Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Leviticus 25:1
And the LORD spoke unto Moses in mount Sinai, saying,
1 7. The rest year was a transference to the land of the sabbatical idea emphasized each week for living creatures, the year being now taken as the unit instead of the day. See App. I, pp. 172 f. for the difference in standpoint between this and the parallel ordinances elsewhere in the Hexateucb, as indicating modifications of the same law in successive periods.
The seventh year is to bear the same relation to the six preceding years as the sabbath to the six preceding days of the week. The parallel between the land and the bondman was close. The divinely appointed seventh day of rest is to be kept holy by abstaining from work, so the land shall keep every seventh year holy to the Lord by resting from all work. It cannot be wholly inactive, but nothing is to be done which will cause the land to put forth its full strength. By a curtailment of the full powers bestowed upon man and land by their Creator both were to keep holy a season to the Lord. In Exo 23:10-11 the fallow year is regarded as a provision for the poor and part of the animal creation, while the religious idea underlies the injunctions of the passage in Leviticus.
In pre-exilic times the law seems to have been, at any rate to a large extent, disregarded (see ch. Lev 26:35; Lev 26:43; 2Ch 36:21).
It is true that the custom of letting land lie fallow prevails in so many countries and can be traced back so far that it is certain that the Hebrews must have observed something of the kind from the time of their being settled. If the fallow time were different for different fields there would be nothing to call for special note, and it is not surprising that no reference is found to the practice in the historical Books. But a fixed fallow year for all the land would cause an interruption of social life of which some traces would be found in the history.
Later on, in Nehemiah’s time (Neh 10:31), the people bound themselves to carry out the Law. According to Josephus ( Ant. xi. 8. 6) both Jews and Samaritans observed it in the time of Alexander the Great, and so later in the days of the Hasmonean dynasty ( 1Ma 6:49 ; 1Ma 6:53 ; Ant. xiii. 8. 1) and the Herods ( ib. xiv. 16. 2). Tacitus ( Hist. Lev 25:4), however, attributes the Jews’ observance of it to laziness.
The sabbatical year concluded with the Feast of Tabernacles (Deu 31:10), and the old reckoning, by which the year began in autumn, not in spring (see on Lev 23:23-25), was necessarily applied in this case. The year’s circle of agricultural operations naturally would begin as soon as harvest and vine-gathering were finished. Had it begun in the first month (after the sowing of spring time) the harvests of both sixth and seventh years would have been lost.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
The sabbatical year and the year of Jubilee belong to that great sabbatical system which runs through the religious observances of the Law, but rest upon moral rather than upon formally religious ground. It is not, therefore, without reason that they are here set apart from the set times which fell strictly within the sphere of religious observances.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
CHAPTER XXV
The law concerning the Sabbatical or seventh year repeated,
1-7.
The law relative to the jubilee, or fiftieth year, and the
hallowing of the fiftieth, 8-12.
In the year of jubilee every one to return unto his
possessions, 13.
None to oppress another in buying and selling, 14.
Purchases to be rated from jubilee to jubilee, according to the
number of years unexpired, 15-17.
Promises to obedience, 18,19.
Promises relative to the Sabbatical year, 20-22.
No inheritance must be finally alienated, 23, 24.
No advantage to be taken of a man’s poverty in buying his land,
25-28.
Ordinances relative to the selling of a house in a walled city,
29, 30;
in a village, 31.
Houses of the Levites may be redeemed at any time, 32, 33.
The fields of the Levites in the suburbs must not be sold, 34.
No usury to be taken from a poor brother, 35-38.
If an Israelite be sold to an Israelite, he must not be obliged
to serve as a slave, 39,
but be as a hired servant or as a sojourner, till the year of
jubilee, 40,
when he and his family shall have liberty to depart, 41;
because God claims all Israelites as his servants, having
redeemed them from bondage in Egypt, 42, 43.
The Israelites are permitted to have bond-men and bond-women of
the heathens, who, being bought with their money, shall be
considered as their property, 44-46.
If an Israelite, grown poor, be sold to a sojourner who has
waxed rich, he may be redeemed by one of his relatives, an
uncle or uncle’s son, 47-49.
In the interim between the jubilees, he may be redeemed; but if
not redeemed, he shall go free in the jubilee, 50-54.
Obedience enforced by God’s right over them as his servants,
55.
NOTES ON CHAP. XXV
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
1491
i.e. Near Mount Sinai. So the Hebrew particle beth is sometimes used, as Gen 27:13; Jos 5:13; Jdg 8:5; 2Ch 33:20, compared with 2Ki 21:18. So there is no need to disturb the order of the history in this place.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
And the Lord spake unto Moses in Mount Sinai,…. Not when Moses was with the Lord on that mount forty days, but after he came down from thence, even after the tabernacle was set up, while the children of Israel where encamped about that mountain, and before they took their journey from thence; for they continued some time in the wilderness of Sinai, and here it was the Lord spoke to Moses; for the words may be rendered “by” or “near Mount Sinai” g; and so Josephus h says, the following laws were delivered to Moses, when Israel was encamped under Mount Sinai:
saying; as follows.
g “apud seu juxta montem”, Piscator; so Ainsworth, Patrick, &c. h Antiqu. l. 3. c. 12. sect. 3.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
The law for the sabbatical and jubilee years brings to a close the laws given to Moses by Jehovah upon Mount Sinai. This is shown by the words of the heading (Lev 25:1), which point back to Exo 34:32, and bind together into an inward unity the whole round of laws that Moses received from God upon the mountain, and then gradually announced to the people. The same words are repeated, not only in Lev 7:38 at the close of the laws of sacrifice, but also at Lev 26:46, at the close of the promises and threats which follow the law for the sabbatical and jubilee years, and lastly, at Lev 27:34, after the supplementary law concerning vows. The institution of the jubilee years corresponds to the institution of the day of atonement (ch. 16). Just as all the sins and uncleannesses of the whole congregation, which had remained unatoned for and uncleansed in the course of the year, were to be wiped away by the all-embracing expiation of the yearly recurring day of atonement, and an undisturbed relation to be restored between Jehovah and His people; so, by the appointment of the year of jubilee, the disturbance and confusion of the divinely appointed relations, which had been introduced in the course of time through the inconstancy of all human or earthly things, were to be removed by the appointment of the year of jubilee, and the kingdom of Israel to be brought back to its original condition. The next chapter (ch. 26) bears the same relation to the giving of the law upon Sinai as Exo 23:20-33 to the covenant rights in Ex 20:22-23:19.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| The Sabbatical Year. | B. C. 1490. |
1 And the LORD spake unto Moses in mount Sinai, saying, 2 Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye come into the land which I give you, then shall the land keep a sabbath unto the LORD. 3 Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and gather in the fruit thereof; 4 But in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, a sabbath for the LORD: thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard. 5 That which groweth of its own accord of thy harvest thou shalt not reap, neither gather the grapes of thy vine undressed: for it is a year of rest unto the land. 6 And the sabbath of the land shall be meat for you; for thee, and for thy servant, and for thy maid, and for thy hired servant, and for thy stranger that sojourneth with thee, 7 And for thy cattle, and for the beast that are in thy land, shall all the increase thereof be meat.
The law of Moses laid a great deal of stress upon the sabbath, the sanctification of which was the earliest and most ancient of all divine institutions, designed for the keeping up of the knowledge and worship of the Creator among men; that law not only revived the observance of the weekly sabbath, but, for the further advancement of the honour of them, added the institution of a sabbatical year: In the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, v. 4. And hence the Jews collect that vulgar tradition that after the world has stood six thousand years (a thousand years being to God as one day) it shall cease, and the eternal sabbath shall succeed–a weak foundation on which to build the fixing of that day and hour which it is God’s prerogative to know. This sabbatical year began in September, at the end of harvest, the seventh month of their ecclesiastical year: and the law was, 1. That at the seed-time, which immediately followed the end of their in-gathering, they should sow no corn in their land, and that they should not in the spring dress their vineyards, and consequently that they should not expect either harvest or vintage the next year. 2. That what their ground did produce of itself they should not claim any property or use in, otherwise than from hand to mouth, but leave it for the poor, servants, strangers, and cattle, v. 5-7. It must be a sabbath of rest to the land; they must neither do any work about it, nor expect any fruit from it; all annual labours must be intermitted in the seventh year, as much as daily labours on the seventh day. The Jews say they “began not to reckon for the sabbatical year till they had completed the conquest of Canaan, which was in the eighth year of Joshua; the seventh year after that was the first sabbatical year, and so the fiftieth year was the jubilee.” This year there was to be a general release of debts (Deu 15:1; Deu 15:2), and a public reading of the law in the feast (Deu 31:10; Deu 31:11), to make it the more solemn. Now, (1.) God would hereby show them that he was their landlord, and that they were tenants at will under him. Landlords are wont to stipulate with their tenants when they shall break up their ground, how long they shall till it, and when they shall let it rest: God would thus give, grant, and convey, that good land to them, under such provisos and limitations as should let them know that they were not proprietors, but dependents on their Lord. (2.) It was a kindness to their land to let it rest sometimes, and would keep it in heart (as our husbandmen express it) for posterity, whose satisfaction God would have them to consult, and not to use the ground as if it were designed only for one age. (3.) When they were thus for a whole year taken off from all country business, they would have the more leisure to attend the exercises of religion, and to get the knowledge of God and his law. (4.) They were hereby taught to be charitable and generous, and not to engross all to themselves, but to be willing that others should share with them in the gifts of God’s bounty, which the earth brought forth of itself. (5.) They were brought to live in a constant dependence upon the divine providence, finding that, as man lives not by bread alone, so he has bread, not by his own industry alone, but, if God pleases, by the word of blessing from the mouth of God, without any care or pains of man, Matt. iv. 4. (6.) They were reminded of the easy life man lived in paradise, when he ate of every good thing, not, as since, in the sweat of his face. Labour and toil came in with sin. (7.) They were taught to consider how the poor lived, that did neither sow nor reap, even by the blessing of God upon a little. (8.) This year of rest typified the spiritual rest which all believers enter into through Christ, our true Noah, who giveth us comfort and rest concerning our work, and the toil of our hands, because of the ground which the Lord hath cursed, Gen. v. 29. Through him we are eased of the burden of worldly care and labour, both being sanctified and sweetened to us, and we are enabled and encouraged to live by faith. And, as the fruits of this sabbath of the land were enjoyed in common, so the salvation wrought out by Christ is a common salvation; and this sabbatical year seems to have been revived in the Christian church, when the believers had all things common, Acts ii. 44.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
LEVITICUS- TWENTY-FIVE
Verses 1-7:
The requirements of the Law are a reminder of the essential character of faith, Heb 11:6. This is emphasized in the Sabbath of the land. Just as one day in seven was to be set aside for man as holy to the Lord, so one year in seven was to be set aside for the land as holy to the Lord. Six years Israel could sow and reap, prune and harvest. But the seventh year was the Sabbath year for the land. Nothing was to be harvested, not even that which grew of itself. This law was to be strictly observed throughout the Land, by all. This included the landowners, their slaves, their hired servants, and the foreigners who lived among them.
The Sabbath year began on Tisri 1, the first day of the civil year. This was just after the harvest, and before the autumn sowing. It was to continue for a full year, until Tisri 1 of the following year. There were several purposes for this law:
1. For the benefit of the land, that it might not be overworked and suffer erosion and depletion due to continual planting.
2. For the benefit of the people, to teach the lessons of:
(1) Thrift and wise provision for future needs. There were six years in which to prepare for this time; the wise farmer would set aside in store from his harvest for the sabbbatical year, see Pr 6:6-11.
(2) Mercy: there was to be a release of debts, De 15:1-11.
(3) Faith: there was a need to trust God to provide enough the sixth year to sustain for two years; this was a constant reminder of God’s trustworthiness.
(4) Study: this was to be a time of public reading of the Law, as a year-long study of the Word of God, De 31:10-13. The sabbath year was not to be spent in idleness; the leisure time was to be spent in praise and meditation on God’s Word.
The sabbatical year requirement illustrates a principle applicable today: that leisure time can best be spent in meditation and praise.
Israel, as a nation, virtually ignored this sabbatical year statute, for almost five hundred years. However, God did not overlook their disobedience. Their violation of this statute was one reason for the Captivity. This is another reminder that man cannot ignore God’s laws, and expect to avoid the consequences, Ga 6:7-9.
History records that after the Jews returned from captivity, they religiously observed the sabbatical year, see “Antiquities” by Josephus; and the Apocryphal book of 1 Maccabees.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
THE SABBATIC YEAR AND THE YEAR OF JUBILEE
Lev 25:1-55
THIS twenty-fifth chapter of Leviticus contains at once the appointment and description of the Sabbatic Year and the Year of Jubilee.
I invite you, therefore, to the study of The Sabbatic Year and the Year of Jubilee as these are set forth in the text of our proposed study.
THE SABBATIC YEAR
In the very constitution of this Sabbatic year, God again emphasized the importance of the number seven. The Roman system of numerals is based upon tens; but our God counts by sevens. Seven great period days to finish creation; seven years of plenty and seven years of famine; the seventh time they compassed Jericho; the seventh time Elijahs servant looked for the coming cloud; seven lights in the candlestick; the seven churches; the seven spirits; seven vials; seven trumpets; and so it was seven years when the Sabbatic was reached; and at the end of seven sevens, the year of Jubilee. However, the Sabbatic year has more significance than that of showing Gods method of reckoning.
By it, God expressed His supreme sovereignty.
Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and gather in the fruit thereof; But in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, a sabbath for the Lord: thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard (Lev 25:3-4).
Notwithstanding the opening sentence of Genesis, In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, men are always being tempted to appropriate the land and call it their own, and God is always reminding them of the fact that the land is His. This Sabbatic year was only another way of saying what the Psalmist so clearly asserted,
The earth is the Lords, and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. For He hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods (Psa 24:1-2).
The principle reason why men have so often denied their stewardship unto God, and even Christian men called into question the idea involved in the very term stewardship, grows out of our having forgotten that the land is the Lords. You may remember that Hood, in his volume, Cromwell, speaks of how, in 1563, the great warrior dissolved The Rump, and said concerning the departure of its members, We did not hear a dog bark at their going; but afterward reminds us, Henceforth, until 1858a brief parenthesis of time, indeed, in the history of the countryhe governed the country absolutely. In a history so brief as this we shall not attempt to detail the circumstances of those troublesome years. Alas! all the battles had been easy to win compared with the task of uniting a distracted realm. So it would almost seem as if God had less trouble in bringing the earth into existence, and dissipating the darkness in which it was enveloped; in carpeting it with green, filling its fields and seas with all animal life, than He has had to retain His hold upon it since man was made, due to our disposition to assert claim to all that comes in sight. And yet, as Campbell Morgan has put it, God is absolute monarch, wherever He is King at all. He not only rules the realm; He owns it. Cromwell had changed the form of government, and the conditions of the people; but God creates both, and to deny His ownership is atheism. When He commanded the Sabbatic year, He spake only that which He had the right, and gave a needed reemphasis to His complete ownership of the earth!
Again, through it He emphasized the value of times and seasons.
But in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, a sabbath for the Lord; thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard (Lev 25:4).
How significant the coupling of the two suggestionsrest from wonted labor, and the sabbath for the Lord. What mind has ever yet imagined the untold benefitsphysical, mental, moral, and spiritualgrowing out of the fact that in the early days God set aside every seventh day as a period in which men should rest from labors, and worship before His face? We sometimes speak of the European Sabbath and the American Sabbath, and we mean by those terms that the people this side of the waters keep the Lords day more strictly than those who live beyond the English channel. And we know perfectly well that our blessings have been in proportion to our Sabbath-keeping; that our civilization depends upon it, and is measured by it. There was a wisdom which belonged alone to God in the fourth commandment, Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy; and we may believe there was equal wisdom in the Sabbatic year. The great complaint that men are now making for excuse as a violation of the Sabbath and absence from all assemblies of Gods saints is, We are so driven with work we have not time to attend. But the man who says that opposes the wisdom of God with the wickedness of human folly. He has, possibly without intention, given himself over to satanic suggestion. The devilwho is the father of lies-has deceived him into supposing that a mans life consisteth of the abundance of things which he possesseth, and has led him to discredit the value of the fourth commandment, and the inspiration of Pauls appeal to the Hebrews, Let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is. Wise men cannot forget that our civilization is not in our mechanics, nor yet in our mental acumen. Unless it rest in morals and in the religion that is in Jesus Christ it is worthless.
The Sabbatic year was well adapted to special religious privileges. If now the people were willing to give one day out of every seven, and one year out of every seven, to the worship of God in private devotions and by multiplied public assemblies, who can imagine the great moral and spiritual results, or tell the measure of improvements which would come into our civilization? We should not forget the declaration of Jesus Christ, No man can serve two masters; ye cannot serve God and mammon. And the man whose mind is so set upon money making that he dares despise Gods seventh of time for the sake of increasing his exchequer, cannot cover away his sin by crying, I am compelled to support my family, for he knows that a support is one thing, and laying up treasures on earth and living in luxury is another thing; and that this latter thing, indulged in in spite of Gods sacred Word, may cost him his soul.
The late Dr. A. C. Dixon told the story of that young lawyer who was a candidate for Congress, who, when approached by one of Dixons friends upon the matter of personal religion, said, I am too busy to give this attention now. Three years later a messenger, sent by this lawyer, rushed into the ministers house, and reported his sickness and his desire to see the man of God. But when he reached his bedside it was too late. He was delirious, and in his wild delirium was raving in profane speech; and all who listened knew that he, like Judas Iscariot, had, for a few pieces of silver, surrendered his soul to the Adversary. How pertinent the question of Jesus, What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?
In this Sabbatic year God also emphasized dependence upon His Providences. People are very prone to think they must work every year in order to live at all. But such a philosophy ignores the Scripture, Every good gift and every perfect gift cometh down from above, from the Father of lights. These people were concerned at this point, and so they put the question,
What shall we eat the seventh year? behold we shall not sow, nor gather in our increase?
To which God replies,
Then I will command My blessing upon you in the sixth year, and it shall bring forth fruit for three years. And ye shall sow the eighth year, and eat yet of the old fruit until the ninth year; until her fruits come in ye shall eat of the old store (Lev 25:20-22).
The whole philosophy of this dependence upon God was spoken when Satan tempted the Son of God to convert stones into bread, and thereby satiate His hunger. But Jesus answered, Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. In fact, the man who lives by bread alone does not live; the man who lives by the Word of God, though he may suffer a famine for bread, is yet enjoying an abundant life. The man who lives by the Word of God is in less danger of a famine for bread than the man who despises that same Word. Of those who come to me seeking material aid, for every righteous man there are five unrighteous; for every one who loves God and keeps His commands, there are ten who regard Him not and who daily transgress His decalogue. I doubt if there is any company of people more kindly cared for than those who keep the commands of the Lord, and put their trust in His promises.
Surely one of the most successful men in modern times from all standpointsphysical, mental, moral, and spiritualwas George Mueller. His physique was almost perfect, and when sick he knew how to call upon the Great Physician. He was well into the nineties before God took him. His mental equipment was such that wherever he went on his trips around the world, he commanded great audiences. His moral character was the admiration of his fellows, while his Christian life was the crown of all, and the only adequate secret of his success. When George Mueller ceased from the question, What shall I eat, what shall I drink, wherewithal shall I be clothed? saying in his heart, I will do the will of God and leave compensation entirely to Him, he testifies to freedom from anxiety concerning his supplies, and to a sense of dependence upon an unlimited God. And one who had observed the great amounts of money which came to his hand for use in his Christian enterprises, was led to confess, You can do such and such things, and need not to lay by, for the church in the whole of Devonshire cares about your wants. To which Mueller replied, Yes, the Lord can use not merely any of the saints throughout Devonshire, but those throughout the world as instruments to supply my temporal wants.
If we remembered that the very fertility of the earth, as it is quickened by rain and sunshine, is with the Lord, we might also be impressed with the fact that our best dependence is not in our industry, nor yet in our ingenuity, but in His Providence, whose promises fail not to them that trust Him. More and more am I impressed with the fact that to be a Christian, in the truest sense of that term, is to feel deeply the fact concerning every successful step we take in this life that Cromwell expressed when he announced the victory of the battle of Naseby to the Speaker of the House of Commons, This is none other but the hand of God, and to Him alone be the glory, wherein none are to share with Him.
THE YEAR OF JUBILEE
As we have seen in the reading of this chapter, God presents not only a Sabbatic year but a year of Jubilee. The seventh year was to be celebrated as unto Him; and at the end of seven sevens, an additional year was to be set aside as to the Lord and called The Year of Jubilee. The Hebrew word yobel means a musical instrument, and calls attention to the fact that this particular feast occurred not only at the end of the seventh seven years, but was introduced by the sound of the trumpet. Bonar says, Like the striking of the clock from the turret of some cathedral, announcing that the season of labor for the day is closed, so sounded the notes of the silver trumpet from the sanctuary, announcing that the great year of redemption and rest had comethe year of release and restoration throughout all Israel. Think what it meant to hear this trumpet sound!
First of all, it meant rest to the favored land. Gods care for the earth is not limited to man. When Jonah complained because Nineveh was not destroyed, Jehovah replied, Shall not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six score thousand people that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand, and also much cattle? Jesus, who knew the Father best, affirmed that not a sparrow falleth in the streets, but He is moved by its agony. But this year of Jubilee takes a step further into nature and shows Gods interest in the inanimate earth. His first, but not His most important reason, for instituting the Sabbatic year, was to give a Sabbath of rest unto the land; that also was one of His reasons for the year of Jubilee, Ye shall not sow, neither reap that which groweth of itself, in it, nor gather the grapes in it of thy vine undressed (Lev 25:4-5).
In the study of this appointment I have been impressed, as never before, with the fact that God takes pleasure in fruitful fields, and must be correspondingly pained by the sight of worn and useless acres. In the hilly country of the South and East it is not unusual to see acres which have been cultivated by men without rest, and without any attempt to enrich the soil, until the very greed of gain has utterly destroyed the ground, and there is exposed to a burning sun a fruitless subsoil. Every such a field is a scar on the face of Gods earth, and I believe, also, is an offence to Him who carpets the earth with grass, adorns it with trees, and exquisitely beautifies it with flowers.
I heard a while ago of a farmer in Albemarle County, Virginia, who had discovered the fact that the worn-out fields would produce violets in profusion, and had bought broad acres of them for a song, and sowed them thickly with violet seeds, and was reaping for himself a fortune, while clothing the earth with beauty and filling the air with fragrance. Such an act would meet the Divine favor! This rest for the land every seventh year, with two years of respite every half century, was Gods provision against the greed which impoverishes the very earth and mars the features of its winsome face.
It provided for the release of prisoners and the oppressed. In the fiftieth year they proclaimed liberty throughout all the land unto the inhabitants thereof. That year the bond servants were set free; that year provided the advantages of the bankruptcy law, for all those who were hopelessly in debt; that year swung wide prison doors and the incarcerated walked out.
Who, then, can imagine what it meant? What homecomings and happiness when the long-exiled one returned, when the captive was released, and all debts were discharged? I talked a while ago with a woman whose son was in prison. Her heart was set upon him; she mourned his condition as only a mother can. But when I asked her how long before he would be free, a smile struck through the tears, and the sad face brightened as she replied, It is only a year. And my attorney leads me to hope that on account of good behavior, six months will let him see the end of it. How the mothers in Israel must have hailed with joy this year of Jubilee when their imprisoned sons were set free, and every bond-servant was given his liberty!
And who can tell what it means to have debts discharged? The poor fear debt as few other calamities, and with good occasion. The creditor may lay claim to but a few dollars and yet if one cannot furnish it, he can make his very life a burden the days a dread, and the nights a delirium. Jehovah, our God, who is not indifferent to any form of human suffering, was familiar with all these sad facts, and by His year of Jubilee, interposed for prisoner and oppressed. When John Howard discovered that English prisons were full of people who had been put in because they owed $1.00, $2.00, $3.00, and for years had languished behind prison bars, charged with delinquency in paying such small sums, he determined, by the grace of God, to set such men at liberty. Where he could, he paid their debts; and for those whose debts were too large for him to provide, he set in motion new legislation which caused their liberty. And the reason John Howard is honored today wherever Christian men and women congregate, is because his sympathy and suggestion was in perfect line with Gods provision in the Sabbatic year and the year of Jubilee.
It looked also to the restoration of families and fortunes. One of the hardships most difficult to bear is the loss of an estate; and that is made double oppression when the estate is associated with the precious memories of an honored house in history. As things are at present constituted, any commercial shark can take advantage of a widow, and by technicalities, wrest from her riches, pauperize her, and forever despoil her children of an estate earned by the sweat of a fathers brow. But it was not so when Gods legislation was regarded by men. The year of Jubilee would bring such an one to justice and take from his hands that which he had criminally accumulated, and turn it back again to those who receive it with all its sacred memories and enhanced values. And, in all this, there was no injustice to the man who came honestly into possession of ones estate, for he knew perfectly that it was a temporary lease, and only paid for it accordingly.
After all our statesmen have said and thought upon the subject of legislation, are we not just as far from the highest wisdom as we are removed from this Divine legislation? Would not the world be deluged with a new joy if this old law were again revived, and by its provision men began to live? How many families would be rebuilt! How many lost fortunes restored! How many homes ring with merriment like to that of Heaven! Raymond, in his Life of Lincoln, tells how one day Schuyler Colfax came to the great President to plead for a boy who had been condemned and sentenced to be shot. Wearied and worn, the President answered, Some of our Generals complain that I impair the discipline and induce subordination in the army by my pardons and respites, but it makes me rested after a hard days work, if I can find some excuse for saving a mans life, and I go to bed happy as I think how joyous the signing of my name will make him and his family and his friends.
Beloved, I believe one secret of the eternal equanimity of God, one reason why He can look upon all the sorrows that beset men and yet remain forever felicitous Himself, is found in the fact that He knows that He has never laid His finger to a document and sent it into the world for the legislation of human affairs; never spoken a word by the mouth of His Prophets, or uttered a sentence through the lips and the pen of His Apostles, but it has been suited to increasing human happiness in proportion as men have received and acted upon it. The Year of Jubilee was only one of His many institutions meant for the restoration of family and fortune.
It impressed the exercise of justice and the spirit of generosity.
In the year of this jubilee ye shall return every man unto his possession. And if thou sell ought unto thy neighbour, or buyest ought of thy neighbours hand, ye shall not oppress one another. * * The sabbath of the land shall be meat for you; for thee, and for thy servant, and for thy maid, and for thy hired servant, and for thy stranger that sojourneth with thee (Lev 25:13-14; Lev 25:6).
Who can tell what it would mean to have justice in the land? What would it mean if men ceased from oppressing one another? Who could tell what it would mean to have one-seventh of all our estates opened wide to the use of the world, so that the stranger might feed thereon? Such is Gods demand for justice that He pronounces woe upon them that join house to house, that lay field to field, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth. He knows the oppression that too often attends the accumulation of property.
And such is Gods appeal for generosity that every single type in the Old Testament teaches us as clearly as Paul ever penned it, Every one of you, on the first day of the week, lay by him in store as God has prospered him; or as John, when by inspiration, he condemns the man who seeth his brother have need but shuts up his bowels of compassion from him.
Bancroft in his History of the United States tells us something of the behavior of our Puritan fathers when in Plymouth colony they discovered that the arrival of new emigrants made such a draft upon their provisions that there was not sufficient to meet the hunger; yet they shared, and shared, until Winslow tells us, I have seen men stagger by reason of suffering for want of food. Who wonders that such men are universally revered! Who wonders that their true descendants have been Gods choicest people! What better type of Satan do you find than the wretched miser; and what man more often reminds you of his God than the great soul whose generosity is felt in every time of need?
And yet, one cannot study this year of Jubilee and remember the Sabbatic years which precede it, and recall the tithes and offerings which God had commanded, without fearing lest the Church of modern times has fallen far below Israel in their gifts in the name of Jehovah.
TYPES AND SYMBOLS
In conclusion I want to say some things concerning the types and symbols of the Sabbatic year, and the year of Jubilee. The man who attempts to interpret Leviticus without reference to types, symbols, and prophecies will prove himself a poor teacher of this mighty volume. Take the types and symbols out of Leviticus and you would practically destroy its value, and remove the very occasion of its existence:. But what of the types, symbols, and prophecies of these sacred seasonsthe Sabbatic year, and the year of Jubilee?
Surely the work of the Son of God is here symbolized. In the Sabbatic year liberty was proclaimed, men were released from debt, and lost fortunes were restored. How all that suggests what Jesus came to do! Do we not remember how, when He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up,
He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up for to read. And there was delivered unto Him the Book of the Prophet Esaias. And when He had opened the Book, He found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the Gospel to the poor; He hath sent Me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. And He closed the Book, and He gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on Him. And He began to say unto them, This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears (Luk 4:16-21)?
It was only when Christ came that there was provision for the release of all debts, the freedom of all prisoners, the liberty of all slaves, for the great Jubilee is not that of Leviticus in the Old Testament, but the acceptable year of the Lord in the New Testament. And so far as discharge of debts, opening of prisons, and relief for the oppressed, that is all in the work of Jesus. He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. * * He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed. I believe the present joy of the redeemed is only an earnest of that which is to come. The atoning work of Jesus is not finished when the soul is saved; it is only commenced. The day will come when the full jubilee will be ushered in by the sound of His voice, and when those who have been oppressed by disease, and those who have been long held captive by death and the grave, shall be given their liberty, for has not the Apostle written,
Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? (1Co 15:51-55).
For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves, groan within ourselves, waiting for our adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body (Rom 8:22-23, R. V.).
Dr. Seiss, speaking of this consummation says, When the trump of jubilee shall sound, these groanings shall cease, and these fetters all dissolve. Rocky vaults and sepulchers, sealed for ages, shall then suddenly burst open, and the doors of death fall down from their rusty hinges, and broad daylight break into the darkest tombs, and all Gods buried saints shake off their damp and mouldy prison garb to bid farewell forever to the dingy cells that now clasp their holy forms. The expecting patriarchs, from their ancient tombs, hear the thrilling call and come; and holy martyrs, whose sacred dust the winds and waters scattered oer the earth; and slaughtered saints, whose bones lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold; and poorhouse paupers, sleeping in Christ, in potters fields; and faithful missionaries whose hearts the savages have eaten; and sea-lost loved ones whom shipwreck left to perish on the barren rocks, or melt in the still depths of the unfathomed seaall, all, all, shall then find their sorry fate reversed, and the power of the oppressor gone forever. Captivity will be at an end; debts will no longer distress; labor and oppression will be things of the past when, by the work of the Son of God, we stand complete at lastbody, soul, and spirit. In that day the jubilee of the ages begins!
Here also the return of the Jews to Palestine is prophesied. The land shall not be sold for ever, for the land is Mine. And this land which is His, is promised to this people for an everlasting possession. Hitherto they have occupied but a part of it, and that only temporarily. So, on the authority of Gods Word, they must come again into its possession, and occupy it to its utmost borders. I know it may seem to some fanciful to say so, but I should believe it een were there no such wonderful indications in the present trend of the times. I should believe it even if this little spot of earth had not remained a bone of contention among the nations. I should believe it if there were no Zionist movement on foot. I should believe it even if the Jews themselves repudiated the idea, because I believe that not one jot of all Gods words shall fail. In the seventy years of their captivity in Babylon there was no other indication of their return to Palestine than that found in Gods promise; and yet, when He had cured them forever of their idolatry, He speedily put it into the heart of kings to co-operate with Him to this end. And He who did that in the ancient day will be abundantly able to make good His promise of peace like a river to Jerusalem, and the glory of the Gentiles like a flowing stream. For the Lord of Hosts has said,
It shall yet come to pass, that there shall come people, and the inhabitants of many cities: And the inhabitants of one city shall go to another, saying, Let us go speedily to pray before the Lord, and to seek the Lord of hosts: I will go also. Yea, many people and strong nations shall come to seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem, and to pray before the Lord. Thus saith the Lord of Hosts; In those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold out of all languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you: for we have heard that God is with you (Zec 8:20-23).
It follows, therefore, that we find here also the type of the Millennial times. The year of Jubilee began just as the day of atonement was finished. It was ushered in with the sound of the trumpet; it was characterized by freedom for all Israelites, bestowment of lost estates, rehabilitation of broken houses, the utter cancellation of all debts, and the gathering unto feasts which were pure in their appointments and provided for the whole population. That year the very land brought forth without the sweat from any mans brow, or the careful planning of any mans mind. What a picture this of the Millennial Age when men shall be able to live in the presence of the Son of God; when prisons will be put away forever; when slavery will be obsolete; when the very benediction of God upon the inanimate earth shall cause the fir tree to come up instead of the thorn, and instead of the briar will come up the myrtle tree; when, as the great Prophet puts it, Ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace. The mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. That is the period to begin when, The Lord Himself shall descend from Heaven with a shout, and with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God. and the dead in Christ shall rise. That is the age in which He shall sit upon the throne of thrones, and rule from sea to sea, and from the rivers unto the ends of the earth. That is the Utopia of which Thomas Moore wrote, without knowing its true name, or understanding who was to usher it in. That is the Golden Age of which all agitators speak, and for which all social and political reformers ignorantly work in unbelief. That is the age to which the Gospel Dispensation leads, and in which all saints shall share a part. Truly, as A. J. F. Behrends has remarked, Everything in the Christian confession is keyed to immortality and eternal blessedness. There shall come an end to weakness and weariness, an end to pain and tears; but the songs of our pilgrimage shall swell into the unending sound of victory and joy. Sometime ago I was talking with one about a friend who had been mightily used of God in Bible teaching, but who is now sadly afflicted by mental and physical collapse. My companion said, I have here a poem from his pen. The words are adapted to end this discourse:
They come! They come!
Those endless years at home!
Those joys unending, selfless, deep;
Within the shelter all the sheep
Eternal holiday to keep;
No more to fear, no more to roam,
Those endless years at home
They come! They come!
He lives! He lives!
Who life eternal gives;
Who calleth all His sheep by name,
Who healeth all the blind and lame,
Who loveth rich and poor the same.
Whoever Christ by faith receives,
Christ life eternal gives
He lives! He lives!
Make haste! Make haste!
The sun is sinking fast!
The door into the fold must close
With nightand left without the foes,
And left without alike are those
Who lingered listless or unto the last
Neglecting stilltill light and grace are past,
O haste! O haste!
Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley
The Fear of Jubilee
SUGGESTIVE READINGS
Lev. 25:1-7.Then shall the land keep a Sabbath unto the Lord. For a whole year the land ceased to be the property of the owner; he might not till the soil, neither gather its spontaneous produce; God asserted His ownership by this enactment, and manifested His providential sufficiency for His people by the guarantee of plenty in the harvest preceding. The fallow land acquired new productive powers by this year of rest, as man and beast gather fresh energy by the weekly sabbath. The sabbatic law is a boon to the whole word. They who would secularise the holy day are madmen, casting firebrands, arrows, and death. The Heaven given days rest is a solace to mans fretting life: a quiet interval amid earths clamour for thought of his sacred interests; and a gentle admonition of his need of that spiritual rest which burdened souls should seek in Christ Jesus.
Lev. 25:8-22.Thou shalt number seven sabbaths of years. On the great day of Atonement, the tenth day of the seventh month, the sound of trumpets proclaimed the dawn of a Jubilee year of universal restitution and redemption. Prisoners were liberated, slaves were set free, debtors were absolved, ancestral heritages were restored, the land enjoyed rest from tillage, and its produce was the common lot of all. Beautiful symbolism: of the joyous proclamation of the gospel liberty and salvation following upon the sacrifice of the Redeemer; and of mans emancipation by Christ from the tyranny of sin and Satan, and restoration to the glad liberty of a spiritual life. The restoration of inheritances effected the sharp distinction of the tribes, keeping the families intact. It also neutralised over-reaching and land greed. Gods promise of abundance (Lev. 25:22-23) to compensate for the Jubilee years cessation of agricultural processes carries with it still the lesson that none are losers who serve God even in the face of seeming sacrifice; for the blessing of the Lord it maketh rich Tis mine to obey, tis His to provide. The questioning spirit of distrust (Lev. 25:20) is arrested by Gods assurance of prosperity following upon obedience. We may dismiss fear if intent on duty. The path of righteousness is always safe to tread, and none that trust in the Lord shall be desolate.
Let this supernatural fact in history be pondered. A miraculous year of super-abundance was guaranteed every fiftieth year, as a provision for the Jubilee Sabbath. If it had failed, what would have ensued? Moses would have been proved a deceiver. Pretending to divine inspiration as Israels legislator, the Jewish religion would have received utter refutation. The pledge of Lev. 25:22-23 were a supernatural attestation every fifty yearseasily verified or refutedof the reality of the true religion, and of Jehovahs personal superintendence over the order of nature and the experiences of man.
A whole nation, age after age, acted on the command to keep Jubilee because satisfied by the preceding sign that the ordinance was indeed divine.
Lev. 25:23-34.The land shall not be sold for ever, &c. The twelve tribes held the land of Canaan of Jehovah as His tenants at will, having no right or permision to barter with the soil, which was not theirs but His. It were well if all dwellers on the earth would consider that no sure or extended tenancy can be maintained by man in this transient abode. Though it is true that the earth hath He given to the children of men, yet the earth is the Lords: even as He gave Canaan by lots to the tribes, yet declared the land is Mine (Lev. 25:23). Here we have no continuing city; men can call nothing their own; the day of restitution will reverse our possessions; the hour of relinquishment hastens for us all. Death will end all occupancy here. But there is a better and more enduring substance for us to inherit, by faith in Christ: and he only is truly rich in Heritages who lays up for himself treasures in Heaven.
Lev. 25:35-38.If thy brother be waxen poor. The poor always ye have with you: and the near of kin who have been unfortunate, fallen in decay, claim special commiseration and leniency. What have we that we have not received? Should we not, therefore, show generosity and kindness?
Lev. 25:39-55.Not compel him to serve as a bondman. An Israelite must be treated as became his dignity, however penurious and helpless he might be, for he was Gods ransomed and chosen child, a son of Abraham. Full redemption came with the Jubilee, from every contract and claim. And the day of our redemption draweth nigh: when the creature itself shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God (Rom. 8:21).
SECTIONAL HOMILIES
Topic: A SABBATH OF REST UNTO THE LAND (Lev. 25:1-7)
Agriculturists still recognize the value of this law of one years rest in seven for the land. Violation of this regulation will exhaust the richest soil, and bring sterility. [See Addenda to chapter, Sabbath.] This law proclaimed,
I. DIVINE OWNERSHIP IN THE SOIL,
Just as the reservation of the seventh day as a Sabbath asserted Gods claim upon mans time, so this law affirmed His right to the soil man occupies and utilizes.
II. MANS HIGHEST INTERESTS ARE NOT MATERIAL AND EARTHLY.
He is here for nobler pursuits and more solemn concerns than to dig and toil, to buy and sell and get gain. For a mans life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.
III. NEIGHBOURLINESS AND BENEVOLENCE SHOULD BE CULTIVATED.
A common interest in all relationships of life (Lev. 25:6-7), and a helpful regard one for another would be promoted. Release from the stern occupancies of life would also awaken those social instincts and foster those healthy friendships which render intercourse cheering and elevating. Men were designed for fellowship and affection; not for exacting from each other what each can be forced to produce. Cultivate brotherliness. [See Addenda to chapter, Benevolence.]
IV. RELIANCE ON GOD, IN IMPLICIT OBEDIENCE TO HIS WILL.
To desist from effort to provide for their own maintenance would
1. Elicit their faith in the fatherly care of God
2. Summon them to a religious use of the time which God had set free from secular toils.
3. Incite them to grateful thoughts of Gods dealings with them as His people, and win them to a renewed recognition that they were not their own, but His, who had redeemed and still cared for them.
V. SABBATIC REST: HEAVENS GRACIOUS LAW FOR EARTHLY, TOILERS.
Human life becomes a toilsome drudgery, unless God interposes restraints. He would save men from grinding degradation, from absorbing labours; and give them respite and rest. Man needs the Sabbath pause, in order to realise
That higher possibilities are opened to him by Gods grace than to be a servant of the soil on which he dwells. He may live for a better country, even a heavenly.
That God desires of men the devotion of fixed seasons, and leisurely hours for sacred meditation and fellowship with the skies.
Topic: THE JUBILEE YEAR: ITS FOURFOLD SIGNIFICANCE (Lev. 25:8-13.)
To the Hebrew the blessings of the jubilee year were local and literal; it was a year of rest and of restitution for the land; a year of release and rejoicing to every inhabitant. Liberty was regained by the slave; possessions in the soil reverted to their owners; agricultural toils were suspended that a whole year of relaxation and repose might be enjoyed. Every home was in enjoyment of plenty, every hand ceased from weary labours, and both man and beast dwelt in quietude and peace.
Glad, indeed, was the hour when the silver trumpet tones announced the arrival of the year of rest. It was like the prelude to a joyous anthem, and that anthem was the angels song over Bethlehem fieldsPeace on earth, goodwill among men.
