25:1 The Lord speaks from Sinai, from the geographical setting of covenant making, to instruct Israel regarding rest and redemption. The Sabbath is a template for holy time established from creation that casts its ever-increasing sphere of influence over life in the land. Israel’s obedient response to the Lord’s invitation to rest under his sovereign rule will result in the sanctification of time, land, and people.

25:2 Until now the people have been instructed on the importance of observing the Sabbath as a sign of the covenant: “Above all you shall keep my Sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the Lord, sanctify you” (Ex. 31:13; cf. Ex. 31:14–17). In a surprising turn the Lord’s royal decree from Sinai mandates that the land observe a Sabbath rest.

25:3–4 After Israel takes possession of her inheritance the land is to have a season of rest from its labor, that is, its work of producing crops to sustain humanity. In every seventh year the Israelites must neither sow nor reap, plant nor harvest, but allow the land to lie fallow in complete rest as it reverts to its natural, unworked, and unmanaged state (Gen. 2:5–6). This charge envisions the Lord as the divine householder of all creation. Because he owns the land (Lev. 25:23), all within his household will enjoy Sabbath rest, including his children, servants, animals, and even the personified land (Ex. 20:8–11). Should Israel not cooperate with the Lord’s commands but instead subject the land to ceaseless production, she will be evicted and sent into exile so that the land may enjoy its Sabbaths (Lev. 26:34–35).

25:5–7 At first blush these verses appear to contradict the sabbatical vision by stating that “all its yield shall be for food” (v. 7). Although the land may not be cultivated, it will still produce “aftergrowth,” natural growth from seeds that fell to the ground during the previous year’s harvest. This aftergrowth is not just for the field’s owners but also for the landless poor, as the parallel passage in Exodus makes explicit: “The seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, that the poor of your people may eat; and what they leave the beasts of the field may eat. You shall do likewise with your vineyard, and with your olive orchard” (Ex. 23:11).284 The law thus envisions that in the sabbatical year everyone will gather as the landless do. Every seventh year the divine Landlord will supply his people’s needs as they glean from his land. Everyone will be equally dependent on the Lord’s provision, and everyone will be equally at rest from one’s labors, from owner to hired worker. Jubilee legislation envisions equality among the covenant community.

The aim of the sabbatical year is not to promote greater productivity or yield from the land as a result of letting it lie fallow but rather to grant it a rest from its labors in a “public affirmation of the land’s freedom under Yahweh’s sovereign rule.”285 That the land is redeemed (Lev. 25:23), as are Abraham’s descendants (v. 42), entwines the destinies of both within the covenant context. A Sabbath for the land suggests it is in covenant relationship with the Lord and that there is a purpose to its redemption that will continue on to the new creation (Rom. 8:19–21).

25:8–9 The jubilee crowns the seventh cycle of seven years, culminating in the fiftieth year.286 The cycle of sevens draws attention to the pattern of time established at creation and ultimately the design of creation itself. As the seventh day heralds the goal of creation—the Lord’s enthronement in worship—the seventh seven both recapitulates creation’s original state and foreshadows its ultimate goal. The jubilee is a portrait of both beginning and end. In language that looks back to Eden the land is reordered along the lines of covenant relations, in which all are family and all is the Lord’s. In a prophetic look forward the jubilee anticipates the re-creation of the world itself.

The jubilee is announced with a trumpet287 in the fall, the beginning of Israel’s agricultural calendar (the ritual calendar begins in the spring, with Passover; see 23:5).288 The name “jubilee” is taken from the ram’s horn (yobel) that is trumpeted to sound the advent of its celebration. A trumpet blast in the context of Sinai (v. 1) is associated with the Lord’s appearance and the sound of his unmediated voice (Ex. 19:16, 19; 20:18). Trumpet blasts also announce the coronation of kings as they take up their throne (2 Sam. 15:10; 1 Kings 1:39; 2 Kings 9:13). In the people’s experience this would have suggested the Lord’s advent as king in their midst.

