Leviticus 25: The Chapter Asks "What Shall We Eat?" Itself

Strangers keep turning up in this stretch of Leviticus. Saturday's post was about the Egyptian's son, a man with no standing in the camp who ended up under the same law as everyone else. Chapter 25 has another kind of stranger, unnamed this time. In verse 47 a sojourner or stranger "wax rich" by an Israelite, and the Israelite beside him goes under. They are different people, but the law is thinking about the same category.

First the calendar, though, because the chapter opens with it.

What shall we eat the seventh year?

The first seven verses are the rest of the land. Six years of sowing and pruning, and in the seventh "a sabbath of rest unto the land, a sabbath for the Lord." Nothing is sown or pruned, and what grows on its own isn't reaped (verses 4 and 5). Then verses 6 and 7 do something I'd have missed if I'd skimmed. The produce of that year is food for the owner and his servant and his maid and his hired servant and the stranger staying with him, and after them the cattle and the beasts of the land. Nobody owns the seventh-year crop. Everybody eats it.

After the fiftieth-year material comes the part I'd put in the middle of any talk on this chapter. Verse 20 says what the people are going to say:

And if ye shall say, What shall we eat the seventh year? behold, we shall not sow, nor gather in our increase:

Then I will command my blessing upon you in the sixth year, and it shall bring forth fruit for three years.

Leviticus 25:20-21

The law raises the objection itself, and the answer it gives is a number: the sixth year's yield covers three years. Verse 22 finishes the arithmetic. They sow in the eighth year and "eat yet of old fruit until the ninth year." Sixth, seventh, eighth, and the ninth year's harvest comes in. That is a long stretch on stored grain.

One thing the chapter never takes up: verse 8 counts forty-nine years and verse 10 hallows the fiftieth, with verse 11 forbidding sowing in the jubilee too. If the seventh-year cycle keeps going, the forty-ninth is a sabbath year and the fiftieth follows it, which would be two fallow years in a row, by my count. The chapter never says what the people do about it, and the promise in verse 21 is made for the sixth year only.

Verses 14 to 17 sell harvests, and the land isn't theirs to sell

Verses 15 and 16 read to me like a pricing rule, and I work in payments. The price goes up "according to the multitude of years" and down "according to the fewness of years," because, as verse 16 puts it, "according to the number of the years of the fruits doth he sell unto thee." Verse 15 says the count is of years "after the jubilee." The usual reading is that the years left before the next jubilee set the price, and the verse leaves that to the reader. Either way, what changes hands is a count of harvests. When the fiftieth year arrives the land goes back, so the buyer was never paying for a permanent thing.

Verse 14 has a warning in it, and verse 17 repeats it: "ye shall not oppress one another." The pricing formula sits between the two.

Then verse 23, which is the reason for all of it:

The land shall not be sold for ever: for the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me.

Leviticus 25:23

"Strangers and sojourners" is the pair of words the chapter uses for the outsider in verse 35 ("yea, though he be a stranger, or a sojourner") and in verse 47. Israel is told it holds the land the way an outsider holds a lease. The chapter says it once and moves on to the next rule.

Doctrine and Covenants 104 is the closest thing I know in modern scripture. Verse 14: "I, the Lord, stretched out the heavens, and built the earth, my very handiwork; and all things therein are mine." Verse 13 calls every man "accountable, as a steward over earthly blessings." I'd use it for the idea of stewardship and stop there. It says nothing about how the jubilee worked.

A brother who sells himself, and one who is sold to a stranger

The redemption law is in verses 24 to 34 for fields and houses, and it has an order to it. A kinsman who comes to redeem a sold field (verse 25) comes first. If there is no kinsman, the seller himself, if he's able, counts the years since the sale and pays back the "overplus" (verses 26 and 27). If he can't, the field stays with the buyer until the jubilee and then goes out (verse 28).

Ruth 4 shows that order working in a small-town scene, though it never cites Leviticus. Boaz tells the nearer kinsman, "If thou wilt redeem it, redeem it: but if thou wilt not redeem it, then tell me, that I may know: for there is none to redeem it beside thee; and I am after thee" (Ruth 4:4). The kinsman agrees, then hears that the field comes with Ruth, "to raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance" (verse 5), and backs out: "I cannot redeem it for myself, lest I mar mine own inheritance" (verse 6). So the near kin has his own books to balance. The law gives someone first claim and then gives the next man his turn.

For a person the chapter works the same way and gets sharper. Verses 39 to 41 say a brother who has sold himself isn't made a bondservant. He serves "as an hired servant, and as a sojourner," and goes out at the jubilee "both he and his children with him." The reason is verse 42: "they are my servants, which I brought forth out of the land of Egypt: they shall not be sold as bondmen."