It was a richly symbolic institute, that Year of Jubilee, whose suggestiveness finds fulfilment in three distinct directions. It points to
I. THE CHRISTIAN DISPENSATION OF GOSPEL LIBERTY AND BEST. [See Luk. 4:18-21].
II. THE BELIEVERS PRIVILEGED LIFE OF SACRED RELEASE AND JOY. [Comp. Eph. 1:13-14; Heb. 4:9; Heb. 8:12].
III. THE MILLENNIAL AGE, OF ESTABLISHED RIGHTEOUSNESS AND PEACE. [See Isa. 66:18-23; Rev. 20:2-4].
IV. THE HEAVENLY STATE OF ETERNAL SECURITY AND SERENITY. [See 2Pe. 3:13; Rev. 14:13; Rev. 21:4].
In the application of the Jubilee incidents to each of these grand fulfilments of its symbolism, the following facts stand out clearly:
i. BOUNTY. God gave a supernatural abundance the year preceding the Jubilee, that in the enjoyment of vast supplies there should be no necessity for toil, no occasion for care[See Lev. 25:21]. And assuredly there is
1. Bounty in the provisions of the Gospel (1Ti. 1:14).
2. Fulness of grace for the believer in Jesus (2Co. 4:15; Tit. 3:6).
3. Abundance of good to be enjoyed in the Millennial Age (Psa. 72:7).
4. Limitless bliss in the Heavenly land (Psa. 16:2).
ii. REST. That Sabbatic year was to be consecrated to repose; the land was to be allowed to rest; the toiler was to cease from toil. Every want was supplied without the weariness of labour. Equally true of the
1. Gospel rest which Christianity announces (Mat. 11:29),
2. Believers rest which faith secures (Heb. 4:3).
3. Millennial rest for a wearied Church (Rev. 20:2-3).
4. Heavenly rest for Christs redeemed followers (Rev. 14:13). [See Addenda to chapter, Rest].
iii. LIBERTY. All bondservants were set free the moment the Jubilee trumpet sounded (Lev. 25:39-44). And assuredly, this finds verification in the
1. Liberty which Christ proclaimed to souls enslaved in sin and fear (Luk. 4:18; Heb. 2:15).
2. Spiritual freedom realized by faith (Rom. 8:15; Joh. 8:36).
3. Emancipation from thraldom which shall distinguish the Millennial reign (Isa. 49:8-9).
4. Glorious liberty of the children of God in Heaven (Rom. 8:21; Rev. 21:24-25). [See Addenda to chapter, Liberty].
iv. RESTITUTION. If the Israelite had parted with his inheritance, its possession was restored to him in the Year of Jubilee, and that without payment (Lev. 25:25-37). So
1. The redemption of Christ recovers for man all that sin had forfeited.
2. Believers in Jesus regain all the virtue, happiness, and hopes which the fall had ruined.
3. The weary and wronged world would enjoy paradisal gladness through Christs millennial sway.
4. Heaven will realize all which on earth had been desired, and restore all which death had desolated. [See Addenda to chapter, Possessions].
V. Let it be marked that the Jubilee, with all its blessings, was CONSQUENT UPON ATONEMENT. Not till the blood of Expiation had been shed, and the living goat had borne into the land of oblivion the sins which (ceremonially) had been transferred to it, did the silver trumpets peal forth their exultant notes, proclaiming liberty and rest, restitution and rectitude for the people. And it is because of Christs atonement that
1. Christianity has come to sinful man, with all its tidings of good and wealth of salvation (Joh. 1:29; Eph. 1:6).
2. Spiritual blessings are inherited by the believer in Jesus (Rom. 5:11).
3. The Church will enjoy the Sabbatic millennial glory (Rev. 19:11-14).
4. Heaven will be the eternal possession of the redeemed (Rev. 8:4-7).
The cross is the source of all human good. All things are ours, because Christ has died. As the blood on the doorposts freed Israel from the plague of death in Egypt, so it is to us now and for ever the Blood of Christ which ensures all sacred good (Rev. 1:5-6; Rev. 5:9-10).
Topic: GLAD FACTS OF THE JUBILEE
I. GODS SOVEREIGN RIGHT TO THE EARTH. He determines when and whether its fields should be tilled and reaped. Man, in his pride, calls the lands his own; thinks and acts as if he were Creations lord. His fancy rears a throne and crowns himself the king. But this decree establishes Gods rule. We are dependant tenants of His fields. The earth is the Lords, and the fulness thereof.
II. GODS POWER TO PROVIDE. He wills, and crops abound. Thus through this year of rest no want is known. The marvel grows when it is considered that the Jubilee Year succeeds a Sabbath Year, in which no seeding or reaping had gone on. But God gave forth a treble harvest in each forty-eighth year. And, as the poor widows meal and oil, it proved an unexhausted feast. As Josephs well replenished store, it fed the hungry and never failed.
None can succeed without the Lord, and none shall want who truly follow Him. Faith works when God says, Work; it rests when God says, Rest; and thrives in obedience.
III. UNIVERSAL BEST ENJOINED AND ENJOYED. No hand should toil. Tillage and harvest sleeps. Repese is the one lawfor man, beast, and soil. A Year long Sabbath reigns.
Emblem of soul rest in Christ.
IV. ATONEMENT USHERS IN THIS CONSECRATED YEAR. When the scapegoat has borne sins out of sight, when the High Priest has sprinkled the mercy-seat, this holy season begins. A light here shines upon the path which leads to restthrough penitence for sin, and reliance on the Victim.
V. THE TRUMPET SOUNDS THROUGHOUT THE LAND. In every place, by every year, the long-expected notes are heard. They tell no doubtful tale. Glad tidings are yours to proclaim, ye ministers of Christ. O, see that your lips publish rest in Christ. Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God.
VI. CAUSES FOR ISRAELS DELIGHT. The downcast debtor was now free. The bondman cast away his yoke. All forfeited estates returned. The oppressor might no more oppress. No servant trembled at his stern lords voice. The former owner claimed his fathers fields. The ancient landmarks were rebuilt, and liberty resumed its sway. In every house and heart there was consciousness of relief. Sorrow and mourning fled away. So there is all-deliverance in Christ.
1. We are poor debtors. Our debts exceed the moments of our lives; But Justice must have reckoning. There is no trifling with God. But hark! the Jubilee is come! Christ avails to pay. His ransomed ones are all free. No debt remains.
2. The Jubilee relaxes the ties of bondage. Each soul, apart from Christ, is a poor slave. Tyrants are many, and their yoke is hard. But Christ liberates from fetters (Joh. 8:36).
(a) Satan enchains the soul. But Jesus vanquishes this despot, and the Jubilee sets free from Satans power.
(b) Sin rules the captive race of men. Till expelled by Christ, it must reign. But a new passion gains the throne when Christ comes in, and shews His dying love, His blood to attone.
(c) This world is a foul tyrant. Its smiles allure, its frowns deter, its fashions force compliance, its laws exact submission: it drives its millions to a slavish toil. But the grace of Christ emancipates from the worlds enthralling snares.
(d) Death, too, is a fearful tyrant. Its chilly features terrify. The stoutest quails. None can relieve but Christ.
3. The Jubilee restores inheritance. Sin drove man from a fair abode; forced him to a wilderness of desolation. Gods smile was lost; the blessing of communion ceased. But Christ re-instates with more than Eden heritage. He places us in a land of peace, where God is our joy for ever. More is found than was lost by sin.
Christ came, lived, died, reigns, to grant this Jubilee to souls. Hear His own words (Luk. 4:18-19). He becomes His peoples life, their liberty, their ransom, their peace, their joy, their hope, their glory. The trustful soul reposes in a jubilee of joy. (Arranged from Dean Laws Christ is All).
Topic: THE YEAR OF JUBILEE (Lev. 25:8-14.)
This was the last and most remarkable of the Hebrew festivals. It bears unmistakable marks of Divine origin, of wise and benevolent design. The trumpet of jubilee sounded on the tenth day of Tisri, immediately after the great atonement had been made by the High Priest, and the sound of it went forth throughout the whole land. Every valley and mountain resounded with the soul-stirring notes, and the people knew that the acceptable year of the Lord had come. The Jubilee taught(a) The dependence of Israel upon the bounty of Heaven. (b) The duty of mutual kindness, forbearance, and forgiveness. (c) The unique position Israel occupied among the nations. (d) The unity of their race. By its advent was proclaimed
I. REST FROM MANUAL LABOUR.
The ordinary law with respect to physical subsistence was, In the sweat of thy brow thou shalt eat bread, but in the eighth and fiftieth years the law was suspended, for no agricultural work of any kind was to be performed, the land was to lie fallow, and have perfect rest. Labour suspended for such a protracted period would restore the wasted energies of man, and secure renewed vitality to the soil. Such an arrest of the tide of busy life would suggest to the Hebrews the necessity of seeking the meat that endureth to everlasting life.
II. DELIVERANCE FROM CIVIL BONDAGE.
Liberty was to be proclaimed throughout the land, every slave was to be set free. In exceptional cases, where full freedom was not given, the condition of the most abject was ameliorated. Thus the common brotherhood of man was emphatically proclaimed, during the period of the jubilee all were on a level. This was an invaluable boon to men, and gave the dependent and downtrodden a fair and new start in secular life.
III. FORGIVENESS OF DEBTS.
Pecuniary liabilities that had been contracted in the transaction of business, and which debtors were unable to discharge, were remitted. No usury or increase was to be taken from the poor, the millstone of debt was to be removed from their necks. Thus the inequalities of social and secular life were readjusted, and society started afresh upon a reformed and revived basis.
IV. RESTITUTION OF LOST PROPERTY.
Of course, there would necessarily be inequalities in the social circumstances of the people; some would accumulate property that others would lose through misfortune or negligence, and wide gaps would be thus created between classes of the community. Those gaps would be filled up at the Jubilee, where all wicked or undue accumulation of possessions would be rectified, and a period put to boundless ambition and lawless aggression. Selfishness and greed would thus be cut up root and branch, and all men taught to be reasonable in their aims and claims.
V. REJOICING FOR THE PEOPLE.
The sounding of the trumpet, immediately upon the atonement being made, would inform the people that an acceptable offering had been presented for their sins; and that all the blessings promised in connection with the Jubilee might be enjoyed. A full tide of gladness would flow through the land, for the great national holiday had begun, and innumerable and inestimable blessings were available for all. The trumpet sound would set the joy bells in every devout Hebrew heart ringing with gladsome melody.
VI. EXEMPTION FROM CARE.
During the previous year the horn of plenty, with twofold richness, was poured into the nations lap, and as the people beheld the super-abundant stores provided in anticipation of their manifold wants, they would be relieved from care and anxiety while the land had the long rest. They would not need to watch the clouds, their well-filled barns and overflowing presses would calm all their anxieties and fears. In these arrangements would be seen the kind thoughtfulness of Israels gracious Father, the sovereignty of their eternal King.
VII. HOMECOMING OF FAMILIES.
However scattered through adverse circumstances from the old homestead, or exiled through debt, all could now return, domestic devotion and social love could now be completely restored. All this would tend to socialize and humanize the people, and foster home and national piety.
VIII. REGENERATION OF THE NATION.
Every Jubilee year the people started afresh with a renewed consciousness of the presence of the Lord in their midst, and of their intimate relationship to Him. He brought them out of Egypt, gave them the goodly fertile land; and every Jubilee they were reminded that the land was His, that it was not to be impoverished and exhausted, that the nation was not to decay or become disintegrated. The divinely appointed conditions upon which the people took possession of the land were restored, and they looked up to Jehovah as their merciful and bountiful Benefactor.
Regarding the year of Jubilee as a type of the gospel age which Christ came to proclaim, and of the latter day glory such reflections as these are suggested:The gospel brings rest of heart for all who hear and obey its joyful sound. Deliverance from bondage of Satan, sin, and self. Recovery of our lost inheritance. Forgiveness of the debt we owe to God. Rejoicing because of good news and glad tidings of reconciliation and peace. Exemption from care about guilt of past, events of present, revelations of the future. Complete restoration to God.
It is mans highest honour and joy to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. The day shall come when a weary world and longing Church shall be fully blest in enjoyment a Jubilee universal and perpetual.F. W. B.
Topic: IMPORTANT PRINCIPLES CONTAINED IN THE JUBILEE REGULATIONS (Lev. 25:8-28)
Not till God uttered His voice in Christ could men understand the Jewish institutions. We who have heard the voice of Christ and His apostles have come plainly to see that the acceptable year of the Lord, and the times for the restitution of all thingsby which terms, and others, the year of Jubilee was describedhave their fulfilment in the Gospel.
(1). The Jubilee began on the Day of Atonement, announced by trumpet blasts Following upon the expiatory services of the day, the gladness occasioned by the joyful sound was in accord with the truths symbolized in those expiatory services.
(2). The Jubilee was marked by a complete suspension of agricultural labour. Fear was quieted by Gods promise (Lev. 25:21). Gods blessing upon the obedient is better than the sowing of the disobedient.
(3). The spontaneous fruits that grew during the suspension of agricultural operations were open to all. No man had the right to appropriate them. Thus the common dependence of all classes upon Gods bounty, and His equal regard for all was declared.
(4). The Jubilee restored to men their lost liberties (Lev. 25:10). Every Hebrew whom poverty, or misfortune, or misconduct had deprived of freedom, regained all the rights and privileges of a free man.
(5). It brought back to their original or hereditary owners the family estates which had been alienated from them (Lev. 25:10). Thus the consolation of misfortune, or the joy of old age, might be that one recovered at the Jubilee the home of his childhood from which he had been driven by sore stress of poverty.
Macaulay tells how Warren Hastings, when under a tropical sun he ruled fifty millions of Asiatics, was haunted with the wish to recover the ancestral manor of Daylesford. He would be Hastings of Daylesford. This purpose, formed in infancy and poverty, was steadfastly cherished. And when his long public life, so chequered with good and evil, with glory and obloquy, had at length closed for ever, it was to Daylesford that he retired to die.
The Jubilee recalled to the remembrance of the nation the fact that the land was Gods, and they but strangers and sojourners therein (Lev. 25:23); and that institution gave back, as with the hand of God, to every man from whom it had been alienated the inheritance of his fathers. By the two great blessings it gave himthe recovery of his freedom and of his family inheritanceevery one was given a new start in life, and the nation as a whole made a fresh beginning on an equal footing, as if they entered anew the promised land, and experienced afresh in all their fulness the privilege of the original covenant of grace.
Important principles, in their germs, were contained in this institution:
I. MANS NEED OF OCCASIONAL REST FROM TOIL.
By the emphasis given to rest, God hallowed it as being a duty and a privilege. Man was not to give himself to a ceaseless course of grinding toil, or to unrelaxing endeavours to keep up riches. Such confinement to labour is deadening to the best faculties of the soul. It destroys the elasticity of the heart and the sweetness of the spirit.
Christianity repeats the old lesson. Mary pausing from her work to listen to Jesus is a better model than Martha ceaselessly toiling. Come ye apart and est awhile.
II. ALL MEN ARE ENTITLED TO A SHARE OF GODS BOUNTY.
What grew in the fields in the Jubilee year was Gods harvest, free to all. It as to be distributed, like other pure bounties of His hand, the rain and sunshine, all alike. This happened every Sabbatic year as well as in the Jubilee. It asserted that mans share in producing any harvests is very small, that God is its chief agent, and therefore that it rightly belongs in great part to Him, and ought to be largely employed for the general weal.
Christianity endorses it. The early believers had all things common. christian charity urges that we contribute to the happiness of the community.
III. THE WELFARE OF SOCIETY IS IMPERILLED BY THE ACQUISITION OF LANDED ESTATES.
The operation of the Jubilee was to prevent the accumulation of land in the hands of a few. The public good demanded its general division among the people. Great Britain may be said to be suffering because of the absence of such a rule. Ireland is rocking as with an earthquake because the land is held in the grasp of a few rich landowners, while the mass of the people, stripped of their ancestral fields, are sunken in extreme poverty. Because of a similar evil the French Revolution overturned the government of France.
The doctrines of Communism find no support in the reasonings of a wise statesmanship, or in the teachings of Christianity. But Christianity suggests a remedy for the evil. Let property be held and administered on Christian principles: Be rich in good works, ready to distribute, willing to communicate.
IV. THE DIGNITY OF MAN VIEWED AS A RANSOMED CHILD OF GOD.
The Jubilee proclaimed the equality of men in the sight of Jehovah, and forbade their tyrannizing over or holding another in slavery. The ground of the prohibition was the same as that which forbade the absolute sale of landGods ownership of them. They are My servants, etc. (Lev. 25:42). The Jubilee made the slave a freeman, and the poor man a property owner.
How Christianity emphasizes this truth! It forbids contempt or oppression of any man for whom Christ died. He may be poor, ignorant, or even wicked. But for him also the scheme of redemption was planned. For his sake Christ laid aside the regalia of heaven and came down to earth. For him He made atonement for sin. For his regeneration He shed forth His Holy Spirit. There is joy in heaven when he repents; and when he dies, if he dies in faith and submission to God, he is carried by angels to the realm of the blessed.
By these things the dignity of man as man is proclaimed. He is to be treated, therefore, with consideration and kindness, with love and forbearance; and in the judgment Christ will say, Inasmuch as ye did it to one of the least of these my brethren, ye did it unto me.ALBERT H. CURRIER.
Topic: CANAAN, THE LORDS LAND FOR EVER (Lev. 25:23-24)
The land is mine! How decisive this claim by Jehovah on the soil, to the possessions which He secured for Israel and settled upon His people for ever! It is to be marked that the land is never called theirs; always called His; for though God gave it into their occupancy He claimed it as His peculiar possession. He will be merciful unto His land (Deu. 33:23); I will pluck them (Israel) up by the roots out of My land (2Ch. 7:20); Lord, Thou hast been favourable unto (well pleased with; margin) Thy land (Psa. 85:1); Then will the Lord be jealous for His land, and pity His people (Joe. 2:18; Psa. 3:2).
I. IN THE LAND OF CANAAN JEHOVAHS MOST WONDROUS DEEDS ALL CENTRED.
There He set up His throne and sanctuary; there His priests stood to minister continually before Him. There the voices of His prophets were heard testifying of present ruin and future restoration and glory; there the Baptist began, continued, and ended his career as the forerunner of the Messiah; there the Blessed One was born of a woman; there He was baptised; there He preached and taught; there He laboured and died; and thence He ascended in triumph to the right hand of God; thither God the Holy Ghost descended, in Pentecostal power; and thence the overflowing tide of gospel testimony emanated to the ends of the earth; thither the Lord of glory will descend, ere long, and plant His feet on the Mount of Olives; there His throne will be re-established and His worship restored.C. H. M.
II. OVER THE LAND OF CANAAN JEHOVAHS MOST JEALOUS WATCHFULNESS IS EXTENDED.
There is no spot in all the earth like unto the land of Canaan in the divine estimation. His eyes and His heart are there continually; its dust is precious in His sight; it is the centre of all His thoughts and operations, as touching the earth; and it is His purpose to make it an eternal excellency, the joy of many generations.
III. UPON THE LAND OF CANAAN JEHOVAHS MOST EMPHATIC CLAIM IS SEALED.
The land is Mine. It might not be sold for ever. It dwells in the keeping of the Omnipotent. It has been a coveted object through many ages, and by many earthly dynasties; and will yet be, if prophecy is rightly read, the scene of cruel war and sanguinary strife. But Jehovah maintains, and will perpetuate His claim. Inalienably, the land is Mine.
For what purpose, and for whom, does God claim and keep that land? It is to be the inheritance of His covenant people; to be re-occupied by those to whom He entrusted it by an everlasting covenant; and when the fulness of the Gentiles ends, and its present era of downtrodden abuse, which symbolises also the oppressed and outlawed lot of lost Israel and dispersed Judah is closed, then He who hath not cast away His people will require the land for Israels re-possession. [See Isa. 66:12-23.].
Topic: EXALTED PHILANTHROPY
Ye shall not oppress one another, etc.(Lev. 25:14; Lev. 25:35-38).
In the Jubilee year the ambitious and affluent among the Israelites were to surrender their possessions on terms that would lift up the unfortunate, and better the condition of the poor. All overreaching and oppression were to be abandoned. What faith in God, obedience to His commands, time for thoughtful meditations, incentives to human kindness, etc., the year of Jubilee would inspire! The spontaneous produce of the land became public property, the poorest Israelite, even the stranger and the slave, enjoyed liberty and fared liberally. The poor have always been the objects of divine concern, and attention has been called to the amelioration of their condition. Let us consider.
I. SOME OF THE CAUSES OF POVERTY. Hereditary or acquired weakness, obscure origin, ignorance, extravagance, idleness, incompetencey, misfortune, calamity, or sometimes divine chastisement, as in case of Job.
II. SOME OF THE MISERIES OF POVERTY. Exacting, unremunerative labour; degrading surroundings; deficiencies in necessaries of life; indisposition for physical, mental, and moral improvement. Poverty has a bitter cry, hunger a sharp thorn. Under such circumstances life scarcely seems worth living.
III. SOME OF THE AMELIORATIONS OF POVERTY. Industry; economy; cleanliness; sobriety; sympathy; charity; above all, the uplifting, cheering influences of the gospel, which are peculiarly adapted and specially intended for the poor. The gospel will fire men with a landable ambition, which will lift them in the social scale, or will make them happy in their unavoidable, lowly circumstances. On the basis of common brotherhood, and the universal Fatherhood of God, the temporal as well as spiritual interests of the poor should be cared for and ministered unto, not by patronising indiscriminate charity which fosters idleness and begets hypocrisy, but under the guidance of sanctified intelligence and Christly charity.F. W. B.
OUTLINES ON VERSES OF CHAPTER 25
Lev. 25:3.Theme: THE SABBATICAL YEAR.
The institution of the sabbath of the seventh year taught that the Lord was the sovereign King of the people, and the sole Proprietor of the land; very appropriate that the law concerning it should be pronounced amid all the solemn scenes and sanctions of Sinai. The Sabbatic year inculcated the lessons:
I. THAT THE LORD WAS THE SOLE PROPRIATOR OF THE LAND.
In all the promises made respecting Canaan, it was constantly kept before the people that the land was the Lords; and that He would give it to the peoplegive it as He gives all His other gifts, to be used according to His good pleasure and revealed will. The people were tenants, and must obey the Lord of the land; for, while the earth is the Lords and the fulness thereof, Canaan was to Him the most holy place. The land would be as His most gracious land, which He would open or shut as He saw fit; and the people would see that they were in His land, and dependent upon Him, as the seasons rolled in their annual round.
II. THAT THE LAND HAD RESTING UPON IT, CONTINUALLY, THE FAVOUR OF THE LORD.
The land was to be ordinarily fertile every year; but, the sixth year was to be exceptionally fruitful, yielding enough for the seventh; so that, in it, the land, as well as the people might repose. Each sixth year would exhibit in an extraordinary manner the unfailing and inexhaustible resources of God, and show how His smile and blessing rested on the soil. Canaan would look like a second Eden, as she appeared decked in her rich and beautiful garments. When the waters of the flood subsided, God said to Noah, I will no more curse the ground for mans sake, and the fertile earth shows that the Almighty crowns the year with His goodness and that His paths drop fatness.
III. THAT THE DIVINE FAVOUR PROVIDES FOR THE WELL-BEING OF EVERY LIVING THING.
This is a general and world-wide truth; but it was especially seen in the Sabbatic year. During its months, every stranger in the land, and every beast, had abundant provision in the stores laid up, and the spontaneous growth of the soil. The great God of Nature pays respect to the wants of the minutest creatures His hands have made; and the directions given about brute creation would show that He was kind to them, and would suggest to men to treat them kindly. He is good to all and His tender mercies are over all His works
IV. THAT OF EVERY LIVING THING, MAN IS THE NEAREST AND DEAREST TO THE GREAT CREATOR.
During the seventh year the poor were to be fed, and the bound set at liberty; thus lessons of kindness and forgiveness were taught. The year was not to be passed in luxury and idleness, but time was to be spent in reading the whole Law; it was a Sabbath to the Lord, when He could be pleased and glorified with the prayers and praises of His people. To man alone are directions given for worshipHe is the offspring of God, made in His image and capable of worshipping Him. Not only one day in seven, but one year in seven, was to be kept as a sabbath, showing how God looked for mans devoted service.
V. THAT THE GREAT CREATOR TEACHES MORAL TRUTHS TO MAN BY MEANS OF WORKS OF NATURE.
All the processes and phenomena of nature are intended to illustrate and enforce spiritual things. Hence the Bible is full of references to correspondences and analogies between the kingdoms of nature and grace. The extraordinary provision made for the Sabbatic year would inculcate lessons of faith, obedience, reverence, love. In the fulness of time the great Teacher by His inimitable parables threw a flood of light upon similitudes between the outer and inner courts of divine revelation. To devoutly study and practice these lessons will ensure exquisite pleasure and eternal profit.F. W. B.
Lev. 25:9Theme: LESSONS OF THE JUBILEE
I. ITS PECULIAR FEATURES
1. It was a great boon to all sorrowing ones.
(1.) Every captive was liberated.
(2.) The exiled wanderer returned.
(3.) The oppressed debtor was released from his debts.
(4.) The unfortunate poor were restored to their ancestral heritage.
(5) Families that bad been separated were now re-united.
(6.) Every estate reverted to the families to whom they were originally allotted in the conquest of Canaan.
2. All this was intimately connected with the DAY OF ATONEMENT. It was on the day of atonement, every year, that the trumpet was sounded in every corner of the land, reminding the people of the year of Jubilee (Lev. 25:9).
3. It was to be a year of perfect freedom from toil (Lev. 25:11-12).
4. Every business transaction had reference to the year of jubilee (Lev. 25:16). Prices were regulated by its nearness or distance.
II. ITS TYPICAL MEANING.
1. It had special reference to the millennial glory of Israel in the land which Jehovah keeps for them through all generations.
(1.) God claims Canaan as He does no other.
(2.) God has honoured Canaan as He has no other.
2. It is a beautiful and correct type of heaven.
(1.) Where every believer will enter upon his inheritance, and enter into his rest.
(2.) Where all exile, captivity, separation, poverty and oppression will for ever cease, and God will wipe away all tears from our eyes.
III. ITS PRACTICAL LESSONS.
1. That which the Jubilee year restores, and the rest and joy and plenty it brings, prove the graciousness of God.
(1). The sorrow, poverty, oppression, exile, etc., which occurred between two Jubilee years show the workings of human selfishness and sin.
(2). That which the Jubilee restores shows the workings of divine grace.
2. The unspeakable blessedness of the worlds Jubilee in the millennial period (Isa. 25:6-12; Isa. 33:23-24; Isa. 35:1-10; Isa. 55:13; Rom. 11:25; Rom. 8:18-22.).
3. The more glorious and more enduring bliss of heaven (Rev. 21:1-27; Rev. 22:1-15).D. C. Hughes.
Lev. 25:9-11.Theme: THE JUBILEE A TYPE OF THE GOSPEL.
I. ITS PRIMARY PURPOSE.
1. It was kind and benevolent: showing that, by remedying the evils the Israelites entailed on themselves, God took an interest in their welfare.
2. It was wise and politic. A people thus regulated would be kept distinct as to their various tribes and families, while an affectionate and dependant spirit would be promoted
3. It was good and beneficial. The insolvent debtor delivered, &c.
II. ITS TYPICAL REFERENCE.
1. The Jubilee of grace. This finds us deeply in arrears to divine justice, and fully remits all our debt. It reverses our state of spiritual bondage, restoring to us the rights and blessings of freedom. And it invests us with a new title to our forfeited inheritance opening to us the kingdom of heaven (Act. 10:43; Rom. 6:14; Joh. 8:36; Eph. 2:12).
2. The Jubilee of glory.
III. ITS JOYFUL COMMENCEMENT.
This was announced by the sound of trumpets throughout the land on the day of atonement. Our jubilee also, which begins in the great atonement, is now proclaimed among us, and is the joyful season of Gods grace, mercy and salvation.
Blessed are the people that know the joyful sound (Psa. 89:15).Wm. Sleigh
Lev. 25:18 Theme: THE DUTY OF OBEDIENCE.
Wherefore ye shall do My statutes, and keep My judgments, and do them; and ye shall dwell on the land in safety.
Man not a machine, but a responsible, free agent; therefore conditioned on obedience. Herein, seen the dignity of man, the righteousness and holiness of God. God had right to command Israel under obligation to obey, for
I. HE WAS THEIR SOVEREIGN RULER. Lord, King, Almighty, Absolute, Eternal.
II. THEY WERE HIS DEPENDENT CREATURES They derived all from Him, were defended, delivered, by Him.
III. THE PATH OF OBEDIENCE WAS SAFE. Whatever might befal them when doing the will of God would be overruled for their real good. No weapon formed against them could prosper, while they enjoyed the approving smile of the Lord.
IV. THE ONLY CRITERION OF CHARACTER IS OBEDIENCE. Faith, love, loyalty, sincerity, consecration, evinced and vindicated by unquestioning, cheerful, self-forgetful, constant obedience. The law of Christ confirms this test, If ye love me, keep my commandments. Revelation closes with declaration of same truth. Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.F. W. B.
Lev. 25:25.Theme: THE KINSMANS RIGHTS.
The tale is simple. One of Israel a sons in destitute His goods, his lands are torn away. The creditor demands, the claim is just, all must be yielded.
But is there some kinsman whose heart feels pity, and whose means abound? Then he has right to pay the price and buy back the forfeited estate. He may not be denied. Redeeming privilege is his.
Such is the statute of the Jewish realm. But it shows far more than civil remedy for helpless debt. It is a bright transcript of the work of Christ.
I. NO ONE BUT A KINSMAN COULD REDEEM US.
The needy ones are offspring of earth; dust is their origin, the worm their brother, the clod their home.
But to redeem requires a kindred birth.
Yet Jesus is God; an infinite distance divides Him from men. One sits enthroned in highest glory, the other grovels in earths lowest mire. Jesus may love, but, as God, He cannot redeem, cannot claim a kinsmans right Are then the destitute beyond relief?
Since the Redeemer must be Man, Jesus connects Himself with human ties. A human form is marvellously framed; and the virgin mother bears the heavenly child. The God-Man becomes a kinsman to redeem.
II. THE KINSMAN ALSO NEEDS WEALTH BY WHICH TO PAY THE PRICE.
Family ties are not enough. Much is required for the redemption of souls. But His deity imparts sufficiency. The price is boundless; the payment far exceeds. In whom we have redemption through His blood the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace (Eph. 1:7).
The sinner, appalled at his debts, may approach the Saviour, and plead His near kindred, may tell Him that He is one of our family, and remind Him that He alone has the redeeming right and redeeming might.
Then, being redeemed, let your life proclaim that you are no more your own but bought with a price. The kinsman claims your heart, your love, your all.Dean Law.
Lev. 25:55.Theme: ROYAL SERVICE.
For unto me the children of Israel are servants.
All things serve the Lord, but there are gradations of service. Man occupies a sphere only second to angels. Israel chosen to cooperate with Jehovah in communicating His will to the world, in winning back a prodigal race to Himself.
I. THE SERVICE HE EXPECTS. (a) Intelligent, higher than that rendered by inanimate and irrational things. Thoughtful, reasonable, conscientious. (b) Spontaneous. The outcome of free and deliberate choice, of preference for Him above all others. (c) Grateful. Remembering deliverances vouchsafed, benedictions bestowed. (d) Lifelong. Not spasmodic service, nor a course marked by withholdings, backslidings, shortcomings, or apostacy. He demands fidelity unto death.
II. THE REWARD HE BESTOWS. (a) His gracious approval; (b) improvement in holiness; (c) promotion to higher service here; (d) admission to perfect blessed service hereafter. In heaven His servants shall see and serve Him. Service there will be ineffable rapture and rest, because not beyond the strength, nor against the will, but in complete harmony with the renewed and immortal faculties.F. W. B.
ILLUSTRATIVE ADDENDA TO CHAPTER 25
BENEVOLENCE
Then none was for a party;
Then all were for the state;
Then the great man helped the poor,
And the poor man loved the great.
Then lands were fairly portioned;
Then spoils were fairly sold;
The Romans were like brothers
In the brave days of old.
Macaulay.
Beneficence is a duty. He who frequently practises it, and sees his benevolent intentions realised, at length comes to love him to whom he has done good. When, therefore, it is said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, it is not meant, Thou shalt love him first and do good in consequence of that love, but thou shalt do good to thy neighbour, and this thy beneficence will engender in thee that love to mankind which is the fullness and consummation of the inclination to do good.Kant.
SABBATH. Sin keeps no Sabbaths.
Brooks.
Yes, child of suffering, thou might well be sure,
He who ordained the Sabbath loves the poor.
Holmes, Urania.
A world without a Sabbath would be like a man without a smile, like a summer without flowers, and like a homestead without a garden. It is the joyous day of the whole week.H. W. Beecher.
We never knew a man work seven days in a week who did not kill himself or kill his mind.Anon.
REST:
No lamkin by its shepherd borne,
No dove its mate caressing,
No bondman freed, no pilgrim worn
The grateful shade possessing;
No child clasped to its mothers heart,
No sick man when his pains depart,
No warrior home returning;
No man can know such perfect rest
As that which ends our weary quest,
Our gracious Lord discerning.
Hillier
LIBERTY
A man, till he be in Christ, is a slave; and the more free a man thinks himself to be and labours to be, the more slave he is. Why? Because the more he sins the more he is enthralled to sin.Sibbes.
The end of Christian liberty is, that being delivered from the hands of our enemies, we might serve the Lord without fear,Westminster Catechism
He is the freeman, whom the truth makes free,
And all are slaves besides.
Cowper.
POSSESSIONS
How shocking must thy summons be. O Death!
To him that is at ease in his possessions:
Who, counting on long years of pleasure here,
Is quite unfurnished for that world to come.
Blair.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
4. SABBATICAL AND JUBILEE YEARS 25:155
a. THE SABBATICAL YEAR 25:17
TEXT 25:17
1
And Jehovah spake unto Moses in mount Sinai, saying,
2
Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye come into the land which I give you, then shall the land keep a sabbath unto Jehovah.
3
Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and gather in the fruits thereof;
4
but in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a sabbath unto Jehovah: thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard.
5
That which groweth of itself of thy harvest thou shalt not reap, and the grapes of thy undressed vine thou shalt not gather: it shall be a year of solemn rest for the land.
6
And the sabbath of the land shall be for food for you; for thee, and for thy servant and for thy maid, and for thy hired servant and for thy stranger, who sojourn with thee.
7
And for thy cattle, and for the beasts that are in thy land, shall all the increase thereof be for food.
THOUGHT QUESTIONS 25:17
585.
Are we to understand from Lev. 25:1 that Moses is now called up on the mount to receive these instructions?
586.
Besides the benefit to the land was there another purpose in the sabbath year?
587.
There is a work principle here. Does it have any relation to present society? Discuss.
588.
Vineyards and orchards would already be planted. What is to be done with them?
589.
From what would the nation live if the increase was for the slaves and servants?
590.
How would they feed their animals?
PARAPHRASE 25:17
While Moses was on Mount Sinai, the Lord gave him these instructions for the people of Israel: When you come into the land I am going to give you, you must let the land rest before the Lord every seventh year. For six years you may sow your field and prune your vineyards and harvest your crops, but during the seventh year the land is to lie fallow before the Lord, uncultivated. Dont sow your crops and dont prune your vineyards during that entire year. Dont even reap for yourself the volunteer crops that come up, and dont gather the grapes for yourself; for it is a year of rest for the land. Any crops that do grow that year shall be free to allfor you, your servants, your slaves, and any foreigners living among you. Cattle and wild animals alike shall be allowed to graze there.
COMMENT 25:17
Lev. 25:1-4 The seventh year is a very important time in the book of Leviticus: (1) to teach equality; the slaves were set free, the land was free for indiscriminate use by all the inhabitants; (2) to teach kindness and thoughtfulness to slaves, servants and cattle; (3) to teach a dependence on God who must provide in the sixth year what they would not have in the seventh or the eighth; (4) break the routine of the pursuit after mammonthey did have time to teach and worship; (5) to let Israel know they did not own the land but were only using it. (Calmet) In Lev. 25:20-21 of this chapter, God plainly states He will provide three times as much in the sixth year than in any other year. This would be necessary for the sixth year, the sabbath year, and the eighth year. What a lesson such care would give to the stranger in the land! Just when this practice began would be hard to determine. Some believe it was in the twenty-first year after their entrance into Canaan. It is calculated by considering seven years for conquest (Jos. 14:10), seven years to dividing the land among the tribes (Jos. 18:1), and seven years of crops.
Lev. 25:5-7 There is a most intriguing principle taught here: God wants man to enjoy the creation He has provided. God will actually enable the land to produce enough for three years for the express use of man in a year of rest, learning, worship and relaxation. Could this be but a foretaste of the sabbath of rest God has for all His children in that upper and better Canaan? Cf. Heb. 4:9.
FACT QUESTIONS 25:17
599.
Show the importance of the seventh year.
600.
The strangers in the land could learn a very important lesson. What was it?
601.
When did the first sabbath year begin, i.e. after entrance into Canaan?
602.
What intriguing principle is taught in Lev. 25:5-7?
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
XXV.
(1) And the Lord spake unto Moses.This chapter should properly have followed Leviticus 23, since the institutions of the sabbatical year, and the jubile which it discusses, are closely connected with the regulations about the festivals laid down in that chapter. The isolation of these ordinances from the rest of the festivals cannot be satisfactorily explained on any other principle than that which the authorities during the second Temple laid down, viz., that many of the sections are transposed, and that there is no strict sequence in the Law.
In Mount Sinai.That is, in the mountainous regions of Sinai. The expression mountain is often used to denote a mountainous tract of country (Num. 12:9; Deu. 1:2; Jos. 14:12, &c.). Accordingly, this divine communication was made to Moses when the Israelites were encamped in the neighbourhood of Sinai, where they remained in the wilderness for twelve months after their exodus from Egypt (Num. 10:11-12).
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
1 . ) Their peculiar relationship to Jehovah; 2.) Their deliverance from Egypt; 3.) The promise of Canaan; and 4.) The continued future regards of God.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
The Sabbatical Year ( Lev 25:1-7 ).
Lev 25:1
‘And Yahweh spoke to Moses in mount Sinai, saying,’
Again we have stressed that here we have God’s word to Moses.
Lev 25:2
“Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them, When you come into the land which I give you, then shall the land keep a sabbath to Yahweh.”
He was to inform the children of Israel that not only must they keep Sabbath every seventh day, but the land must keep sabbath as well every seventh year. Once they had entered the land and it had been distributed to them as their gift from Him, they were to observe a sabbath rest for the land after every period of six years, a period again in which they did no labour.
Lev 25:3
“Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard, and gather in its fruits,”
Compare Exo 23:11. For six years things were to go on as normal. They were to sow and prune and gather. The land was theirs to do what they liked with. They must work to make the most of it.
Lev 25:4
“But in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a sabbath to Yahweh. You shall neither sow your field, nor prune your vineyard.”
But when the seventh year came all was to cease. The land must be allowed to rest. They must cease from work. They must neither sow nor prune. It was to be a sabbath of solemn rest for the land, and for themselves. It would be a year in which their thoughts could be turned on to covenant matters, and to doing good. It was a period when God and His ways were to be central in their thoughts. It was intended to be in this seventh year that the whole law was read at the Feast of Tabernacles (Deu 31:10-13). It was to be their Sabbatical.
Lev 25:5
“That which grows of itself of your harvest you shall not reap, and the grapes of your undressed vine you shall not gather. It shall be a year of solemn rest for the land.”
Indeed they must go further. They must not gather in an organised way what grows of itself, neither reaping, nor gathering grapes and fruit. They must treat the land as if it was not theirs. What grew on the land should be seen as God’s and would be open to anyone to collect. The ‘landowner’ would in that year simply have the same rights as everyone else. It was a time for sharing all that they had.
Lev 25:6
“And the sabbath of the land shall be for food for you; for you, and for your servant and for your maid, and for your hired servant and for your stranger, who sojourns with you.”
So what grew on the land in that seventh year would be for everyone who went out to collect it for themselves. There were to be no organised labour parties, no work on the land organised by the owner. Anyone could go individually and collect what he was able. It was to be an exercise in magnanimity. All could live off what the land naturally produced under God.
Lev 25:7
“And for your cattle, and for the beasts that are in your land, shall all its increase be for food.”
The produce of the land was also to be left to the cattle and to beasts generally. They too were to be able to enter the land and eat what they would. The more ideal equivalent is portrayed in Isa 11:6-9.
That this could not happen in all places at the same time in this way, once the land was not captured as a whole, is clear to us. It could only happen piecemeal. It may well have happened to the land distributed in the first distribution, in the hill country and the lowlands, and later as more was gradually absorbed piecemeal it could be worked into the system. It may even have been observed on a differing basis in different localities. But the leaving fallow of the fields for a year was good practise, and was also practised elsewhere, and would give the soil time to recover and would actually be good for the land. And it was an indicator of God’s purpose of fullness of blessing yet to come.
This year would also have been the year of release mentioned in Deu 15:1-2 where all loans to fellow-Israelites were to be written off. Although this was no longer to apply once there were no poor people in the land. This attitude was reflected in the teaching of Jesus about giving and lending (Mat 5:42). And He would point out that in His day ‘you have the poor always with you’ (Joh 12:8).
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
The Sabbath Year (Its Purpose) Lev 25:1-7 discusses the Sabbath year, and the year of Jubilee, both based on seven-year cycles. The Sabbath year was intended to give man rest, both physically and mentally so that he could be renewed and refreshed spiritually. This seventh year also served to break up man’s daily routines so that he does not get into a lifetime rut in his behaviour and lifestyle; but rather, he is able to enter a new season of live with a new, fresh attitude. We still need such renewals in our lives today. We need a change in direction and daily routines. Otherwise, life becomes boring. Any industrious person knows that life becomes increasingly busy as the months and years go by. We tend to take on more work projects than we can complete. It has been my experience that after staying on a job at least seven years I become weary from the routine and increased responsibility. The Sabbath year gives us a rest from our pursuits so that we can re-evaluate our priorities.
Lev 25:1-7 The Sabbath Year (The Cycles of Nature) It is interesting to note that as scientists discover more of the miracles of nature and science, they find that many events in nature revolve around seven-year cycles. For example, many animal populations grow and decrease on seven-year cycles. In Scripture, we see that the weather follows seven-year cycles in the time of Joseph in Egypt.
Gen 41:29-30, “Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine ; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt; and the famine shall consume the land;”
The famine in Elijah’s time was three and a half years, exactly half of this cycle.
Jas 5:17, “Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months .”
A famine in the time of Elisha was on this seven-year cycle.
2Ki 8:1, “Then spake Elisha unto the woman, whose son he had restored to life, saying, Arise, and go thou and thine household, and sojourn wheresoever thou canst sojourn: for the LORD hath called for a famine; and it shall also come upon the land seven years .”
David chose between seven years of famine, or another type of divine judgement.
2Sa 24:13, “So Gad came to David, and told him, and said unto him, Shall seven years of famine come unto thee in thy land ? or wilt thou flee three months before thine enemies, while they pursue thee? or that there be three days’ pestilence in thy land? now advise, and see what answer I shall return to him that sent me.”
In fact, God created this earth in six days, and rested on the seventh. This is an indication that all of creation is based on a cycle of seven. Therefore, the Sabbath year and year of Jubilee fit into God’s seven-year cycles that He placed within His creation.