The celebration is announced on the Day of Atonement. On the day that the sanctuary is cleansed from all sin and defilement the land reverts to its original state and debtors are released from their debts. The pattern of 7 x 7 that purifies the sanctuary through blood extends now to the land,289 which is consecrated by a pattern of 7 x 7 cycles in time (Lev. 25:10).

25:10–13 Legislation for the jubilee comes with special vocabulary shared with Israel’s neighbors. The “liberty” (Hb. deror) proclaimed throughout the land is reflected in a similar Mesopotamian institution known as anduraru, an edict of release issued by kings to prevent economic collapse and uprisings in their realm. The sense means “to move about freely,” as those bound in indentured labor are released from their debt servitude.290 Israel’s practice differs in that, instead of an unpredictable edict of debt forgiveness when society is on the brink of collapse, the jubilee guarantees release and return once in every generation. Israel’s Sovereign, whose proclamation goes forth and is set in motion by this very passage, decrees liberty in every generation. The King whose throne is founded on righteousness and justice brings freedom in his train (Ps. 89:14).

The heart of the jubilee is the release from debts that brings about the return of each debtor to his family and the return of all land to its original tribal allotments. This practice is firmly grounded in Israel’s history. Yahweh redeemed his firstborn son, Israel, from Pharaoh’s oppression and slavery (Ex. 4:22). As Father, he bequeathed to them an inalienable family inheritance as tribal allotments in the land of Canaan (Num. 26:52–56). Israel’s inheritance is a gift not given apart from relationship; it is evidence of sonship and a place to commune with him as they dwell together in the land. Each generation that recovers ancestral property and returns to the land relives the redemptive narrative of God’s people. This is the land where the Lord chose to plant his people: “You will bring them in and plant them on your own mountain, the place, O Lord, which you have made for your abode, the sanctuary, O Lord, which your hands have established” (Ex. 15:17). It is the holy ground of relationship with God, in which every covenant son and daughter finds rootedness and belonging that shape the identity of the covenant people.

25:14–17 Fair and just economic dealings are predicated upon the fact that all land is owned by the Lord, who will reapportion the tribal allotments in every generation. Land sale, therefore, is not the right to ownership but rather the right to the land’s produce. The buyer purchases its use and the right to its harvests. The land’s purchase value is calculated according to the number of years until the coming redemption. The closer to the jubilee year of release, the less the land is worth because of its anticipated reclamation by its original owner.

The admonition not to wrong one another forms an envelope around these verses (Lev. 25:14, 17), speaking directly to the temptation to take advantage of the one who sold his land out of need. Wronging one’s neighbor is decried by the prophets, who address the wealthy who seize lands to add to their own estates:

    They covet fields and seize them,

    and houses, and take them away;

    they oppress a man and his house,

    a man and his inheritance. (Mic. 2:2)

25:18–22 The text takes up the sabbatical year again, anticipating how fear could stand in the way of keeping the commandment and in so doing voicing concerns that would arise also in the seventh round of seventh years. If the land is left uncultivated in the forty-ninth year and remains unworked in the fiftieth year also, the people will not reap a harvest until the third year. Is it possible that in God’s economy they could escape starvation? The Lord answers with the promise of a bumper crop in the sixth year that will last through the fallow seventh year and to the planting of the eighth (jubilee) year. Crops planted in the fall of the eighth year would yield a harvest in the spring of the ninth year, making Israel rely on the Lord’s promise to sustain her.291

Israel is about to embark on a forty-year journey through the wilderness, in which the Lord will prove his ability to provide for his people every day. He will embed within their experience the testimony of an increased yield of manna every sixth day that will sustain them into the seventh (Ex. 16:5). The manna will prove miraculous in both its provision and its preservation not to spoil (Ex. 16:24). This weekly rhythm of being fed by the Lord will train the people to exercise faith once settled in the land and to put their trust not in the works of their hands but in the Lord’s unfailing provision. The Lord promises not only survival if Israel obeys but a flourishing such as was known in the beginning of God’s creation.

