Leviticus · chapter 25 of 27
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Leviticus 25 establishes that the land rests every seventh year and that every fifty years the Jubilee is proclaimed: the land returns to its family and Israelite slaves go free. The land belongs to the Lord, and the Israelites are his tenants. The poor are protected by interest-free help and the right of redemption, because the Lord brought them out of Egypt.
After the sanctuary and the calendar of feasts, Leviticus 25 applies holiness to the economy and the land. When Israel enters Canaan, it must not repeat the injustices of Egypt: the land is the Lord's, poverty will not be a permanent sentence, and each generation will have a fresh start.
At Mount Sinai the Lord commands that, when they enter the land, it is to keep a Sabbath for him every seventh year. For six years they sow and gather, and in the seventh they do not cultivate, and what the land yields by itself is for everyone: the owner, servants, the foreigner and livestock. The Lord promises to bless the sixth year so that it is enough.
They count seven times seven years, and on the Day of Atonement of the fiftieth year the horn sounds throughout the land: it is the Jubilee, a holy year in which liberty is proclaimed. Everyone returns to his property and to his family. That year they do not sow either. The land cannot be sold permanently, because it is the Lord's, and it is sold only according to the years until the Jubilee. A close relative may redeem it, and if not, it returns to its owner at the Jubilee.
If a brother becomes poor, he is helped without charging him interest, and he is not treated as a slave but as a hired worker until the Jubilee, because the Israelites are servants of the Lord, who brought them out of Egypt. Foreign slaves may be property, but a brother is not to be ruled harshly. If an Israelite sells himself to a foreigner, he may be redeemed by a relative or by himself, or goes free at the Jubilee.
References follow ESV book names and verse numbers. Read each verse in your Bible before the explanation.
In the seventh year the land is to have a Sabbath of rest for the Lord: no sowing and no pruning. It is a confession of faith: the people rest because they trust that the land and its harvest are God's gift, not only the fruit of their own effort.
The fiftieth year is to be holy, and liberty is proclaimed throughout the land to all its inhabitants. Each person returns to his property and his family. It is a picture of grace that restores what was lost, which Jesus echoed when announcing his ministry at Nazareth.
The land is not to be sold permanently, because it is the Lord's, and the Israelites are only sojourners and tenants with him. This phrase changes the view of ownership: everything we have we manage, and we are not absolute owners.
The Israelites are servants of the Lord, who brought them out of Egypt. So they cannot be perpetual servants of others. Their freedom is rooted in God's redemption, and that memory obliges them to treat a poor brother with dignity.
6 questions with answers and references, ready for Sunday school, small group or a Bible quiz night.
Answer: It rested, with a Sabbath for the Lord, with no sowing or pruning. — Leviticus 25:4
Answer: In the fiftieth year, after counting seven times seven years. — Leviticus 25:8-10
Answer: Liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. — Leviticus 25:10
Answer: Because it is the Lord's, and the Israelites are sojourners and tenants with him. — Leviticus 25:23
Answer: Interest or profit on what was lent. — Leviticus 25:35-37
Answer: A close relative, or he himself if he had the means. — Leviticus 25:47-49
Leviticus 25 challenges how we think about property, rest and poverty. In a Sunday school class you can ask what it means today to trust God by resting, and to recognize that what we have is his. Also, how to help the needy so that they recover their dignity and are not bound by debt.
Jesus, in the synagogue at Nazareth, announced good news to the poor and liberty to the captives, in language that recalls the Jubilee. In him true liberation is fulfilled. His people live with generosity and justice, knowing they were redeemed.
Leviticus 25 teaches that among God's people land, rest and freedom are received as gifts and shared. Leviticus 26 closes the Holiness Code with the blessings of obedience, the consequences of disobedience and the promise that God will remember his covenant.
The biblical text commands it, but the Bible does not clearly describe its practice. Some later passages speak of Israel not keeping the land's Sabbath years, and the prophets rebuke economic injustice. The Jubilee remains an ideal that points to God's restoration.
At Nazareth, Jesus read a passage from Isaiah about good news to the poor and liberty to the captives and said it was fulfilled in him. Many interpreters see here an echo of the Jubilee, a year of the Lord's favor that Christ inaugurates.