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
The Seventh Year
v. 1. And the Lord spake unto Moses in Mount Sinai, v. 2. Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye come in to the land which I give you, v. 3. Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and gather in the fruit thereof; v. 4. but in the seventh year shall be a Sabbath of rest unto the land, a Sabbath for the Lord; thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard. v. 5. That which groweth of its own accord of thy harvest, v. 6. And the Sabbath of the land shall be meat for you; for thee and for thy servant and for thy maid, v. 7. and for thy cattle, and for the beast that are in thy land shall all the increase thereof be meat,
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
EXPOSITION
The subject of the sacred seasons is taken up again in this chapter, after the parenthetical insertion of Lev 24:1-23. There remain the septennial festive season and that of the half-centurythe sabbatical year and the jubilee.
The sabbatical year was instituted not for any supposed physical benefit accruing from it to the land, but, first, as serving for a link between the sabbath and the jubilee by means of the sacred number seventhe sabbatical year being the seventh year, and the jubilee being the year following the seven-times-seventh year; and secondly, and chiefly, as enforcing the lesson of the weekly sabbath in a manner that could not be overlooked, and symbolically, teaching the universal application of the sabbatical law, even where physical needs were not concerned, and in that way suggesting the expectation of a rest to be hereafter attained by all God’s creatures. The sabbatical year began with the commencement of the civil year, the 1st of Tisri, just before the autumn sewings, which were intermitted for one year. The ground was not tilled during this year (Lev 24:4). There was a release of debts (Deu 15:1-11), and there was to be public reading of God’s Law (Deu 31:10-13). During the previous six years the husbandmen had been well aware of the coming sabbatical year, and would have laid by in store accordingly, so as to support themselves and their families during that year. The release of debts inculcated mercy. The command that the Law should be publicly read showed that the intention of the institution was not that the year should be spent in idleness, but that the time saved from ordinary labour was to be given to devotional pursuits. The law of the sabbatical year was so hard of observance by an agricultural people, that it was seldom or never acted upon until the Captivity (see 2Ch 36:21). But after that time it seems to have been religiously kept (see Josephus, ‘Ant.,’ 11.8, 6; 14.10, 6; 14.16, 2; 15.1, 2; 1 Macc. 6:49; Gal 4:10; Tacit; ‘Hist.,’ 5.2, 4).
The jubilee was a joyous year appointed to be observed every fifty years. The cycle of the sabbatical year and the jubilee touched without coalescing. The forty-ninth year was necessarily a sabbatical year, and the following year was the jubilee. It has appeared to some so difficult to believe that two years in which it was not allowable to engage in agricultural work should come together, that they have assumed that the sabbatical year itself, that is, the forty-ninth year, was the year of the jubilee. But this was clearly not the case. Twice in the century the laud was to lie fallow for two years runningfrom September to the second September followingspecial preparations having, of course, been made by laying up a store of grain from the abundant harvest promised in the previous year (Lev 24:21), and foreign crops being, no doubt, imported to take the place of the usual home crops. In matter of fact, however, these two blank years seldom, if ever, occurred together; for as the sabbatical year was not observed before the Captivity, while there are indications of the existence of the jubilee (1Ki 21:3; Isa 61:1-3), so probably the jubilee ceased to be observed after the Captivity, when the sabbatical year was carefully kept. Supposing that they did come together, the second year in which labour was prohibited would end just in time for the seed to be sown for the next summer’s harvest.
The jubilee affected both land and men. Land could only be sold for fifty years, its value immediately after a jubilee had passed being that of fifty harvests, or rather, deducting the sabbatical years and the fiftieth year, of forty-two harvests. If it were sold, it might be bought back by the original owner or any of his relations, counting the number of harvests remaining before the next jubilee, and buying out the previous purchaser with the sum of money thus estimated. No more effective plan could be well devised for preserving the various properties in the families to which they were at first assigned.
The other point chiefly affected by the law of the jubilee was slavery. In ease a brother Israelite became poor, it was the duty of his richer brethren to help him, and to lend him money without interest, to set him up in the world again. But if this did not succeed, the poor man might sell himself as a slave, either to an Israelite or to a foreigner living in the land. In the former ease it had been already enacted that his slavery was not to last beyond six years (Exo 21:2). To this enactment it was now added that he must be also set free whenever the year of jubilee occurred.
If he became the slave of a non-Israelite, he must be set free, not as before on the seventh year of his slavery, but still at the jubilee. He had also preserved for him the right of being redeemed by any kinsman, the price paid for him being the wages which would be paid up to the next jubilee. In either case, he was to be treated without rigour, and it was the duty of the Israelite magistrate to see that no undue harshness was used by the foreign master. The principle is, as before, that as the land is God’s land, not man’s, so the Israelites were the slaves of God, not of man, and that if the position in which God placed them was allowed to be interfered with for a time, it was to be recovered every seventh, or at furthest every fiftieth, year. The possession of slaves was not forbiddenthe world was not yet ready for such a prohibition. The Hebrews might purchase and own slaves of alien blood, but between Hebrew and Hebrew the institution of master and slave was practically abolished, and superseded (in most respects) by the relationship of master and servant.
Lev 25:1
And the Lord spake unto Moses in mount Sinai. The purpose of the words, in Mount Sinai, is not to distinguish the place in which the sabbatical law and the law of the jubilee were given from that in which the preceding laws were delivered. The words mean only, “in the Sinai district;” and they are employed because these laws form the conclusion of the series of laws given while tile people were en-camped under Mount Sinai. The law on vows is, it is true, added to them, but it is by way of appendix.
Lev 25:2-7
The sabbath of the seventh year could only be observed when ye come into the land which I give you. The habit of making no distraction in the seventh year during the whole of the life in the wilderness may have led to the neglect of the law after the settlement in Canaan. Another excuse for the neglect may have been a difficulty which would have presented itself of fixing the date from which to count up to the seventh year, as different parts of the land were conquered at different times. According to the law, from New Year’s Day of the seventh year to the following New Year’s Day, there was to be neither sowing nor pruning, reaping or gathering. The expression, Neither shalt thou gather the grapes of thy vine undressed, would be more literally rendered, the grapes of thy Nazarite vine, the vine with its unpruned tendrils, being likened to the Nazarite with his unshorn locks. As to sowing and reaping, an exception was made with respect to the barley sown and reaped for the Passover sheaf, and the wheat sown and reaped for the Pentecost loaves. The spontaneous fruits of the earth, and they were very large in the rich fields of the valleys and plains, were to be the property of all alike, whether the owners of the land or not, “that the poor of thy people might eat” (Exo 23:11). And what was left by man was to be food for the cattle and beasts of the field. The cessation of agricultural labours must have served, and may have been intended to serve, as an encouragement to mercantile pursuits, as well as to the study of the Divine Law (Deu 31:10-13). The Feast of Tabernacles of the seventh year was specially appointed by Moses as a day for reading the Law to the assembled people (Deu 31:10-13). And the Mishna appoints the following passages of Deuteronomy to be read on that day:Deu 1:1-6; Deu 6:4-8; Deu 11:13-22; Deu 14:22; Deu 15:23; Deu 17:14; Deu 26:12-19; Deu 27:1-26, Deu 28:1-68. (‘Mish. Sotah.,’ 7.8). The other ordinance connected with the sabbatical year, the release of debts to the poor (Deu 15:1-6), was, like the fifth commandment, made of none effect by rabbinical traditionsnotably by one which required a debtor, when his creditor said, “I remit,” to insist that nevertheless he should accept payment. The moral purpose of the sabbath of the seventh year is well drawn out by Keil:”In the sabbatical year the land which the Lord had given his people was to observe a period of holy rest and refreshment to its Lord and God, just as the congregation did on the sabbath day; and the hand of man was to be withheld from the fields and fruit gardens from working them that they might yield their produce for his use. The earth was to be sacred from the hand of man, exhausting its power for earthly purposes as his own property, and to enjoy the holy rest with which God had blessed the earth and all its productions after the Creation. From this, Israel, as the nation of God, was to learn, on the one hand, that although the .earth was created for man, it was not merely created for him to draw out its power for his own use, but also to be holy to the Lord and participate in the blessed rest; and on the other hand, that the great purpose for which the congregation of the Lord existed did not consist in the uninterrupted tilling of the earth, connected with bitter labour in the sweat of the brow (Gen 3:17, Gen 3:19), but in tile peaceful enjoyment of the fruits of the earth, which the Lord their God had given them and would give them still, without the labour of their hands, if they strove to keep his covenant and satisfy themselves with his grace.”
Lev 25:8, Lev 25:9
The word jubile (as it is always spelt in the Authorized Version) is taken from the Hebrew word yovel, and it came to mean a year of liberty (Eze 46:17; Josephus, ‘Ant.,’ 3.12, 3), because it freed men and lands from the obligations to which they would otherwise have been liable; but originally it signified no more than a cornet-blast, and thence the year of the cornet-blast. The way to find the jubilee year was to number seven sabbaths of years, that is, seven weeks of years (Lev 22:15), seven times seven years; and the space of the seven sabbaths of years shall be unto thee forty and nine years: then by a blast of the cornet (the word is inexactly rendered trumpet) on the tenth day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement, the approach of the jubilee in the following year was announced.
Lev 25:10
This verse contains a short statement of the two purposes of the jubilee:
(1) to proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof;
(2) ye shall return every man unto his possession.
Lev 25:11, Lev 25:12
So far as the tillage of the land went, the jubilee year was to have the same effect as a sabbatical year.
Lev 25:13-17
The Israelites were only tenants of God. They might regard themselves as owners for fifty years, but at the end of every fifty years the land was to come back to him to whom the Lord had assigned it, or to his representative. It might be bought and sold on that understanding, the value of the purchase being four. d by reckoning the price of the harvests up to the next jubilee day; but in this period only “the years of the fruits” were to be counted, that is, the sabbatical years, in which there would be no harvests, were to be deducted. Ye shall not therefore oppress (or overreach) one another by demanding more for the hind than would be its just value under the limitation of the jubilee law.
Lev 25:18-22
“Not only the year of jubilee, but the sabbatical year also, commenced in the autumn, when the farmers first began to sow for the coming year; so that the sowing was suspended from the autumn of the sixth year till the autumn of the seventh, and even till the autumn of the eighth whenever the jubilee year came round, in which case both sowing and reaping were omitted for two years in succession, and consequently the produce of the sixth year, which was harvested in the seventh month of that year, must have sufficed for three years, not merely till the sowing in the autumn of the eighth or fiftieth year, but till the harvest of the ninth or fifty-first year, as the Talmud and rabbins of every age have understood the law” (Keil). The question, What shall we eat? would present itself with double force when the sabbatical and the jubilee years came together. It and the answer to it therefore properly follow on the institution of the jubilee, instead of preceding it, as Ewald, Knobcl, and others demand that it should do.
Lev 25:23, Lev 25:24
For the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me. Many incidental advantages, if some difficulties, arose from the jubilee law (which will be the more appreciated if we compare the evils resulting from slavery and the accumulation of land in a few hands, found in the history of Rome or any other ancient nation); but its essential features, so far as the laud was concerned, was its inculcation of the lesson of the proprietorship of the Lord. Palestine was God’s land: he divided it once for all in the time of Joshua among his people, and every fifty years he required that recourse should be had to that original division, in order that in each generation the people might feel themselves to be his tenants, not independent owners, possessores, not domini.
Lev 25:25-28
The right of redemption of land sold continued always alive, and might be exercised by the original owner or his kinsman. If not exercised, the owner returned into his possession at any rate in the jubilee year. If a man had to sell his laud, he was bound to offer it to his nearest kinsman first (see Jer 32:7, Jer 32:8).
Lev 25:29-31
Houses in walled cities are not subject to the law of restoration at the jubilee, as that law applies only to lands and to men; but houses in the country are subject to the law, as they are regarded only as appurtenances of the land. Houses in cities, being occupied by artisans and built by human industry, not originally assigned in the territorial division, arc not considered in so strict a sense the property of the Lord as the soil is, and may be parted with more readily. Yet the owners, if obliged to part with them, are allowed a year’s grace, during which they are to have the right of buying them back. The expression, within a full year, would be more literally rendered during a fixed time, that fixed time having just before been declared to be a year.
Lev 25:32-34
The houses of the Levites are, by an exception, subject to the law of jubilee. They constituted the share of the national property which was assigned to the tribe of Levi, and so far stood in the same relation to them as the land did to the other tribes. They therefore returned to the original possessor or his representative in the year of jubilee, and might at any earlier time be redeemed. The words, Notwithstanding the cities of the Levites, should rather be rendered, But in respect to the cities of the Levites. There is a difficulty also as to the translation of the clause, And if a man purchase of the Levites, for the word rendered purchase menus elsewhere redeem; but here the Authorized Version would seem to be correct. The sense that it gives is that if any one bought a house of the Levites, he had to render it back in the year of jubilee, just as though it had been land. On the other hand, the land belonging to the Levites, in the suburbs of the Levitical cities, which was used for the pasturage of the flocks of the Levites, could not be sold except to a Levite, and therefore no question between the Levites and members of the other tribes could arise regarding it. The phrase, the house that was sold, and the city of his possession, must be understood, by a hendiadys, to mean, the house that was sold in the city of his possession (see Gesenius, ‘Lex.,’ s.v. i.b.).
Lev 25:35-38
Slavery. It is presumed that no Hebrew will become a slave except on the pressure of poverty, and this poverty his brethren are commanded to relieve; but foreseeing that either want of charity on the part of the rich or unthrift on the part of the poor would certainly bring about slavery, the legislator makes regulations so as to soften its character as far as possible. The literal translation of Lev 25:35 is as follows: If thy brother becomes poor, and his hand faileth by thee, thou shalt lay hold of him; a stranger or a sojourner that he may live with thee. The translation of the latter clause adopted by the Authorized Version, yea, though he be a stranger, or a sojourner; that he may live with thee, makes the duty of giving charitable support and loans of money to apply to the case of the stranger and sojourner as well as of the Israelite. The other and more probable rendering confines its application to native Israelites. If thy brother becomes poor, and his hand faileth, thou shalt support him as a stranger or a sojourner, that is, treat him with the forbearance shown to resident foreigners, to whose state he had reduced himself by the loss of his land. The command in Lev 25:36, Take thou no usury of him, or increase, does not bear upon the general question of taking interest for money when lent to wealthy men or companies for business purposes. It simply forbids the taking of interest or increase of a brother Israelite who had become poor. The history of Rome shows how much cruelty and revolution such an injunction may have prevented. The words, or increase, added to usury, forbid the exaction of any greater quantity of food or clothing (a method of evading the law against usury) than that which had been lent. The injunction was transgressed in the time of Nehemiah, when “he rebuked the nobles, and the rulers, and said unto them, Ye exact usury, every one of his brother . Then held they their peace, and found nothing to answer” (Neh 5:7, Neh 5:8).
Lev 25:39-42
We see the way in which a poor Israelite might become a slave in the case of the sons of the widow whose oil was multiplied by Elisha. “Thy servant my husband is dead; (and thou knowest that thy servant did fear the Lord:) and the creditor is come to take unto him my two sons to be bondmen” (2Ki 4:1). And in the time of Nehemiah, “Some also there were that said, We have mortgaged our lands, vineyards, and houses, that we might buy corn, because of the dearth. And, lo, we bring into bondage our sons and our daughters to be servants, and some of our daughters are brought unto bondage already: neither is it in our power to redeem them; for other men have our lands and vineyards” (Neh 5:3-5). But the fact that an Israelite could not be kept in slavery for more than six years (Exo 21:2), and that the period of his service had to be still shorter if the jubilee fell before the seventh year, and the further fact that at the time of the jubilee he would not only he free, but recover any ancestral property that he had forfeited, so that he might become once more on an equality with his master, would have made his position totally different from the hopeless, helpless state of the Greek or Roman slave, even without the positive command that he was to be treated, not as a bondservant: but as an hired servant, and as a sojourner. All alike, master and bondsman, were the slaves of God, and therefore not only were they, so far, on an equality one with another, but the master would be encroaching on the right of God if he claimed God’s slaves for his own inalienably.
Lev 25:43
Thou shalt not rule over him with rigour; but shalt fear thy God, is paralleled by the New Testament injunction, “And, ye masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening: knowing that your Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with him” (Eph 6:9).
Lev 25:44-46
Slavery is not forbidden in respect to non-Israelites. The world was not yet ready for it, as it was not ready in the days of St. Paul.
Lev 25:47-55
Rules are laid down for the case of an Israelite who has sold himself for a slave to a non-Israelite. In this case he is not set free at the end of six years, as he would be if his master were a countryman, but in other respects his treatment is to be like that of the man with an Israelite master. He may be redeemed by the value of his work down to the jubilee being paid by himself or his kinsman; he is to be set free when the jubilee comes at any rate; he is to be treated kindly while continuing in his master’s service, and his countrymen are to see that no over-severity is used.
HOMILETICS
Lev 25:8-34
The jubilee, being a year of deliverance and joy, came to be a type of the Messianic dispensation, and of the final deliverance and state of happiness which is still to come. “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord” (Isa 61:1, Isa 61:2). We have our Lord’s authority for saying that these words bear spiritual reference to his ministry on earth (Luk 4:21). They are partially fulfilled in his kingdom here, and will be fully accomplished at “the restitution of all things” (Act 3:21) in his kingdom hereafter, when his people shall “rest from their labours” and be delivered from the burden of their debts and emancipated for ever from slavery.
Lev 25:35-55
Bible.
I. IN THE OLD TESTAMENT. It is accepted as a fact, not denounced or approved, but recognized and gradually ameliorated.
1. Hebrew slaves are not to be treated with rigour (Lev 25:43, Lev 25:53), but as hired servants. How different from the state of slaves in the workshops of Greece and Rome!
2. In the ease of Hebrew slaves, the duration of slavery was not to be perpetual. At the end of six years every slave was to be restored to liberty, and at the end of fifty years at the utmost he was to be replaced in a social position which might equal his master’s (Lev 25:28, Lev 25:54).
II. IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. It is still accepted as a fact. But:
1. A principle is laid down, which, like leaven leavening the whole lump, could not but cause its destruction. “Ye masters your Master also” (or, as it would be better translated, “your and their Master”) “is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with him” (Eph 6:9). “Ye call me Master and Lord: and say ye well; for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you” (Joh 13:13-15). “Art thou called being a servant (slave)? care not for it: but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather. For he that is called in the Lord, being a servant (slave), is the Lord’s freeman: likewise also he that is called, being free, is Christ’s servant (slave)’ (1Co 7:21, 1Co 7:22). “There is neither bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all” (Col 3:11).
2. An example is given. St. Paul thus speaks of Onesimus, the runaway slave, now converted to Christianity: “I beseech thee for my son Onesimus, whom I have begotten in my bonds: thou therefore receive him, that is, mine own bowels. For perhaps he therefore departed for a season, that thou shouldest receive him for ever; not now as a servant (slave), but above a servant (slave), a brother beloved, specially to me, but how much more unto thee, both in the flesh, and in the Lord? If thou count me therefore a partner, receive him as myself” (Phm 1:10-17). Contrast the feeling entertained contemporaneously towards slaves in the Roman Empire. “Their growing power was sometimes restrained by legalized murder; they were sold without remorse; they were tortured and beaten and crucified without pity. Even Cicero apologizes to Atticus for being affected by the death of his slave” (Wordsworth, ‘Church History,’ Lev 23:1-44).
III. TEACHING IN THE SECOND CENTURY. “We ought,” says Clement of Alexandria, “to treat our slaves as ourselves. They are men as we are; and there is the same God of bond and free; and we ought not to punish our brethren when they sin, but to reprove them. Whatever we do to the lowest and meanest of Christ’s brethren, we do to him”.
IV. SLOW BUT CERTAIN EXTINCTION OF SLAVERY. There was a long battle to be fought between the selfish and the Christian instinct; but slavery could not coexist with Christianity, and wherever Christianity now stretches, slavery, though it may still linger here and there, is condemned by public sentiment and doomed to extinction.
HOMILIES BY R.M. EDGAR
Lev 25:1-7
The fallow year.
cf. Deu 31:10-13. We have here a ceremonial appendix to the fourth commandment. The land must have its sabbath as well as man, and so every seventh year was to be fallow year for the ground. The necessity of giving land rest is recognized still in agriculture. Continual cropping impoverishes a soil, and reduces it eventually to barrenness. This was one of the grave charges made by political economists against the slavery of North America, that, in consequence of the inefficiency of slave labour, the land was subjected to a monotonous process of cropping, and in consequence killed. The finest virgin soil was being reduced to wilderness, for the land was allowed neither variety nor rest. This arrangement in Israel, therefore, was economically most wise. But “the sabbath of the fields” had a wider basis than this mere natural one. It was attended by most important religious results.
I. THE FALLOW YEAR PROCLAIMED THAT THE LAND BELONGED TO THE LORD. For if the fourth commandment really implies that the people, called from their own work to do God’s work on God’s day, belong to him, and so are under obligation to obey this call, in the very same way the claim that the land should rest proclaims that the land is his. What was thus claimed in Canaan is only part of a still wider claim; for “the earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. For he hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods” (Psa 24:1, Psa 24:2). The demand for “a sabbath of rest unto the land” is for “a sabbath for the Lord.” He thus stamps the land as his, and had we the clear vision, we might see the “sign manual” of the Lord upon all the world.
II. THE FALLOW YEAR CHANGED AGRICULTURAL INTO PASTORAL LIFE. The people of necessity gave greater attention to the rearing and the tending of cattle. It is evident from Deu 31:7 that the care of the cattle and of the beasts of the field was specially contemplated by the arrangement. National life would become in consequence more idyllic. A wholesome change would thus be introduced every seventh year, and the people would morally be improved. The population would become more and more humane, and the whole country profit thereby.
Now, in pastoral countries there is of necessity more time for pensive meditation and thought. Pastoral life is in the interests of reflection. It is a providential aid thereto. Hence we see in the sabbatic year the condition supplied for greater thoughtfulness and reflection. If we compare the blank intellectual condition of agricultural labourers, ground down by ceaseless toil, with the thoughtful, poetic mood often met with among shepherds, we can have no difficulty in recognizing the great moral importance of a pastoral year.
III. THE FALLOW YEAR WAS A FINE EXERCISE FOR THE NATIONAL FAITH, For men would naturally ask, “What shall we eat the seventh year?” (Deu 31:20). And to this the Lord made answer, “Then I will command my blessing upon you in the sixth year, and it shall bring forth fruit for three years” (Deu 31:21). For a nation to prepare for this fallow year required great faith in God. The sixth year was a year of “great expectations;” they looked to God to provide for the coming year of rest, and thus were drawn up to an exercise of faith and hope of the most profitable description. Amid our multiplied methods of livelihood we are in danger of losing sight of the Divine hand altogether, and of living a low life of sight. And yet, by periodic returns of hard times and- difficulties, the Lord is still calling on us for faith in him, to enable us to serve him. He still desires us to exercise this faith in him, that none of us shall ever suffer real loss in seeking to serve him. “So those who abstain from their labours upon the sabbath,” says an old writer in this connection, “it shall never impoverish them, for the blessing of God upon the week-days shall supply all their wants; so the Lord promised, when they shall go up to Jerusalem to serve him at their feasts, that he would keep their land from the incursion of their enemies (Exo 34:24). We see also (Jos 5:1, Jos 5:2), when they were circumcised, the Lord struck such a fear and terror into the hearts of the Canaanites, that they durst not touch them, as Simeon and Levi killed the Shechemites when they were newly circumcised. Never man yet got hurt in the service of God; he shall still find the Lord’s protecting hand and blessing in his service.”
IV. THE FALLOW YEAR BROUGHT INTO PROMINENCE THE GREAT TRUTH ABOUT THE BROTHERHOOD OF MAN. Although the land was to lie fallow, it gave much in the way of spontaneous growth. This became public and common property, so that servant, and maid, and hired servant, and stranger, as well as the rightful owner, “had all things common.” In fact, there was, to adopt the modern phraseology, a “commune” established in Canaan so far as the produce of the sabbatic year was concerned. Was this not a recognition of the brotherhood of man, and of the obligation to make some provision for poorer brethren? It was thus the year of charity, when all alike sat at the table of the Divine bounty, and realized thereat their common relation.
It was a similar outcome of the religious spirit which occurred at Pentecost. Then “the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common” (Act 4:32). And although the Christian commune did not work well, but broke down speedily, it showed the true tendency of inspired men. The obligation under which they live to do their best for all about them, especially for those of the household of faith, is cheerfully and gladly recognized. And possibly, in the perfect world and sabbath of the spirit, this community of goods will be found workable, the selfish elements which now cause friction having entirely disappeared.
V. THE FALLOW YEAR AFFORDED SPECIAL FACILITIES FOR PROMOTING NATIONAL EDUCATION. It is evident from Deu 31:10-13 that the sabbatic year was to be a season of special study of the Law. The Feast of Tabernacles with which it began was to be devoted to the public reading of it. Not only the adults, male and female, but also the children, were to be instructed in it. So that the national desire might very properly find its expression in the words of the Psalm (119:19), which celebrates the Divine Law, “I am a stranger in the earth: hide not thy commandments from me.” A pilgrim people in extemporized tents applied themselves in the sabbatic year to the study of God’s commandments.
Thus national education was promoted, and this education was of such a character that “the revival of religion” must have resulted if the sabbatic years had been faithfully kept. It would seem from such a passage as Jer 34:14, however, that Israel was not careful about the sabbatic year, and the result was judgment without mercy (Jer 34:17-22). The institution was most valuable, morally and spiritually, but it was disregarded by an apostatizing people, who came in consequence into an inheritance of judgment rather than of blessing.R.M.E.
Lev 25:8-55
The jubilee.
cf. Isa 61:1 -13; Luk 4:18, Luk 4:19. We have here a further appendix to the fourth commandment. After seven sabbatic years there came another year, called the jubilee, which was also sabbatic, and during which there was to be a universal restitution. The trumpet was to be blown on the Day of Atonement, and the captives were then to be released, the unfortunate ones who had been compelled to part with their inheritance had it restored to them, and there was a general restoration of heart and of hope throughout the land. It was the year of liberty, of comfort, of restoration; in one word, it was every half-century a bloodless revolution, giving to the entire nation the opportunity of a new departure.
I. THE JUBILEE WAS PRE–EMINENTLY THE LORD‘S, AND AS SUCH WAS A HALLOWED YEAR. The fallow year was a year of rest unto the land, the jubilee was a year of liberty and release unto the people, and, as the year which was reached after a series of seven sabbatic years, it was hallowed as no other year was hallowed, to the service of the Lord. His will ruled all the year, just as his will is pre-eminently regarded on the sabbath days. Now, the principle embodied in the jubilee was this: “All members of the community are the direct servants of Jehovah, not the servants of men, and they must therefore have an unfettered body and unencumbered estate, in order to live worthy of their vocation.” Hence God gave his people in the jubilee who had become “servants of men” through the pressure of the times, release from their bondage; he gave those of them who had disposed of their estates, which they could only dispose of until the jubilee, a new gift of their inheritance; he gave every exile from his home and family through the exigencies of the times, right to return to his family and begin life amid the old associations and without encumbrance. This was surely to show that his service is perfect freedom, and that when his will is done on earth as it ought to be, men shall have such social privileges and such adequate temporal provision as will make life an antepast of heaven!
The only exception to the law of restoration was the case of a house in a walled town, which, if not redeemed within a year, might become the inalienable inheritance of the buyer. It was only by some little possibility of this kind that the stranger could have any footing in the holy land at all. The growth of cities, and of the civilization which cities bring, was thus provided for. If every house as well as field reverted to its former owners, every jubilee would have witnessed an emigration of all but the descendants of the old proprietors, and business would have been brought to n utter standstill. We see in this exception the possibility of a foreign and advantageous element amid the native population.
II. THERE WAS A SLAVERY WHICH TERMINATED, AND A SLAVERY WHICH DID NOT TERMINATE, IN THE YEAR OF THE JUBILEE. The slavery which did terminate was that into which a Jewish debtor had entered, in order to give his service in lieu of the debt. In fact, slavery was the form that the bankruptcy laws took in Palestine. It would be well if some such system were engrafted on our own jurisprudence. A man who has got unfortunately into difficulties might thus honourably redeem his position and his character, instead of compromising both by availing himself of present legal facilities.
On the other hand, foreigners or natives of Canaan might become perpetual slaves to the Jews. In so doing, they shared in Jewish privileges, and had the advantage of Jewish training. This was compensation for the loss of their freedom. Besides, their considerate treatment was carefully secured by the Law of God. It was right, therefore, that it should thus be unmistakably exhibited that other nations were only “hewers of wood and drawers of water” to the Lord’s own people. This was what slavery among the Jews embodied.
III. THE JUBILEE WAS THE TYPE OF GOSPEL TIMES. Our Lord appropriated the prophecy delivered by Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord” (Isa 61:1, Isa 61:2; cf. Luk 4:18, Luk 4:19). We are living consequently amid the glorious privileges of the Lord’s acceptable year. The gospel, as preached to men, is the trumpet blown at the beginning of the jubilee. It is blown over the completed atoning sacrifice of Christ.
It proclaims, therefore
1. The pardon of sin. Sin constitutes the great debt, and as sin-burdened hearts feel, the pardon of sin is the great release. What a liberty forgiveness brings!
2. The gospel proclaims freedom from the power of sin. For if God gave us liberty to sin with impunity, it would be no real blessing. He gives us through Christ and his Spirit freedom from the dominion of sin. He takes away the love of sin, which is the real liberty.
3. The gospel proclaims the sanctity of family life. Just as in the jubilee broken family circles were restored again, and social enjoyments regained, so the gospel exalts the family as the unit, and sets its highest sanctions round the home.
4. The gospel has wrought steadily towards the liberties of men. For while there was no “servile war” proclaimed in the apostolic time, but seeds of liberty were left to fructify in the bosom of the race, we know they have sprung into vigorous being, and that it is pre-eminently to the force of gospel truth and principle the battle of freedom and its victory are due.
5. And the gospel is the charter of all wise reform. It might be shown that true progress and the bloodless revolutions of such countries as England and America are due to the force of gospel principles making their hallowed way among men. It is only so far as the will of God is regarded in the politics and policy of nations that true progress and needful revolutions shall be secured.
IV. THE JUBILEE IS ALSO THE TYPE OF THE EVERLASTING REST. “There remaineth,” we are told, “a sabbatism to the people of God” (Heb 4:9). This jubilee of Creation is to be ushered in by the trump of God (1Th 4:16). And regarding the heavenly state, we may in this connection remark
1. That heaven will be an everlasting sabbath. If the jubilee was a sabbath extending over a year, heaven is to be a sabbath extending over an eternity. All time, if such an element is recognized in eternity, will prove consecrated there.
2. All wrongs shall then be righted. All the burdens and injustices and sorrows which we endure here will give place in the jubilee of heaven to the utmost justice and the most scrupulous reward.
3. The Divine family shall be complete. The scattered children of God shall be restored to their rightful place in the great family circle, and the home-feeling shall be the heritage of all.
4. And everlasting progress shall characterize the everlasting rest. For if progress towards perfection is life’s most real joy, we can see how heaven itself can afford a field for it. God’s infinite nature and boundless operations will not be comprehended in a flash of intuition; but insight will be, let us thankfully believe, the steady growth of ages.R.M.E.
HOMILIES BY J.A. MACDONALD
Lev 25:1-7, Lev 25:18-22
The sabbatic year.
At the close of the original week the sabbath of the seventh day was given; that of the seventh year, on the entrance of the Hebrews into Canaan. The former was a memorial of creation; the latter, of redemption. These are intimately related. There are correspondences between the old creation and the newthe material and the spiritual. The grand effect of redemption will be the constitution of a new creation, in which the mundane system will participate.
I. THE SEVENTH YEAR WAS A “SABBATH OF THE LAND.” Then:
1. The soil remained untilled.
(1) In other years it was customary to sow the grain after the Feast of Ingathering, and the vines were pruned in the spring. While we are in this world the greater portion of our time should be occupied in its concerns. This is God’s order. The thing in hand should be done with might.
(2) In this year no seed was sown, and there was no dressing of vines. The affairs of this world must not engross all our time and care.
(3) The sentiment of religion must be with us in our earthly business. Religion must limit the time it claimsthe intensity with which it is pursued. Thus:
2. The people were taught to trust God.
(1) They lived upon the natural productiveness of the soil. But not without the blessing of God upon it. Natural productiveness without the blessing of God is a poor dependence.
(2) With that blessing, such was the bounty of the sixth year that it carried the nation on to the harvest of the eighth (see Lev 25:21, Lev 25:22). Thus miraculously was the fruit of three years brought forth in one. This was in perpetuity the miracle of the manna (Exo 16:22; see also Mat 4:4).
(3) What reply to this institution can those give who would convict Moses as an impostor? (see Exo 23:10, Exo 23:11). No sensible man would have made such a law as this, unless he acted under Divine direction; for the sixth year would have refuted his pretensions. Thus also:
3. The people were taught to hope in God.
(1) Every recurrence of the sabbatic year reminded them of the period before sin entered, in which the earth of its natural strength brought forth plenty.
(2) In it too they anticipated the period when, through the redemption of the gospel, the curse shall be lifted from the earth, and men shall be released from the burden of labour (see Gen 3:17; Gen 4:11, Gen 4:12; Gen 5:29; also Isa 65:17-25; Rom 8:18-23; Rev 22:3).
II. TURN THE FRUIT OF THE LORD‘S LAND WAS FREE.
1. The land is the Lord’s.
(1) In this law he asserted his right as Landlord to impose conditions upon his people when he gave them possession of Canaan. All God’s gifts carry conditions. This should ever be remembered.
(2) God’s laws will regulate the new heavens and earth. They will not then be contravened. Happy will that state be. By loyalty to the laws of God we should now anticipate that state as much as in us lies.
2. This year the tenant shared his benefits with all comers.
(1) What fruit came spontaneously was free to the poorfree to the strangerfree to the cattlefree even to the wild animal. What a lesson of generosity! of public spirit! of kindness to animals! Consider here also the Divine philosophy of rights in property.
(2) Note that the resolution of the primitive Christian Church to have all things in common was not without precedent (see Act 2:44). Also that in the light of this precedent we may discern their purpose; and learn that when the Spirit shall be poured out upon all flesh, of which the baptism of the Pentecost was but an installment, the consummation will be happy.
(3) But how different are the theories of our socialists! Satan is an adept at setting up counterfeits. The idle vagabond has no objection to be the subject of love from others, if he can thereby live on their property. He would eat without working, in contravention of the apostolic rule (see 1Th 4:11, 1Th 4:12; 2Th 3:10). He has no conception of those spiritual blessings in connection with which alone communism is a happy possibility.
(4) The feeding together of the cattle and wild animals points to the universality of the blessings of the gospel (see Isa 11:6-9; Isa 56:7-9; Hos 2:18; Act 10:11, Act 10:12). The feeding together of the stranger and poor Hebrew on the holding of the rich sets forth the spirituality of the gospel. These things will be blessedly realized in the sabbaths, viz. of the millennium, and of the heavenly world.
3. There was a release from debts (see Deu 15:1, Deu 15:2).
(1) The gospel truly is “the Lord’s release.”
(2) This release will be perfected in the heavenly state.
III. THE LEISURE OF THIS YEAR WAS RELIGIOUSLY SPENT.
1. The Law was publicly read (see Deu 31:10, Deu 31:11).
(1) Our leisure should be largely given to the study of the Word of God.
(2) Leisure should be made for this important duty.
2. If not religiously used, leisure is fruitful in mischief.
(1) The want of a worthy aim is in itself a great mischief. The faculties suffer.
(2) The want of a worthy aim implies the pursuit of that which demoralizes. We are constitutionally active. We cannot sleep away existence.
(3) The curse of labour is a blessing in disguise. All God’s curses crop up as blessings somewhere. This must be so, for he is essentially and everlastingly Good. Men who retire from business should give their leisure to Church work.J.A.M.
Lev 25:8-17
The jubilee.
The sabbath of the seventh day is commemorative of the rest of God after the work of creation, and anticipative of the rest in heaven for his people after the world’s great week of toil and sorrow (see Heb 3:1-19, Heb 4:1-16). The more to impress these things upon us, to keep alive our gratitude, and to stimulate our faith and hope, he also instituted the sabbaths of the Levitical system. Conspicuous amongst these are the grand sabbaths mentioned in this chapter, viz. that of the seventh year and that of the week of years. This last comes now under review; and we notice
I. THE TIME OF THE JUBILEE.
1. In its astronomical aspect.
(1) It was regulated by the sun. It was reckoned from the entrance of the children of Israel into Canaan, and recurred at the time of the autumnal harvest.
(2) It was also regulated by the moon. It was counted from the tenth day of the first month, that being the month in which Israel crossed the Jordan.
(3) It was itself an important factor in reconciling solar and lunar time. Forty-nine years is a soli-lunar cycle. The interval from the tenth day of the first month of the year to the tenth of the seventh month of the forty-ninth year is exactly six hundred lunations. The sabbaths are all worked in, as elements of intercalation, and the intercalations of the Levitical system are very superior to those of the Gregorian (see ‘Dissertation Concerning the Sabbath; and a Sabbatical Era,’ in the third volume of King’s ‘Morsels of Criticism’). Who but God could have instituted a system so scientifically perfect? (see Gen 1:14).
2. In its theological aspect.
(1) The jubilee dated from the great Day of Atonement. Some compute that the very year in which Christ suffered was the year of jubilee, and the last of the Levitical series.
(2) Its provisions were typical of gospel mysteries. As the jubilee ended the yoke and burden of the slave, so the bringing in of the gospel released us from the yoke and burden even of the ceremonial Law itself.
(3) When the gospel is received by faith, it introduces us into a spiritual rest from the burden and yoke of sin.
(4) The rest of the soul in Christ is an earnest of the rest in heaven. This last also springs from the great atonement of Calvary.
II. THE PROCLAMATION OF THE JUBILEE.
1. This foreshadowed the preaching of the gospel.
(1) It was by sound of trumpet. Some suppose that the jubilee had its name () from a particular sound of the trumpet.. The word jobel () is used for a trumpet in Exo 19:13. The gospel should have a certain sound (see 1Co 14:8).
(2) The trumpet was sounded over the sacrifices. This foreshowed the connection between the great atonement of Christ and the blessings of salvation. The preaching of the gospel is the preaching of the cross. “The great liberty or redemption from thraldom, published under the gospel, could not take place till the great atonementthe sacrifice of the Lord Jesushad been offered up (Clarke).
(3) The trumpet was sounded throughout the land (Exo 19:9).
(a) If the land of Canaan be taken as a specimen of the world at large, then was this a prophecy of the proclamation of the gospel to the ends of the earth.
(b) But if the land be taken in a restricted sense as applicable to the people of the Law in contradistinction to the heathen, then the teaching is that those only who renounce sin by repentance are concerned in the blessings of the gospel.
2. The trumpet also suggests the judgment.
(1) The jobel, or trumpet, sounded the giving of the Law (Exo 19:13). It called attention to the Law as the standard by which we shall be judged. The trumpet will sound at the last day,
(a) to awaken the dead (1Co 15:52);
(b) to summon all men to the tribunal.
(2) The jubilee trumpet was the trumpet of a seventh period. There was the trumpet of the seventh day; again, of the seventh year; and now again, of the sabbath of a week of sabbatic periods. To these correspond the seventh of the seven great trumpets of the Apocalypse, which proclaims the judgment.
(3) While to the wicked the trumpet of the judgment is a fearful alarm, to the good it is a joyful sound. If we sing of judgment we must also sing of mercy (Psa 101:1). The seventh trumpet heralds in the reign of peace.
III. THE BLESSINGS OF THE JUBILEE.
1. It proclaimed a release.
(1) As to the person. The slave was released from the hand of his brother; from the hand of the stranger. Whom the Son maketh free is free indeed.
(2) As to the land. Every man returned to his possession. Adam Clarke derives the word jubilee () from hobil (), to cause to bring back, because estates, etc; which had been alienated, were then brought back to their primitive owners. No true believer can be deprived of his share in the land of promise (see Eph 1:14; Heb 11:9-14).
2. It was a season of joy.
(1) The poor then rejoiced in plenty. In the sabbatic year the fruit of the Lord’s laud was free. In the year of jubilee every man returned to his possession.
(2) The generous rejoiced in the prosperity of the poor. No doubt there were churls. Such persons are never to be envied; least of all in a season of rejoicing. Heaven would be hell to the churl.
(3) The spectacle of blessedness periodically witnessed in sabbatic years and jubilees encouraged generous habits of thought, feeling, and action. Happy is the people whose God is the Lord.J.A.M.
Lev 25:23-34
Redemption.
This subject is intimately connected with that of the jubilee; and the redemption of the Law prefigured that of the gospel, which also stands intimately related to the glorious jubilee of the great future. In this light we have to consider
I. THE NATURE OF THE REDEMPTION. This we may view:
1. In respect to the possession.
(1) Canaan may be taken as a specimen of the earth at large. The Hebrew word for that land (s the term also for the whole world. In the largest sense the earth was given to mankind for an inheritance (Gen 1:26-29; Psa 8:5-9; Psa 115:16). If the Israelites were ever reminded that they had their possession of Canaan from God (Lev 25:23), we must never forget that we have nothing that we receive not (Joh 3:27; 1Co 4:7; Jas 1:17).
(2) The Hebrews held their possession upon the tenure of faith and obedience (Deu 1:34-36; Deu 30:15-20; Heb 3:18, Heb 3:19). Such also is the tenure upon which the earth at large is held. And as the expulsion of Adam from Eden vividly brought home to him his forfeiture of right to the earth, so did the forfeiture of Canaan keep alive in the Israelite the remembrance of the consequences of the Fall.
(3) The land of Canaan was not only a specimen of the earth at large, but also of a type of the new earth of the future. Eden also was a “like figure.” Like the garden, Canaan was “the glory of all lands” (Deu 8:7-10; Eze 20:6, Eze 20:15). So in the institution of the law of redemption we have bodied forth the means by which we shall recover our interest in the earth (see Luk 21:28; Rom 8:23; Eph 1:14; Eph 4:30).
(4) While Satan is the god of this world, the true heir may be kept out of his inheritance, but his title cannot be ultimately defeated. This was one of the important lessons of the jubilee, and of the law of redemption (Lev 25:23, Lev 25:24, Lev 25:28; see also Eph 1:4; Heb 11:9-14).
(5) As the possessions of the Levites were inalienable (Lev 25:34), so the “kingdom of priests” shall for ever enjoy their possessions in the renovated earth (1Pe 2:5; Rev 1:6). We may view this subject:
2. In respect to the person.
(1) By sin we have not only forfeited our right to Eden, to Canaan, to the old earth, to the new earth, but we have also become enslaved. The habit of evil is a chain of iron. The terror of death is formidable bondage. The tyranny of Satan is merciless. Bad enough to have our liberties sold to a fellow-man; but to be sold over to this “stranger” from the infernal world is intolerable.