25:23–24 The theological vision of land finds its source with God as owner and the status of his people as analogous to resident aliens and immigrants, with no claims to property. When Israel recites its humble origins in gratitude at the harvest, the people are reminded that their ethics stem from their own experience as sojourners in Egypt: “A wandering Aramean was my father. And he went down into Egypt and sojourned there” (Deut. 26:5). Many a time the community of faith will rehearse this spiritual truth in worship (1 Chron. 29:15; 1 Pet. 2:11). The land is entrusted to Israel for cultivation, a portion of which will be brought back to the Lord in thanksgiving and worship, and the majority of which will sustain and satisfy his people’s needs. This ultimately stages a different power dynamic among the community of Israel, in which God as landowner has the power to host or to evict his people. It is not for an Israelite to lord it over another with an accumulation of fields or houses (Isa. 5:8).

25:25–28 Three successive stages of descent into increasing debt are treated in the jubilee laws: loss of a portion of land, loss of all of land, and loss of freedom. Each of these situations begins with the conditional clause “If your brother becomes poor,” situating the commands in the framework of kinship relations that are sure to evoke sympathy and counter the tendency to dismiss personal responsibility. In fact the laws address those who have the power to act and make “care for the poor the litmus test of covenant obedience.”292 They refer to a fellow Israelite as a “brother,”293 a term first introduced in parallel with “neighbor”: “You shall not hate your brother in your heart. . . . You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19:17–18). The jubilee is in conversation with the passage on brotherly love to spell out in practical detail what the Israelites have already learned from their stories of origin: they are their brother’s keeper (Gen. 4:9).

The first situation concerns an Israelite who is forced by his circumstances to sell some of his land. The reasons could be multiple, from failed crops to mismanagement, but the fact that none are mentioned means that his situation is not judged. He is entitled to recover his ancestral estate because the Lord gives it, not because he deserves it. The extended family serves as a safety net, calling for the “nearest redeemer” to acquire the property so that it does not leave the family’s holdings (cf. Jer. 32:7). In the event that the seller’s economic situation improves and he acquires the means he may buy back his land, but, if not, he must wait for the jubilee year for his land to revert to his family’s holdings.

The concern that ancestral land not be lost is brought to life vividly in the book of Ruth, wherein Boaz acts as redeemer to buy back the property of his clan member Elimelech.294 In the process he goes beyond that which the law envisions in order to restore Naomi and Ruth to the family property through marriage and producing a living descendant. The narrative brings to the fore that which is behind the jubilee, namely, the bond between land and identity.

25:29–31 Real estate is an exception to the law of redemption. Should someone sell a house in a walled city, he is given a year’s time to buy it back; otherwise it will permanently remain in the possession of the buyer. Houses are not like fields, which provide the means for the life sustenance of a family. Village homes, however, are accounted as one with their land parcel and fall under the same laws of land redemption; they can be recovered at the jubilee.

25:32–34 Special provision is made for the Levites, who have no tribal inheritance (Josh. 13:33). They are allotted no land to farm but instead given forty-eight cities and their surrounding lands for pasturing their flocks (Num. 35:7; Josh. 21:1–42). If a Levite sells a house in a city, the house will revert to him in the jubilee, since that is his only possession. Land for grazing and gardening held in common, however, must not be sold at all.

If land sale is not an option, then what kind of safety valve do Levites have in economic crisis? The Lord intends for the Levites to be supported by the tithes and offerings brought to the sanctuary (Num. 18:24; Deut. 18:1–2; Josh. 13:14). The Levites are found grouped together with the vulnerable fatherless and widow as the Lord urges charity, mercy, and beneficence toward them (Deut. 14:27–29).

25:35 After the clauses of exceptions the laws of redemption pick back up with the situation of an Israelite who, having been forced to sell some of his landholdings, now faces complete insolvency and must be supported as though a resident alien or sojourner, that is, as being in the same social class as the landless. The loss of farmland exposes a family to the very real possibility of starvation. In the kin-based society of ancient Israel poverty strikes at the heart of a person’s very identity, unrooting him from a place tied to identity. In his vulnerability he must be treated as a brother, with the same dignity and compassion with which the Lord treats his people, all of whom are accounted as “strangers and sojourners” (Lev. 25:23). Even for those without land and power the Lord affirms equality of personhood.

