor and the stranger, the cattle and game. This year of rest was to invigorate the productive powers of the land, as the weekly Sabbath was a refreshment to men and cattle. It commenced immediately after the feast of ingathering, and it was calculated to teach the people, in a remarkable manner, the reality of the presence and providential power of God.
Le 25:8-23. The Jubilee.
8-11. thou shalt number seven sabbaths of years—This most extraordinary of all civil institutions, which received the name of "Jubilee" from a Hebrew word signifying a musical instrument, a horn or trumpet, began on the tenth day of the seventh month, or the great day of atonement, when, by order of the public authorities, the sound of trumpets proclaimed the beginning of the universal redemption. All prisoners and captives obtained their liberties, slaves were declared free, and debtors were absolved. The land, as on the sabbatic year, was neither sowed nor reaped, but allowed to enjoy with its inhabitants a sabbath of repose; and its natural produce was the common property of all. Moreover, every inheritance throughout the land of Judea was restored to its original owner.
10. ye shall hallow the fiftieth year—Much difference of opinion exists as to whether the jubilee was observed on the forty-ninth, or, in round numbers, it is called the fiftieth. The prevailing opinion, both in ancient and modern times, has been in favor of the latter.
12. ye shall eat the increase thereof out of the field, &c.—All that the ground yielded spontaneously during that period might be eaten for their necessary subsistence, but no persons were at liberty to hoard or form a private stock in reserve.
13. ye shall return every man unto his possession, &c.—Inheritances, from whatever cause, and how frequently soever they had been alienated, came back into the hands of the original proprietors. This law of entail, by which the right heir could never be excluded, was a provision of great wisdom for preserving families and tribes perfectly distinct, and their genealogies faithfully recorded, in order that all might have evidence to establish their right to the ancestral property. Hence the tribe and family of Christ were readily discovered at his birth.
17. Ye shall not oppress one another, but thou shalt fear thy God—This, which is the same as Le 25:14, related to the sale or purchase of possessions and the duty of paying an honest and equitable regard, on both sides, to the limited period during which the bargain could stand. The object of the legislator was, as far as possible, to maintain the original order of families, and an equality of condition among the people.
21, 22. I will command my blessing upon you in the sixth year, and it shall bring forth fruit for three years, &c.—A provision was made, by the special interposition of God, to supply the deficiency of food which would otherwise have resulted from the suspension of all labor during the sabbatic year. The sixth year was to yield a miraculous supply for three continuous years. And the remark is applicable to the year of Jubilee as well as the sabbatic year. (See allusions to this extraordinary provision in 2Ki 19:29; Isa 37:30). None but a legislator who was conscious of acting under divine authority would have staked his character on so singular an enactment as that of the sabbatic year; and none but a people who had witnessed the fulfilment of the divine promise would have been induced to suspend their agricultural preparations on a recurrence of a periodical Jubilee.
23-28. The land shall not be sold for ever—or, "be quite cut off," as the Margin better renders it. The land was God's, and, in prosecution of an important design, He gave it to the people of His choice, dividing it among their tribes and families—who, however, held it of Him merely as tenants-at-will and had no right or power of disposing of it to strangers. In necessitous circumstances, individuals might effect a temporary sale. But they possessed the right of redeeming it, at any time, on payment of an adequate compensation to the present holder; and by the enactments of the Jubilee they recovered it free—so that the land was rendered inalienable. (See an exception to this law, Le 27:20).
29-31. if a man sell a dwelling house in a walled city, then he may redeem it within a whole year after it is sold—All sales of houses were subject to the same condition. But there was a difference between the houses of villages (which, being connected with agriculture, were treated as parts of the land) and houses possessed by trading people or foreigners in walled towns, which could only be redeemed within the year after the sale; if not then redeemed, these did not revert to the former owner at the Jubilee.
32-34. Notwithstanding the cities of the Levites, &c.—The Levites, having no possessions but their towns and their houses, the law conferred on them the same privileges that were granted to the lands of the other Israelites. A certain portion of the lands surrounding the Levitical cities was appropriated to them for the pasturage of their cattle and flocks (Nu 35:4, 5). This was a permanent endowment for the support of the ministry and could not be alienated for any time. The Levites, however, were at liberty to make exchanges among themselves; and a priest might sell his house, garden, and right of pasture to another priest, but not to an Israelite of another tribe (Jer 41:7-9).
35-38. if thy brother be waxen poor, … relieve him—This was a most benevolent provision for the poor and unfortunate, designed to aid them or alleviate the evils of their condition. Whether a native Israelite or a mere sojourner, his richer neighbor was required to give him food, lodging, and a supply of money without usury. Usury was severely condemned (Ps 15:5; Eze 18:8, 17), but the prohibition cannot be considered as applicable to the modern practice of men in business, borrowing and lending at legal rates of interest.
39-46. if thy brother … be waxen poor, and be sold unto thee, thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bond-servant—An Israelite might be compelled, through misfortune, not only to mortgage his inheritance, but himself. In the event of his being reduced to this distress, he was to be treated not as a slave, but a hired servant whose engagement was temporary, and who might, through the friendly aid of a relative, be redeemed at any time before the Jubilee. The ransom money was determined on a most equitable principle. Taking account of the number of years from the proposal to redeem and the Jubilee, of the current wages of labor for that time, and multiplying the remaining years by that sum, the amount was to be paid to the master for his redemption. But if no such friendly interposition was made for a Hebrew slave, he continued in servitude till the year of Jubilee, when, as a matter of course, he regained his liberty, as well as his inheritance. Viewed in the various aspects in which it is presented in this chapter, the Jubilee was an admirable institution, and subservient in an eminent degree to uphold the interests of religion, social order, and freedom among the Israelites.