(2) But there is redemption for the Hebrew slave. He may redeem himself if he have the means. His next of kin has the right of redemption (Lev 25:25, Lev 25:26). He may be redeemed by his brother Hebrew (see Neh 5:8). So to the truly penitent, who like the Hebrews are the people of the Law, there is the redemption of the gospel.
(3) But the Law has no provision for the redemption of the stranger who cannot purchase freedom for himself. Yet might he be the subject of mercy. The gospel reaches those whom the Law discourages. The pagan slave might become a Jewish proselyte, and be released in accordance with the Law. So those who are furthest off may in true repentance be brought nigh to God.
(4) But the mercy of the gospel has its limits. It may be forfeited by obstinacy. It may also be forfeited by neglect. A year only is allowed in which to redeem a house in a city (Lev 25:30). The house is a common figure for the people; and the interpretation of the year of recovery may be seen in Isa 61:2; Isa 63:4; 2Co 6:2. If taken in time, the whole city of God may be redeemed; but the period of probation missed, the case is hopeless. Consider
II. THE QUALIFICATIONS OF THE REDEEMER.
1. A slave might redeem himself.
(1) That is, if it be in the power of his hand. Under favourable conditions of earning and saving, this might become possible.
(2) But when the slave is the sinner and he is in bondage to the justice of God, this is impossible. Our deeds are sin. And the wages of sin is death.
2. The near kinsman is the legal redeemer.
(1) This kinsman was a type of Christ. Bishop Patrick quotes a rabbi, who says, “This Redeemer is the Messiah, the Son of David.” Job speaks of Messiah as his Redeemer (Job 19:25). So is he elsewhere termed in Scripture (see Isa 59:20; Rom 11:26).
(2) To be qualified to redeem, Jesus became our Kinsman by taking up our nature. As any Hebrew brother might become a redeemer, so Jesus, in our flesh, became “the brother of every man,” that he might redeem. Job speaks of seeing his Redeemer in his flesh, or incarnatefor this I take to be the sense.
(3) Every near kinsman may not have it in his power to become a Goel or Redeemer. No mere human being can give to God a ransom for his brother (Psa 49:7). But Christ is a competent Redeemer, having in his Godhead all resources.
(4) We can imitate Christ as redeemers of our brethren only by endeavouring instrumentally to recover them from the snares of Satan.
(5) What a blessing is liberty! “Whom the Son maketh free is free indeed.”J.A.M.
Lev 25:35-55
Justice and mercy.
The equity of the Mosaic laws has striking illustrations in the words now under review. We see it
I. IN THE KINDNESS ENJOINED TOWARDS THE POOR.
1. Their necessities are to be relieved.
(1) Though they be strangers. The stranger “with” the Hebrew, and so, subject to his law, is recognized as a brother (see Lev 25:35, Lev 25:36).
(2) Usury is not to be taken from the poor. “That thy brother may live.” Rights of property must not override those of existence (Mat 6:25). “That thy brother may live with thee.” The hands of the poor are as necessary to the rich as is the wealth of the rich to the poor.
2. The reasons for mercy are edifying.
(1) “I am the Lord your God.” I stand in covenant relationship to you. I have a right to require this of thee.
(2) I “brought thee out of the land of Egypt.” The remembrance of thy miseries in Egypt should influence thee to consider those of the poor stranger by thee.
(3) I “gave you the land of Canaan.” Gratitude to me should move thee. I can yet more gloriously reward thy mercy in giving thee inheritance in the heavenly Canaan.
II. IN THE KINDNESS ENJOINED TOWARDS THE SLAVE.
1. The Hebrew must show it.
(1) Not to his brother only, but also towards the stranger.
(2) Yet there is a difference. The Hebrew slave goes out in the jubilee; but the power of a Hebrew master over the stranger is not then removed. This law prefigured the dominion which the righteous will have over the wicked in the morning, viz. of the resurrection (see Psa 49:14).
(3) The stranger, by becoming a proselyte, might claim the privilege of the Hebrew. So may the wicked, by repentance towards God and faith in the Lord Jesus, become a Christian, and enjoy the privileges of the righteous.
2. The stranger must show it.
(1) The stranger is presumed to be not so merciful as the Hebrew. Privileges of grace should make men generous.
(2) The cruelty of the wicked must be restrained by the laws of the good.
III. IN THE DETERMINATION OF THE RANSOM PRICE. In this determination:
1. The rate of wages is an element. The principles of hired service should be remembered by masters in the treatment of slaves.
2. This rate was then multiplied into the years prospective to the jubilee.
(1) This determination of the rate was in favour of the slave; for if the law had not settled it, then it must be settled by agreement, in which case the master would be in a position to drive a hard bargain to the prejudice of the slave. Law should, for the same reason, control the claims of landlords where they prejudice the rights of their tenantry.
(2) In this law there is equity also with respect to the master. Any difference in the value to him of a slave over that of a hired servant is compensated in the risk of life, in which, after the redemption, he has now no pecuniary concern.
IV. IN THE DIFFERENCE OF THE LAW RELATING TO A COUNTRY HOUSE AS COMPARED WITH A HOUSE IN A WALLED CITY.
1. The country house returned to the owner of the land.
(1) This house is presumed to be simply a residence. The inconvenience of removal of residence is not formidable.
(2) To a Christian the removal of residence from this world should not be formidable.
2. The house in the walled city did not so return.
(1) Such a house may be presumed to be a place of business. In this case, establishment in a locality is often of great importance. Landlords should consider the interests of their tenants as well as their own.
(2) But within the first twelve months after the sale of a house in a walled city, the owner bad a power of redemption. This was before the business could be said to be established. It gave the seller an opportunity to repent of a bargain which may have been forced upon him by the pressure of a temporary necessity.
(3) What a mercy that the sinner has space for repentance!J.A.M.
HOMILIES BY W. CLARKSON
Lev 25:1-7
Divine discipline.
This was certainly one of the most striking institutions which God gave to Israel. It was, in a high degree, disciplinary. Rightly taken, it would engrave sacred truth on their minds more deeply and effectually than either word or rite. It was calculated
I. TO TEACH THEM THE TRUTH AS TO THE DIVINE OWNERSHIP. God claimed to be the One Proprietor of the land. He had given it to the nation by his direct guidance, and by his interposing power. To him it belonged, and those who occupied were to feel that they held everything at his good pleasure. What could more effectually and impressively teach this than the right which God reserved, to require them to do what he thought was best with the soilto cultivate it or to leave it untilled? How difficult we find it to realize as we should that we hold everything as tenants at the Divine will; that we must be ready at his word to lay down that which we most regard as “our own;” that we are but “strangers and sojourners with God” (Lev 25:23)!
II. TO INCULCATE MODERATION IN TEE USE OF THAT WHICH THEY POSSESSED. Making haste to be rich, men too often exhaust themselves and the objects on which they work. How often is land impoverished by the incessant demand the agriculturist makes upon it! God demanded that the rich land he gave Israel should not be rendered infertile by their drawing immoderately on its virtue. He would have us use prudently, as those who look forward, the things which he puts in our power. The lesson particularly applies, in our time, to the use we make of our physical and mental powers; we should give these full measure of rest, a restorative sabbath, that they may serve us the better and the longer.
III. TO ENCOURAGE A SENSE OF BROTHERHOOD AND KINDNESS OF HEART. (Lev 25:6, Lev 25:7.) Of that which was spontaneously produced all might freely partake. The land was for the nation, and not merely for those whose names were enrolled as proprietors. The husbandman was to be trained to see his neighbours, whatever their condition or relation to himself, gathering the fruits of his land. This sabbatic institution said practically to him, and says to us, “God has given the earth and all it bears to the many and not to the few, to all classes of the people: cause all to rejoice in the abundance of his gifts.”
IV. TO TEST THEIR MORAL AND RELIGIOUS DISPOSITION.
1. It would test their obedience. They would be under some temptation to make the ordinary use of their opportunity, and to secure a harvest by tillage. This word of the Lord tried them; the obedient regarded, the disobedient disregarded, his will.
2. It would also test their industrial virtues. Perhaps there was more room left for daily activity than some have imagined. “Each day would still present certain calls for labour in the management of household affairs, the superintendence or care of the cattle, the husbanding of the provisions laid up from preceding years, and the execution, perhaps, of improvements and repairs.” Nevertheless, there must have been some temptation to abuse the long holiday. A wise man has said that nothing is so certain a criterion of character as the way in which men spend their leisure hours. The idle are tempted to vacancy or folly; the wise find an opportunity for
(1) real recreation, for
(2) self-improvement, for
(3) service of others, for
(4) the worship of God (see Deu 31:9-13).C.
Lev 25:8-55
Year of jubilee:
1. A nation’s joy. On every fiftieth year of national life, as the sun went down on the great Day of Atonement, when the sins of the nation had been forgiven, and peace with God was once more assured, the sound of many trumpets ushered in the blessed year of jubilee. Then
(1) the forfeited patrimony was restored to its rightful heir (Lev 25:10, Lev 25:13, Lev 25:28, Lev 25:41); then
(2) the bondsmen were free once more (Lev 25:10, Lev 25:41-54); then
(3) members of the same family, long separated, were reunited (Lev 25:10, Lev 25:41); then
(4) the ties which bound man to man throughout all classes and conditions of the nation were to be recognized and honoured (Lev 25:12-14, Lev 25:17, Lev 25:35, Lev 25:36); then
(5) the relation in which Israel stood to Jehovah was to be distinctly and peculiarly realized (Lev 25:17, Lev 25:18, Lev 25:23, Lev 25:38, Lev 25:55); and then
(6) in holy joy the favoured nation was to be glad in the prosperity which came from God (Lev 25:19).
No nation now can expect to enjoy such an institution as this; we must learn to dispense with such miraculous arrangements as that which made the year of jubilee a possible thing to Israel (Lev 25:20-22). It is our national wisdom to bring about, by
(1) wise and equal laws, and by
(2) virtuous and godly lives, the happy estate in which the people of God found themselves when the trumpets of jubilee announced that a new era of liberty, sufficiency, piety, prosperity, had begun.
A nation may truly rejoice, and may feel that its jubilee is approaching, when it is attaining to:
1. Freedom from degrading poverty; the community not being constituted of a few wealthy men and a multitude of paupers, but being composed of those who earn an honourable livelihood by self-respectful industry, there being general, widespread prosperity.
2. The possession of libertyindividual and national, civil and religious; every cruel, degrading, injurious bond being broken, and all men being free to exercise their God-given faculties without hindrance or restraint.
3. Domestic well-being; purity, love, order in the household.
4. Piety; the recognition of indebtedness to God, and a full and deep understanding that we are, above all things, his servants.
5. Charity; a kind and generous regard to those who are “waxen poor and fallen into decay;” a ready hand to help the needy, and give them a new start in the race of life. Let a nation only be advancing in these elements of goodness and prosperity, and it may rejoice greatly in its inheritance, for then “God, even our own God, will bless it;” and though no trumpet sound the note of jubilee, then shall its “light break forth as the morning and its righteousness shall go before it; and the glory of the Lord shall be its reward” (Isa 58:8).C.
Lev 25:8-55
Year of jubilee: II. The world’s redemption.
The whole Christian era is one long year of jubilee. It is “the acceptable year of the Lord” (Luk 4:19). That “acceptable year,” the fiftieth year in the Jewish calendar, was a year of
(1) emancipation (Lev 25:10);
(2) readjustment of social relations (Lev 25:10, Lev 25:39-41, Lev 25:43, Lev 25:54);
(3) national regeneration (Lev 25:10, Lev 25:13). The land rested a second year, and recovered any virtue it may have lost, and the old patrimonies reverted to the heirs of the original owners;
(4) rest from cultivation (Lev 25:11);
(5) abounding joy.
These, in a deeper, a spiritual sense, are the characteristics of the Christian era:
1. It is a time of spiritual emancipation. Sin is the slavery of the soul; “men are “holden with the cords of their sins” (Pro 5:22). They are in the bondage of selfishness, or of worldliness, or of one or other (or more than one) of the vices, or of the fear of man, or of a foolish and frivolous procrastination. To accept Jesus Christ as Saviour of the soul and Lord of the life is to be released from these spiritual fetters.
2. Social readjustment. Christianity, indeed, effects no immediate revolution in the forms of social life. It does not say to the slave, “Escape from thy master” (1Co 7:20); it does not give directions as to the way in which human relations are to be organized. But it infuses a new spirit into the minds of men; it introduces those principles of righteousness and those feelings of considerateness which silently, but most effectually, “make all things new.” It drops the seed of “charity” in the soil of human nature, and behold a goodly tree springs therefrom, the leaves of which are for the healing of the social sores of all the nations.
3. Individual and national regeneration. The soul that receives Jesus Christ as its Lord, and the nation that surrenders itself to his holy and beneficent rule, make an entirely new departure in their course. So great and radical is the change which is thereby effected, that the Truth himself speaks of it as a “regeneration” (Joh 3:1-36). In Christ we are born again, or born from above. We enter on a new life, the life of faith, love, humility, zeal, holy service, godliness, anticipation of future blessedness.
4. Rest of soul. The rest of body enjoyed in the year of jubilee has its analogue in the rest of soul which we enjoy in the acceptable year of the Lordrest from
(1) a burdensome sense of condemnation;
(2) self-reproach, remorse;
(3) spiritual struggle and disquietude;
(4) anxious, torturing fears.
5. Joy in God. In this “acceptable time” we have not only peace, but we also “joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom 5:11). We are bidden to “rejoice in the Lord alway” (Php 4:4); and though there may be found in the sorrows of others as well as in our own and in the difficulties and depressions that attend us here too much of cloud and shadow to feel that it is always jubilee-time with us in our homeward journey, yet the felt presence of our Saviour, his unchanging friendship, the blessedness of doing his work, honouring his Name, and even hearing his holy will, the view of the heavenly land,these will “put a new song into our mouth,” a real gladness into our heart, the brightness and music of the “acceptable year” into our Christian life.C.
Lev 25:8-55
Year of jubilee: III. The blessed kingdom.
It may be thought that, while it is indeed true that the year of jubilee has a true counterpart in that dispensation of spiritual emancipation, social readjustment, regeneration, rest, joy, in which we stand; yet, on the other hand, there is so much of detraction in the sins and sorrows of the present time as to make the one but a very imperfect picture of the other. There is truth in this thought: it is only in a qualified sense that we can speak of the Christian era as a time of jubilee. Its perfect realization is yet to come; its true and glorious fulfillment awaits us, when the blessed kingdom of the Son of God shall have come in all its fullness and the latter-day glory shall appear; then there shall be
1. Emancipation from all bondage. Every fetter shall be struck from the soul, as well as from the body, and we ourselves shall be free in all “the glorious liberty of the children of God.”
2. Restitution. We shall recover the heritage forfeited by sin; the estate which our Father intended to bestow originally on all his human children will then revert to us, and we shall “return every man unto his possession” (Lev 25:13). We shall know by blessed experience what God designed for holy manhood.
3. Regeneration. So great and blessed will be the change, the new conditions under which we shall live, that we shall feel that a “new heaven and a new earth” have been created. God will have made “all things new” to us.
4. Reunion. We shall “return every man unto his family” (Lev 25:10). Parents and children, brothers and sisters, pastor and people, long-separated friends, will gather again in the same home, and “join inseparable hands” of holy, heavenly reunion.
5. Reign of love. If there be gradation, inferiority, rule, and service there, all “rigour” will be unknown (Lev 25:46). Our “brother will live with us” (Lev 25:35, Lev 25:36) in love; all rule will be beneficent; all service sweet and cheerful.
6. Perfect service of the Supreme. “Unto me the children of Israel are servants; they are my servants” (Lev 25:55). There is no fairer promise in the Word of God concerning the future than this”his servants shall serve him” (Rev 22:3). Then shall we attain to the ideal of our humanity when, escaping from ourselves, we shall, in thought and feeling, in word and deed, consciously and unconsciously, be serving God in stainless, uninterrupted ministry. Then God will be “all in all.”
7. Rest and joy. The toil and care of earth will be left behind, will be lost in the endless sabbath, and we shall “enter into rest.” Only those happy activities will await us in which we shall engage with untiring energy and unfading joy.C.
HOMILIES BY R.A. REDFORD
Lev 25:1-7
The sabbatical year.
Rest of the land, as the physical source of blessings, as the consecrated portion of God’s people.
I. THE NATURAL BASIS OF RELIGION. Creation. Providence. Moral government. “Man is one world, and hath another to attend him” (George Herbert). The ascent of the higher nature from the lower. The subordination of the material and temporary to the immaterial and eternal. Care of all life involved in the covenant of God with his people. The life of the vegetable world, the life of the animal world, viewed in their relation to higher purposes of God. Art is perfected only in the atmosphere of religion. Science, both theoretic and applied, requires to be pervaded with religious spirit, or becomes atheistic, worldly, and corrupt.
II. THE BLESSING OF GOD ON HIS PEOPLE. “A sabbath for the Lord,” that he may rejoice with his children.
1. Material blessings promised: “All these things shall be added unto you;” “he careth for you; godliness hath the promise of the world which now is.”
2. Rest in the Lord, over all the land, in all states and conditions, eventually in all men. The resting land typical of the Divine promise of a restored earth and regained paradise. The weekly sabbath enlarged. Time expanding to eternity. Special opportunities granted for the larger spiritual culture.R.
Lev 25:8-34
The year of jubilee.
Accumulation of sabbaths and sabbatical years; climax of rest. Proclaimed on Day of Atonement. Outcome of the original covenant. Specially soul-stirring and delightful, “waked up the nation from the very center of its moral being.” “All estates and conditions of the people were permitted to feel the hallowed and refreshing influence of this most noble institution. The exile returned; the captive was emancipated; the debtor set flee; each family opened its bosom to receive once more its long-lost members; each inheritance received back its exiled owner. The sound of the trumpet was the welcome and soul-thrilling signal for the captive to escape; for the slave to cast aside the chains of his bondage; for the man-slayer to return to his home; for the ruined and poverty-stricken to rise to the possession of that which had been forfeited. No sooner had the trumpet’s thrice-welcome sound fallen upon the ear than the mighty tide of blessing rose majestically, and sent its refreshing undulations into the most remote corners of Jehovah’s highly favoured land.” Regard it
(1) socially,
(2) morally,
(3) spiritually.
I. SOCIALLY. An example of wise and beneficent legislation. As:
1. Security against accumulation of property in the hands of the few, to the oppression of the many.
2. Relief to inevitable reverses of fortune.
3. Maintenance of family life and bonds of natural affection.
4. Destruction of slavery.
5. Promotion of equality of condition and opportunity.
6. Preservation of hopefulness and cheerfulness in society.
7. Avoidance of litigation and social strife.
II. MORALLY. An abiding support of the higher moral sentiments.
1. Benevolence and compassion.
2. Patriotism.
3. Personal liberty.
4. Moderation.
5. Brotherhood.
6. Industry.
III. SPIRITUALLY. A type of realized salvation by Divine grace.
1. Proclaimed on Day of Atonement; fruit of reconciliation with God.
2. Universality of the offered deliverance, independent of human merits.
3. Promise of restored human conditionthe “meek inheriting the earth.”
4. The jubilee of heaven”glorious liberty of the children of God” (Rom 8:21; cf. Isa 66:12-23; Luk 4:16-22; Rev 11:15; Rev 14:6, Rev 14:7; Rev 21:1-27).R.
Lev 25:35-55
The law of personal servitude.
I. GENERAL PRINCIPLE, love of our neighbour. Servitude admitted in that early stage of the world, but limited and modified, and its extinction provided for in that principle of love and compassion which was seized and exalted by the gospel. God’s method to subdue and extinguish effects of man’s fall by the vital force of higher motive. Distinction between strangers and fellow-Israelite preserved the covenant, therefore the religion which taught love and saved the stranger.
II. LESSON OF UNSELFISHNESS AND UNWORLDLINESS. All servants of the Lord. All property his. The underlying facts of redemption, “bought with a price, therefore glorify God,” etc.R.
HOMILIES BY S.R. ALDRIDGE
Lev 25:19-21
The sabbatical year.
All the Divine institutions are marked by practical wisdom, and doubtless subserved many purposes which are not distinctly mentioned in the Law. To celebrate a year of abstinence from agricultural labour must have benefited the ground itself, as well as tended to produce a spirit of brotherhood amongst all classes of the people. For in that year the natural uncultivated produce of the soil was free to be partaken of by the poorest. But we shall concern ourselves chiefly with the reasons given in the Law for the observance of the sabbatical year.
I. THE PROPRIETORSHIP OF THE LAND IS CLAIMED BY GOD. “The land is mine” (Lev 25:23). As proprietors occasionally shut up a path for a day in order to prevent its being claimed as public property, so God refuses every seventh year to let the Israelites do what they please with the land, in order to remind them of the fact that he is the real owner whose grace bestowed the tenancy on them. Men are but stewards. God’s dominion is universal over their persons and possessions. Nothing that man is or has can be exempted from the need of consecration. The conditions of tenancy must be complied with. If the people were unwilling to observe the terms, let them quit their holding, and start somewhere for themselves. But where shall we procure aught by our own exertions apart from the favour of the Almighty? Our very existence is due to him. Useless, then, is it to quarrel with the lease of our premises.
II. MAN IS TAUGHT THAT HE HAS OTHER DUTIES THAN THAT OF PROVIDING FOR HIS PHYSICAL WANTS. Work is the fundamental necessity, the burden laid upon us by the declaration, “In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread.” Mere idleness is disgraceful. Yet by this command of the text God asserts that rest is a duty as well as toil The one does indeed fit us for the other. Recreation is by no means sinful, and that is a narrow, false view which deems it so. God’s rest after the work of creation has for ever hallowed legitimate relaxation. Rest from servile labour may be properly employed in holy service. It was during this sabbatical year that the Law was to be read in the bearing of the entire people. Man does not find his noblest end in the industrial pursuit of his daily occupation. He is not always to be surveying the same span of earth. He may lift up his head, and rejoice in upward thoughts and wider prospects. This world is not man’s final home. So we may without violence interpret the statement, “Ye are strangers and sojourners with me.” It refers primarily to the placing of Israel in a land which did not belong to them, but it conveys a deeper lesson, one of pertinent application to modern circumstances. Many fancy that if they diligently attend to their business and pay their way, they do all that can be demanded of them. Such low-thoughted action is here rebuked.
III. TIMID FORETHOUGHT INQUIRES AS TO THE FEASIBILITY OF COMPLIANCE WITH THE ENACTMENT. “What shall we eat the seventh year?” Man is expected to use his reason, and to anticipate the future. Ushered into the world the most helpless of animals, he is enabled to surround himself with ample might and resources. One harvest suffices to fill his granaries till they are replenished by the stores of another year. Is he to run in the teeth of prudence, and to neglect the usual tillage operations? The requirement of the Law is superior to such scruples. It may seem unreasonable conduct, unbelief may suggest terrible eventualities, but if the wilt of God has been clearly expressed, the devout Israelite dares not falter. There are many Divine precepts which appear to impose trying obligations upon the faith of God’s people. Some have feared to risk the loss involved in renouncing Sunday trading. Some have refused to sacrifice any portion of their time or profits to engage in religious work. The livelihood of themselves and families has been the one prominent object. Too often the necessary provision is rated too high, and luxuries are included among the essentials. There are others to whom the question suggests itself, “How can I compete with my rivals if I adhere to moral laws and discountenance all practices savouring of dishonesty? To make a profession of Christianity may entail the loss of position and worldly esteem.”
IV. GOD PROMISES THAT NOTHING SHALL BE LOST THROUGH OBEDIENCE TO his STATUTES. “I will command my blessing upon you.” The sixth year shall bring forth fruit for three years. Of course, this supposes a supernatural association of conduct and prosperity which is not to be looked for in the ordinary course of providence. Yet the promise of blessing upon the faithful is for every generation. There is a full recompense guaranteed for all tribulation endured in the service of righteousness. Nor are the instances few in number where men have in modern times experienced the truth of the assertion that God withholds no good thing from them that walk uprightly, that the righteous are not forsaken, nor have their poor been obliged to beg for bread.
Recently a Greek newspaper owned that since it had discontinued its Sunday issue, its profits had increased rather than diminished. This, at least, is certain, that he makes a good investment who takes shares in God’s companies formed for righteous purposes. Such shall realize the double assurance of” safety” and “abundance” (Lev 25:19). Note our Lord’s reply to Peter asking, “What shall we have then?” Moses esteemed “the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt.” Let the promises of God’s Word scatter all doubt and hesitation! His counsel may appear strange as it did to King Zedekiah (Jer 38:20), but the result shall verify his wisdom. “What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” In keeping his commandments there is great reward. It is good for this life, and even better for the life to come.S.R.A.
Lev 25:42
Servants of God.
The Law contains other than ceremonial regulations. Many of its precepts are moral in the highest degree, and breathe the spirit of purest Christianity. Indeed, the Christian Church, with the relationship of its members, its benefits, and obligations, is clearly outlined in the nation of Israel; rather, however, sad to say, in its constitution than in actual observance of its conditions. Little alteration is needed to suit the injunctions of this passage to modern circumstances.
I. GOD‘S SERVANTS ARE SO BY VIRTUE OF WHAT HE HAS DONE FOR THEM. “They are my servants which I brought forth out of the land of Egypt.” Redemption from the iron furnace of affliction was the ground on which Jehovah continually claimed the Israelites as his own peculiar property. “I have broken the bonds of your yoke.” So God gave his Son as the price of man’s ransom from sin, and Christ is said to have purchased the Church of God with his own blood. Paul delighted to call himself a “bondservant” of Christ in the superscription of his Epistles. To the goodness of God the Israelites owed their preservation and their installation in a goodly land. Gratitude constrains to faithful service. We have but to review the past to notice numberless golden bands that attach us to the Redeemer. The matchless character of our God furnishes sufficient reason for executing his commands, but this character is best evidenced by a survey of the deeds of sovereign love that have made us what we are and placed us where we are.
II. GOD‘S SERVICE PRECLUDES OUR BEING IN BONDAGE. We cannot serve two masters, and if we belong to God, others cannot claim absolute lordship over us. “They shall not be sold as bondmen,” for this would signify that God’s ownership is disputed. Only the foreigner can be treated as a slave without insulting Jehovah. Slavery is thus really condemned, though permitted with restrictions. The Law must not be too far in advance of the morality of those who are to keep it, lest it overshoot the mark and prove powerless to guide and instruct. What was granted in earliest ages may be altogether unpardonable in days of modern illumination and progress. We shall be judged according to the light we have to direct our steps. The truth shines dearly forth that to serve God is truest freedom. It accords with the noblest dictates of our nature; reason and conscience glorify such obedience. Like the railway train, we fulfill our highest functions, not by deserting but by running upon the lines laid down for our advance. See the warnings addressed to Christians by Jesus Christ (Mat 8:34), Paul (Rom 6:16), and Peter (2Pe 2:19). When we are actuated by the suggestions of the tempter, we rebel against God’s authority and proclaim ourselves unworthy servants. And to seek to ensnare others or to induce them to act contrary to Divine instructions, is even worse than to have been brought into bondage ourselves. God will not brook these infractions of his majesty.
III. THE SERVANTS OF GOD ARE BOUND TO AVOID ALL HARSH TREATMENT OF ONE ANOTHER. Unjust dealing is reprobated. Bad in any case, it is peculiarly offensive here. The people of God are not to forget that they are brethren in the employment of the one master. “If that evil servant shall say in his heart, My Lord delayeth his coming, and shall begin to smite his fellow-servants, the lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him,” is the New Testament version of the command, “Thou shalt not rule over him with rigour; but shalt fear thy God” (Lev 25:43). Christian brotherhood is not intended to upset the constitution of a society in a fruitless endeavour after social equalization. Distinction of rank and class is recognized by the Apostle Paul, and proper regard must be paid to those in authority. The servant is not to despise his master because the latter is a brother in Christ; on the other hand, the masters are to forbear threatening, “knowing that both their Master and yours is in heaven” (Eph 6:9). It cannot be pleasing to Christ to see an unfair advantage taken of a brother Christian’s hour of weakness. Such conduct virtually dishonours the Master whom we profess to serve, it offends “one of these little ones.” And further, fellow-servants should relieve each other’s wants. There is a “bond” of union between them, and love and regard for the Master must lead them to see that in giving to the poor they are lending unto the Lord. “One is your Master” (Instructor), “and all ye are brethren.” To collect for the Church poor at the observance of the Lord’s Supper is a happy recognition of this truth. Many are the vicissitudes of life that befall the most honest and industrious. Changes of fortune merit our sympathy, and the cloud is beautified with rainbow hues when the sun of brotherly love shines athwart its darkness. Another’s fate may at any time become our own. How it will mitigate our grief to know that in our season of elevation and prosperity we were not unmindful of the woes of others! “Blessed is he that considereth the poor: the Lord will deliver him in the time of trouble.” “As we have opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith.”S.R.A.
Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary
Lev 25:1. The Lord spakein mount Sinai The particle rendered in, might, with as much propriety, be rendered at, or near. The word sabbath, Lev 25:2. &c. would have been better translated throughout this chapter by the word rest, as in the margin of our English Bibles. The first mention of this extraordinary institution is made, Exo 23:11 where the reason of it is, in part, assigned. It was to take place every seventh year, after their settlement in Canaan. The first sabbatical year was celebrated by the children of Israel, as it is thought, on the seventh year after their coming into the land of Canaan: this year was reckoned not from Abib, or March, but from Tisri, or September; but of this see more on Lev 25:8.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
FOURTH SECTION
Of the Sabbatical and Jubilee Years
The keeping holy of the hallowed territory, the holy land, by the Sabbatical year; of the consecrated inheritance by the Jubilee Year, and thus also of those who had become impoverished, the Israelites who had fallen into servitude; the keeping holy of the outward appearance of the holy land (streets and ways); of the public Sabbath feast and of the Sanctuary of the religion of the land. Lev 25:1 to Lev 26:2. Lange.
Lev 25:1-55
1And the Lord spake unto Moses in mount Sinai, saying, 2Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye come into the land which I give you, then shalt the land keep a sabbath unto the Lord. 3Six years thou shall sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard [fruit garden1], and gather in the fruit thereof; 4but in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, a sabbath for the Lord: thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard 5[fruit garden1].2 That which groweth of its own accord of thy harvest thou shalt not reap, neither gather the grapes of thy vine undressed:3 for it is a year of rest unto the land. 6And the sabbath of the land shall be meat for you; for thee, and for thy servant,4 and for thy maid, and for thy hired servant, and for thy stranger that sojourneth with thee, 7and for thy cattle, and for the beasts [animals5] that are in thy land, shall all the increase thereof be meat.
8And thou shalt number seven sabbaths6 of years unto thee, seven times seven years; and the space of the seven sabbaths6 of years shall be unto thee forty and nine years. 9Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the jubile to sound [cause the sound of the cornet to go through the land7] on the tenth day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout all your land. 10And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubile8 unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall 11return every man unto his family. A jubile8 shall that fiftieth year be unto you: ye shall not sow, neither reap that which groweth of itself in it, nor gather the 12 grapes in it of thy vine undressed.3 For it is the jubile;8 it shall be holy unto you: ye shall eat the increase thereof out of the field.
13In the year of this jubile8 ye shall return every man unto his possession. 14And if thou sell9 ought unto thy neighbor, or buyest ought of thy neighbors hand, ye shall not oppress [overreach10] one another: 15according to the number of years after the jubile8 thou shalt buy of thy neighbor, and according unto the number of years of the fruits he shall sell unto thee: 16according 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. 17Ye shall not therefore oppress [overreach10] one another; but thou shalt fear thy God: for I am the Lord your God.
18Wherefore ye shall do my statutes and keep my judgments, and do them; and ye shall dwell in the land in safety. 19And the land shall yield her fruit, and ye shall eat your fill, and dwell therein in safety. 20And if ye shall say, What shall we eat the seventh year? behold, we shall not sow, nor gather in our increase: 21then I will command my blessing upon you in the sixth year, and it shall bring forth fruit for three years. 22And ye shall sow the eighth year, and eat yet of old fruit until the ninth year; until her fruits come in ye shall eat of the old store.
23The land shall not be sold for ever:11 for the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me. 24And in all the land of your possession ye shall grant a redemption for the land. 25If thy brother be waxen poor, and hath sold away some of his possession, and if any of his kin come to redeem it, then shall he redeem that which his brother sold. 26And if the man have none to redeem it, and himself be 27[has become12] able to redeem it; then let him count the years of the sale thereof, and restore the overplus unto the man to whom he sold it: that he may return unto his possession. 28But if he be not able to restore it to him, then that which is sold shall remain in the hand of him that hath bought it until the year of jubile:8 and in the jubile8 it shall go out, and he shall return unto his possession.
29And if a man sell a dwelling house in a walled city, then he may redeem it within a whole year after it is sold; within a full year [a term of days13] may he redeem it. 30And if it be not redeemed with the space of a full year, then the house that is in the walled city shall be established for ever to him14 that bought it throughout his generations: it shall not go out in the jubile.8 31But the houses of the villages which have no wall round about them shall be counted15 as the fields of the country: they may be redeemed, and they shall go out in the jubile.8
32Notwithstanding [But concerning16] the cities of the Levites, and [omit and] the houses of the cities of their possession, may the Levites redeem at any time. 33And if a man purchase of the Levites,17 then the house that was sold, and [in18] the city of his possession, shall go out in the year of jubile:8 for the houses of the cities of the Levites are their possession among the children of Israel. 34But the field of the suburbs of their cities may not be sold; for it is their perpetual possession.
35And if thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee; then thou shalt relieve him: yea, though he be a stranger [poor, and his hand trembles by thee, thou shalt hold him up as a stranger19], or a sojourner; that he may live20with thee. 36Take thou no usury of him, or increase: but fear thy God; that thy brother may live with thee. 37Thou shalt not give him thy money upon usury, nor 38lend him thy victuals for increase. I am the Lord your God, which brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, to give you the land of Canaan, and to be your God.
39And if thy brother that dwelleth by thee be waxen poor, and be sold unto thee; 40thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bondservant: but as an hired servant, and as a sojourner, he shall be with thee, and shall serve thee unto the year of jubile:841and then shall he depart from thee, both he and his children with him, and shall return unto his own family, and unto the possession of his fathers shall he return. 42For they are my servants, which I brought forth out of the land of Egypt: they shall not be sold as bondmen. 43Thou shalt not rule over him with rigor; but shalt fear thy God. 44Both 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. 45Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your possession. 46And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen for ever: but over your brethren the children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another with rigor.
47And if a sojourner or stranger wax rich by thee, and thy brother that dwelleth by him wax poor, and sell himself unto the stranger or21 sojourner by thee, or to the stock of the strangers family: 48after that he is sold he may be redeemed again; one of his brethren may redeem him; 49either his uncle, or his uncles son, may redeem him, or any that is nigh of kin22 unto him of his family may redeem him; or if he be able, he may redeem himself. 50And he shall reckon with him that bought him from the year that he was sold to him unto the year of jubile:8 and the price of his sale shall be according unto the number of years, according to the time of an 51hired servant shall it be with him. If there be yet many years behind, according unto them he shall give again the price of his redemption out of the money that he was bought for. 52And if there remain but few years unto the year of jubile,8 then he shall count with him, and according unto his years shall he give him again 53the price of his redemption. And as a yearly hired servant shall he be with him: and the other shall not rule with rigor over him in thy sight. 54And if he be not redeemed in these years [by these means23], then he shall go out in the year of jubile,8 both he, and his children with him. 55For unto me the children of Israel are servants; they are my servants whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
Lev 25:3-4. . See Textual Note 6 on Lev 19:10.
Lev 25:5. The Sam., LXX. and Syr. prefix the conjunction.
Lev 25:5; Lev 25:11. means primarily the separated (see Gen 49:26; Deu 33:16), then the consecrated. Except in the passages referred to, and in this chap, it is always used of the Nazarite. It is applied to the vine either as for this year consecrated, so LXX. ; or by a figure of speech, thy Nazarite vine, as having its branches unpruned like the unshorn locks of the Nazarite. The latter is generally preferred by the commentators. See Keil who refers to the Latin viridis coma, Tibull. i. 7, 34; Propert. ii. 15, 12. Ten MSS., the Syr. and Vulg. read the word in the plural.
Lev 25:6. The Sam. and Syr. read this and the three following words in the plural.
Lev 25:7. . See Textual Note1 on Lev 11:2.
Lev 25:8. Sabbath is used here as in Lev 23:15 (see note there) rather in a figurative way than with the definite sense of weeks.
Lev 25:9. The word = Jubile of Lev 25:10 does not occur in this verse, and there is no occasion for its insertion. The is the loud sound, clangor, of an instrument usually translated trumpet in the A. V., but occasionally (1Ch 15:28; 2Ch 15:14; Psa 98:6, etc.) more correctly cornet. It was either the horn of an animal (according to the Mishna, of chamois or wild goat), or made of metal in the fashion of a horn. The LXX. renders , the Vulg. buccina.
Lev 25:10-13, etc. is translated throughout this chapter and Leviticus 27, jubile. So also Num 36:4. In Exo 19:13 it is rendered trumpet (marg. cornet), and in the only other places where it occurs, Jos 6:4-6; Jos 6:8; Jos 6:13, rams horns. Outside of the Bible the word is always spelt jubilee, but being here spelt jubile, Clark considers that it was intended to be pronounced as a dissyllable, making a close imitation of the Heb. word. Authorities differ as to its sense etymologically. See the subject discussed in Bochart, Hieroz, I. c. 43 (vol. I., pp. 463466 ed. Rosen.), and Gesen. Thes. s. v. The LXX. renders with relation to what was to be done in this year rather than as a translation of the Heb. word. Josephus (Ant. III. 12, 3) uses the Heb. word , which he explains as meaning liberty, . The Vulg. has jubileus. In Eze 46:17 it is called = the year of liberty, from which Josephus probably derived his interpretation. This accords well with the context in Lev 25:11, and also with the derivation from = to flow freely.
Lev 25:14. The Heb. has the verb in the plural; but the Sam. has the sing in accordance with the sing, pronouns following. The word buy, is inf. abs., as in Gen 41:43.
Lev 25:14. . The verb in the Hiph. applies especially to that sort of civil oppression brought about by fraud, which is best, expressed in English by the word overreach.
Lev 25:23. , lit. for cutting off (as in marg. A. V.), viz. from all hope of redemption. In modern phrase, in perpetuity.
Lev 25:26. The marg. his hand hath attained and found sufficiency exactly renders the Heb.; but the text of the A. V. is a sufficiently good translation except in failing to bring out the idea that the ability to redeem has come about since the sale took place. The Jewish interpretation was accordingly correct, that the right of redemption should only accrue in case the ability to re-purchase was gained after the sale had taken place; a merely voluntary sale must hold until the jubilee year.
Lev 25:29. , lit. days shall its redemption be, i.e. the right of redemption shall continue for a definite time and no longer, which time has been explained in the previous clause to be a year; it is better, however, to let the translation follow the Heb. than to paraphrase so much as has been done in the A. V.
Lev 25:30. The kri for the text is also the reading of the Sam. and of thirteen MSS.
Lev 25:31. is sing. The Sam., LXX. and Syr. have the plural.
Lev 25:32. On this use of the particle see Nordheimers Heb. Gr. 1093, 6, c, h. It is evident that there is nothing said about the redemption of the cities, which the form of the A. V. would seem to imply, but only of the houses in them.
Lev 25:33. There is much diversity of opinion as to the meaning of this clause. The text of the A. V. is supported by the LXX. and by the Targums, and is defended by Keil. A difficulty arises from the use of the word = redeem; but Keil maintains, on the authority of the Rabbins, that this is used in the sense of = to buy. He grounds the usage on the fact that the Levitical cities were originally assigned to the tribes as a part of their inheritance; they relinquished the houses, or a part of the houses in them (together with pasture grounds) to the Levites for dwelling-places. When therefore one of another tribe purchased of a Levite, he was in fact redeeming the inheritance of his tribe. So Murphy. On the other hand, the reading: If one of the Levites redeems a house in the city (according to the marg. of the A. V.), is preferred by Clark following Rosenmller, De Wette, Kranold, Herxheimer and others. The meaning will then be, that if a Levite has sold a house to one of another tribe, and another Levite redeem it, then in the Jubilee year it must revert to its original possessor. But it is more than questionable whether the Levites had any such general right of redemption on behalf of their fellow Levites as this would suppose. The Vulg. inserts a negative, Si redempt (sc. des) non fuerint, and this is sustained by Houbigant, and preferred by Woide, Ewald, Bunsen and Knobel. It is adopted by Lange in the translation and exegesis; but it is a serious objection that it would require a change in the Heb. On the whole, the text of the A. V. seems best sustained, and gives the clearest sense.
Lev 25:33. On the use of in the figure Hendiadys see Gesen. s. v. 1, b.
Lev 25:35. The particle as is inserted here by the LXX., Vulg., Targums, Luther, etc., and is recognized as to be supplied by many commentators, as Keil, Clark and others. So also Riggs. On the other hand the Syr. gives just the opposite sense: thou shalt not hold him for a sojourner or foreigner; but he shall live with thee. Others, as Lange, adopt the sense expressed in the A. V.
Lev 25:35. according to Keil, an abbreviation for occurring only here.
Lev 25:47. The missing conjunction is supplied in ten MSS., the LXX. and Syr.
Lev 25:49. See Textual Note4 on Lev 18:6.
Lev 25:54. The Heb. does not express the noun at all. That supplied by the marg. of the A. V. is clearly more agreeable to the context than that in the text. So Lange, following the Syr. The other ancient versions do not supply the ellipsis.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
This chapter, with the first two verses of the following one, forms another Parashah. or proper lesson of the law; the parallel lesson from the prophets is Jer 32:6-27, concerning Jeremiahs redemption of Hanameels field in Anathoth. This and the following chapter, which is the conclusion of the book proper, form a single Divine communication. The institution of the jubilee years corresponds to the institution of the day of atonement (Leviticus 16). Just as all the sins and uncleannesses of the whole congregation, which had remained unatoned for and uncleansed in the course of the year, were to be wiped away by the all-embracing expiation of the yearly recurring day of atonement, and an undisturbed relation to be restored between Jehovah and His people; so, by the appointment of the year of jubilee, the disturbance and confusion of the divinely appointed relations, which had been introduced in the course of time through the inconstancy of all human or earthly things, were to be removed by the appointment of the year of Jubilee, and the kingdom of Israel to be brought back to its original condition. Keil. The systematic character and correspondence of the two great divisions of Leviticus are thus brought into view.