25:36–37 In a measure that protects the poor from exploitation Israelites are forbidden from charging interest on a loan made to a brother Israelite in need (cf. Ex. 22:25). Exacting no interest brings loans under the economy of the household, as family lending to family. Profiting from a brother’s misfortune and driving him deeper into debt destroys not only him but also the bonds of community.295

Gracious dealings with one’s brothers are motivated by the fear of God, a holy reverence for the Father in whose patrimony all have a right to live. This is Nehemiah’s appeal amid the mounting debt crisis of those who have returned to an impoverished homeland. Farmers have mortgaged their land and indentured their children with no hope of recovery, while the upper class prosper through charging interest on loans. Invoking the fear of the Lord (Neh. 5:9, 15), Nehemiah shames those taking advantage of their covenant brothers and makes them return the fields seized as collateral and the interest made on loans. Brothers protect and do not profit.

25:38 The section appropriately ends with a strong charge to imitate the Lord, who released his people from servitude and gave them the land as a possession.

25:39–41 The final scenario is one in which persistent and unalleviated financial distress presses an Israelite to enter another’s household as a servant. In this situation he must be treated as a bond servant, not a chattel slave. The difference between the two is teased out carefully in the following verses. Debt slavery is an institution known in the ancient world that, though not abolished here, sees limits and boundaries set for what the Lord will permit at this time. Above all is the exhortation to uphold human dignity in all one’s dealings.

An Israelite is never to be less than a hired resident worker, whose wages go toward paying off his loans. At the jubilee he is released to return to his land, as he and his children are restored once again to their ancestral inheritance. The children are mentioned here since the release looks forward to their future. The jubilee assures that families will not be trapped in an endless cycle of poverty with no hope or a future but that each generation will see the possibility of a clean slate and a new start.

25:42–43 The exhortation to treat a fellow Israelite as a hired laborer and not oppress him is rhetorically stirring and theologically compelling. No Israelite can ever be reduced to a slave, for the Lord released all of them from Pharaoh’s service to enter his own.296 It would challenge his ownership were they to become objects of human slavery. This claim continues with redemptive-historical power, as Paul argues for the release of Onesimus based on the Lord’s claim on him and his master (Philem. 16–21). In his opening greetings of his letters Paul calls himself a bondservant of Christ (Rom. 1:1; Gal. 1:10; Phil. 1:1; Titus 1:1). To put every Israelite on the same level is to acknowledge that all are debtors before God.

25:44–46 An exception can be made with respect to slaves from among foreigners and resident aliens. The only ones in servitude in Israel should be foreigners, acquired as captives of war (Deut. 21:10–14) or purchase (Gen. 37:28). Their slavery is permanent, with no change of status. Slaves become a part of the household (Gen. 17:12–14) and are entitled to certain rights as rest on the Sabbath and can even celebrate the Passover (Ex. 12:44).297

25:47–54 Finally, if an Israelite must enter into the service of a household outside his clan (or even outside the covenant community), the obligation rests with the clan to redeem him, from nearest to most distant extended family member. In this situation the redeemed Israelite will work for his kinsman rather than a foreigner. As with land, all calculations for his redemption are made in light of the upcoming jubilee. In all transactions of redemption, whether of land parcel or person, all value is accorded with respect to the ultimate proclamation of release. In this way the debtor is released when his land is released so that he has a place in this world to which to return.

25:55 The chapter closes with the Lord’s statement of ownership that undergirds the laws on indentured servants and all jubilee practices. It is a statement of identity and hope. Israelites may not be enslaved, for they are the Lord’s servants. Since they belong to him by right of redemption from Egypt, they live in the promise that he will continue to redeem them and repatriate them, as he has in the past (Isa. 43:5–7; 49:8–12).