The case in verses 47 to 54 is the one with the rich stranger. The man has sold himself to a stranger or sojourner who got rich. He "may be redeemed again" by a brother, an uncle, an uncle's son, "any that is nigh of kin unto him," or by himself "if he be able" (verses 48 and 49). The price is the years left until the jubilee, at the rate of a hired servant (verse 50). Few years left, small price. Many years left, larger. And if nobody redeems him, verse 54 lets him go anyway, and his children go out with him. The kin can redeem him sooner, and the jubilee comes whether they do or not.

Deuteronomy 15 has a related release and the two don't match. In Deuteronomy 15:12 a Hebrew who is sold serves "six years" and "in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free," and verse 13 adds he's not to go away empty. Leviticus 25:40 has him serve "unto the year of jubilee." Exodus 21:2 agrees with Deuteronomy on six years. The text doesn't reconcile the three. What they do share is the ground, which Deuteronomy 15:15 puts as "thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt, and the Lord thy God redeemed thee," and Leviticus 25:42 and 55 put as "which I brought forth out of the land of Egypt."

What verses 44 to 46 allow

People get quiet when this part comes up in class, so I'll be plain about it.

Verse 44: "Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids." Verse 45 adds the children of strangers living among them. Verse 46 says they may be taken "as an inheritance for your children after you" and "shall be your bondmen for ever: but over your brethren the children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another with rigour."

So the chapter protects an Israelite from being held as a bondman and permits holding others. The redemption rules, the jubilee, the kin who can buy a man back, all of that is written for the brother. The chapter does not forbid slavery, and I can't make it read gentler than it does. It's one of the places in the Bible I'd rather not have to explain to my kids, and I'd tell them so before I tried. I'd leave it in the chapter where it is and not smooth it over.

The year they let their servants go, and took them back

Jeremiah 34 is what happened to a version of this law, when King Zedekiah made a covenant with the people at Jerusalem "to proclaim liberty" (verse 8) so that every man would let his Hebrew manservant and maidservant go free. They did (verse 10). "But afterward they turned, and caused the servants and the handmaids, whom they had let go free, to return" (verse 11).

The Lord's answer in verse 17 is one of the harder sentences to read twice: "behold, I proclaim a liberty for you, saith the Lord, to the sword, to the pestilence, and to the famine." The word they had proclaimed comes back with a different list after it. Verse 14 tells us what rule was being broken: the seven-year release, with the note that "your fathers hearkened not unto me." That's Deuteronomy's and Exodus's six-year rule, not Leviticus 25's jubilee, so I wouldn't say Jeremiah 34 proves anything about the fiftieth year.

For the land, 2 Chronicles 36:21 says the exile happened "until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths: for as long as she lay desolate she kept sabbath." A reader can infer from that the sabbaths hadn't been kept. The verse does give a length for the desolation, "to fulfil threescore and ten years." What it doesn't give is how long the sabbaths went unkept, and it can't tell us how often anyone kept the jubilee.

Frequently Asked Questions

What's the difference between the sabbath year and the Year of Jubilee?

The sabbath year comes every seventh year and rests the land (verses 2 to 7). The jubilee is the fiftieth year, after seven sabbaths of years (verse 8), and it adds the return of everyone to "his possession" and "his family" (verse 10). One is for the field, the other is mostly for people and property.

Is the Year of Jubilee about Christ?

Luke 4:18 and 19 has Jesus reading from Isaiah in Nazareth, ending "To preach the acceptable year of the Lord." Luke doesn't use the word jubilee anywhere in that passage, and Isaiah 61:2 says "the acceptable year of the Lord" too. Many readers link them. I think it's a reasonable reading, and it is a reading. Luke doesn't say it.

Does "the land shall not be sold for ever" mean land couldn't be sold?

No, since verses 14 to 16 spend three verses on how to price a sale. What can't happen is a permanent one. The reason is in verse 23 ("the land is mine"), and the practical effect is that every sale is really a lease measured in harvests. The walled-city house in verses 29 and 30 is the exception.

Was it forty-nine years or fifty?

Both numbers are in the chapter, since verse 8 counts forty-nine as the sum of seven sevens, and verse 10 says "hallow the fiftieth year." The jubilee is the fiftieth. I mention it because the two get run together in lessons more often than you'd think.

I kept coming back to the question in verse 20 more than to the jubilee itself. It's 2:30 here, so I'm going to get the Diet Coke.

— D.