The institution of the Sabbatical year occupies the first seven verses, and that of the year of Jubilee, with its effects upon rights and property, the remainder of the chapter. The latter may be subdivided into the institution itself (Lev 25:8-12); the legal return of every man to his own land, and the effect of this on contracts (Lev 25:13-34); and finally the emancipation of the Hebrew slave with its consequences (Lev 25:35-55). The Sabbatical year and the year of Jubilee belong to that great Sabbatical system which runs through the religious observances of the law. They were solemnly connected with the sacred Covenant. Clark. They are therefore appropriately placed immediately after the appointed seasons of the previous chapter; yet they are also somewhat separated from these, as they were distinguished by no religious ceremonies, they were accompanied by no act of religious worship. There were no sacrifices, nor Holy Convocations belonging to them. Although forming a part of the Hebrew ecclesiastical system, they were yet chiefly marked in their effects by their civil and social relations. As the whole civil polity of Israel was fundamentally theocratic, so were these remarkable provisions in their national life placed upon a religious basis.
There are perhaps in the whole ancient world no institutions bearing comparison with the Hebrew year of release and of Jubilee, either in comprehensiveness or in loftiness of principle. It is impossible to appreciate too highly the wonderful consistency with which the Sabbath was made the foundation of a grand series of celebrations extending from the Sabbath-day to the Sabbath-month, and the Sabbath-year, and lastly to a great Sabbath-period of years. And all these institutions were associated with ideas admirably calculated to foster both a sense of dignity and humility, both zeal in practical pursuits and spiritual elevation, both prudence and charity. Kalisch.
The fundamental thought is: Jehovah is the Lord of the land of Jehovah, with all its blessings, with its soil and its harvests, with its inheritances and its dwellings, with its rich and its poor, with its free and its slaves, its roads and its bye-ways, its holy seasons, the Sabbath days and its central holy place, the Tabernacle. Lange.
Lev 25:1-7. In mount Sinai clearly means in the region about the mountain, as in Lev 7:38; Lev 26:46; Lev 27:34, etc. Mount Sinai is emphasized to allow the immediately following ordinance to come into prominence as a prophecy of the distant future. Lange. Neither the Sabbatical nor the Jubilee year were to be observed until the settlement of the people in the promised land. On Lev 25:4 Lange quotes Keil as follows: The omission of sowing and reaping presupposed that the Sabbatical year commenced with the civil year, in the autumn of the sixth year of labor, and not with the ecclesiastical year, on the first of Abib (Nisan), and that it lasted till the Autumn of the seventh year, when the cultivation of the land would commence again with the preparation of the ground and the sowing of the seed for the eighth year; and with this the command to proclaim the jubilee year on the tenth day of the seventh month throughout all the land (Lev 25:9), and the calculation in Lev 25:21-22, fully agree. On the expression Sabbath Sabbathon of Lev 25:4, see Textual Note 2 on Lev 23:3. In Lev 25:4-7 all agricultural labor is forbidden for the Sabbatical year. Two questions arise: how were the wants of the people to be provided for during the year? and how was the time thus freed from its usual employments to be spent? In regard to the first, reference is usually made to the great productiveness of the land, and to the fact that there would be a considerable spontaneous growth of grain, while the fruit trees and the vine would of course bear nearly as usual. Greater use would also have been made of animal food by those who possessed cattle, or were able to purchase it, and the uncropped fields would have allowed of the support of herds and flocks in unusual numbers. These facts lessen the difficulty, and indeed remove it altogether for the wealthy and for the poor also during several months of the year; all this spontaneous produce was common property, and might be gathered by any one for immediate use but not stored. Undoubtedly during the time of the ripening of the various cereals there would thus be abundant provision for the wants of the whole population. But after all, the main reliance must have been upon the stores laid up previously in view of the coming on of the Sabbatical year, and this is pointed out in Lev 25:20-21. It is also to be noticed that only agriculture labor was suspended, and that the commerce of the cities went on as usual. In regard to the employment of the time: the command is given in Deu 31:10-12, that at the feast of Tabernacles in this year the law should be read in the hearing of all the people, including not merely the men who were alone required in other years to assemble at the feast, but also the women and children. This provision, joined with the analogy of the seventh day, shows that the leisure of the Sabbatical year was to be improved in acquiring a knowledge of the Divine law, and doubtless in renewing family ties and associations. It is distinguished not as an idle year, but as a year of intellectual and moral, rather than of manual occupation. Other passages in the law on this subject are Exo 23:10-11, and Deu 15:1-18. The latter is the most detailed of all, and provides for the release in that year of all debts due from Israelites, and of all Israelites in bond-service. The Sabbatical year was doubtless provided for the sake of man and its bearing upon his spiritual welfare; yet when the law pronounces (Lev 25:2) the land shall keep a Sabbath unto the LORD, we are forced to see a symbolical significance in the very rest of the land itself. The earth was to be saved from the hand of man exhausting its power for earthly purposes as his own property, and to enjoy the holy rest with which God had blessed the earth and all its productions after the creation. From this, Israel, as the nation of God, was to learn, on the one hand, that although the earth was created for man, it was not merely created for him to draw out its powers for his own use, but also to be holy to the Lord, and participate in His blessed rest; and on the other hand, that the great purpose for which the congregation of the Lord existed, did not consist in the uninterrupted tilling of the earth, connected with bitter labor in the sweat of his brow (Gen 3:17; Gen 3:19), but in the peaceful enjoyment of the fruits of the earth, which the Lord their God had given them, and would give them still without the labor of their hands, if they strove to keep His covenant and satisfy themselves with His grace. Keil. The law of the Sabbatical year was not to come into operation until after the completion of the conquest. It is hardly probable that it was actually observed until the Captivity, see 2Ch 36:21, unless possibly a few times in the very beginning of the settlement in Canaan. Later, there are found several historical notices which imply its observance. The Jews were exempted from tribute in the Sabbatical year by Alexander the Great (Jos. Ant. xi. 8, 6), and by Julius Csar (ib. xiv. 10, 6). The inhabitants of Bethsura could not stand out when besieged by Antiochus Epiphanes, because they had no store of provisions owing to the Sabbatical year (1Ma 6:49), and the inhabitants of Jerusalem suffered from a like cause when they were besieged by Herod (Jos. Ant. xiv. 16, 2; xv. 1, 2). Clark. Tacitus also mentions the Jewish seventh year given to indolence (Hist. v. 2, 4), and St. Paul (Gal 4:10) charges the Judaizers with observing years as well as days and months.
Lev 25:8-12. The institution of the year of Jubilee. The present chapter contains the whole literature of the Jubilee year to be found in the Pentateuch, except the discussion of its effect upon fields dedicated to the Lord in Lev 27:16-25, and except also the allusion in the case of the daughters of Zelophehad, Num 36:4. Lange: The relation of the last Sabbatical year to the Jubilee year itself creates a special difficulty. If the people did not sow or reap during two years, there would result a stoppage of four years. [This seems to overlook the fact that the Jubilee was proclaimed on the 10th Tisri, when the whole work of the agricultural year had been rounded out and completed, so that the break of two years, serious as this was, did not extend either forward or backward in its effects beyond those years themselves.F. G.]. On this account it has indeed been supposed that the 49th year itself was the Jubilee year (see Keil, p. 162 [Trans. p. 458]. Art. Sabbath and Jobeljahr in Herzogs Real-encyclopdie). [This view was first advocated by R. Jehuda, and has been adopted by Scaliger, Usher, Petavius, Rosenmller, and others, and hesitatingly by Clark in his commentary. It is entirely rejected by Keil as contradictory to the plain language of the text, and by Clark in his Art. Jubilee in Smiths Bibl. Dict. The text (Lev 25:8-11) is perfectly plain, using the same forms of language as in regard to the feast of Pentecost after the completion of the seven weeks, between which and this Pentecostal year there is a clear analogy. Notwithstanding the authority of the critics above referred to, it must be considered as certain that the Jubilee followed the seventh Sabbatical year, and that thus once in every half century two fallow years were to occur together. The provisions for food were the same in the one case as in the other: no agricultural labor was to be performed, but the spontaneous productions of the earth were the common property of the whole population. Large reliance must therefore have been placed upon food previously stored and, perhaps, on foreign commerce.F.G.] We see from the book of Jeremiah that this feast was poorly kept in Israel, not on account of apprehended need, but in consequence of the hardening effect of proprietary relations, and the hard-heartedness of the powerful and great. (Knobel, p. 563. Jeremiah 34). But the year of Jubilee formed the culmination of the ideal relations of Israel which the law aimed at without actually reaching. It is most full of significance that on the 10th of the 7th mouth (at the end of the seven Sabbatical years on the great day of Atonement, without doubt immediately after the full accomplishment of the propitiation) the trombone was to sound through all the land to announce the year of Jubilee as a year of freedom (), the highest feast of the laborer, and of nature, the redemption of lost inheritances, the ransom of the enslaved, the year of the restoration of all things (Isaiah 61). The instrument of the announcement is the trombone, the horn (), the sound of which had proclaimed also the feast of the covenant of the law. After the solemn quiet of the day when all the people must afflict their souls, and when the great rites of the annual propitiation had been completed, probably at the time of the evening sacrifice, the sudden burst of sound proclaiming the year of Jubilee must have been peculiarly impressive. The proclamation of freedom was most appropriate just after the great reconciliation of the people with God had been symbolically completed. The chief allusions to this year in the prophets are Isa 61:1-2; Jer 32:6-15; Eze 7:12-13; Eze 46:16-18.
Lev 25:13-34. In the year of Jubilee every man was to return to his inherited possession. The principle on which this law is based is given in Lev 25:23 : The land was the absolute possession of Jehovah alone; He had allotted it to the families of Israel as strangers and sojourners with Him, and however these allotments might be temporarily disturbed in the exigencies of life, in the Jubilee they must all be restored again. Lev 25:14. Sell aught refers only to land and houses in the country. Personal property (except slaves) was not affected by the Jubilee as debts were by the Sabbatical year (Deu 15:1-11). The price of the land was determined (Lev 25:15-16) by the value of the harvests remaining until the Jubilee. In the valuation of the harvest there was always opportunity for fraud; therefore the earnest warning not to oppress [overreach] ones neighbor. Lange. Lev 25:20-22 relate in terms to the sabbatical year, but only in regard to the supply of food. This is of course, equally applicable to the Jubilee year, and thus both cases are covered. The question arises in connection with the latter, but needs also to be answered for the former, and is therefore arranged with reference to that as the more frequently recurring. The verses stand therefore quite in their proper place; if placed, as various critics would have them, just after Lev 25:7, the Jubilee year could only be provided for by a repetition. Lev 25:23-28. Lange: The land shall not be sold even to defeasance, i.e., completely. It shall also not be sold absolutely; the form is not an hereditary lease, once for all, but a temporary lease for a course of years.For the land is Mine, Jehovah says, and ye are strangers and sojourners with Me.Therefore the soil throughout the whole land was placed under the law of redemption. Also redemption could take place before the 50th year if the nearest Goel or redeemer of the impoverished man stepped in and bought back for his benefit that which had been alienated. If the redeemers (relatives, according to their degrees of relationship, having the ability and the will) failed, then the case was conceivable that the impoverished man himself might come into the possession of means before the 50th year, and then the redemption was reserved to him according to the usufruct of the yet remaining years. If neither of these means of redemption were availed of, then the law of reversion absolutely and without consideration came into play in the Jubilee year. There could never be injustice in this, as all purchases had been made with a full knowledge of the law. The law, if thy brother be waxen poor, throughout presupposes that no Israelite would sell his inheritance except under the pressure of poverty. Comp. 1Ki 21:3.
Lev 25:29-34. The alienation and redemption of houses (a) of the people generally, Lev 25:29-31; (b) of the Levites, Lev 25:32-34. (a) Lange: A dwelling-house within a walled city could be redeemed within the space of the first year, but not afterwards. The law could not be brought to bear upon the more fixed relations of cities without prejudice to justice and order. The reason certainly is not that the houses in the cities belonged to the full proprietorship of their possessors. The possessors themselves were really tenants of Jehovah. [The law of redemption relates to land, and is based upon the original division of the land among the families of Israel. In cities the original value of the land constituted but a small part of the value of a house; the rest was the creation of human industry. The property represented by the original value of the land is recognized in the right of redemption for a year, which also concurred with the general purpose of the law in checking the sale of real estate; but beyond this the house in the city was justly treated as of the nature of personal property. Calvin also observes justly that there was not the same objection to the falling of city houses into the hands of the wealthy as of those in the country. On the one hand, the expense of maintaining them was greater, and could be better borne by the wealthy; and on the other, the possession of a house was not at all as necessary to a poor man in the city as in the country where he could scarcely otherwise find shelter.F. G.] But the houses in open places were put, as an appurtenance to the farm, under the law of redemption within the fiftieth year, or of reversion at the end of that period. (b) See the Textual Notes on Lev 25:32-33. Lange, in his translation and exegesis of Lev 25:33, follows the Vulgate, and objects to the view of Keil as too subtle, and as inapplicable to the clause: and the city of his possession. The latter objection is removed by considering this as a hendiadys, and translating in the city. Lange considers that the clause has something like these the senses: even houses of the Levites fall back again, even if they were the whole city. Or again: only by this means the Levitical cities remain guaranteed as such. The pasturage of the Levites was absolutely inalienable, even temporarily (Lev 25:34), and the reason for extending the law of redemption to their houses in the cities is evidently that they had no other inheritance, and it was therefore necessary in this to assimilate them to the rest of the people that they might enjoy the same safeguards against hopeless poverty with their brethren. This provision applied to the priests also, who constituted one family of the Levites, and were in the same situation as their brethren in regard to landed property. It is noticeable on the one hand that this is the only mention of the Levites in this book; and on the other, that the provision of cities for them had not yet been announced. Both facts admit of the easy explanation that the whole legislation had been communicated to Moses in the Mount, so that any part of it may presuppose another; but that he was to announce it to the people in the order best adapted to their needs. The Levites are not therefore spoken of in this book, except thus incidentally in order to keep them distinct from the priests; and the law in regard to the redemption of their houses in their cities is given to complete the law of Jubilee; but the assignment of the cities themselves is reserved to the directions for the division of the land.
Lev 25:35-55. The emancipation of the Hebrew slave with its consequences. The main subject is still the law of Jubilee; but in connection with the effect of this upon the Hebrew slave, the treatment of the poor generally is spoken of.And if thy brother,i.e. an Israelite, be waxen poor, he was not to be treated as an outcast, but with the consideration shown to a resident foreigner, who also had no landed possession. Lev 25:36-37, forbid the taking of usury of him, or increase. In the latter verse this is applied also to the furnishing of food. It is entirely clear that the prohibition is not simply of what is now commonly called usurious interest, but of any interest whatever. There was no law regulating the amount of interest; no interest was allowed to be taken of a Hebrew brother, and no limitation was put upon that which might be demanded of a foreigner. Lange, however, considers the words: a stranger or a sojourner (Lev 25:35) as in apposition with the pronoun him, and taking the view expressed in the A. V., says: It is very noticeable that this holds good also of the foreigner. See Textual Note 19. Lange adds: Jehovah says this, the great Benefactor, who has delivered His Israel out of Egypt, and purposes to give him the whole land of Canaan, in order to make him, through thankfulness, like-minded with his God. (Lev 25:38.) Lev 25:39-43. Hebrew servants to Hebrews. The law provides that such servants shall not be treated as ordinary slaves entirely dependent upon the will of their master, but rather as simply under a contract, like a hired servant. In Exo 21:1-4 it has already been provided that the term of servitude for the Israelites should not extend beyond six years, and in the seventh they should go out free; it is now further provided, as an almost necessary supplement to that law, that, whatever the number of years he might chance to have served, he should go free in the Jubilee when the land of his inheritance reverted to him, and would need his care. Through this principle slavery was completely abolished, so far as the people of the theocracy were concerned. Oehler. In Ex. the freedom of his wife and children is also assured, unless the wife be one given him by his master, and therefore his slave. In that case the wife and children remained the masters, and the same qualification is doubtless to be understood of Lev 25:41 here. In Exo 21:5-6, provision is made for the case of a slave who preferred to continue with his master; it would have been unnecessary at any rate to mention this unusual exception here; but probably it applied only to the ordinary release in the seventh year of service, and was not intended to take place also at the Jubilee. If the slave freed at the Jubilee chose to go back to his master, he could of course do so, but could only devote himself to perpetual servitude after another six years service. Lev 25:42-43. Lange: The Israelites were not allowed to become mens slaves, because they were Gods slaves. The Jews could misinterpret these noble words in arrogance in opposition to the heathen (John 8); but Christian industry has read them too little. Lev 25:44-46. Heathen slaves of Hebrew masters. The Israelites, in common with all nations of their time, were permitted to hold heathen slaves. It was a patriarchal custom of long standing, and the supply was kept up by natural descent, by purchase from foreigners, and by captives taken in war. The people were not yet prepared for the abrogation of this, and in consequence the Mosaic law permits its continuance, but in many ways mitigates its rigor (see Exo 21:16; Exo 21:21; Exo 21:26-27), especially by providing that the slave might adopt the religion of his master, and be circumcised, and thus entitled to all the privileges of a Hebrew servant (comp. Exo 12:44). This had certainly been done with all the slaves of Abraham, and probably with those of Isaac and Jacob. It is likely that no inconsiderable portion of the Israelites of the time of Moses were the descendants of slaves thus manumitted. Lev 25:47-55. Hebrew servants to foreign masters. By this addition all possible cases of servitude are covered. Lange: The prohibition of oppressive power against an Israelite brother occurs again Lev 25:43, and again Lev 25:46. So strongly were the Israelites now bound to charitableness and to the fostering of freedom; so strongly also was the power of the stranger and foreigner coming into Israel limited in relation to heathen encroachments upon the Jewish right of freedom. If an impoverished Jew sold himself or his house to a foreigner, any one of his kindred might become his redeemer, the brother, the uncle, the uncles son, or any blood relation; also he might redeem himself, if he had laid by enough for the purpose. Everything breathed the tendency to freedom; but it was conditioned by law. The price of the redemption was fixed according to the years which he had yet to serve to the year of Jubilee, and according to the usual wages. In case there was no redemption, he was set free in the year of Jubilee. At the close occurs yet once more the solemn sanction of the law, Lev 25:55. This law evidently contemplates the acquisition of wealth by foreigners residing in Israel, and their living in undisturbed prosperity. The Hebrew slave of a Hebrew was released without redemption after six years of service, and also in the year of Jubilee whenever that might occur; but apparently the law of Exodus 21 does not apply to foreign masters, and here nothing is said of release, except by redemption, until the Jubilee. This would be a strong inducement to an impoverished Hebrew to sell himself to an Israelite rather than a foreigner, and concurs with the general tendency of the law to discourage any subjection to foreigners.
Lange connects the first two verses of the following chapter with this section as is done in the Jewish Parashah. They seem, however, to belong to the general conclusion of the book contained in the following chapter.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
I. Lange (under Exegetical): The chosen land, seen from a distance, appears as a paradisaical world, inexhaustible in fruitfulness. But it is to be particularly noticed that the prescribed Sabbath rest of the land forced the people back again to the inexhaustible source of food in the breeding of cattle, and so far to simple Idyllic relations; the breaking the hardness of purchase and property relations would further the return of Idyllic simplicity, soften the differences of rank, and above all, avert the so-called proletarian relations, and glorify Jehovah as the gentle sovereign Lord and manor Lord of the families of Israel joined together in brotherhood. By this also comfort was brought to the cattle, and even to the wild animal. In later times the turbulent, restless pressing on of industry is not appeased by voluntary or legal times of rest and years of remission, but indeed by commercial crises, civil catastrophes and extraordinary helps in necessity; but the proper ideas or ideal of the Sabbatical and Jubilee years have not yet come to be clearly seen in the Christian consciousness of the time. What is noted by H. Spencer as the rythmic flow of all things in the universe is provided for in regard to human activity in this wonderful legislation; the disastrous consequences attending its absence are noted above by Lange.
II. Lange (also under Exeg.): The limitation of human proprietary right to the soil has also its permanent ideal significance. God challenges to Himself the royal right over terrestrial nature, as a clear idea of this is given indeed in the winter storm over the sea, the Alpine glacier and the deserts. Man is inclined, in his egotistical industry, to harass nature as his beast.
III. Looking at the law of Jubilee from a simply practical point of view, its operation must have tended to remedy those evils which are always growing up in the ordinary conditions of human society. It prevented the permanent accumulation of land in the hands of a few, and periodically raised those whom fault or misfortune had sunk into poverty to a position of competency. It must also have tended to keep alive family feeling, and helped to preserve the family genealogies But in its more special character, as a law given by Jehovah to His peculiar people, it was a standing lesson to those who would rightly regard it, on the terms upon which the enjoyment of the land of Promise had been conferred upon them. All the land belonged to Jehovah as its supreme Lord, every Israelite as His vassal belonged to Him. Clark.
IV. The law of slavery as understood among ancient nations generally is here essentially modified and softened, the Levitical precepts tending in the same direction with those of the Gospel which, after so long a time, have now nearly effected its abolition throughout the civilized world. But in regard to the Hebrews themselves, the law went much further, and substantially abolished slavery at once, reducing it to a six years service, and even this interrupted by the year of Jubilee, and subject to many restrictions. It is still further to be remembered that any foreign slave might be admitted to the privileges of the Hebrew, by becoming an Israelite through the reception of circumcision. Thus strongly did the law set its face against the institution of slavery.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
Lange (under Exeg.): The Sabbath year is the germ of the Jubilee year, as this is a type of the New Testament time of deliverance, restoration and freedom (Isaiah 61; Luk 4:18), and further, a prelude and a prophecy of the heavenly and eternal Sabbath itself (Hebrews 4).
Lange (Homiletik): The year of Jubilee of the theocratic land. The great year of rejoicing in the theocratic community. Ideals which have been scantily and scarcely fulfilled in the letter in Israel, but which in Christianity are continually being realized in the spirit. And this indeed in the commendable care of the fields and forests; in the dread of a gross profit out of nature; in the limitation of the proprietary right of individuals over nature; in customs of gentleness; in the consecration of the social right of fellowship; the right of the poor, the right of the laboring man, the right of rent and purchase. The later dismal caricatures of these ideals. Seven years a period after which the administration of nature required a new revision; forty [fifty] years a period after which the arrangements of business required a revision. The neglect of reform a source of revolution. The Jubilee year a type of the Gospel time of deliverance (Isaiah 61; Luk 4:16). The true preaching of the Gospel always a proclamation of the true Jubilee year. The Jewish and the Christian emancipation from slavery: 1) its common foundation, 2) its greater difference, 3) its unceasing development in the world.
As the law provided for a redeemer for the poor, so, says Wordsworth, Christ became the Redeemer for the spiritually poor, reinstating us in our lost estate, and delivering us from the bondage of sin; and this He was entitled to do because by His incarnation He took our nature and became our Kinsman.
By the prohibition of sowing and harvesting in the Sabbatical and Jubilee years was again taught that principle which the Israelites learned from the manna in the wilderness, and which the words of Christ make of perpetual validity, that man doth not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord.
Very full and striking are the provisions of this chapter for the loving care of the poor, not for the sake of the poor only, but for the sake of him who should show them kindness. That the blessing of this lesson might not cease with the Mosaic dispensation, God has provided that we shall have the poor always with us, and our Lord has elevated our ministrations to them into ministrations to Himself. Similarly kindness and consideration towards those who labor for us is taught by Moses, and is ever made one of the prominent practical duties of Christianity. See Eph 6:9, etc.
Footnotes:
[1]Lev 25:3-4. . See Textual Note 6 on Lev 19:10.
[2]Lev 25:5. The Sam., LXX. and Syr. prefix the conjunction.
[3]Lev 25:5; Lev 25:11. means primarily the separated (see Gen 49:26; Deu 33:16), then the consecrated. Except in the passages referred to, and in this chap, it is always used of the Nazarite. It is applied to the vine either as for this year consecrated, so LXX. ; or by a figure of speech, thy Nazarite vine, as having its branches unpruned like the unshorn locks of the Nazarite. The latter is generally preferred by the commentators. See Keil who refers to the Latin viridis coma, Tibull. i. 7, 34; Propert. ii. 15, 12. Ten MSS., the Syr. and Vulg. read the word in the plural.
[4]Lev 25:6. The Sam. and Syr. read this and the three following words in the plural.
[5]Lev 25:7. . See Textual Note1 on Lev 11:2.
[6]Lev 25:8. Sabbath is used here as in Lev 23:15 (see note there) rather in a figurative way than with the definite sense of weeks.
[7]Lev 25:9. The word = Jubile of Lev 25:10 does not occur in this verse, and there is no occasion for its insertion. The is the loud sound, clangor, of an instrument usually translated trumpet in the A. V., but occasionally (1Ch 15:28; 2Ch 15:14; Psa 98:6, etc.) more correctly cornet. It was either the horn of an animal (according to the Mishna, of chamois or wild goat), or made of metal in the fashion of a horn. The LXX. renders , the Vulg. buccina.
[8]Lev 25:10-13, etc. is translated throughout this chapter and Leviticus 27, jubile. So also Num 36:4. In Exo 19:13 it is rendered trumpet (marg. cornet), and in the only other places where it occurs, Jos 6:4-6; Jos 6:8; Jos 6:13, rams horns. Outside of the Bible the word is always spelt jubilee, but being here spelt jubile, Clark considers that it was intended to be pronounced as a dissyllable, making a close imitation of the Heb. word. Authorities differ as to its sense etymologically. See the subject discussed in Bochart, Hieroz, I. c. 43 (vol. I., pp. 463466 ed. Rosen.), and Gesen. Thes. s. v. The LXX. renders with relation to what was to be done in this year rather than as a translation of the Heb. word. Josephus (Ant. III. 12, 3) uses the Heb. word , which he explains as meaning liberty, . The Vulg. has jubileus. In Eze 46:17 it is called = the year of liberty, from which Josephus probably derived his interpretation. This accords well with the context in Lev 25:11, and also with the derivation from = to flow freely.
[9]Lev 25:14. The Heb. has the verb in the plural; but the Sam. has the sing in accordance with the sing, pronouns following. The word buy, is inf. abs., as in Gen 41:43.
[10]Lev 25:14. . The verb in the Hiph. applies especially to that sort of civil oppression brought about by fraud, which is best, expressed in English by the word overreach.
[11]Lev 25:23. , lit. for cutting off (as in marg. A. V.), viz. from all hope of redemption. In modern phrase, in perpetuity.
[12]Lev 25:26. The marg. his hand hath attained and found sufficiency exactly renders the Heb.; but the text of the A. V. is a sufficiently good translation except in failing to bring out the idea that the ability to redeem has come about since the sale took place. The Jewish interpretation was accordingly correct, that the right of redemption should only accrue in case the ability to re-purchase was gained after the sale had taken place; a merely voluntary sale must hold until the jubilee year.
[13]Lev 25:29. , lit. days shall its redemption be, i.e. the right of redemption shall continue for a definite time and no longer, which time has been explained in the previous clause to be a year; it is better, however, to let the translation follow the Heb. than to paraphrase so much as has been done in the A. V.
[14]Lev 25:30. The kri for the text is also the reading of the Sam. and of thirteen MSS.
[15]Lev 25:31. is sing. The Sam., LXX. and Syr. have the plural.
[16]Lev 25:32. On this use of the particle see Nordheimers Heb. Gr. 1093, 6, c, h. It is evident that there is nothing said about the redemption of the cities, which the form of the A. V. would seem to imply, but only of the houses in them.
[17]Lev 25:33. There is much diversity of opinion as to the meaning of this clause. The text of the A. V. is supported by the LXX. and by the Targums, and is defended by Keil. A difficulty arises from the use of the word = redeem; but Keil maintains, on the authority of the Rabbins, that this is used in the sense of = to buy. He grounds the usage on the fact that the Levitical cities were originally assigned to the tribes as a part of their inheritance; they relinquished the houses, or a part of the houses in them (together with pasture grounds) to the Levites for dwelling-places. When therefore one of another tribe purchased of a Levite, he was in fact redeeming the inheritance of his tribe. So Murphy. On the other hand, the reading: If one of the Levites redeems a house in the city (according to the marg. of the A. V.), is preferred by Clark following Rosenmller, De Wette, Kranold, Herxheimer and others. The meaning will then be, that if a Levite has sold a house to one of another tribe, and another Levite redeem it, then in the Jubilee year it must revert to its original possessor. But it is more than questionable whether the Levites had any such general right of redemption on behalf of their fellow Levites as this would suppose. The Vulg. inserts a negative, Si redempt (sc. des) non fuerint, and this is sustained by Houbigant, and preferred by Woide, Ewald, Bunsen and Knobel. It is adopted by Lange in the translation and exegesis; but it is a serious objection that it would require a change in the Heb. On the whole, the text of the A. V. seems best sustained, and gives the clearest sense.
[18]Lev 25:33. On the use of in the figure Hendiadys see Gesen. s. v. 1, b.
[19]Lev 25:35. The particle as is inserted here by the LXX., Vulg., Targums, Luther, etc., and is recognized as to be supplied by many commentators, as Keil, Clark and others. So also Riggs. On the other hand the Syr. gives just the opposite sense: thou shalt not hold him for a sojourner or foreigner; but he shall live with thee. Others, as Lange, adopt the sense expressed in the A. V.
[20]Lev 25:35. according to Keil, an abbreviation for occurring only here.
[21]Lev 25:47. The missing conjunction is supplied in ten MSS., the LXX. and Syr.
[22]Lev 25:49. See Textual Note4 on Lev 18:6.
[23]Lev 25:54. The Heb. does not express the noun at all. That supplied by the marg. of the A. V. is clearly more agreeable to the context than that in the text. So Lange, following the Syr. The other ancient versions do not supply the ellipsis.
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
CONTENTS
This forms a most interesting chapter, even in its moral sense, but much more so in its spiritual. And as an enlightened eye will he enabled to discern in it, that Moses spake of CHRIST, the attention ought to be the more awakened. Here is GOD’S appointment of every seventh year to be a year of rest to the land, that the holy land of Canaan, which was the glory of all lands, should be distinguished from every other by a Sabbatic year. Here is also GOD’S appointment, for every seven times seventh year to be a year of jubilee, in which the captive and the bond-servant among the Hebrews should go out free. This chapter hath also some very gracious laws contained in it, for the treatment of the poor, and of debtors.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Was not this precept intended to teach the LORD’S people to look back and consider how, in the garden of Eden, there would have been a perpetual rest to the land, and a constant Sabbath to the LORD, but for the transgression? And was it not also intended, to teach the LORD’S people to look forward to him, who is himself the Sabbath and rest of his people, and hath prepared a rest for them? Psa 116:7 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Sojourning with God
Lev 25:23
There are two views to be taken of that famous land about which so much of Old Testament history gathers. (1) When you are looking at the children of Israel passing out of Egypt and through the wilderness, their prospect of this promised land awaiting them reminds you of the heavenly inheritance held out to believers as the rest that remaineth for the people of God. (2) But when you think of the Israelites in actual occupation of Canaan, then there are aspects of it which rather suggest the provision of earthly support during this mortal life, which God has promised to His children here in this world.
I. The first thing suggested is the sojourning condition of the children of God in this world. They are strangers and sojourners. It must be admitted in the first place that they have much in common with everybody else. All are lately come into existence ere long shall cease to be connected with the present order of things, and therefore sojourners. Those therefore are sojourners who really have in view another country; another system of things as their durable inheritance.
II. Observe a great element in this sojourning state emphasized in the text. To be strangers and sojourners has something depressing in it; but a great element of gladness comes when we hear the voice that says ‘The land is Mine; ye are strangers and sojourners with Me”. For a believer this world becomes God’s world, and in his sojournings he is assured of a Divine companionship and communion.
III. What way of dealing with our earthly possessions is expected of us in this situation? The ‘prohibition implied that the Israelite was not to claim absolute ownership, nor was he to act as if he claimed it’. He had a use of it under restrictions, but the land continued to be the Lord’s; the Lord had the abiding possession; the Israelite only a transient use as a stranger and a sojourner with God. And you are sojourners so that you are also stewards. These are your Lord’s goods. For the direct interest of the cause of God, be stewards be stewards that shall not fear the reckoning.
Robert Rainy, Sojourning with God, p. 1.
Reference. XXVI. 2. R. G. Soans, Sermons for the Young, p. 7.
Fuente: Expositor’s Dictionary of Text by Robertson
IX
THE LAND SABBATH AND THE JUBILEE SABBATH
Exo 23:10-11
THE LAND SABBATH 1. Where do we find the text of the law of the land sabbath?
Ans. Exo 23:10-11 ; Lev 25:1-7 . I’ll quote the text: “And six years thou shalt sow thy land, and shalt gather in the increase thereof: but the seventh year thou shalt let it rest and lie fallow, that the poor of thy people may eat: and what they leave the beast of the field shall eat. In like manner thou shalt deal with thy vineyard, and with thy oliveyard.” That is the Exodus text of the land sabbath, two verses of chapter 23. Being in that chapter it is an integral part of the covenant of Mount Sinai, and that part of the covenant in which God and the nation are represented. You will find the Levitical text in Lev 25:1-7 . We begin at the third verse. “Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and gather in the fruits thereof; but in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a sabbath unto Jehovah: thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard. That which groweth of itself of thy harvest [that is, the volunteer crop] thou shalt not reap, and the grapes of thy undressed vine thou shalt not gather: it shall be a year of solemn rest for the land. . . . all the increase thereof shall be for food.” That is the original text of the law.
2. What things are evident from the law itself?
Ans. (1) That in all agricultural departments there should be a suspension of work; that man must not plow, nor reap, nor harvest;
2) That every other man, particularly the poor, must have a right to go into the fields or into the oliveyards or into the vineyards and eat what he can eat of what the volunteer crop grows that year, and if they leave anything, then the beasts may go in and eat it;
(3) That the purpose of the law is: First, to solemnly teach the people that the land was God’s. That the man had no absolute ownership of the land and he was simply a tenant under God; and second, the scientific basis or purpose of the law is presented in the passage in Exodus, that the land “shall lie fallow.” Every good farmer will tell you that if you cultivate land to its extreme ability every year, you soon exhaust its fertility, and in order to preserve the product of the land, there should be a “land fallow” for that land in which you do not cultivate it.
If you were in Virginia today you would see hundreds of farms, which used to be farms, that are now absolutely worthless. The reason is that by continuous cultivation they exhausted all the fertility of the land. So those are two reasons that are assigned, and the third reason assigned is, that the poor might have, at least once in seven years, the right to eat of the volunteer fruits of the earth; that, though the poor would not be allowed to go in and take away a basketful of fruit, and they would not be allowed to harvest, the rich and the poor just alike, in perfect equality before God, could go in day by day and eat of it;
(4) That there was a penalty for not keeping this land sabbath which you will find set forth in the following scriptures: Lev 26:43 , alluded to in Jer 25:11-12 ; Jer 29:10 ; Dan 9:2 ; Zec 1:12-7:5 .
3. What was the penalty?
Ans. That if they did not observe that land sabbath, then God would remove them from the land, and keep them in captivity until there was a land sabbath equal in extent to all of the land years that had been disregarded. As a matter of fact, for 490 years in their history they disregarded this law of the land sabbath, that is, they stole seventy years, or oneseventh of 490 years. They robbed God and the land of seventy years’ rest; the land of rest, and God of his title. Now for each year that they withheld the observing of this land sabbath they were kept in captivity. I have given scriptures that show how this law was enforced, viz.: by the seventy years of captivity in Babylon which kept them out of the land just exactly the time that they had withheld the observance of the land sabbath in Canaan.
4. What concurrent laws went with the land sabbath?
Ans. There were three concurrent laws:
(1) One releasing the borrowers from any collection of the debt owed during that year. There was the suspension of the collecting power of the land. Where a man had borrowed money the creditor could not collect it off him, nor any interest off him that year.
(2) The second concurrent law was, that the Hebrew bond servant was to go free that year, if he had sold himself to a brother Hebrew or to an alien living in that territory and under the jurisdiction of the government.
(3) And the third and most important of all of the concurrent laws was, that when the Feast of Tabernacles came in the year of the land sabbath, the whole Pentateuch was to be read to the people.
5. Where do you find the text of the law concerning the release of the debtor and why this law?
Ans. 1 am going over each one of these concurrent laws particularly. We will take the first one. You will find the text of the law concerning the release of the debtor in Deu 15:1-6 . That gives the text of a concurrent law of the release of the debtor, or rather the suspension of the power of the lender to collect payment of borrowed money. Why this law releasing the borrower, and what is the basis of this law? As in that year all agricultural labor was suspended, and all income from crops was suspended, it was an equitable thing that the man should not have to pay debts or interest that year. That is the idea underlying it.
6. Give an account found in later history where the Jews recovenanted to observe this law to release the Levite during the land sabbath.
Ans. It is stated in Neh 10:31 . They had returned from captivity, and that captivity was because they disregarded the land sabbath. Nehemiah insists that the returned captives enter into a covenant with each other, that they would strictly follow that law.
7. What was the import of the second concurrent law, the law of the bond servant?
Ans. 1 told you this special part should be brought out concerning the land sabbath in Exo 21:2-6 , and in Deu 15:12-18 ; that the Hebrew could not become a slave if he was sold into bondage; that it was not perpetual. In the seventh year he was to be released, and if an alien had bought him in that seven years, he must release him, i.e., if living in the land subject to these laws.
8. What was the penalty of disobeying these laws with reference to the bond servant?
Ans. A most thrilling account of the penalty is found in Jer 34:13-22 . I quote some of that to show how God never forgot any of his laws that he had enacted: “Thus saith the Lord, the God of Israel: I made a covenant with your fathers in the day that I brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, saying, At the end of seven years ye shall let go every man his brother that is a Hebrew, which hath been sold unto thee, and hath served thee six years, thou shalt let him go free from thee: but your fathers hearkened not unto me, neither inclined their ear. And ye were now turned, and had done that which is right in mine eyes, in proclaiming liberty every man to his neighbour; and ye had made a covenant before me in the house which is called by my name.” In other words “You have disobeyed my covenant; you pretended to let those bondsmen go and then by a small technicality of law reinvolved them. [Now we come to the penalty.] Inasmuch as ye have denied liberty to whom I had ordained liberty, I will proclaim unto you a liberty but it will be a liberty to the sword, to the pestilence, and to the famine. I will give the bodies of those transgressors of the law, their dead bodies, to the fowls for meat.”
9. Which is the most important of the concurrent laws, where found, what was the prominent idea and how does the provision of it compare with modern methods, etc?
Ans. The most important of the concurrent laws is the provision for reading the whole of the Pentateuch to all Israel assembled together in grand convocation. It is in Deu 31:10-13 . It is the most remarkable Sunday school that the earth ever knew, commencing at Deu 31:10 : “And Moses commanded them, saying, At the end of every seven years [toward the end of it], thou shall read this law [meaning the whole of the Pentateuch]. When all Israel is come to appear before the Lord thy God in the place which he shall choose, thou shalt read this law before all Israel in their hearing. Gather the people together, men, women and children, and thy stranger that is within thy gates, that they may hear and that they may learn, and fear the Lord your God, and observe to do all the words of the law; and that their children, who have not known, may hear, and learn to fear the Lord your God, as long as ye live in the land whither ye go over the Jordan to possess it.”
This is a remarkable statute. There is nothing like it in history. Notice the true conception of the Sunday school, viz.: men, women, and children. Notice the length of that Sunday school; it probably did not last the whole year of the land sabbath, for it commenced with the Feast of Tabernacles. There was no work to do; all agricultural work was suspended, and the nation gathered before God in Sunday school, men, women, and children; and in the hearing of the assembled nation the whole book of the Pentateuch was read and expounded, and so expounded that even a child that had not known anything must know the law of God, and believe and do it. Now the question arises, Did they ever try to observe that law? Of course, when they did not keep the land sabbath at all they did not keep that law. But we have one remarkable fulfilment. After their return from captivity in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, they did carry out this law. That account tells you that they were gathered together, men, women, and children, and that Ezra stood upon the pulpit (that is the only place in the Bible where the word “pulpit” is mentioned) and Ezra slowly read the law and the scribes around him explained the law. He slowly read a part, then came the explanation of that part; it lasted from an early hour in the morning to a late hour in the evening; and it was kept up until they got through with the Pentateuch.
I am quite sure that it would produce a revolution to keep the people of the present day in a religious service that long. They have so many other things that they want to do, that every year they are losing the opportunity to hear the Word of God. I know a number of churches that count it a sin for the preacher to preach over fifteen minutes; I could give you the names of the churches that make it a rule that the service should not be over fifteen minutes. Now how are those people to know the meaning of the Word of God? One of the highest things in the world for the preacher is to be able to expound the Word of God from the pulpit. Now, you count up the services in the year, counting morning and evening, thirty minutes every Sunday, and it would require a man to be as old as Methuselah ever to get through with the high places in the Bible from his pulpit, and as the multitude of people never hear the law of God except as it is announced from the pulpit, they are reared in ignorance of that law. The modern service has become ritualistic. There are about ten items on the pro- gram of the Sunday morning service, and by the time they get to the sermon it is usually about fifteen minutes to twelve, and when the dinner horn blows they all want to go to dinner, and there is only fifteen minutes for the sermon. If the man goes over thirty minutes they get restless. What are you going to do about it? How can they compare themselves with those ancient people that gave so much time to the law of God?
THE JUBILEE SABBATH 10. Where do you find the text of the law of the Jubilee sabbath? Explain it and give its application.
Ans. In Lev 25:8-28 . I quote a part of it, beginning at Lev 25:8 : “And thou shalt number seven sabbaths of the years unto thee,” seven times seven years (that is, seven land sabbaths). Seven times seven is forty-nine, that is, forty-nine years. “Then thou shalt cause the trumpet of the jubliee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month; in the day of atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout the whole land. And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto the inhabitants thereof. A jubilee shall the fiftieth year be unto you; ye shall not sow, neither reap that which groweth of itself, nor gather the grapes in it of thy vine undressed.”
