Leviticus 25

Leviticus 25 is one of the chapters of statutes in the latter half of Leviticus. Following the regulations concerning the lamp and the showbread and the incident of blasphemy in Leviticus 24, it addresses the "rest" and "restoration" of both land and people. It leads into the blessings and curses of Leviticus 26.

Outline

• Verses 1–7 Sabbatical year: The land is farmed for six years and allowed to rest in the seventh. Whatever grows of itself is to be eaten in common by servants, hired workers, strangers, and animals.
• Verses 8–12 Jubilee: After seven sabbatical years (forty-nine years) have been counted, the trumpet is sounded on the tenth day of the seventh month, the Day of Atonement, and liberty is proclaimed in the fiftieth year.
• Verses 13–17 The price of land is set according to the number of years remaining until the Jubilee, and the people are not to oppress one another.
• Verses 18–22 Those who obey will dwell in safety. God promises that the harvest of the sixth year will suffice for three years.
• Verses 23–28 The land may not be sold permanently. Land sold because of poverty may be redeemed by a near kinsman or by the seller himself; if it is not redeemed, it returns to him in the Jubilee.
• Verses 29–34 A house within a walled city may be redeemed only within one year. Houses in unwalled villages and houses in the cities of the Levites are treated as exceptions.
• Verses 35–38 No interest (usury) is to be taken from a poor fellow Israelite.
• Verses 39–46 A fellow Israelite who has sold himself is not to be made to serve as a slave but is to be treated as a hired servant and released in the Jubilee. Slaves may be bought from among the surrounding nations.
• Verses 47–55 A fellow Israelite sold to a foreigner may be redeemed (bought back by payment of a price) by a kinsman or by himself; if he is not redeemed, he goes free in the Jubilee.

Key Verses

• Leviticus 25:10 "And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof" — the central verse of the Jubilee proclamation. It is also inscribed on the Liberty Bell in the United States.
• Leviticus 25:23 "For the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me" — gives the grounds for the principle that the land belongs to God.
• Leviticus 25:55 "For unto me the children of Israel are servants" — grounds the prohibition against enslaving fellow Israelites in the Exodus.

People and Places

• The LORD and Moses: the Giver of the law and the one who receives it.
• Mount Sinai: the place where these regulations were given.
• Egypt and Canaan: the land from which Israel was delivered and the Promised Land.
• The Levites: receive separate regulations concerning the houses in their cities.

Points for Reflection

• Whether the Jubilee was actually observed is debated among scholars, since direct records of its observance in the Old Testament are scarce. 2 Chronicles 36 refers to the land's sabbaths.
• Redemption by a near kinsman is linked to the institution of the kinsman-redeemer. The story of Boaz in Ruth 4:4–10 is a representative example, and there is a tradition of reading it as a picture foreshadowing Christ's redemption.
• Many interpreters connect the Jubilee with the New Testament scene in which Jesus, in the synagogue at Nazareth, reads from Isaiah 61 and proclaims "the acceptable year of the Lord" (Luke 4).
• The regulations concerning foreign slaves in verses 44–46 raise questions for modern readers. Some interpreters seek to understand them within the social setting of the ancient Near East, while others seek to reread them in light of New Testament teaching.

In the Korean Church

The Jubilee is frequently invoked in sermons on land justice, debt forgiveness, and care for the poor. The National Council of Churches in Korea is reported to have proclaimed 1995, the fiftieth anniversary of Korea's liberation, a Year of Jubilee in its 1988 "Declaration of the Churches of Korea on National Reunification and Peace."