You see there are two years which come together and there is no planting, no pruning. And every man shall return unto his original possession of the house sold to his neighbor. That is, if a person bought his neighbor’s land on the first year after the Jubilee, he bought only the crop of the land for forty-nine years; he didn’t buy the land, but the fruit, for on the year of the Jubilee it went right back to the original owner. If he bought two years after the Jubilee he bought only forty-seven years, and so on down. “According to the number of years after the jubilee thou shalt buy of thy neighbour, and according to the number of years of the fruit he shall sell unto thee. According to the multitude of the years thou shalt increase the price thereof, and according to the fewness of the years thou shalt diminish the price of it; for according to the numbers of years of the fruits doth he sell unto thee. . . .. 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 the three years,” i.e., the land sabbath year, the Jubilee year and the year following until new crops were made. “The land shall not be sold in perpetuity; for the land is mine. . . . And in all the land in your possession ye shall grant a redemption for the land.” If a man was too poor to redeem that which he sold, his kinsmen had to redeem it for him, and if neither he nor his kinsmen were able to redeem it, it had to go back to him anyhow.
11. What are the essential particulars of this law?
Ans. (1) First of all is liberty. Suppose a man had sold himself to his Hebrew brother in the sixth year of the land sabbath, a year before the Jubilee, then whether he had been able to redeem himself or not, in the year of the Jubilee he is free.
(2) The next point of interest in the law is, that land could not be sold in perpetuity. After careful examination of this Jubilee and land sabbath business, I have reached this conclusion: that this law forbade both private and communal ownership of land. There is a political party that is trying to destroy private ownership today in our land by associational and communal trusts. Neither as a community nor as individuals did the people own the land. The land is God’s, the earth and the fulness thereof. The only thing that the ownership gave to the country was the use of its fruits. They could not absolutely sell it because of the law which brought it back to him when the year of Jubilee came round. Therefore, the individual did not have absolute private ownership, and the community did not own it. God owns it.
(3) The third thought is that if a man in extremity sold his land he could redeem it at any time. If he sold his own place and wanted to buy it back he could do it plus the improvements,” and if he were unable to redeem it any kinsman he had could redeem it for him.
(4) The next relation to the law is the relation of the dwellinghouse. If the dwellinghouse was in the walled city and he sold it under stress of circumstances and kept the privilege of redeeming it within one year after that, that dwellinghouse did not come back to him in the year of Jubilee. Why? Because the value of a residence in a great city is not its value in land for any agricultural purpose, but its valuation comes from a crowded population in that place. For instance, suppose a man was living where an important streetcar line now runs, and would not help build that street; would not help put down those pavements; would not help to get the streetcar. When the streetcar line and the pavements came, his property was increased 50 per cent, in this instance. He did not do it; other people did it. They built that street, those pavements and that streetcar line. It did not come to them by what he did.
(5) The next thought is concerning dwellinghouses in villages or in the country. A dwellinghouse in the village or country was counted as a part of the land, since its only use for it was that the land around could be cultivated and it could not be sold in perpetuity like a dwellinghouse of the city.
(6) There is another part of the law, that in the case of a Levite’s dwellinghouse: because they had no dwellinghouse assigned to them, they had to hold both their dwellinghouses and their land in perpetuity.
(7) The next was the effect of it. This is the law on slavery and refers to Hebrew slaves, whether sold to Hebrews or foreigners.
12. What was the signal of the Atonement Day in the Jubilee year, what is its meaning and what hymn is based on it?
Ans. On the Day of Atonement for the forty-ninth year, a great trumpet should be blown throughout the land; whether one lived in Jericho, Jerusalem, or any other part of the Holy Land, on the great Day of Atonement, which was the tenth day of the seventh month, he would hear the trumpet sound, and the meaning of that sound was “Liberty, liberty, liberty!” A hymn has been written on that: “Blow ye the Trumpet, Blow!” I will tell directly what it typifies, but before I get to that I want to discuss the land sabbath generally.
13. Cite examples of community ownership of land.
Ans. The Spartans of Greece were not allowed to sell their land, and among the Dalmatians it was the law that no matter what changes took place in the ownership of the land, every eighth year the land would be redistributed. A remarkable fact ia cited by Prescott in The Conquest of Peru, viz.: that under the rule of the Incas the land belonged to the nation and whenever a man married he was allowed a certain portion of land as an inalienable possession. What use has an old bachelor for land? He got that title to that land when he married. Now, up in Oklahoma, the old law was that each tribe of Indians, as a tribe, had a certain section of land set apart for the tribe. They did not own that land in severally, but in community, and in order to sell a foot of it there had to be a legal gathering of the tribes and a treaty made by which the tribe would sell (not the individual) a piece of that land. A great many white men went in there and obtained a lease of land and in that way became very rich. They got a lease from the tribe.
14.What was the position of Jefferson, George, Cooper, and Goldsmith on this question?
Ans. Mr. Jefferson has announced some doctrines on the land question. He says, “The earth belongs to the living,” that is, the use of its fruits is for the living, not for the dead. It is a far-reaching statement. It was upon that statement that Henry George wrote his famous book, Progress and Poverty. In the early settlement of New York vast stretches of country were given by sovereigns in Europe to what they called “Patroons.” The sovereign placed the patroon on the land and in process of time this land reached a fabulous price, and one man in land value could be worth half a state. This brought about revolutions in the state of New York in the ownership of that land; that no man had a right to claim such a section of the earth when multitudes of the people were homeless, and especially when they did not get that from the people but from some king who had no right to it. Fenimore Cooper has written three or four of his great novels On the land question. And he wrote them, too, mainly in the interest of the landowner, not the people. Goldsmith, in his famous poem, “The Deserted Village,” immortalized himself. England has had her struggles and the result was that the yeomanry that constituted a large class, won its battles in wars of strife and left England with whole villages that had nothing but empty houses. It was upon that situation that this poem was written, in which occurs this strong language:
Ill fares the land to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates and men decay.
There are immense portions of Scotland today, once populous, now deer parks. A few men own a greater part of England and Scotland, and that is why the Germans, Swedes, and Italians swarm across the ocean to this country. I have talked with them and they said, “Because my father nor my grandfather ever owned a foot of land; never had a chance to get a piece. Since we came over here we can easily buy some land. How proud we are when we can say, ‘My home, this is my home.’ ” The great curses today that put in jeopardy the property of this nation, are those immense syndicates, ever buying. They bought up the coal lands; they bought up the forest land; are sending agents to Puerto Rico; are getting hold of the Philippines and of every valuable part of the world. Their agents are buying up lumber and you are sure to pay for it when you go to build a house. There isn’t any such thing in the United States today as a man being able to open a lumber yard as a private person. The combine on the lumber question is simply impregnable.
15. What are the great lessons of the Jubilee sabbath?
Ans. (1) The relation of God to the land and man; the land is his and the use of it goes to man.
(2) The lesson of faith. “What shall we eat in the seventh year if we do not plant a crop?”
(3) In the continual equalizing and distribution of the property so that there should never be such a thing as a syndicate, a thing impossible under those Jewish laws.
(4) The lesson in equity. There is no unfairness in this law. If a man bought a neighbor’s property, he didn’t buy it outright; he bought the fruit of it. If he redeemed it he had to pay back what had been paid for it.
(5) The typical significance of the year of Jubilee. Our Saviour in his sermon at Nazareth, after he had entered the public ministry, read a certain passage in Isaiah and he said that he was anointed by the Holy Spirit to preach a deliverance to the captives and the acceptable year of the Lord. So (a) it signifies the final repentance and restoration of Israel; (b) it points to the restoration of all things, at the second, final coming of the Lord; (c) the trumpets signify the preaching of the gospel, “Blow ye the Trumpet, Blow.” You go out as a preacher and say, “If Christ shall make you free, you shall be free indeed.” You go to bring sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf; that is the significance of the trumpets.
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
Lev 25:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses in mount Sinai, saying,
Ver. 1. And the Lord spake unto Moses in Mount Sinai. ] Posthuman, returning from the eastern parts, is, by Sulpitius, a brought in thus speaking: I saw the Red Sea, I went up Mount Sinai, the very top whereof, reaching up almost to heaven, cannot be come at.
a Sulp., Dial i., cap. 2.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Leviticus Chapter 25
CHAPTER 3.
THE LAND AND JEHOVAH’S EARTHLY PURPOSE.
1. THE SABBATH YEAR.
Lev 25:1-7 .
The Feasts had given the entire circle of divine purpose and ways leading up to its effectuation, etc. (Lev 23 ). Lev 24 presents, in a remarkable and concise twofold, the unfailing priestly light in the Sanctuary, whatever the darkness of Israel might be temporarily to their shame because of their rebellion and blasphemy of His Name. This is vividly set forth in the fruit of a mixed marriage in the same chapter and its unsparing doom. Now follows, in a seventh sabbatic year, and the jubilee when seven sevens of years pass, Jehovah’s pledge that His mercy endures for ever, and this for His land, for His people; as it is written in Deu 32:43 , “For He will avenge the blood of His servants, and will render vengeance to His adversaries, and will be merciful to His land, to His people.”
Jehovah means to bless all families of the earth in Abraham, and in his seed, the true (not the figurative) Son dead and risen; and so the apostle could justify, by its first clause, the gospel to every creature, and those that believe of the Gentiles, rejoicing with the Israel of God, all such fleshly distinction gone in the church. But the fulfilment for Israel, and the nations as a whole awaits the day of Jehovah; when after overwhelming judgments on both, and on apostate Christendom most of all, the Crucified, Jah the Saviour, shall reign over all the earth. In that day shall there be one Jehovah, and His name one, all idols consigned to the moles and to the bats. Yet though mercy will surely bless the nations, even Egypt the old oppressor and Assyria that punished them for their idolatry, Israel shall still be expressly Jehovah’s inheritance. No other is holy and pleasant here below. By the Christians, during Israel’s night, as for the faithful elders, is seen a better land, that is, a heavenly, and not as by them afar off, but themselves brought nigh and lit up with the light of Christ, their life, known far more fully by sovereign grace. How can any, with the N. T. and the Holy Spirit as now given, doubt it for a moment? No wonder that such children are gloomy, under notions so defective (to say the least), and occupied overmuch with creature evil, to the loss of the spiritual good to be enjoyed; for whatever the reproach and the suffering, we more than conquer through Him that loved us.
The Jews are exiles again, and far longer the time required for their blind hatred of their, of Jehovah’s, Messiah. But they shall yet sing, “His foundation is in the mountains of holiness. Jehovah loveth the gates of Zion more than all the tabernacles of Jacob. Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God.” At that very time God will have visited the judgments of saints and apostles and prophets on the corrupt city of confusion, which has so long dazzled the eyes of the superstitious as the false eternal, doomed to God’s burning, the smoke of which is to go up to the ages of ages, when the earth as well as the heavens rejoice. Neither London nor Paris, neither Berlin nor Vienna nor yet Moscow, has the smallest claim to a sacred title. It is quite easy to understand that successful merchants, soldiers, and scientists think otherwise; but what is the worth of any opinion of man? The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God abides for ever. And the Christian can say so with an emphasis and joy unknown as yet to the Jew, if he but know his calling upwards, waiting for the Lord to receive him to Himself for heavenly glory as well as reigning over the earth in that day.
” 1 And Jehovah spoke to Moses in mount Sinai, saying, 2 Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them, When ye come into the land that I will give you, the land shall keep a sabbath to Jehovah. 3 Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years shalt thou prune thy vineyard, and gather in the produce thereof; 4 but in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest for the land, a sabbath to Jehovah. Thy field thou shalt not sow, nor prone thy vineyard. 5 That which groweth of itself of thy harvest thou shalt not reap, and the grapes of thine undressed vines thou shalt not gather: a year of rest shall it be for the land. 6 And the sabbath of the land shall be for food for you; for thee, and for thy bondman, and for thy handmaid, and for thy hired servant, and for him that dwelleth as a sojourner with thee, 7 and for thy cattle, and for the beasts that [are] in thy land: all the produce thereof, it shall be for your food.”
Now here was to worldly ears the strangest edict ever imposed on a people. Nebuchadnezzar, despotic as he was, could not dare to issue it; nor Cyrus the Persian, nor Alexander. Julius Caesar or his imperial nephew would have counted it stark madness. Jehovah laid it down as a matter of course for a people separated to Himself; and this early in their wilderness history. For it is intimated that He spoke it to Moses in mount Sinai, whence they moved early in the second year; as then He told them of their coming to the promised land, though many years through their sinful folly must pass till the rebellious generation was followed by another one. He knew the end from the beginning, and has communicated to His own what was good for them to know, let the miscalled higher critics revile as they may. Nor did Jehovah ever fail to make good the extraordinary means He adopted, as explained in vers. 21, 22. He gave them, while Israel obeyed, the produce of three years on every sixth year, to carry over not that year only but the sabbatic and the eighth, when they sowed and waited for its harvest. It was therefore a constant exertion of divine power and goodness to a people whom He thus encouraged to trust and honour Him. But Israel soon became restive under His control and authority, and contrived to be “like all the nations,” growing mad on strange gods beyond any. Retrograding they violated the Covenant, and made it impossible for Jehovah to perform His wondrous part, unless He consented to His own dishonour.
The Sabbath had a great and holy interest from the beginning. It was God’s rest from creating to make; but man sinned and failed to enter. It reappeared in His dealings of grace before Israel reached Sinai, when it was marked out after the manna was given, type of rest after the living bread from heaven. But Israel liked not that bread of God, and lusted after flesh, confiding in human ability to keep the law which embodied the Sabbath as a divine command. It became a sign to Israel, a sign of God: rest to faith, when God introduced any new principle in the great book of redemption, Exodus. But Israel despised and ignored His sabbaths, though every week closed with one, and the first month had an added one to which Messiah’s death lent a most solemn import, with the sevens till Pentecost; and the seventh month more openly still, with its Day of Atonement, and its Feast of Booths, with its first day and eighth extraordinarily. But the sabbath year was the same writ large to be read and seen by all men. It brought into prominence the land: “a year of rest for the land,” of which Jehovah was landlord, and Israel His tenants at will.
O that His people had hearkened, and Israel had walked in His ways! But they would none of Him to their own ruin, to this day even worse than of old, but not for ever. No: the land is His, and He will give it again to them, no longer on the condition of their faithfulness to Him but of His to them in mercy; when they are brought down truly to feel that mercy alone suits either their sin and ruin, or His grace and truth as their Saviour God. God’s rights remain to faith when man, yea the chosen nation, sinned away all pretension to right on their part. It is true that an unparalleled tribulation must be the last chapter of the Jew without the true God and His Anointed, alas! under the antichrist, the man of sin, “the time of Jacob’s trouble; but he shall be saved out of it” (Jer 30:7 ). Yes, Jehovah will be merciful to His land, to His people.
The sabbath year was also marked by the liberation of a brother who had become a bondman to an Israelite; for what anomalies might not be till Messiah come and reign over them? But even during the day of evil through one man’s weakness or fault, and another man’s availing himself of it for his selfishness, in that land only was the sign of the good time coming, and of Him who is competent to put down all enemies. But even now Jehovah insisted on all that heeded this law, that after six years of bondage the Hebrew slave could claim liberty. “In the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee” (Exo 21 , Deu 15:12 ); and when sent free, he was not to “go away empty.” The law made nothing perfect; but it was righteous, good, and holy check on man. It was not Christ and redemption, or the Spirit and the new man; so that neo-critics, who complain of things then as not on the Christian level, only betray their illwill and ignorance.
Again, the seventh or sabbath year was Jehovah’s release for the insolvent Hebrew (Deu 15:1-15 ). It is beautiful and affecting, how the lawgiver was inspired to appeal to the hearts of those who had, on behalf of the poor brother that had not. But the divine mind was clear and express in this beneficent obliteration of debts in the year when His own bounty was so conspicuous to His people, spite of sad and frequent faults.
There was the further care of His wisdom, that “at the end of [every] seven years, in the solemnity of the year of release, in the feast of tabernacles, when all Israel is come to appear before Jehovah thy God in the place which he shall choose, thou shalt read this law before all Israel in their hearing” (Deu 31:10 , Deu 31:11 ). Thus admirably was it provided, unless rebellious wickedness hindered, that every Israelite, men, women, and children, ay, “and thy stranger that is within thy gates,” should hear and observe to do all the words of this law.
But as unbelief led to idolatry, so even before this, to profane the sabbaths of every kind, of days and years, as we find predicted in Lev 26:14 , Lev 26:15 , and also punished in the carrying away to Babylon for seventy years (2Ch 36:20 , 2Ch 36:21 ). Alas! it is the old, old story of man’s failure in every duty, and from the earliest; for what meant the setting up the calf of gold which Aaron made at the people’s mandate, before the tables on which Jehovah deigned to write His law were brought down by Moses? These however are only the wretched ways of man. But days come, when all will be recovered by a poor and afflicted and repentant people under Messiah and the new covenant. Then will be fulfilled all the pledges of the sabbath year, and incomparably more, every promise and every prediction to God’s glory, and to the blessing of Israel and all the nations; as the heavenly saints will enjoy still higher and richer blessings with Christ above.
Here again note the testimony to Jehovah’s beneficence to the humble and the needy and the stranger that sojourned with the Israelite, to their cattle, and to the very beasts in their land: none forgotten, all provided for; though in the sabbath year not a field was sown nor a vineyard pruned, not a field reaped nor the grapes gathered. What a witness for God, if Israel had obeyed! But they disobeyed here as elsewhere; and were it not that Jehovah changes not, the sons of Jacob had been destroyed hopelessly. But He looked on to Messiah and His sacrificial work, awaiting in the latter day their repentance in His grace. Then will He blot out their transgressions for His own sake, and will not remember their sins. Then the deaf shall hear, and the blind see. Then shall the lame leap as a hart, and the tongue sing; for in the wilderness shall waters break forth, and torrents in the desert. And the mirage shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water; in the habitations of wild dogs where they lay, grass with reeds and rushes. In short, sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
On the other hand it ought to be plain to every reflecting Christian that the type of the recurring sabbatical year of release cannot without violence be applied to the church or to any individual member of it. We have redemption in Christ through His blood, the forgiveness of sins. It is a constant privilege of the gospel. One may have to confess any and every sin into which he falls by the way through unwatchfulness and failure in dependence on God. But the redemption which we received at the start remains unrevoked and unimpaired throughout the entire course of each believer; and the grace which gave it sovereignly then abides in His faithful goodness to the last, providing the advocacy of Christ with the Father and securing our humiliation and self-judgment to the restoration of the soul.
Our relation to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is therefore very different from that of Israel as here traced. And it is of the more importance to seize it, as the tendency ever is to slip from the heavenly and eternal character of our privileges into the earthly and temporal nature of theirs. To confound them has been the bane of Christendom; and the issue is the loss of the “better thing” God provided for us, and the denial of the hopes of Israel in their due place and season.
CHAPTER 4.
THE YEAR OF JUBILEE
Lev 25:8-13
Deeply impressive as the sabbath year is in ushering in this chapter, more outward and imposing and thorough-going is the jubilee when seven sabbaths of years were fulfilled, or forty-nine years. This therefore is next introduced in a general way with details to the end of the chapter.
” 8 And thou shalt count to thee seven sabbaths of years, seven years seven times; and the days of the seven sabbaths of years shall be to thee forty and nine years. 9 And thou shalt cause a sound of the trumpet to go forth in the seventh month on the tenth [day] of the month; on the day of atonement shall ye sound the trumpet throughout all your land. 10 And ye shall hallow the year of the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty in the land to all the inhabitants thereof: a jubilee shall it be to you, and ye shall return [every] man to his possession, and ye shall return [every] man to his family. 11 A jubilee this fiftieth year [shall] be to you: ye shall not sow, nor reap its after-growth, nor gather one of its separations. 12 For it [is] the jubilee; it shall be holy to you; out of the field ye shall eat its produce. 13 In this year of jubilee shall ye return [every] man to his possession” (8-13).
As there was a sabbath day and month, so also a sabbatical year and one after seven times that year; this last being the jubilee, when the cycle of seven sabbatical years was completed. The first two referred to the people with Jehovah; the last two to the land. So it is with us now that the Spirit of God carefully brings out the individual’s true and full relation to God, before our corporate privilege is unfolded, as we may read in the Epistle to the Ephesian saints. So here, after days of sin, sorrow, and ruin, it is the day anticipated in these pledges by the way whereon Jehovah who chose Israel will remember His people, even to the joy of the nations long envious and scornful; when He will avenge the blood of His servants, and will render vengeance to His adversaries, and will be merciful to His land, to His people. The land is prominent in the sabbatical year, still more completely in the jubilee.
Hence the explicit care to base the jubilee on the offering and acceptance of the atonement-day, the most solemn sacrifice of the year. The cornet which was to sound so loud, and bring in the proclamation of liberty throughout the land to all the inhabitants thereof, was not on the first of the seventh month but on the tenth. The first was a sabbath too, and distinguished by a memorial of blowing the cornet. It too was a holy convocation: no servile work was to be done, and a fire-offering made to Jehovah. But the tenth was the fast, when no work was to be done, with the most peremptory warning that every soul not afflicted on that same day should be cut off from among his peoples, and that every soul doing any manner of work on that same day Jehovah would destroy from among His people. Christ’s atonement alone accounts for this. Therefore the repentance in dust and ashes; therefore too the exclusion of any manner of work. His work, His suffering for sin, explains it all.
The “liberty” which immediately follows is the answer to that work of atonement completed and accepted. It is quite a different liberty from that deliverance from the law of sin and death which we know as Christians as traced in 2Co 3 , and Gal 5 . The jubilee is in no way the type of what pertains to the Christian or the church, but of Israel for the land when Jehovah’s people shall be brought into their full promised blessing. Pentecost typifies what we now enjoy by the gift of the Spirit, consequent on Christ our passover sacrificed for us, and His resurrection shown in its wave-sheaf and the wave-loaves, till at an untold moment the heavenly saints are changed and caught up to meet Him for the Father’s house. Only this was a mystery not yet revealed in scripture but hid in God. After that, when time begins again to be counted, in the seventh month comes a new series of divine dealings to apply the already accomplished work of atonement to Israel, awaked from their long slumber of death on the first of the month, then brought by self-judgment and humiliation under the atoning sacrifice in power of truth, at length the feast of glory for time and even eternity.
It is here too that the jubilee finds its just place and true application; for it has its peculiar place for Israel so marked that it is treated here distinctly from the greater cycle of the Feasts of Leviticus. It has nothing whatever to say to any joy for us in the resurrection when the last trumpet sounds for our joining Christ on high to be with Him above. It concerns characteristically the people and the land; for Christ is to have glory everywhere, and a suited people for the earth as well as the heavens. Here the theologians are sadly astray and short of the truth. And the N. T. is as clear about it, as the O. T. is full of it. The fiftieth year the Israelites were to hallow, and proclaim in the land for all the inhabitants thereof. It is the era when all Israel shall be saved too, when all Zion’s children shall be taught of Jehovah, and great shall be their peace. They shall be all righteous, and possess the land for ever as the branch of Jehovah’s planting, the work of His hands, that He may be glorified. The type was but the shadow of a greater antitype. But it is of Israel’s blessedness here below when Messiah reigns.
“A jubilee shall it be to you, and ye shall return every man to his possession, and ye shall return every man to his family.” We can readily perceive how appropriate such consolation is to poor distressed Israel. They had a vested interest there, and from Jehovah, but by their own self-confidence held on the tenure of law, that is, of their own righteousness. Alas! they violated their law in every way. They were as mad as Babylon on their idols, and the Jews were exiled to Babylon, as the rest had been to Assyria. And when a remnant of Jews returned in God’s goodness for the coming of Messiah in due time, it was but to reject and have Him crucified by lawless hands; as they also refused the Spirit’s call in the gospel, and especially rose up against it for the Gentiles. For all that Jehovah waits to be gracious; and when the Gentiles, instead of standing by faith and continuing in goodness, claim all for themselves in pride and denial of Israel, they too shall become objects of judgment. Then God’s mercy shall Dow like a river on Israel repentant and believing; and the jubilee shall sound for the long distant and deaf, the atoning sacrifice being received in faith and true affliction of heart to the denial of self and all manner of work. Liberty shall be proclaimed, and a return shall be for every man, and for every man to his family. As the land shall mourn, every family apart and their wives apart in self-judgment, so all will be united in joy when the restitution of all things arrives. “A jubilee this fiftieth year shall be to you.”
Such language has a force to Israel as it has to no other people, because Jehovah gave them the land of His choice for them, as for none else. Still less can the words have fitness for the Christian or the church, chosen out of every family, and brought into union with Christ, so that henceforth as Christians we know no man according to flesh. We belong even now to a dead and risen Christ, and are a new and heavenly family, not man’s but God’s for glory on high. And what is the possession to which every Christian returns? The notion becomes an absurdity. We had nothing in our natural estate as children of wrath; we had only sins and sin. There was no earthly paradise for fallen man to return to, nor yet possession in the land of Israel for a Gentile. To us all our portion as Christians is above nature and heavenly; and it is what sovereign grace gives us in and with Christ. Only thus could heavenly glory be ours, and all we enjoy as members of His body and shall inherit in that day.
So also the provision that follows, like that of the sabbatical year in vers. 11, 12. “Ye shall not sow, nor reap its aftergrowth, nor gather in its separations (i. e. the fruit of its undressed vines). For it is the jubilee; it shall be holy to you: out of the field ye shall eat its produce.” It is a little testimony to the great change when the land shall be no more barren or reluctant, but yield its increase with all fulness, to honour the great King, and greet His people no longer small but mighty and exalted and blest. “Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress, and instead of the nettle shall come up the myrtle, and it shall be to Jehovah for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.” How apply such words to the Christian and the church, save to drag us down from heaven to earth, and to deny Israel’s hopes under Messiah and the new covenant! No, it is for them, not about us, that we read, “In this year of jubilee ye shall return every man to his possession.”
“Give the king thy judgments, O God, and thy righteousness unto the king’s son.
He shall judge thy people with righteousness, and thy poor with judgment.
The mountains shall bring peace to the people, and the hills, in righteousness.
He shall judge the poor of the people, He shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor.
They shall fear thee while the sun endureth, and so long as the moon, throughout all generations, he shall come down like rain upon the mown grass: as showers that water the earth.
In his days shall the righteous flourish; and abundance of peace, till the moon be no more.
He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the River unto the ends of the earth.
They that dwell in the wilderness shall bow before him; and his enemies shall lick the dust.
The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall bring presents: the kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts.
Yea, all kings shall fall down before him: all nations shall serve him.
For he shall deliver the needy when he crieth; and the poor, that hath no helper.
He shall have pity on the poor and needy, and the souls of the needy he shall save.
He shall redeem their soul from oppression and violence; and precious shall their blood be in his sight: and they shall live; and to him shall be given of the gold of Sheba: and men shall pray for him continually; they shall bless him all the day long.
There shall be abundance of corn in the earth upon the top of the mountains; the fruit thereof shall shake like Lebanon: and they of the city shall flourish like grass on the earth.
His name shall endure for ever; his name shall be continued as long as the sun: and men shall be blessed in him: all nations shall call him happy.
Blessed be the Lord God, the God of Israel, who only doeth wondrous things: and blessed be his glorious name for ever; and let the whole earth be filled with his glory. Amen, and Amen.
The prayers of David the son of Jesse are ended.”
CHAPTER 5.
THE JUBILEE THE STANDARD OF VALUE
Lev 25:14-17
The position of Israel on earth was unique. They were the only people over whom Jehovah’s name was called. “Ye are my witnesses, saith Jehovah, and my servant whom I have chosen: in order that ye may know and believe that I am He; before Me was no god formed, and none will be after Me.” So the apostle, instead of depreciating their privileges, says in Rom 9:4 , “Whose is the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the law-giving, and the service, and the promises; whose are the fathers, and of whom is Christ as concerning the flesh, who is over all, God blessed for ever.” It was they who in their blind unbelief stumbled at the stumbling-stone, the infinite grace of His humiliation, and His obedience unto death – the death of the cross, which shut out from the eyes of their heart the height of His glory far beyond that of the Messiah.
But even in the matter of the land allotted to each Israelite, we see a standard of valuation which was meant to keep before them their peculiar relation to Jehovah, as well as their bright prospect, whatever the failure or the chastening, whatever the change even to exile. For a restitution of all things awaits them on earth under the Messiah, the ground of all their blessings.
” 14 And if thou sell aught to thy neighbour, or buy of thy neighbour’s hand, ye shall not over-reach one another. 15 According to the number of years since the jubilee thou shalt buy of thy neighbour; according to the number of years of the crops he shall sell to thee. 16 according to the greater number of the years thou shalt increase the price thereof; and according to the fewness of years thou shalt diminish the price thereof; for it is the number of the crops that he selleth to thee. 17 And ye shall not over-reach one another; but thou shalt fear thy God; for I [am] Jehovah your God” (vers. 14-17).
But like every thing else here below committed to man’s responsibility, the polity of the theocracy broke down through the rebellion of Israel. Those who were nationally set apart to Jehovah sought to be like the nations, that they might have not only a king but other and false gods. Thus the warnings given in His ordinances were trampled under foot. Has therefore the word of Jehovah failed? Far from it. Israel, having gone astray, has borne the chastisement and has yet more and worse to bear before the blessing. But the word of God shall stand for ever: even while the ruin is complete, and before the manifested blessing comes for Israel and the land, we have it for our profit by faith.
To the Jew it ought to have been a precious resource that underneath such regulations as these the principle stood that the land belonged to Jehovah. This secures inalienable title for Israel in the long run. The Gentiles have trodden down the land and its capital for many centuries; but their times shall be fulfilled. The last empire is doubtless to revive in a portentous way, and shall be destroyed, not by conquest or decay, but by divine judgment. So shall be destroyed the Antichrist, the lawless king in the land; the Assyrian, or King of the North; and later his gigantic patron, Gog, Prince of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal: these, with their allies and followers too, constitute all the nations of the earth. Their downfall in the day of Jehovah will make way for Jacob to take root. Israel shall blossom and bud; and they shall fill the face of the world with fruit. In that day shall be a root of Jesse, standing as a banner of the peoples: the nations shall seek to it ; and His resting-place shall be glory.
How obvious the comfort thus rendered to the believing Israelite, who would enjoy the blessed assurance of Jehovah’s loving interest in His people! Thus He secures the restoration of the property assigned, in spite of all their errors and imprudence, or the over-reaching of others meanwhile. We know that, among Gentiles who know not God, reigns a general anxiety as to both persons and property. To Israel only was there the divine guarantee at every half-century. But what when this beneficent pledge is incomparably exceeded in the great Jubilee! Then “Behold, these shall come from afar; and, behold, these from the north and from the west; and these from the land of Sinim. Shout, ye heavens; and be joyful, thou earth; and break forth, ye mountains, into singing; for Jehovah comforteth his people, and will have mercy on his afflicted ones” (Isa 49:12 , Isa 49:13 ). No loss of liberty or land more; “for as the new heavens and the new earth which I will make shall remain before me, saith Jehovah, so shall your seed and your name remain” (Isa 66:22 ).
But before that day, and as long or far as there was fidelity to Jehovah and His word, they were bound in selling or buying the land, or rather the lease of it, by the jubilee as instituted by divine command. Personal equity was not all, but Jehovah’s valuation of the worth of its produce till the jubilee. A regularly recurring miracle accompanied subjection to His law. It was not, as for the Christian and the church, a constant hope of Christ’s coming suited to the heavenly people; but the earthly people had their times and seasons, and the value of their sales according to the distance or the nearness of the jubilee. We are not of the world, and should always wait expectantly.
The Israelites were not to over-reach one another; and, if obedient, had a free insurance of life, liberty, and land from Jehovah. “Thou shalt fear thy God; for I [am] Jehovah your God.” What could be more simple and sure for an earthly people? If rebellious, how could they expect it? God is not mocked.
CHAPTER 6.
INCENTIVES TO OBEDIENCE IN THE LAND
Lev 25:18-24
Jehovah did not fail to encourage His people in subjection to Himself as their God, and in a way suited to their position in the land He was about to give them. By their own act their tenure depended on their fidelity; but He exhausted all means to explain, and stimulate, to strengthen and cheer them. Yea, He would act on their behalf in mercy and judgment; and they shall celebrate it soon in everlasting song when they own their rejected king.
” 18 Wherefore ye shall do my statutes, and keep my judgments and do them; and ye shall dwell in the land in safety. 19 And the land shall yield its fruit, and ye shall eat your fill, and dwell therein in safety. 20 And if ye shall say, What shall we eat the seventh year? behold, we shall not sow, nor gather in our increase: 21 then I will command my blessing upon you in the sixth year, and it shall bring forth fruit for the three years. 22 And ye shall sow the eighth year, and eat of the fruits, the old, until the ninth year; until its fruits come in, ye shall eat [of] the old. 23 And the land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land [is] mine; for ye [are] strangers and sojourners with me. 24 And in all the land of your possession ye shall grant a redemption for the land” (vers. 18-24).
Obedience is indeed the essential claim of God on the creature, and the creature’s inalienable duty. But even innocent, sinless, man never stood in it, but failed; and this very soon, when tested, as the opening facts of inspired history prove to every soul that fears God and trembles at His word. How much less did or could fallen man recover his balance? One perfect exception at length appeared, the hope of Whom acted powerfully on all who waited for Him in faith; but all others departed more and more sadly from God, and hardened themselves in disobedience and self-will with ever growing boldness of unbelief.
That exception however was the Creator become man; who demonstrated the incurable evil of fallen man, only made worse by corrupting or defying all God’s remedial means. Worst of all, He proved favoured man’s hatred of God come in nothing but goodness, for God was as far as possible from judging and publishing man’s iniquity, but revealing Himself in sovereign grace. Man’s answer was enmity to God in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing to them their offences. Thereon God would and does now act in Him for His own glory, bringing in the gospel of His grace, and the church Christ’s body. Then obedience assumes its fullest. character in; those that are His elect according to, God the Father’s foreknowledge by (or, in) the Spirit’s sanctification unto obedience and blood-sprinkling of Jesus Christ. The Christian by grace obeys God as a son after Christ’s pattern, though he receives His blood-sprinkling to do it. It is in full contrast with Israel under the most solemn sanction of death if they violated the law (Exo 24:7 , Exo 24:8 ); as they shortly did thoroughly. But what can we say of our obedience either individually or collectively? Its very nature is ignored. The total ruin of Christianity proper is attested by the boast of Christendom in its twofold shame of Jewish ordinance and of Gentile philosophy.
But the land itself equally attests the no less ruin of the Jew. Does Israel therein dwell in safety? Does the land yet yield its fruit? Do the people of God eat their fill, and dwell therein in peace, honour, blessing and glory? When under the Messiah and the new covenant, it will assuredly be so. No longer will they say, what shall we eat the seventh year? Jehovah will bless them every year, not when, by the political help of friendly Gentiles, the Jews, before the harvest and after the blossom, think to become a ripe grape. Not so: the sprigs shall be cut off, and the spreading branches cut down. They are not yet a people prepared for Jehovah. The veil still lies upon their heart, which has not yet truly turned to Him. They do not yet repent at the feet of the crucified Messiah:; and they shall be left together to the ravenous birds of the mountains and to the beasts of the earth, who shall respectively summer and winter upon them. Yet the same inspired: prophet declares, following up their bitter disappointment, “In that time shall a present be brought unto Jehovah of hosts” of that very afflicted people, not with worldly aid without faith, nor to provisional region half-way, but to the place of His name, the Mount Zion. There shall they be ranged in the land, yet in a wholly different order from that under Joshua, but carefully from north to south laid down in Eze 48 and with parallel lines from east to west, then only to be for all the twelve-tribed nationality of Israel.
The Jews are still under the retribution, not only of the law broken in all ways but of the Messiah rejected. So the prophet Isaiah forewarned in his second and still more mature and profound portion, which depraved wits will have to be of his nameless double. Jerusalem is trodden down of Gentiles till their seasons are fulfilled. And the Jews must face a darker page of sin and woe, when the mass of them in the land shall receive the Antichrist for King, as their fathers rejected the true Anointed. Then shall be seen the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory; and when these things begin to come to pass, a godly Jewish remnant look up and lift up their heads, because their redemption draws nigh.
Jehovah will vindicate His rights in that day. “The land shall not be sold in perpetuity,” whatsoever the pretensions pride of Gentile may say. “For the land is Mine.” Strangers and sojourners with Him had been the men of Israel. But thenceforward He will hide His face no more from them; “for I have poured out my Spirit upon the house of Israel, saith the Lord Jehovah.” The right of redemption which they were responsible to grant in all the land of their possession He keeps for the fit moment, and will triumphantly proclaim to their everlasting joy. And what unselfish joy will be the glorified church’s in that day looking down from the heavenly places, and praising Him who is the giver of every good giving and every perfect gift, and of His Son through whom it all comes righteously, and of His Spirit in virtue of whom it can alone be divinely known and enjoyed.
But Christendom is as faithless to His grace as she is indifferent to His glory on high, and hence has sought that supremacy on earth, which is the proper portion in reserve for Israel, when the Son of man shall reign over all nations and tongues under the heavens. They repentant and restored to their land in that day shall have the place of earthly power in righteousness as His own people. Meanwhile we believe and confess Him as the rejected Messiah exalted to the throne of His Father, and not yet sitting on His own throne, and share His sufferings here below, unknown to the world and refusing its alliance or its honours, but waiting for Him to receive us to Himself for the Father’s house, and to be manifested along with Him when He is manifested in glory.
Ignorance of the gospel and of the church’s heavenly relationship coveted earthly case and worldly honour soon after the apostles passed away. That departure left room for the rivalry of the West and the East; as later still it gave birth to the Crusaders which are the plainest evidence that the grace and truth which came through our Lord Jesus was practically not only depraved but effaced. It was what struck the Christian Seer with wondering horror, when he beheld, not the chaste virgin espoused to Christ and suffering with Him here below, but the great harlot gorgeously arrayed, pandering to the lust of kings, intoxicating the peoples, and riding the Beast or Roman Empire, but destined to be the object of God’s sternest judgments for her corruption, cruelty to the saints, and abominable idolatry. But the end is not yet though at hand, and pride rises high before the irretrievable downfall.
CHAPTER 7.
THE RIGHT OF REDEMPTION
Lev 25:25-28
Here as elsewhere is no hiding of the people’s failure in responsibility. Each would surely have his portion in Jehovah’s land. Each was to enjoy the sabbath yea. of the land to Jehovah. For each throughout all the land the joyful sound of the jubilee should sound after: forty-nine years, proclaiming liberty and return, each to his possession. Not because they were more numerous or able, nor yet that they were more righteous than others, had they been chosen; but because Jehovah loved Israel, and because He would keep the oath He had sworn to their fathers, He brought them out with a powerful hand from the then greatest kingdom on earth that oppressed them, redeeming them out of the house of bondage, and giving them these pledges of unfailing rest and deliverance for the day when judgment falls on the inhabited earth. But Israel shall have the kingdom under the whole heavens under the Son of man: an everlasting dominion, which. shall not pass: away, and His kingdom which shall not be destroyed.
Yet it is a great mistake to confound this coming day of blessing for His earthly people with the secret hid in God, and thus from ages and generations, for Christ’s glory in the heavens and the joint-heirs with Him, His heavenly bride. Restitution of all things now ruined here below is quite different from that glory which is above the world, wherein all distinction between Jew and Gentile disappears; because Christ is “the all” for all on high, in the faith of which the Christian and the church are called now to walk. In the world to come, whatever the blessing to every family on earth, the daughter of Zion shall have the first dominion; for great will be the Holy One of Israel in the midst of her. The glorified above as one with Christ shall with Him share the universe. He is given head over all things to the church, His body.
Meanwhile on the side of man failure is anticipated and provided for; and here is contemplated the first case of loss through poverty, the form which failure must take in this type; and which we know in a still deeper way.
” 25 If thy brother grow poor and sell of his possession, then shall his nearest of kin come and redeem what his brother sold. 26 And if the man have no one having right of redemption, and his hand hath attained and found sufficiency for its redemption, 27 then shall he reckon the years since his sale, and restore the overplus to the man to whom he sold it; and so return to his possession. 28 And if his hand have not found what sufficeth to restore it to him, then that which is sold shall remain in the hand of the buyer until the year of jubilee; and in the jubilee it shall go out, and he shall return unto his possession.”
“If” is a serious word for man. No doubt it is righteous; but the fact is that the first man breaks down and fails in his responsibility. He is fallen and a sinner; and of this Israel in the past is the constant witness. Every help that mercy could furnish, while law governed, Israel enjoyed, priesthood, offering, sacrifice. But the failure was ever more and more; and the rejection of their own Messiah, added to their previous idolatry, made their tenure of Jehovah’s land impossible, and their scattering over the earth complete, till the repentance of a godly remnant and return to their Messiah in heart. This will be of Jehovah’s mercy enduring for ever, and through the atonement which grace applies to Israel in that great day. For Jesus will then be owned as the Kinsman Redeemer. And He will indeed come to redeem. The right is His, and He will not fail to recognise and apply it, in everlasting mercy.
But Israel must be made willing. And so it shall be in the day of His power. They refused Him to their own sin and shame and loss in the day of His humiliation, proud as man is so often of his poverty, and blind to his need of grace. Kin otherwise will have failed, and their own hand will have attained to no sufficiency. But grace will count that the time of suffering is accomplished, and that iniquity is pardoned through Him that loved His people and suffered for their sins. It is quite a mistake that mankind is here in question, however wide the gospel call. But redemption, whether for forgiveness of sins, or deliverance of the body, is of believers only. The theologians forget relationship, or vaguely misapply it. We hear of a brother who had his possession lost through unfaithfulness, and restored through grace triumphant over all difficulties. And Israel will be the standing and public witness, both of the loss through evil, and of the gain through grace. Yet the merit is not theirs in any way but only of Jesus, as the grace here and in every case is of God delighting in good of His own nature and of His own will, which rises above creature weakness and worthlessness, whatever the fruits of His Spirit in any.
CHAPTER 8.
THE DWELLING-HOUSE
Lev 25:29-34
It is the people and the land with which Jehovah connects redemption. Both were objects of His gracious choice. Both have fallen under the greatest change through contempt of His goodness on man’s part, and opposition to His will, even to rebellion and apostasy. But Jehovah will triumph on behalf of both, but by His own mercy in Christ the Redeemer, when Israel shall sing, Not unto us, O Jehovah, but unto Thy name give glory, for Thy loving-kindness and for Thy truth’s sake. The redeemed of Jehovah whom He had redeemed from the hand of the oppressor, and gathered out of the countries from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south, shall give thanks to Jehovah, and say that He is good, for His loving-kindness endures for ever. What a contrast with man’s way who starts with confidence, and whose hopes tell a flattering tale; but, looking no more truly to God than the beasts that perish, he has this of His, hand to lie down in sorrow. And none will have this more bitterly and manifestly than such of Israel as presume on their name and privileges as His people while their heart is far from Him and under the enemy’s power. But blessed are all who have their confidence in the Son – in Jehovah Himself. And Zion shall put on her strength, Jerusalem her beautiful garments; and her waste places shall break forth, for Jehovah comforts His people, and redeems her as well as them.
The truth is made more emphatic in the type by making an exception of what man builds, a dwelling-house in a walled city.” 29 And if any one sell a dwelling-house in a walled city, then he shall have the right of redemption up to the end of the year of the sale; for a full year he shall have the right of redemption. 30 But if it be not redeemed until a whole year is complete, then the house that [is] in the walled city shall be established for ever to him that bought it throughout his generations; it shall not go out in the jubilee. 31 But the houses in villages that have no wall round about them shall be counted as the fields of the country; they may be redeemed, and they shall go out in the jubilee. 32 But [as to] the cities of the Levites, the houses in the cities of their possession, the Levites shall have a perpetual right of redemption. 33 And if a man redeem from one of the Levites (or, one of the Levites redeem something), then the house that was sold in the city of his possession shall go out in the jubilee; for the houses of the cities of the Levites [are] their possession among the children of Israel. 34 And the field of the suburbs of their cities shall not be sold; for it [is] their perpetual possession (vers. 29-34).
It was the dwelling-house in a walled city which thus lost its claim to redemption at the jubilee. The seller had the right to gain it back during a full year from its sale; after that, if not bought back, it passed for ever to the possession of the purchaser. Though it was built on the land which God gave the Israelites, its privilege of divine gift was vitiated by the prevalence of man’s failure, as a twofold witness may show us. “For every house is builded by some one.” It is only man that builds it. But the God that built all things claimed the land as His and gave it to His people as their landlord, to make it all the surer as He will prove it to be in the great jubilee, when every intruder vanishes, and He reinstates His people, who had lost it meanwhile over and over again by their departure from Himself. The land will go out free for the Israelite in that day by Jehovah’s vengeance on their wicked enemies, and His mercy toward themselves, at last repentant in dust and ashes and resting on the atoning blood of Him whom they now refuse and despise. But the dwelling-place which each built or took from the Canaanite was no such gift of God as the land of promise.
And this was made still more precise by the added feature of being “in a walled city.” For here is not merely man’s hand everywhere apparent in his dwelling-house, but yet more the “walled city” marks the presence if not the prevalence of the enemy’s power. There is therefore recourse to such a human measure of protection, which tells the tale how little as yet the Israelite enjoys His full privilege when they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid, for the mouth of Jehovah hath spoken it. No doubt it will be because a King shall reign in righteousness, far beyond David or Solomon, His feeble types. And the man who is God, and Jehovah’s fellow, shall be as a hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. And then shall the Spirit be pouted from on high, and the wilderness be a fruitful field, and the fruitful field be counted for a forest; and His people shall dwell in a peaceful habitation, and in sure dwellings and in quiet resting-places.
So, when the work of dealing with Israel’s enemies is in process but not yet complete, we hear in Eze 38 Israel shall then be gathered out of many peoples into the land bought back from the sword. But the chief of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal, unmoved by the downfall of the head of the western powers in league with the Antichrist, and even by the destruction of the eastern hordes who opposed the west, persists in his mischievous purpose of self-aggrandisement, and hopes by coming down on Israel’s unprotected appearance to become overlord of the earth. ”Thou shalt say, I will go up to the land of unwalled villages; I will go up to them that are at rest, that dwell safely, all of them dwelling without walls, and having neither bars nor gates, to seize the spoil and to take the prey; to turn thy hand against the waste places that are inhabited, and against a people gathered out of the nations which have gotten cattle and goods, that dwell in the midst of the land.” But Jehovah will prove Himself the true and glorious bulwark of His people, and pour upon this last enemy and all his hosts, before the proper reign of peace over the earth begins, overflowing rain and great hailstones, fire and brimstone. So it shall be upon the mountains of Israel; nor will that exemplary punishment suffice. For Jehovah will send a fire on Magog, and among them. that dwell at ease in the isles. Their walled cities, their fortifications, their formidable navies, will be a vain defence, for it is the day when the risen Lord will judge the inhabited earth; and they shall know that He is Jehovah (Eze 39:6 ).
Hence the house in the country parts, not thus protected, fell under the principle of the land, retained the right of redemption, and should go out in the jubilee. The strength and shield of man must fall in that day, and the defenceless that confide in Him shall triumph, when the fastness of the high defences of men’s walls will He bring down, lay low, bring to the ground, into the dust.
On a similar principle too the house of the Levites fell under His care who calls them to be His servants, and had perpetual right of redemption. Even if sold in the city of his possession, it must go out at the jubilee. On the other hand, their fields in the suburbs of their cities could not be sold. They must abide their perpetual possession, as God’s sacred gift to them; and this He will see to when He comes whose right it is to repair all wrongs and failures for His own that wait or Him.
The Christian now is in a different position and His glory heavenly; and he shall reign with Christ over the earth. He has already redemption in Him through His blood, but awaits His coming again for the redemption of the body and also of the inheritance. He is united to Christ by the Spirit who strengthens him to suffer with Him joyfully, not of the world as He was not.
CHAPTER 9.
THE POOR BROTHER IN DECAY
Lev 25:35-38
Here we read a new statute respecting the poor brother fallen into decay. It does not touch on what might be done by his nearest relation, or by his own recovery, as in vers. 25-28, but on loving succour where there was no such resource from without or from within. For Jehovah encouraged compassion in His people, of which they had been so richly the objects from Himself. Nothing more alien from His mind, among His own and even to strangers, than the spirit of independence of which the Gentiles are proud in their self-sufficient ignorance of God.
” 35 And if thy brother grow poor and be fallen into decay beside thee, then thou shalt relieve him, stranger or sojourner, that he may live beside thee. 36 Thou shalt take no usury nor increase of him; and thou shalt fear thy God, that thy brother may live beside thee. 37 Thy money shalt thou not give him on usury, nor lend him thy victuals for increase. 38 I [am] Jehovah your God, who brought you forth out of the land of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan, to be your God” (vers. 35-38).
Three divine principles are here applied to the duty of the Israelite, standing in a relationship to Jehovah peculiar to that people of His choice, whatever the mercy it may involve as it does to the stranger; for God abides good in Himself and to all, and will not suffer His people to forget it, though prone to do so as scripture proves, to say nothing of experience.
(1) It is His grace which gives prosperity to any. Only unbelief is blind to His over-ruling who counts the hairs of our head, and without whom not a sparrow falls unheeded. Man, sinner alas! as he is, is no object of indifference to Him. The Israelite was then precious to Him for the fathers’ sake, as he will be by-and-by not for them also but incomparably more for Him whom in repentance and faith they will own as their Messiah, so long despised, their all-gracious and Almighty deliverer when ready to perish under the Antichrist and to be swallowed up by the nations. But even from early days He would have them pitiful to their brother, or even a stranger and sojourner by their side, that he might live and not die. It was grace that called out Abram from beyond the Euphrates, where their fathers in old time dwelt and even served other gods. It was grace that sent Moses to plague Egypt which oppressed the sons of Israel, and brought them out of the iron furnace across the Red Sea which covered their enslavers. When the same power should destroy the Amorite, the Canaanite, and the rest who dwelt in the promised land, they were bound to remember that all was of His grace, and that He enjoined it in due measure on those who prospered on behalf of their decayed brothers. It was no small grace which inaugurated the emerging, if not birth, of His people, when brought forth out of the land of Egypt to receive the land of Canaan, and have Jehovah their saviour and guide and governor to be their God.
Just so we, Christians, are privileged and bound ever to look back and cherish our beginning, the foundation of all our blessing in Him who died, rose, and ascended to the highest heaven for us. This rises far above what was given or possible to Israel; for we can say, and ought to know by divine teaching, we are quickened and raised together with Christ and made to sit together in Him in the heavenlies. And as we are such a workmanship as this, His body who is Head over all, so were we created in Christ Jesus (for it is a wholly new thing) for good works which God before prepared that we should walk in them, a new walk in many respects because of and suited to such a unique relationship.
(2) Israel had to represent Jehovah and do His will as given to dwell in His land. If the strange gods gave a licence to every passion of sinful man through the working of the great enemy of God and man, the Jew was called to practise mercy, as belonging to and confessing Him who delights in mercy. How could He maintain a people in His land, the good land flowing with milk and honey, where His eyes rested continually, if they set His will at nought and abandoned Him? They had deliberately taken their stand on their obedience of His law, and must abide the consequence. Mercy obtained is a valid ground for expecting mercy to be shown; and the law bound this on the Jew as we see here.
(3) But there was also the powerful influence of hope, which governs the regulations of all this chapter. The Jew was called to act in view of the jubilee, and was inexcusable if he put it from his eyes in his conduct. When a brother was decayed, he was to bear in mind the deliverance that ere long would surely come, and thereby be strengthened to assist the need, and not to make it an occasion for selfish greed by interest for a loan, or return of food to increase his own store. For Israel in the land was not to be a merchant like the Canaanite; but it is the striking contrast of the Jews now among the nations, enriching themselves in this way beyond all others, the banking masters of the world. They have for the time lost their true place, because they became apostate from God, first by idolatry, then by rejecting Jesus the Christ; as they will descend lower still by receiving the Antichrist. Even on their return from Babylon, which was to see the Messiah in humiliation, they made the divine command of no effect by their tradition; and selfish interest prevailed over goodness and mercy, till unbelief wrought to the utmost.
But what has Christendom to say as to this? Has it the face to reproach the Jew? Christendom that has oppressed, plundered, and cruelly persecuted the Jew, instead of being a city of refuge to the man-slayer, till the death of the anointed priest (that is, in antitype, till Christ closes His priesthood on high)! Thence He will come for judgment, and the believing homicide will be cleared and enter on his inheritance; but the blood of guilt shall lie on the unrepentant murderer who persists in his unbelief to helpless ruin.
It is not Romanism only, but the Greek church yet more which hates the Jew and disbelieves his hopes in a future day, blessed in a new way and in Jehovah’s special mercy, and not at all as merged in the church of God. For the church has a heavenly place of union with her glorified Head; whereas Israel has the promise of the first dominion on the earth when the Lord reigns over all the nations also. This earthly dominion Christendom in all its forms began to covet, when it shirked to share Christ’s sufferings here below, and the heavenly hope of Christ’s glory above and reigning with Him over the world in that day.
Satan will find means to amalgamate with the Jew the Western powers in the worship of idols, and the false prophet-king of the Jews in the land (Dan 11:36-39 ). And the Lord will destroy them both at His appearing (2Th 2:3 , Rev 17 , Rev 19 ), as He will afterwards and similarly destroy him whom Isaiah and Micah call “the Assyrian,” as Daniel styles him “the king of the north,” their then external enemy (Isa 28 , Isa 29 , Isa 30 ; Dan 8:23-25 , Dan 11:40-45 ), of whom Sennacherib was the type.
CHAPTER 10
THE POOR BROTHER SOLD
Lev 25:39-46
There is a condition still more lamentable than the decay of poverty. The Israelite might be so reduced as to sell himself to bondage; and this condition comes under divine regulation to the end of the chapter. Here we may notice its first part.
” 39 And if thy brother grow poor beside thee, and be sold to thee, thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bond-servant: 40 as a hired servant, as a sojourner, he shall be with thee; until the year of jubilee he shall serve with thee. 41 And he shall go out from thee, he and his children with him, and shall return unto his own family, and unto the possession of his fathers he shall return. 42 For they [are] my servants, whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt; they shall not be sold as they sell bondmen. 43 Thou shalt not rule over him with rigour, and thou shalt fear thy God. 44 And thy bondmen and thy bondmaids whom thou shalt have – of the nations that are round about you – of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. 45 Moreover of the children of those that dwell as sojourners with you, of them shall ye buy and of their families that [are] with you, which they beget in your land; and they shall be your possession. 46 And ye shall make them as an inheritance to your children after you, to inherit as a possession: these ye shall make your bondmen for ever; but your brethren the children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another with rigour” (vers. 39-46).
Whatever the disorder created by sin and its resulting miseries, Jehovah provided merciful checks, especially for the people of His choice till the day of restitution, of which the jubilee was the recurring foreshadow. The Israelite might through sheer distress be sold to one of his brethren, but never in perpetuity. Ordinarily it was but for the term of six years of servitude, and on the seventh he went out free for nothing, as we know from the deeply interesting “judgment” with its details in Exo 21:2-6 . But, if as here with no such limit, the year of jubilee reinstated him. Meanwhile Jehovah imposed the duty on his Israelitish master that he should not be treated as a bondservant, but as a hired servant, as a sojourner and not a slave. Then should he go out from his employer, and his children with him unconditionally. The sale of bondmen did not apply. On the contrary he lifted up his head as free, and all his, returning to his own family and to the possession of his fathers.
With such considerate care did Jehovah provide for His people, whatever their improvidence. How affecting and securing the ground on which He laid it down! “For they are my servants whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt.” There superstition took care of the priests who kept them in unceasing bondage to false gods who were but demons without truth or pity. The Eternal, who rescued Israel out of that house of bondage and iron furnace, did not hinder as yet such an Israelite as broke down in his responsibility from tasting the bitter effect of his or others’ wrongs. But He restricted the chastening to measured times, and gave the sure hope of merciful return: the pledge of a glorious one for ever, when the Divine Deliverer shall rescue them from sins and sufferings no less than enemies, and Himself be the ground of a holy freedom and an unfailing inheritance, as due to One who is David’s Son and David’s Lord. What a joyful sound will be the trumpet voice of the true and full jubilee, which needs not but precludes repetition!
When it was only a nation favoured of Jehovah, the law did not interfere with an Israelite buying slaves, as we see in vers. 44-46. They were free to have such slaves of the nations round about them, or even of the sojourners with them. Neither could claim the relation of their own brotherhood holy to Jehovah: of troth they might buy, and make them their possession. and leave them as an inheritance to their own children after them, their bondmen for ever. And even in the day, when the creation shall be delivered from its present groans and thraldom, when the church shall share Christ’s glory above and over all things, when Israel shall own the crucified but all the more exalted Messiah, the Son of man and Heir of all things, kings here below shall be nursing fathers of the Jew never more to be despised or persecuted, and queens their nursing mothers. Strangers shall build up Zion’s walls, and their king” shall minister in that day. Aliens shall be their plowmen and their vine-dressers For that nation and kingdom that will not serve Zion shall perish. “But ye shall be named priests of Jehovah: men shall call you the ministers of our God. Ye shall eat the wealth of the nations, and to their glory shall ye succeed.” Need one refer to more decisive proofs of the change that awaits Israel under Messiah and the new covenant? And the time hastens: the zeal of Jehovah of hosts will perform this.
It is infatuation for Gentile theology to take any of this away from the hopes of Israel. True Christian faith maintains it all for the Jew when his heart shall turn to the Lord whom they despised to their own sin, shame, and loss. But God’s gifts and calling stand without a change on His part, who awaits and will bring out their salvation in sovereign grace. Our calling is above: we can well afford to set our mind on heavenly things. Their portion will be all blessing and glory on the earth, and in their own land, then the joy and boast and crown of all lands. The word of our God, Israel’s God, shall stand for ever. God has provided some better thing concerning us [who believe while the Jews are impenitent] that apart from us even those who of old believed but received not the promises should not be made perfect. We shall each enjoy our proper portion practically at the same time to God’s glory in Christ..
CHAPTER 11.
THE POOR BROTHER SELLING HIMSELF TO THE STRANGER WAXING RICH
Lev 25:47-55
This last case is the saddest of all to a true Israelite. It was not without a fault that a person under the government of Jehovah grew poor in His land (vers. 25, etc.), and had to sell his possessions, whether land, or a dwelling house in a walled city (vers. 29, etc.). It was worse to fall into such decay as to become an object of help to Jew, stranger, or sojourner, for money and victuals (35-38). Still worse was it to be sold to a brother Israelite, even if Jehovah in each interposed His shield of mercy (39-46). But here it is the poor brother selling himself to a stranger or sojourner becoming rich. Yet Jehovah speaks here also.
” 47 And if a stranger or a sojourner with thee become rich beside thee, and thy brother beside him grow poor, and sell himself to the stranger [or] sojourner with thee, or to a descendant of the stranger’s family: 48 after he is sold, there shall be right of redemption for him; one of his brethren may redeem him; 49 or his uncle, or his uncle’s son, may redeem him, or any of his next of kin of his family may redeem him; or if he may obtain the means, he may redeem himself. 50 And he shall reckon with him that bought him from the year that he sold himself to him unto the year of jubilee; and the price of his sale shall be according to the number of the years; according to the days of a hired servant shall he be with him. 51 If [there be] yet many years, according to them shall he return the price of his redemption out of the money he was bought for. 52 And if there remain but few years unto the year of jubilee, then he shall reckon with him; according to his years shall he return the price of his redemption. 53 As a hired servant shall he be with him year by year: he shall not rule with rigour over him before thine eyes. 54 And if he be not redeemed by these [means], then he shall go out in the year of jubilee, he and his children with him. 55 For to me the children of Israel [are] servants; they [are] my servants, whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt: I [am] Jehovah your God” (vers. 47-55).
As this chapter is devoted to redemption by grace and in power, it is in perfect keeping with its aim to let Israel know the reserves which awaited their failure in responsibility to the law, which they had accepted as the ground of their standing before Jehovah. Their fall to such an extreme of want as for an Israelite to sell himself into voluntary bondage to a rich stranger or sojourner with them, or to a scion of such a house, is here provided for in God’s considerate goodness. Jehovah would not hinder their tasting their evil or folly; but He was careful to lay down, that after he had sold himself, there should be right of redemption for him. One of his brethren might redeem him, or his uncle, or his uncle’s son, or any of the near relations of his family: there was room for that affectionate and special interest, which He ever cherished in, and commended to, His people.
Or again, the man, once so desperately impoverished, might somehow obtain adequate means to redeem himself, so that he could not be kept an hour longer in slavery. As being in that land, no strangers any more than a brother could plead a just title against the statutes of Jehovah. But justice must stand too. “And he shall reckon with him that bought him from the year that he sold himself to him unto the year of jubilee; and the price of his sale shall be according to the number of the years; according to the days of a hired servant shall he be with him.” Absolute slavery Jehovah would not tolerate for a child of Abraham. If the price of redemption was equitably offered, the stranger must accept it and set him free. If many years had yet to run, redemption price had to be returned out of the money that he was bought for (51); and if there remained but few years, the reckoning must be accordingly (52).
But Jehovah’s pitifulness went farther still; for in ver. 53 it was prescribed, even where he had no means or prospect of redemption till the jubilee, that the Israelite bondman was to have a place like no other slave. “As a hired servant shall he be with him year by year: he [the stranger master] shall not rule with rigour over him before thine [Israel’s] eyes.” Thus was the strain meanwhile to be alleviated, if Israel had the heart and power to see Jehovah’s will enforced on behalf of His poor.
Then came the great resource when the trumpet of jubilee sounded over the land (54). If every other means failed, here was sure hope for Israel. “And every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was bitter of soul” in abnormal bondage, was entitled to leap for joy at Jehovah’s glad tidings of grace; as it is said here, ”he shall go out in the year of jubilee, he and his children with him.” And Thou, blessed Jesus, true but rejected and only the more glorious Messiah, shalt have the joy of redeeming Israel from all his iniquities and all distresses and all indignities, Thyself the more loved then for Thy sufferings and shame at the Jews’ hand, joining hand in hand thus with the lawless Gentiles as presently with the Antichrist against Jehovah and His Anointed. Thou shalt return in glory to destroy the destroyers, to deliver Israel in its godly remnant, and to crush the nations, with the old serpent that deceived them all, and that deceives Christendom now as blind as it is haughty.
The very learned prelate of Chester, Dr. John Pearson, had low views of Christ’s personal glory, and accordingly of His work and offices. His was such “dry light” on divine things as might satisfy the most scientific of theologians. Yet even he saw in this chapter not the prototype of Christian privilege, but rather a strong contrast with the “better thing” God provided concerning us. So even his cold spirit warmed a little when he compared our privileges with those pledges of goodness to Israel. “We were all at first enslaved by sin, and brought into captivity by Satan, neither was there any way of escape but by way of Redemption. Now it was the law of Moses that if any were able he might redeem himself: but this to us was impossible, because absolute obedience in all our actions is due unto God; and therefore no act of ours can make any satisfaction for the least offence. Another law gave yet more liberty, that he which was sold might he redeemed again; one of his brethren might redeem him. But this in respect of all the mere sons of men was equally impossible, because they were all under the same captivity. Nor could they satisfy for others, who were wholly unable to redeem themselves. Wherefore there was no other brother but that Son of Man which is the Son of God; who was like unto us in all things, sin only excepted, which could work this redemption for us. And what he only could, that he freely did for us.” (An Exposition of the Creed, vol. i. 119, Oxford, 1797.)
Yes, we were all lost far beyond the worst picture of any Israelite; and we are saved as none could be till the Son of God had wrought soul-salvation for such as believe beyond what Dr. P. ever taught or knew; for God’s salvation is come, and His righteousness is revealed. Such is His gospel to Jew and Greek through and upon faith in Christ. But the favoured nation, according to Rom 11 and the facts which every one sees day by day, are enemies, “until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in.” Blindness in part is their state while the gospel goes out to the Gentile, till a new-born remnant of the Jews say, Blessed is He that cometh in the name of Jehovah. Then will Jesus come to the deliverance of the remnant and the destruction of their foes. “And so all Israel [except the apostates] shall be saved; as it is written, There shall come out of Zion [a later epoch than out of heaven] the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob. For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins [never so great as then]: as concerning the gospel, enemies for your sake [the Gentiles now called], but as touching the election, beloved for the fathers’ sake” (Rom 11:26-28 ). Can anything be plainer that the present age then closes, and the new age begins for the generation to come
CHAPTER 12.
THE JUBILEE CONCLUDED
Lev 25:55
This last verse concludes the subject with a renewed statement of Jehovah’s immediate interest in His people. They were His servants; He had brought them forth out of the land of Egypt; and He in His eternal covenanted Name was their God.
” 55 For unto me [are] the children of Israel servants; they [are] my servants whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt: I [am] Jehovah your God.”
Throughout, the great aim of these statutes of the jubilee is that the Israelite should remember that his best and unfailing Friend and mighty Deliverer is Jehovah. It is the same assured truth which the last of their prophets uttered, “I Jehovah change not; and ye, sons of Jacob, are not consumed” (Mal 3:6 ). We learn that the jubilee is the pledge that the land as well as the people is to share the same deliverance at His hand. The scattering of Israel is the visible sign that the accomplishment has not yet taken place, as this cannot be till they own their rejected Messiah. It is Emmanuel’s land, as they are His people; and His eyes are continually on both. Babylon was the instrument of punishing their idolatry; as Rome longer and more heavily, because of Him whom they despised with averted face and alienated heart. But the day hastens when they shall say in their heart, Blessed is He that cometh in the name of Jehovah. He will come when the godly remnant is rejected like Himself, and the mass fall victims both to idolatry and to the Antichrist.
How gracious and grand for Israel, when it shall be no more the shadow but the very image! when the Lord shall come to Zion a Redeemer indeed, and to those that turn from transgressions in Jacob, saith Jehovah! “And as for me, this is my covenant with them, saith Jehovah: My spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed’s seed, saith Jehovah, from henceforward and for ever.”
Truly “the gifts and the calling of God admit of no change of mind,” as he wrote who loved them as much as Moses did. Both loved Israel because they are the objects of God’s grace, and Messiah’s people for the earth’s glory in divine purpose. This makes their unbelief and its chastisement the more bitter, but gives certainty that the Deliverer is at hand. They belong to Him as His servants; and when they own it, He will appear for their rescue and redemption. He does not forget their old deliverance out of the iron furnace; but then the new covenant shall eclipse the old, and glory shall dwell in their land, as the fruit of His grace and of blood that speaks a better thing than Abel. How will they exult when they learn that Messiah suffered that they might be saved, and own Him, as unbelieving Thomas did, their Lord and their God. In the fulness of His person Jesus is not Messiah only but also Jehovah their God.
Grace like this when brought home by the Spirit will at length subdue the self-righteous heart of Israel, and produce the generation to come which will then be fitted to bear witness to the besotted heathen world with a power beyond the feeble testimony of the nations which have long compromised the name of the Lord Jesus by the vanity of knowledge falsely so-called, and by worldly lusts as unjudged as among the heathen themselves. It will be another thing when the long unbelieving Jew is brought into childlike faith; and yet more when the Lord Jesus reigns as King of kings and Lord of lords, after an unparalleled judgment of the quick in West, East, South and North, with a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit suited to that wondrous display of His government and blessing of all the families of the earth in righteousness, power, and glory.
On Israel’s repentance for the blotting of their sins depends the coming of times of refreshing from the presence of Jehovah, when He will send the Messiah-Jesus who was fore-ordained for them, times of restoring all things, of which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets since time began.
Fuente: William Kelly Major Works (New Testament)
the LORD. Hebrew. Jehovah. App-4.
spake. See note on Lev 5:14.
mount Sinai. See note in title “Leviticus”; not out of the tabernacle.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Now as we get into chapter twenty-five, they were to give the land a Sabbath day’s rest or Sabbath year. They were to plant the land for six years, the seventh year they were to let the land rest. Really, I like these laws of God. Man, you’ve got a lot of seven-day holidays spread through the year. Then every seventh year, you just kick back and take the year off. You don’t even plant anything in that year; you just let grow up whatever grows up and you eat that. But God said, “If you will do this in the sixth year I will cause your crops to be so bountiful that I’ll give you a three year’s crop in the sixth year so that it’ll carry you through, clear, and over until you are harvesting from the eighth year. If you’ll just follow this,” God said, “I’ll let you have the whole year off. You just eat what grows up wild. But in the sixth year you’ll have a triple crop that’ll carry you clear on over to the harvesting of the eighth year.”
Now I would venture to declare to you that some, what do they call them, agronomists, or agriologists or something, one of these guys in the field of agronomy. Agronomist? Thank you. Some day an agronomist is gonna come up with a fascinating discovery; that if you just let the ground lie in the seventh year that it has a tremendous regenerative effect upon the land. That has a way of coming out in the sixth year, that you just have a bumper crop. I’m sure that it is a natural law that God has established; that if people would follow it, they would find tremendous success. They could actually have a year’s vacation every seven years.
Now this is the law that God, we were talking about spiritual laws, and when we get to it, God said, “Now if you’ll just walk in it, this is what I’m gonna do. You’ll have plenty. Your vintage will last till the vintage season.” I’m sure that they’ll discover that the ground will produce much better in the six years, and that your overall crops, and just growing for six years, and letting the thing lie in the seventh year, your overall crop would actually be greater than growing it all seven years. I’m certain that it is true. But you see people say; “I don’t understand how that could work.” And you get a bunch of egghead scientists that say, “Oh, there’s no way that could work,” and they put it down. But I’m sure it would. It’s there. It’s a part of the laws that God has established. Farmers could have it so easy, or so much easier. I don’t suppose a farmer ever has it easy. I don’t think it’s easy getting up that early in the morning, but they could have it so much easier the seventh year. Just enjoy, you know.
Now when the people came into the land they didn’t follow this. They were a bunch of smarties just like you are. So they figured, “Oh well, we’ll really make it next year. Look at the bumper crop we had this year. Ah, let’s plant it this next year. We’ll really go for it.” They were constantly struggling with a land plagued with drought, over producing the land so that it was weakening the soil processes. Just weakening the soil, its fertility. They disobeyed the laws of God.
So after four hundred and ninety years of being in the land, God said, “All right, that’s it. Every seventh year the land was to have a rest. You haven’t given it any rest since you’ve come in. This poor land had been worked for four hundred and ninety years. It never did get its Sabbaths. So I’m gonna set you over in Babylon for seventy years so that the land can get its Sabbaths. And the land is gonna get its rest. It’s gonna rest for seventy years because you didn’t give it its Sabbaths.” Because in the four hundred and ninety years, there would have been seventy of these Sabbath year rests. So God gave it the rest anyhow.
But the people look at the benefit they missed of a vacation, a year vacation every seven years. You know, I like the programs of God. I don’t see anything wrong with this at all. I think it’s pretty, I think God’s pretty generous really with man.
Seventh year shall be a sabbath rest: thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune your vineyard. [“Just stay out of it; just rest.”] That which grows of its own accord of your harvest thou shalt not reap ( Lev 25:4-5 ),
Just leave it there for the poor people, for the servants, let them come in and let them have it. Whatever grows on your grapevines or your fruit trees, just let it be for the people to come in and take it in the seventh year, because God will give you enough, a triple crop in the sixth year.
Then there was to be a-they would count seven Sabbath years, and then the next year, the fiftieth year was a special one. So you got every fifty years, you got two years’ vacation. This was the Year of Jubilee, a year of real celebration. All debts were canceled, all mortgages were canceled, all the slaves were set free, a Year of Jubilee every fifty years. That was equivalent to the Pentecost. You count seven Sabbaths and the next day, the fiftieth day was the Pentecost. So they did it with years. You count seven of the Sabbath year cycles, and then the next year, the fiftieth year, a special Year of Jubilee.
We are close to a Jubilee year right now. Whether or not it’s this year or next year, or eighty-one, it’s right in here close. And there are varied opinions as to when the Jubilee Year actually is taking place. Some have marked it, a few have marked it seventy-nine, some have marked it eighty-one, and many have marked it eighty. Who am I to mark a year? But it’d be nice, take a year off. You know, after all if next year’s gonna be the Jubilee Year, this means this is the rest year anyhow. So go for it. But the year Jubilee.
He now deals with the laws in regards to the Year of Jubilee, beginning with verse eight.
Cause the trumpet of the jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month ( Lev 25:9 ),
That was a day that we’ve already studied. What was the tenth day of the seventh month? Yom Kippur; good.
And then ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land of the inhabitants thereof: [The Year of Jubilee.] Return every man unto his possession, and return every man unto his family. A jubilee in that fiftieth year be unto you: and ye shall not sow, neither reap that which grows of itself, nor gather the grapes in it undressed. For it is the jubilee; it shall be holy unto you: and ye shall eat of the increase thereof out of the field. And in the year of the jubilee ye shall return every man unto his possession. And if you sell off to your neighbour, you buy something from your neighbour’s hand, ye shall not oppress one another: According to the number of years after the jubilee thou shalt buy of thy neighbour, according to the number of years of the fruits he shall sell unto thee ( Lev 25:10-15 ):
In other words, you never really bought the land; you leased the land and the lease would go until the Year of Jubilee. So you always figured the price by the number of years until the Year of Jubilee. In other words, if the Year of Jubilee was forty years away, you’d have to pay a pretty good piece of cash for the land. But if the Year of Jubilee was maybe just three years away, then you always measured the price by the distance of the Year of Jubilee because in the Year of Jubilee the land always returned unto the original ownership.
The same was true of the servants; they were to go free. The slaves were to go free in that Year of Jubilee.
The land shall not be sold forever: [verse twenty-three] for the land is mine; [In other words, God says, “The land is mine, you’re not to sell it for ever.”] for you are strangers and sojourners with me ( Lev 25:23 ).
In other words, “You’re my guests”, God is saying, “this land is Mine; you’re My guests.” It’s always an interesting thing to me when I go over to the land; I love it because I think, “Wow Lord, this is Your land, and I’m just journeying with You. I’m a sojourner with You. Your land, so I’m just sojourning through Your land here.” I love to sojourn through the Lord’s land of Israel. It’s a fascinating experience.
Now if your brother is poor, and he sold away some of his possessions, and then his next of kin can redeem it, and shall redeem what his brother has sold [so that it stays with the family] ( Lev 25:25 ).
The various laws of redemption are given to us here in the twenty-fifth chapter of Leviticus. These are important laws, for they pertain to us, for we are redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ. This idea of being set free in the seventh year, or in the Jubilee Year. If you purchased a slave who was a Jew, he would serve you for six years; the seventh year he was to be set free.
Now there is that interesting pattern of the six years of servitude, the seventh year being the year of liberty being set free. I see it really in the earth. I believe that Adam sold out the possession that God had given to him just about six thousand years ago. How close to the six thousand years, nobody really knows, awfully close now though, because we do know that Adam sold out to Satan. If you take the figures out of the Bible and add them all up, the ages of each person and all, you come to about 4000 B.C. that Adam sinned against God and gave the earth over to Satan.
Now we are in 1979, coming towards the close of it. So you’ve got a few years divergency here that could be eaten up in several different ways. We are approaching, certainly approaching, and at least at the longest, we are less than twenty years from six thousand years of slavery to sin to Satan, his possession of this earth.
Now we know that there is a thousand-year period coming of restoration, of a righteous reign of Jesus Christ of peace and glory upon the earth. The fact that the six thousand years are almost over is extremely exciting to me, because I am personally convinced that the seventh millennium of the earth will be the glorious Kingdom Age, and we can’t be more than twenty years away. Now I’m excited about that. And to me there’s nothing of doom and gloom but glory to God, the mess is over. Oh, I’m so excited. What an exciting time to be living. The close of this age, the close of this millennium, the close of this final millennium prior to that glorious seventh millennium, the millennial reign of Christ. He shall rule and reign for a thousand years upon the earth. He’s gonna rule and reign forever, a thousand of it will be here upon the earth, and we shall rule and reign with Him as kings and priests. Can you imagine that? How close we are, whoosh it’s exciting. I love it.
So this whole law of redemption through chapter twenty-five, the redemption of the poor brother by the kinsman redeemer. What a picture of Christ. The man is unable to redeem himself; his next of kin can move in and redeem it for him.
Now man could not redeem the world himself, so Christ became a man so He could be next of kin to man, so that He could redeem the earth back unto God. Necessary that He become a man, that He become our brother, that He might become our kinsman Redeemer. That which man could not do, Jesus Christ has done. In Revelation, chapter five, when we get into heaven and we’re beholding that glorious scene, and we see the angel with the scroll, the title deed of the earth with seven seals writing within and without, standing there proclaiming, “Who is worthy to take this scroll and to loose the seals?”( Rev 5:2 ).
Here is this whole thing of redemption. Adam forfeited the world over to Satan. It’s his possession. He said to Jesus, “It’s mine, I can give it to whomever I will.” Who is able to redeem now the earth? John began to sob convulsively because no man was found worthy to take the scroll and to loose the seals. That’s right, no man can do it.
And as John was weeping the others said, “Weep not John, behold the Lion of the tribe of Judah hath prevailed to take the scroll and loose the seals, and I beheld Him as a lamb that had been slaughtered. And He came, and He took the scroll out of the right hand of Him who sat upon the throne. And as He did, the elders and the cherubim came forth with the golden vials full of odours, which were the prayers of the saints. And they sang a new song saying, Worthy is the Lamb to take the scroll and loose the seals, for He was slain and hath redeemed us by His blood out of all the nations and tribes, tongues, and people, and has made us unto our God a kingdom of priests, and we shall reign with Him on the earth”( Rev 5:5-10 ). Oh how I long for that day when I’m standing there at the throne of God, singing that glorious song of the redeemed and the worthiness of Jesus Christ.
So this law was put in here for your benefit that you might understand just exactly why Jesus became a man, why it was necessary that He become a man in order that He might be a kinsman redeemer. So there in chapter twenty-five, you’ll find it fascinating in that regards. You might want to look at it more carefully.
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Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary
Lev 25:1-2. And the LORD spake unto Moses in mount Sinai, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye come into the land which I give you, then shall the land keep a sabbath unto the LORD.
The Jews had much rest provided for them. If they had had faith enough to obey Gods commands, they might have been the most favored of people; but they were not a spiritual people, and the Lord often had to lament their disobedience as in the words recorded by Isaiah, O that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments! then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea.
Lev 25:3-4. Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and gather in the fruit thereof; but in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, a sabbath for the LORD:
Think of a Sabbath a year long, in which nothing was to be done but to worship God, and so to rest!
Lev 25:4-5. Thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard. That which groweth of its own accord of thy harvest thou shalt not reap, neither gather the grapes of thy vine undressed: for it is a year of rest unto the land.
A restful period in a restful land; all land to have rest, and yet to have fruitfulness in that rest; the rest of a garden, not the rest of a task. Thus is it oftentimes with Gods people, when they rest most, they work best; and while they are resting, they are bearing fruit unto God.
Lev 25:6-7. And the sabbath of the land shall be meat for you; for thee, and for thy servant, and for thy maid, and for thy hired servant, and for thy stranger that sojourneth with thee, and for thy cattle, and for the beast that are in thy land, shall all the increase thereof be meat.
There was to be no private property in the spontaneous produce of that year. It was free to everybody; free even to the cattle, which might go and eat what they would, and where they would.
Lev 25:17-21. Ye shall not therefore oppress one another; but thou shalt fear thy God: for I am the LORD your God. Wherefore ye shall do my statutes, and keep my judgments, and do them; and ye shall dwell in the land in safety. And the land shall yield her fruit, and ye shall eat your fill, and dwell therein in safety. 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.
Not merely for the one year of rest, but fruit for three years.
Lev 25:22. And ye shall sow the eighth year, and eat yet of old fruit until the ninth year; until her fruits come in ye shall eat of the old store.
They were to have enough for the year of rest, and for the next year in which the harvest was growing, and still to have something over for the ninth year. They scarcely could want as much as that; but God would give them more than they actually needed, exceeding abundantly above what they asked or even thought. That Sabbatical year had other blessings connected with it. Let us read about them in the Book of Deuteronomy, chapter fifteen.
THIS EXPOSITION CONSISTED OF READINGS FROM Lev 25:1-7; Lev 25:17-22, and Deu 15:1-18.
Fuente: Spurgeon’s Verse Expositions of the Bible
The last section of the Book of Leviticus is occupied with setting forth laws concerning the outward signs in the land of the proof of possession, together with certain promises and warnings, all ending with instructions concerning making and observing vows.
The signs affecting the land were, first, the Sabbath of the land and, second, redemption in the year of jubilee. These signs served to keep before the people the fact that God is the original Owner and Possessor of the land and that no man can treat it as absolutely his own. In the year of jubilee great human interrelationships were insisted on. The laws of this year of jubilee are carefully set out as they affect the land, dwelling houses, and persons. The only thing to which a man has a right in the land is that which results from his own labor. In the year of jubilee, moreover, the slave was to be liberated, thus reminding men that they could have no absolute and final property in any human being. The law, moreover, emphatically provided that during the period of bondage, the slave was not to be governed with rigor. In these laws the foundations of the social order were firmly laid. The interhuman relationships of both property and possession were conditioned in the fundamental fact of relationship to God.
Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible
the Sabbatical Year and the Jubilee
Lev 25:1-17
As the weekly Sabbath was to give septennial rest for man and beast, so the sabbatical year, returning after six years of unbroken harvests was to be a rest for the land unto the Lord. The year of jubilee, at the end of seven weeks of years, gave an opportunity of restoration for the poor and those who had been compelled to alienate their lands. The year of jubilee points onward to the redemption of the purchased possession, Eph 1:14, when all the disabilities which have befallen us shall be made good, and we shall regain all that glorious inheritance which was ours in the divine purpose, but which we have alienated by our sin.
With what joy must thousands have heard the notes of that trumpet sounding out over the land! Yes, and the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. Then incorruption shall inherit the kingdom of God! See 1Co 15:52.
Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary
Lev 25:10-13
The Old Testament jubilee was meant to be a type of the entire New Testament dispensation in three points, imaging by its Sabbatic character the Gospel rest in Christ, by its unreserved deliverance of captives and slaves the Christian redemption from guilt and spiritual bondage, and by its universal restitution of property to the poor and needy the fulness of that inheritance which is treasured up for all the faithful in Christ, whose unsearchable riches, like the national possessions, opened up by the jubilee, enrich all, without impoverishing any who make good their title.
I. The first element of jubilee gladness, common to the Jew of old and the Christian amid the celebrations of the Gospel age, is the joy of distinction or of privilege. There was not a single memorial of blessing or promise, temporal or spiritual, which the jubilee did not recall, and hold up before the eyes of that most favoured nation, so that it was on God’s part an impressive reiteration of His covenant, and on their part a grateful recognition that they were indeed a “chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a peculiar people.” The Christian Church, and we as members of it, are privileged (1) as to safety; (2) as to character; (3) as to work; (4) as to suffering.
II. The second great element of the gladness of jubilee is the joy of stability and progression. Traces of progress are to be found in every leading country of the Christian world. The last half-century has seen the cause of missions pass through all its phases, and encounter all its perils from ridicule, neglect, hope deferred, till now it ranks perhaps as the most distinctive and glorious feature of our age.
III. The third element in the jubilee gladness is the joy of anticipation or consummation. We believe that faith and hope shall in God’s own time effect a marvellous conquest of this long-revolted earth, and that love, working in a united and purified Church, shall through great periods gather up and treasure the spoils of victory. But it is to Christ’s coming that we look forward and hasten, as the crown and consummation of Christian hope.
J. Cairns, Jubilee Services, 1856.
All men ultimately get their living out of the soil. There is a recognition of this in the first chapters of Genesis. Man is placed in a garden to till it, and to eat its fruits. He has no other way of living, and will never have any other. Every human being must have some real relation, direct or indirect, to a certain extent of soil. To get man rightly related to the soil, in such a way that he shall most easily get his food from it, this is the underlying question of all history, its key-note and largest achievement.
I. There are two forces which draw men to the soil: (1) a natural, almost instinctive, sense of keeping close to the source of life, as a wise general does not allow himself to be separated from his supplies; (2) the pride, and greed, and love of power of the strong. In all ages the relation of man to the soil has been characterised by deep and cruel injustice. The main oppression in the world has been a denial of man’s natural rights in the soil.
II. The remarkable feature of the Jewish commonwealth is its anticipatory legislation against probable and otherwise certain abuses. The struggles of other nations and the skill of statesmanship have been to correct abuses; in the Jewish commonwealth they were foreseen and provided against. The Jewish theocracy had for one of its main features a system of Sabbaths curiously and profoundly arranged for the interpenetration of Divine and political principles. Every half-century formed a grand Sabbatical circle. The fiftieth year, or year of jubilee, settled at the outset the problem that no other people ever solved except through ages of struggle and revolution.
III. Its design and effect are evident. (1) It was a bar to monopoly of the land. (2) It was a perpetual lesson in hope and encouragement. It was a constant assertion of equality. (3) It fostered patriotism, a virtue that thrives best on the soil. It kept alive in every man a sense of ownership in his country. (4) It was an inwrought education of the family, fostering a sense of its dignity, and guarding the sanctity of marriage and legitimacy of birth.
IV. Though a political measure, it is informed with spiritual significance. It shadows forth the recovery from evil, the undoing of all burdens that weigh down humanity, the eternal inheritance awaiting God’s children when His cycle is complete.
T. T. Munger, The Freedom of Faith, p. 171.
References: Lev 25:11-Homiletic Magazine, vol. vi., p. 86. Lev 25:55.-Parker, vol. iii., p. 138. Lev 25-Old Testament Outlines, p. 32; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. ii., p. 379.
Fuente: The Sermon Bible
4. The Sabbatic Year and the Year of Jubilee
CHAPTER 25
1. The Sabbatic year (Lev 25:1-7)
2. The jubilee (Lev 25:8-12)
3. The jubilee and the land (Lev 25:13-28)
4. The jubilee and the dwelling houses (Lev 25:29-34)
5. The jubilee, the poor and the bondmen (Lev 25:35-55)
This is the great restoration chapter in Leviticus. All is connected preeminently with Israels land. The application, which has been made, that this chapter foreshadows a universal restitution of all things, including the wicked dead and Satan as well, is unscriptural. If such a restitution were true the Bible would contradict itself. The Sabbatic year could only be kept after Israel came into the land. When ye come into the land which I give you, then shall the land keep a Sabbath unto the Lord. And Jehovah uttered these words from Mount Sinai and not from the tabernacle (Lev 1:1). Every seventh year, the land which belongs to Jehovah, and which was not to be sold, had to enjoy complete rest. See what gracious promises Jehovah had given in connection with the Sabbatic year (Lev 25:20-22). Jehovah was the Lord of the land, the owner of the land, and Israel received the land as a gift; they were the tenants. Beautifully the Lord said: Ye are strangers and sojourners with Me. When Israel sinned and broke the laws of Jehovah, when they did not give the land its rest, the Lord drove the people out of the land. Read here 26:32-35. And I will bring the land into desolation and your enemies which dwelt therein shall be astonished at it. And I will scatter you among the nations, and will draw out a sword after you, and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste. Then shall the land enjoy her Sabbaths, as long as it lieth desolate, and ye be in your enemies land; even then shall the land rest, and enjoy her Sabbaths. As long as it lieth desolate it shall rest; because it did not rest in your Sabbaths, when ye dwelt upon it. This prediction has been fulfilled. Israel is scattered among the nations of the earth and the land is desolate, a witness for the Word of God. Jehovah in giving the law concerning the Sabbatic year, gave to His people a picture of that coming rest, and the assurance of joy and blessing. But they failed.
The year of jubilee shows clearly the restoration which is in store for Israel and Israels land. It points once more to the millennial times of blessing and glory. How blessedly is that coming age of restoration and of glory seen in the year of jubilee! Without entering into details we give a few of the divine statements. What did the jubilee year mean to Israel? Liberty was proclaimed; every man returned to his possession; every man to his family; all wrongs were righted and the redemption of the bondmen took place. Seven times the word return is used; and oftener the word redeem. It was the time of returning, the blessed time of restoration and redemption.
And how was this year of jubilee ushered in? By the sound of the trumpet of the jubilee on the tenth day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement. This great year of returning and redemption began with the day of atonement. Most likely after the high priest had returned from his holy office work and sprinkling of blood; after he had put the sins of the people upon the scapegoat and that sacrificial animal bearing upon its head Israels sin had vanished in the wilderness, the trumpet sounded. What all this means we have seen in the annotations of the day of atonement chapter. The year of jubilee begins, when our Lord comes back from the Holiest and appears in the midst of His people. And this time of restoration, blessing and glory is not confined to Israels land. It means more than the promised blessings for that land. We have the year of jubilee in Rom 8:19-23.
We must not forget the significance of the time, the fiftieth year. The day of Pentecost came fifty days after the resurrection of Christ from among the dead. And the fiftieth day brought, as the result of the death and resurrection of Christ, the gift of the Holy Spirit, and the formation of the church began. It came on the eighth day, the first day of the week. The year of jubilee may well be termed another Pentecost. On that day a great outpouring of the Spirit of God will take place (Joe 2:28). The kingdom with all its glories and blessings will be established upon the earth. And how much more might be added to these blessed foreshadowings of the good things to come!
Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)
Exo 19:1, Num 1:1, Num 10:11, Num 10:12, Gal 4:24, Gal 4:25
Reciprocal: Lev 26:46 – General Num 3:1 – spake Gal 4:10 – General
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
THE SABBATIC AND JUBILEE YEARS
Considering the limited scope of this work, we pass over chapter 24 to give more attention to the subject of the present chapter which is closely connected with that of the feasts, or appointed seasons.
THE SABBATIC YEAR
It deals first with the Sabbatic year (Lev 25:1-7). From what were the Israelites prohibited in the seventh year (Lev 25:4)? How much further did the prohibition extend (Lev 25:5)? But while there should be no sowing, pruning or reaping for the year, nevertheless were all the spontaneous produce of the land to be a waste (Lev 25:6-7)? What may have been Gods object in this law?
Agricultural science recognizes that a periodic rest of land is of advantage, particularly where it is difficult to obtain fertilizers in adequate amount. But there must have been a deeper reason here, and we wonder whether the enactment was not intended as a discipline in faith towards God, teaching the Israelite that man does not live by bread alone (compare verses 20-22 with Deu 8:3). Then may not another thought have been to impress him that his right to the soil and its produce came from God? We can see also how such an enactment would curb selfishness and covetousness, and place the rich and the poor periodically on the same level. It has some symbolical and typical aspects as well, which will be considered later.
THE JUBILEE YEAR
The chapter deals in the next place with the Jubilee year (Lev 25:8-12). In what month, and on what day did it begin (Lev 25:9)? What name was given to this day? By what ceremony was it introduced? What was the proclamation on this day (Lev 25:10)? Was it also a Sabbath for the land (Lev 25:11)? Then did two Sabbath years come in immediate succession?
A question may arise as to how a new year could begin in the seventh month. But the answer is that Israel had two kinds of years. What might be called its religious year, began with the Feast of the Passover in the spring (Exodus 12), while its civil year began with the day of atonement in the fall.
LIBERTY PROCLAIMED
One feature of the liberty of the Jubilee year concerned the redemption of the land (Lev 25:12-27). In that year what must be returned to every man who had suffered a loss of it (Lev 25:13)? What was the basis of value in the purchase and sale of land (Lev 25:15-16)? Since the possession must revert to the original holder in the year of Jubilee, it had only just so much value as there were years and crops intervening between the time it left his hand and the next Jubilee. What was the purpose or effect of this law (Lev 25:17)? What was its basis, or in other words, why could not the land be sold in perpetuity, but must be returned to its first holder (Lev 25:23)?
Observe from this that in Israel, under the theocracy, there was no such thing as either private or communal ownership of the land. The owner was
Jehovah, and all any man could buy or sell was the right to its produce, and that only for a limited time.
THE KINSMAN REDEEMER
The law of the kinsman redeemer is an interesting feature of this subject (Lev 25:25-28).
If one for reasons of poverty was obliged to sell his land, whose duty was it to redeem it for him did his circumstances permit (Lev 25:25)? Might the original possessor himself redeem it (Lev 25:26)? Observe that the basis of price (Lev 25:27) was that referred to above. Observe also, that if it could not be redeemed in either case, then it must return to him at the Jubilee (Lev 25:28).
EXCEPTIONAL CASES
The exception as to walled cities is peculiar (Lev 25:29-34). If a man sold a dwelling there, might he ever get it back again (Lev 25:29)? If the opportunity was not availed of, what then (Lev 25:30)? Did this apply to other than walled cities (Lev 25:31)? Was there any exception as to the owners of dwellings in walled cities (Lev 25:32)?
The reason for exempting houses in walled cities seems to be that there was no land here which might be used agriculturally for mans support. In the case of unwalled towns or villages it was otherwise, hence the exception there. The inhabitants of such towns or villages were the cultivators of the soil, and their houses belonged to the farms. The case of the Levites is explained by the fact that according to the divine command, earlier recorded, they had no other possession than their houses.
THE QUESTION OF SLAVERY
The question of slavery comes again before us (Lev 25:39-55). What kind of slave is referred to in Lev 25:39, voluntary or involuntary? A Hebrew or an alien? What difference must be made in his case? How did the Jubilee year effect him (Lev 25:40-41)? What other kind of slave is allowed for (Lev 25:44-45)? If a Hebrew sold himself to an alien, what then (Lev 25:47-49)?
We wonder at Jehovah permitting slavery. But if we carefully considered the laws governing it in Israel, we must have seen how different it was from modern slavery, how just and equitable, and even how desirable for
those whose circumstances made it necessary. We shall see also that these laws had such an educational power as to altogether banish slavery from the Hebrew people.
THE TYPICAL AND SYMBOLICAL ASPECT
The Sabbatic year and Jubilee year are the last two members of the Sabbatic system of septenary periods all of which have a typical significance. Each brings out some aspect of redemption through Christ, and all combined form a progressive revelation in type of the results of Christs work for the world.
These last two periods began on the great Day of Atonement in which all Israel was to afflict their souls in penitence for sin. On that day they both began when the high priest came out from within the veil, where, from the time of offering the sin offering, he had been hidden from the sight of Israel. Both also were ushered in with a trumpet blast. We have in both a type of the final repentance of Israel in the latter days, and their re-establishment in their own land, of which all the prophets speak. The earlier restoration from their Babylonian captivity was doubtless prefigured here as well; and yet the ultimate reference must be to that event still in the future (Isa 11:11).
THE WORLD FULFILLMENT
The type, however, reaches beyond Israel and includes the whole earth. See Peters reference in Act 3:19-21, when Jesus Christ the heavenly High Priest shall come forth and when the last trumpet shall sound and He shall appear the second time without sin unto salvation (Heb 9:28; Rom 8:19-22).
QUESTIONS
1. Name four practical reasons for the Sabbatic year.
2. When did the civil year of Israel begin?
3. Who owned the land of Israel?
4. Can you explain the exemption of walled cities?
5. What effect has Gods law about slavery had upon that institution among the Hebrews?
6. On what day of the year did the Sabbatic and Jubilee years begin?
7. Of what are both these years a type?
8. How far beyond Israels history does the type of the Jubilee year extend?
Fuente: James Gray’s Concise Bible Commentary
Lev 25:1. In mount Sinai That is, in the wilderness of Sinai, or near mount Sinai, as the Hebrew particle beth frequently signifies. For they did not remove from this wilderness till the 20th day of the seventh month after their coming out of Egypt.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Lev 25:4. The seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest. While the Hebrews continued faithful under the Theocracy of heaven, they were the happiest people in the world. A sabbatical year was a year of small labour only, that they might cultivate their minds instead of their lands.
Lev 25:10. Ye shall hallow the fiftieth year. The jubilee was certainly one of the happiest institutions ever imposed on civil society. The earth is the Lords, and all its fulness. No man has a right to alienate his land, and ruin his children. The jubilee saved Elimelechs house from poverty and distress, Rth 2:3.; and Naboth lost his life in efforts to preserve his inheritance. But alas, the gripe of avarice had, prior to the Captivity, almost superseded this divine institution; and after that time it totally ceased, being kept merely in memory of the day of atonement. It is also of moment to note, that our Saviour was born in the year of jubilee, which made the close of the 29th, and the commencement of the 30th period of jubilee from the time of Joshua.Some derive the term Jubilee from Jubal, the inventor of musical instruments. But others derive it from Jobel, a ram: for the jubilee was proclaimed by the sound of rams horns, as well as by the silver trumpets.
Lev 25:21. Fruit for three years. The Hebrews, as indeed all Shems race, were altogether by designation a holy nation. Their persons, their food, their law, their tabernacle, their lands, their city, were all hallowed. Moses was not ignorant that land is weakened by a constant annual culture, and requires a fallow. But he here wrote from the oracle what he was commanded, that faith might be exalted above reason, and that the husbandman, receiving this supernatural munificence from the hand of God, might love and serve him with all his heart.
Lev 25:37. Money upon usury. If men lend money on trade, they may take interest; but this precept respects a loan to a poor brother till his crop should be ready; in which case, interest was prohibited.
REFLECTIONS.
From the minor festivals of Israel we now proceed to the sabbatical years, as leading to the joyful jubilee appointed of God. And the first object which strikes us here is, the standing miracle of providence in favour of the year of rest. The land in the sixth year, according to the course of nature, would be weak: but while Israel continued in covenant with God it was rendered so fruitful by the supernatural blessing of heaven, that they had corn for the eighth year till the harvest was ready. No man should be impoverished by observing the sabbaths, and the appointed times of devotion. Had this miracle failed of effect, it would have destroyed the credit of revelation. The infidels of Israel would have sneered; they would have said, however great Moses might be as a prophet, he certainly was totally unacquainted with agriculture. But so luminous, so acknowledged was this divine phenomenon, that after the apostasy under Jeroboam, when they plowed on the seventh year, they had not bread enough; but those who observed the law in Hezekiahs time, had no lack. 2Ki 19:29-30.
The seven days in the week, as well as the seven sabbatical years, have been regarded as typical of the latter-day glory of the church. A day with the Lord is said to be as a thousand years: hence after six thousand years shall have elapsed we expect the ages of righteousness to succeed the ages of wickedness, when sin and its punishments shall be greatly diminished, and when the earth shall be filled with every temporal and spiritual blessing.
The institution of the jubilee distinguished the Theocracy of Israel from all the monarchies and republics of the gentile world. Society, unrestrained by law, in the struggle for the acquisition of wealth and honour, necessarily tends to aggrandize the rich, and to oppress the poor. During the feudal system, and while the lands were held chiefly by military tenure, the barons were princes and the poor were vassals. But where commerce has prevailed it has very much meliorated the condition of the labouring class, and afforded to the manufacturer and the merchant ample means to rise in the scale of opulence and rank. But in the states of Europe, and in the more distant nations where commerce is less cultivated, the poor are wretched and oppressed beyond conception. Considering the Israelites therefore as almost totally destitute of trade, we must regard an unalienable lot of land to every family, as originating in the divine foresight and care. Every man had his house and garden, or vineyard; he had his harvest field, and his quota of the flocks and herds of the city, which more than supplied the wants of his family. In the intervals between the more active seasons of the year, he had leisure to attend the feasts of the Lord, and to appear with decent oblations in his presence: or if prodigal and profane in his character, he might reduce himself to servitude and want, but he could not ruin his children. The land was the Lords, and he had given it to them and their children for an everlasting possession. Property so disseminated was a pledge to the public for the rectitude and morals of every individual. Who would rob, steal, or proceed to any atrocious act of violence, when his property as well as his person was amenable for his conduct.
We are not to stop however at the temporal advantages arising from an institution, the best and wisest known among humankind. While the silver trumpets and the rams horns were sounding emancipation to the servant, and investing him with the inheritance of his father, Isaiah saw the character of the Messiahs ministry, and the glory of the gospel age. He saw his Redeemer anointed with the Spirit, preaching good tidings to the meek. He saw him sent to bind up the broken hearted, to publish liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound. He heard the gospel trumpet proclaim the everlasting jubilee, or acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance on all them that despise his grace. He beheld him comforting the mourners, giving them beauty of countenance, by removing the ashes and wiping away their tears, and adorning them with righteousness, as the trees of a vineyard are adorned with fruits. Oh happy, happy age, when in the day of atonement our iniquity is forgiven, our bonds are broken, our hearts sanctified, and the emancipated soul is made heir of the inheritance, incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away.
In the near kinsman, to whom belonged the right of redemption, we see most strikingly the kindness and grace of Christ. Sinners, however unworthy you may be, he is flesh of your flesh, and bone of your bone; he has actually paid the price of your redemption, life for life; and he is gone to take possession of a better inheritance than that which Adam lost. Lift up your heads with joy: you have no need to wait a tedious course of years to the jubilee, the acceptable year is already come, and you only want a heart to receive the grace. Resemble not those slaves, who, attached to their masters house by fleshly ties, refused liberty, as Esau despised his birthright. On them the day of vengeance shall fall, and they shall never be counted worthy of the glorious liberty of the children of God. Prize your privilege; know the day of your visitation; for it is Gods great and last dispensation of mercy to a lost and captive world.
Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Leviticus 25
The intelligent reader will discern a strong moral link between this and the preceding chapter. In Lev. 24 we learn that the house of Israel is preserved for the land of Canaan. In chapter 25 we learn that the land of Canaan is preserved for the house of Israel. Taking both together, we have the record of a truth which no power of earth or hell can obliterate. “All Israel shall be saved,” and “the land shall not be sold forever.” The former of these statements enunciates a principle which has stood like a rock amid the ocean of conflicting interpretations; while the latter declares a fact which many nations of the uncircumcised have sought in vain to ignore.
The reader will, I doubt not, observe the peculiar way in which our chapter opens. “And! the Lord spake unto Moses in Mount Sinai.” The principal part of the communications contained in the Book of Leviticus is characterised by the fact of its emanating “from the tabernacle of the congregation.” This is easily accounted for. Those communications have special reference to the service, communion, and worship of the priests, or to the moral condition of the people, and hence they are issued, as might be expected, from “the tabernacle of the congregation,” that grand centre of all that appertained, in any way, to priestly service. Here, however, the communication is made from quite a different point. “The Lord spake unto Moses in Mount Sinai.” Now, we know that every expression in Scripture has its own special meaning, and we are justified in expecting a different line of communication from “mount Sinai” from that which reaches us from “the tabernacle of the congregation.” And so it is. The chapter at which we have now arrived treats of Jehovah’s claims as Lord of all the earth. It is not the worship and communion of a priestly house, or the internal ordering of the nation; but the claims of God in government, His right to give a certain portion of the earth to a certain people to hold as tenants under Him. In a word, it is not to Jehovah in “the tabernacle” – the place of worship; but Jehovah in “Mount Sinai” – the place of government.
“And the Lord spake unto Moses in Mount Sinai, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye come into the land which I give you, then shall the land keep a Sabbath unto the Lord. Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and gather in the fruit thereof; but in the seventh year shall be a Sabbath of rest unto the land, a Sabbath for the Lord: thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard. That which groweth of its own accord of thy harvest thou shalt not reap, neither gather the grapes of thy vine undressed: for it is a year of rest unto the land. And the Sabbath of the land shall be meat for you; for thee and for thy servant, and for thy maid, and for thy hired servant, and for thy stranger that sojourneth with thee, and for thy cattle, and for the beast that are in thy land, shall all the increase thereof be meat.” (Ver. 1-7)
Here, then, we have the special feature of the Lord’s land. He would have it to enjoy a sabbatical year, and in that year there was to be the evidence of the rich profusion with which He would bless those who held as tenants under Him. Happy, highly privileged tenantry! What an honour to hold immediately under Jehovah! No rent! No taxes! No burdens! Well might it be said, “Happy is the people that is in such a case; yea, happy is the nation whose God is Jehovah.” We know, alas! that Israel failed to take full possession of that wealthy land of which Jehovah made them a present, He had given it all. He had given it forever. They took but a part, and that for a time. Still, there it is, The property is there, though the tenants are ejected for the present. “the land shall not be sold for ever: for the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me.” What does this mean, but that Canaan belongs specially to Jehovah, and that He will hold it through the tribes of Israel? True, “the earth is the Lord’s,” but that is quite another thing. It is plain that He has been pleased, for His own unsearchable purposes, to take special possession of the land of Canaan, and to submit that land to a peculiar line of treatment, to mark it off from all other lands, by calling it His own, and to distinguish it by judgements, and ordinances, and periodical solemnities, the mere contemplation of which enlightens the understanding: and affects the heart. Where, throughout all the earth, do we read of a land enjoying a year of unbroken repose – a year of richest abundance? The rationalist may ask, “How can these things be” The sceptic may doubt if they could be; but faith finds a satisfying answer from the lips of Jehovah: “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. And ye shall sow the eighth year, and eat yet of old fruit until the ninth year; until her fruits come in ye shall eat of the old store.” (Ver. 20-22) Nature might say, “What shall we do for our sowing?” Gods answer is, “I will command My blessing.” God’s “blessing” is better far than man’s “sowing.” He was not going to let them starve in His sabbatic year. They were to feed upon the fruits of His blessing, while they celebrated His year of rest – a year which pointed forward to that eternal Sabbath that remains for the people of God.
“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. Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month; in the day of atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout all your land.” (Ver. 8, 9) It is peculiarly interesting to note the various methods in which the millennial rest was held up to view, in the Jewish economy. Every seventh day was a sabbatical day; every seventh year was a sabbatical year; and every seven times seven years there was a jubilee. Each and all of these typical solemnities held up to the vision of faith the blessed prospect of a time when labour and sorrow should cease; when “the sweat of the brow” would no longer be needed to satisfy the cravings of hunger; but when a millennial earth, enriched by the copious showers of divine grace, and fertilised by the bright beams of the Sun of righteousness, should pour its abundance into the storehouse and winepress of the people of God. Happy time! Happy people! How blessed to be assured that these things are not the pencillings of immagination, or the flights of fancy, but the substantial verities of divine revelation, to be enjoyed by faith which is “the substance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
Of all the Jewish solemnities the jubilee would seem to have been the most soul-stirring and enrapturing. It stood immediately connected with the great day of atonement. It was when the blood of the victim was shed, that the emancipating sound of the jubilee trump was heard through the hills and valleys of the land of Canaan. That longed-for note was designed to wake up the nation from the very centre of its moral being, to stir the deepest depths of the soul, and to send a shining river of divine and ineffable joy through the length and breadth of the land. “In the day of atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout all your land. Not a corner was to remain unvisited by “the joyful sound.” The aspect of the jubilee was as wide as the aspect of the atonement on which the jubilee was based.
“And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: 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. 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. For it is the jubilee; it shall be holy unto you: ye shall eat the increase thereof out of the field. In the year of this jubilee ye shall return every man unto his possession.” (Ver. 8-13) All estates and conditions of the people were permitted to feel the hallowed and refreshing influence of this most noble institution. The exile returned; the captive was emancipated; the debtor set free; each family opened its bosom to receive once more its long-lost members; each inheritance received back its exiled owner. The sound of the trumpet was the welcome and soul-stirring signal for the captive to escape; for the slave to cast aside the chains of his bondage; for the manslayer to return to his home; for the ruined and poverty-stricken to rise to the possession of their forfeited inheritance. No sooner had the trumpet’s thrice-welcome sound fallen upon the ear, than the mighty tide of blessing rose majestically, and sent its refreshing undulations into the most remote corners of Jehovah’s highly-favoured land.
“And if thou sell ought unto thy neighbour, or buyest ought of thy neighbour’s hand, ye shall not oppress one another: according to the number of years after the jubilee thou shalt buy of thy neighbour, and according unto the number of years of the fruits he shall sell unto thee. 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. Ye shall not therefore oppress one another; but thou shalt fear thy God: for I am “the Lord your God.” (Ver. 14-17) The year of jubilee reminded both buyer and seller that the land belonged to Jehovah, and was not to be sold. “The fruits” might be sold, but that was all – Jehovah could never give up the land to any one. It is important to get this point well fixed in the mind. It may open up a very extensive line of truth. If the land of Canaan is not to be sold – if Jehovah declares it to be His for ever, then for whom does He want it? Who is to hold under Him? Those to whom He gave it by an everlasting covenant, that they might have it in possession as long as the moon endureth – even to all generations.
There is no spot in all the earth like unto the land of Canaan in the divine estimation. There Jehovah set up His throne and His sanctuary; there His priests stood to minister continually before Him; there the voices of His prophets were heard testifying of present ruin and future restoration and glory; there the Baptist began, continued, and ended his career as the forerunner of the Messiah; there the Blessed One was born of a woman; there He was baptised; there He preached and taught; there He laboured and died; from there He ascended in triumph to the right hand of God; thither God the Holy Ghost descended, in Pentecostal power; from thence the overflowing tide of gospel testimony emanated to the ends of the earth; thither the Lord of glory will descend, ere long, and plant His foot “on the mount of Olives;” there His throne will be re-established and His worship restored. In a word, His eyes and His heart are there continually; its dust is precious in His sight; it is the centre of all His thoughts and operations, as touching this earth; and it is His purpose to make it an eternal excellency, the joy of many generations.
It is, then, I repeat, immensely important to get a firm hold of this interesting line of truth with respect to the land of Canaan. Of that land Jehovah hath said, “IT IS MINE.” Who shall take it from Him? Where is the king or the emperor, where the power, human or diabolical, that can wrest “the pleasant land out of Jehovah’s omnipotent grasp? True, it has been a bone of contention, an apple of discord to the nations. It has been, and it will yet be, the scene and centre of cruel war and bloodshed. But far above all the din of battle and the strife of nations, these words fall with divine clearness, fullness, and power, upon the ear of faith – “the land is mine!” Jehovah can never give up that land, nor those “twelve tribes,” through whom He is to inherit it for ever. Let my reader think of this. Let him ponder it deeply. Let him guard against all looseness of thought and vagueness of interpretation, as to this subject. God hath not cast away His people, or the land which He sware to give unto them for an everlasting possession. “The twelve loaves” of Leviticus 24 bear witness to the former; and “the jubilee” of Leviticus 25 bears witness to the latter. The memorial of the “twelve tribes of Israel” is ever before the Lord; and the moment is rapidly approaching when the trump of jubilee shall be heard upon the mountains of Palestine. Then, in reality, the captive shall cast off the ignominious chain which, for ages, has bound him. Then shall the exile return to that happy home from which he has so long been banished. Then shall every debt be cancelled, every burden removed, and every tear wiped away. “For thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will extend peace to her (Jerusalem) like a river, and the glory of the Gentiles like a flowing stream: then shall ye suck, ye shall be borne upon her sides, and be dandled upon her knees. As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you; and ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem. And when ye see this, your heart shall rejoice, and your bones shall flourish like an herb; and the hand of the Lord shall be known toward his servants, and his indignation toward his enemies. For, behold, the Lord will come with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire. For by fire and by his sword will the Lord plead with all flesh: and the slain of the Lord shall be many . . . . . . . . For I know their works and their thoughts; it shall come, that I will gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come and see my glory, And I will set a sign among them, and I will send those that escape of them unto the nations, to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, that draw the bow; to Tubal and Javan, to the isles afar off, that have not heard my fame, neither have seen My glory; and they shall declare my glory among the Gentiles. And they shall bring all your brethren for an offering unto the Lord, out of all nations, upon horses, and in chariots, and in litters, and upon mules, and upon swift beasts, to my holy mountain Jerusalem, saith the Lord, as the children of Israel bring an offering in a clean vessel into the house of the Lord. And I will also take of them for priests and for Levites, saith the Lord. For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, saith the Lord, so shall your seed and your name remain. And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the Lord.” (Isaiah 66: 12-23)
And, now, let us look for a moment at the practical effect of the jubilee – its influence upon the transactions between man and man. “And if thou sell ought unto thy neighbour, or buyest ought of thy neighbour’s hand, ye shall not oppress one another. according to the number of years after the jubilee thou shalt buy of thy neighbour, and according to the number of years of the fruits he shall sell unto thee.” The scale of prices was to be regulated by the jubilee. If that glorious event were at hand, the price was low; if far off, the price was high. All human compacts as to land were broken up the moment the trump of jubilee was heard, for the land was Jehovah’s; and the jubilee brought all back to its normal condition.
This teaches us a fine lesson. If our hearts are cherishing the abiding hope of the Lord’s return, we shall set light by all earthly things. It is morally impossible that we can be in the attitude of waiting for the Son from heaven, and not be detached from this present world. “Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand.” (Phil. 4) A person may hold “the doctrine of the millennium,” as it is called, or the doctrine of “the second advent,” and be a thorough man of the world; but one who lives in the habitual expectation of Christ’s appearing must be separated from that which will be judged and broken up when He comes. It is not a question of the shortness and uncertainty of human life, which is quite true; or of the transitory and unsatisfying character of the things of time, which is equally true. It is far more potent and influential than either or both of these. It is this, “The Lord is at hand. May our hearts be affected and our conduct in all things influenced by this most precious and sanctifying truth!
Fuente: Mackintosh’s Notes on the Pentateuch
Leviticus 25. The Year of Sabbath and of Jubile.
Lev 25:1-7. The Year of Sabbath (H).This is an ancient Hebrew institution (p. 102), cf. Exo 23:10*, where the law of a fallow every seventh year is set side by side with that of the rest every seventh day. In Ex., however, apart from this reference, there is no suggestion that the sabbath year is to be the same for the whole country, nor is this actually stated here. Only that which grows up without human labour is to be eaten. Undressed (Lev 25:5) is literally Nazirite-like (the hair being allowed to grow); cf. Lev 19:23. In the seventh year Hebrew slaves were to be released and debts remitted (Exo 21:2, Deu 15:1; Deu 15:12, Jer 34:8-16). The origin of the law was possibly an agricultural custom with humanitarian and religious motives supervening.
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
THE SEVENTH YEAR SABBATH (vv. 1-7)
Here was a wonderful provision for Israel every seven years. When they came into their land, they were to plant their land for six years and reap its fruits. But the seventh year they were to do no planting, nor any pruning of their vineyards, but to allow the land to rest for the whole year (vv. 1-4).
Though doing no work on the land, they could still expect fruit or grain to grow voluntarily. If so, they were not to reap this, that is, to store it or sell it (v. 5). For the sabbath produce of the land was to be food for them and their households (v. 6). In other words, they could use it as they needed it, but were not to make money from it.
If Israel had adhered to this, they would have been greatly blessed. The six years they worked would have provided more than enough to keep them through the seventh year. All that was needed was faith to believe God. But we know how selfish our own hearts are. When for six years their crops were so abundant, selfishness would say, Why not get the same profit from the seventh year too? Instead of resting and giving God glory, Israel preferred their own works, and thereby lost instead of gaining. Therefore Lev 26:31-35 prophesies of the resulting desolation in Israel, the people scattered and the land lying desolate, during which time God would give the land its needed rest. In spite of much experience we do not easily learn that selfishness defeats its own ends.
THE YEAR OF JUBILEE (vv. 8-17)
This was another gracious provision of God for His people Israel. At the end of 49 years (7×7) a year of jubilee was ordered on the 50th year. This was not merely a celebration, and not only a year of rest for the land, but on the Day of Atonement, the tenth day of the seventh month, the trumpet was to be sounded throughout all the land (v. 9), proclaiming liberty to all its inhabitants (v. 10). This would appropriately take place after the high priest had offered the sin offering and brought its blood into the holiest, thus making atonement for the people.
In this 50th year Jubilee God’s wisdom is seen in addressing the inequalities that develop over a period of time, things which become destructive in many nations today. For some people become wealthy and the poor become virtually their slaves. People lose their property and others gain by their loss. Today, what wealthy man would want the government to adopt a policy of Jubilee such as Israel was given? But God’s method of government in Israel was far better than any human government has ever advanced.
Whatever condition one was in, a slave or not, he was given back the property he owned previous to the year of Jubilee (v. 13). This is wonderfully symbolic of the great equalizing of all things when the Lord Jesus takes His great power to reign over Israel and the nations. What a Jubilee of unspeakable joy that will be! Mankind will cease from his own work and will recognize with wondering awe the greatness and perfection of the work of God!
The price of things sold and bought between the people was to be regulated by the number of years remaining till the Jubilee (vv. 14-16), for in this case it was really a lease for that number of years. Of course, if it were livestock, the age of the animal would also be considered, and perishables would not be considered in this matter.
But it was important for all to remember that they were not to oppress one another (v. 17), in other words, they must be fair in their dealings. No matter how good a government may be, if individuals are not fair, there is trouble.
BLESSINGS FOR OBEDIENCE (vv. 18-22)
So long as Israel would observe God’s statutes and keep His judgments, they would dwell in the land safely (v. 18). The land would yield well for them, so that they would have no lack. This was a definite promise of God. Israel might question how they would be supported in the seventh year if they rested the land, as God commanded (v. 20), and the answer was plain: God would see to it that the sixth year produced enough for three years, not only sufficient for the seventh year, but abundantly over-sufficient (v. 21).
How well it would have been for Israel if they had only simply believed God! But their want of faith induced disobedience, by which they forfeited all title to God’s conditional promise.
REDEMPTION OF PROPERTY (vv. 23-34)
Though the land was always to be returned to its original owner in the day of Jubilee, yet also if land had been sold, the original owner had the right of redeeming it at it fair market value at any time (v. 24). Thus it was impressed on Israel that the land belonged to the Lord (v. 23).
If an Israelite became so poor that it was necessary to sell his land or other possessions, it was also possible for a relative to redeem this (v. 25). The buyer must give way in such a case. The seller himself might eventually have sufficient funds to redeem his possession, and if so he was to count the number of years since its sale, and of course the time remaining till the year of Jubilee, and pay according to this. If, for instance, the buyer had use of the property for 20 years and there were ten years left before the Jubilee, the percentages were to be worked out according to this. For in the year of Jubilee the first owner would pay nothing to have his property returned (v. 28).
An interesting exception was made in the case of one owning a house in a walled city. If he sold it, he could redeem it within one year (v. 29), but if not redeemed in that time, the house became the permanent property of the buyer: it was not released in the year of Jubilee (v. 30). However, those houses in unwalled towns or villages were to be considered as those in the country. They could be redeemed at any time, and in the year of Jubilee were returned to the original owner (v. 31).
However, the houses of the Levites in their cities were redeemable at any time, and would return to the original owner at the time of Jubilee (vv. 32-33). For the Levites were given property only in their own cities. They therefore had the right to the redemption of their property. In these cities, however, there was common land, belonging to all the Levites, and that was not ever to be sold (v. 34).
LENDING WITHOUT INTEREST (vv. 35-38)
In cases of poverty in Israel, neighbors were to be of help, lending money, but not charging interest (vv. 36-37). Jews were not forbidden to take interest from foreigners (Deu 23:20), but were to charge nothing when dealing with their own people. This is surely a good lesson for us too. If one requires help because of poverty, it is unseemly that we should charge him interest. Dealing on the basis of business is a different matter. Still better than lending to those in poverty is the grace of giving to them, as 2Co 9:7 assures us.
HIRED SERVANTS, BUT NOT SLAVES (vv. 39-55)
Israel was never to make slaves of their own people, yet if one became so poor as to sell himself to another, he would thus become a hired servant. He was not to be oppressed as though he was merely the property of a master. In the year of Jubilee he was set free to return to his original property, which was also released at the time. This applied also to his family (v. 41). For Israel must remember that all Israelites were God’s servants whom He had redeemed from Egypt. They were never to be sold as slaves, though they could become hired servants. This was virtually a leasing agreement, as was true of the sale of land also. No harsh treatment was allowed (v. 43).
However, Israel was allowed to buy Gentile slaves and keep them permanently, whether from the nations around or from those Gentiles who settled in the land (vv. 44-46). It is not said here that they were not to rule over such slaves with rigor, but in Exo 22:21 it is insisted, You shall neither mistreat a stranger nor oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.
In the case of a foreigner dwelling or sojourning in the land of Israel, if he were to buy an Israelite, the Israelite was not his permanent property, but could be redeemed at any time by any near relative (vv. 47-49). In the year of Jubilee he was to be set free without charge. So that the price of redemption would become lower as the day of Jubilee became closer. Thus the same principles applied to an Israelite serving a Gentile as would apply if he were sold to another Israelite. He would be a hired servant, not a slave. For in a particular way the children of Israel were God’s servants (v. 55). Believers today too are permanently God’s servants.
Fuente: Grant’s Commentary on the Bible
F. Sanctification of the possession of land by the sabbatical and jubilee years ch. 25
Chapter 25 concludes the laws God gave the Israelites on Mt. Sinai. It contains the only legislation on the subject of land ownership in the Pentateuch. These laws regarding the Promised Land correspond to the laws Moses previously gave regarding the people of Israel. God owned both the Israelites and the land He was giving them.
"The central theme of this last set of instructions is that of restoration. Israel’s life was to be governed by a pattern of seven-year periods, Sabbath years. After seven periods of seven years, in the Year of Jubilee, there was to be total restoration for God’s people." [Note: Sailhamer, p. 361.]
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
1. The sabbatical year 25:1-7
As God ordered the people to rest every seventh day, so He ordered them to let the land rest every seventh year. By resting the people renewed their strength and rejuvenated their productivity in His service. By resting the land’s strength likewise revived and its productivity increased. Modern agronomists have supported the practice of allowing land to lie fallow periodically. God did not want the Israelites to work the land "to death" (i.e., to rape their environment). It belonged to God. Ecologists have argued for the same careful use of the environment that God required of His people. By using the land properly the Israelites sanctified their possession of it. They set it apart to God.
The people were to regard the crops that grew up during the sabbatical year as an offering to Yahweh. God told them not to harvest them. He permitted the slaves, hired people, foreign residents, aliens, cattle, and animals (Lev 25:6-7) to eat freely of what was His.
"From this, Israel, as the nation of God, was to learn, on the one hand, that although the earth was created for man, it was not merely created for him to draw out its powers for his own use, but also to be holy to the Lord, and participate in His blessed rest; and on the other hand, that the great purpose for which the congregation of the Lord existed, did not consist in the uninterrupted tilling of the earth, connected with bitter labour in the sweat of his brow (Gen. iii. 17, 19), but in the peaceful enjoyment of the fruits of the earth, which the Lord their God had given them, and would give them still without the labour of their hands, if they strove to keep His covenant and satisfy themselves with His grace." [Note: Keil and Delitzsch, 2:457. See N. P. Lemche, "The Manumission of Slaves – The Fallow Year – The Sabbatical Year – The Jobel Year," Vetus Testamentum 26 (January 1976):38-59; and Don Blosser, "The Sabbath Year Cycle in Josephus," Hebrew Union College Annual (1981):129-39.]
"In its overall plan, the Sabbath year was to be a replication of God’s provisions for humankind in the Garden of Eden. When God created human beings and put them into the Garden, they were not to work for their livelihood but were to worship . . . So also in the Sabbath year, each person was to share equally in all the good of God’s provision (Lev 25:6). In the Garden, God provided for the man and woman an eternal rest (cf. Gen 2:9, the Tree of Life; Gen 3:22 b) and time of worship, the Sabbath (Gen 2:3). The Sabbath year was a foretaste of that time of rest and worship. Here, as on many other occasions, the writer has envisioned Israel’s possession of the ’good land’ promised to them as a return to the Garden of Eden." [Note: Sailhamer, p. 361.]
"God’s people must order their lives to harmonize with their belief that the bounty of the earth they share is from the sovereign Creator of the earth." [Note: Ross, p. 453.]
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
THE SABBATIC YEAR AND THE JUBILEE
Lev 25:1-55
THE system of annually recurring sabbatic times, as given in chapter 23, culminated in the sabbatic seventh month. But this remarkable system of sabbatisms extended still further, and besides the sacred seventh day, the seventh week, and seventh month, included also a sabbatic seventh year; and beyond that, as the, ultimate expression of the sabbatic idea, following the seventh seven of years, came the hallowed fiftieth year, known as the jubilee. And the law concerning these two last-named periods is recorded in this twenty-fifth chapter of Leviticus.
First (Lev 25:1-5), is given the ordinance of the sabbatic seventh year, in the following words: “When ye come into the land which I give you, then shall the land keep a sabbath unto the Lord. Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and gather in the fruits thereof; but in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a sabbath unto the Lord: thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard. That which groweth of itself of thy harvest thou shalt not reap, and the grapes of thy undressed vine thou shalt not gather: it shall be a year of solemn rest for the land.”
This sacred year is thus here described as a sabbath for the land unto the Lord, -a sabbath shabbathon; that is, a sabbath in a special and eminent sense. No public religious gatherings were ordered, however, neither was labour of every kind prohibited. It was strictly a year of rest for the land, and for the people in so far as this was involved in that fact. There was to be no sowing or reaping, even of what might grow of itself; no pruning of vineyard or fruit trees, nor gathering of their fruit. These regulations thus involved the total suspension of agricultural labour for this entire period.
It was further ordered (Lev 25:6-7) that during this year the spontaneous produce of the land should be equally free to all, both man and beast:
“The sabbath of the land shall be for food for you; for thee, and for thy servant and for thy maid, and for thy hired servant and for thy stranger that sojourn with thee; and for thy cattle, and for the beasts that are in thy land, shall all the increase thereof be for food.”
That this cannot be regarded as merely a regulation of a communistic character, designed simply to affirm the absolute equality of all men in right to the product of the soil, is evident from the fact that the beasts also are included in the terms of the law. The object was quite different, as we shall shortly see.
That it should be regarded as possible for a whole people thus to live off the spontaneous produce of self-sowed grain may seem incredible to us who dwell in less propitious lands; and yet travellers tell us that in the Palestine of today, with its rich soil and kindly climate, the various food grains continuously propagate themselves without cultivation; and that in Albania, also, two and three successive harvests are sometimes reaped as the result of one sowing. So, even apart from the special blessing from the Lord promised to them if they would obey this command, the supply of at least the necessities of life was possible from the spontaneous product of the sabbath of the land. Though less than usual, it might easily be sufficient. Deu 15:1-11, it is ordered also that the seventh year should be “a year of release” to the debtor; not indeed as regards all debts, but loans only; nor, apparently, that even these should be released absolutely, but that throughout the seventh year the claim of the creditor was to be in abeyance. The regulation may naturally be regarded as consequent upon this fundamental law regarding the sabbath of the land. The income of the year being much less than usual, the debtor, presumably, might often find it difficult to pay; whence this restriction on collection of debt during this period.
The central thought of this ordinance then is this, that mans right in the soil and its product, originally granted from God, during this sabbatic year reverted to the Giver; who, again, by ordering that all exclusive rights of individuals in the produce of their estates should be suspended for this year, placed, for so long, the rich and the poor on an absolute equality as regards means of sustenance.