Leviticus 25:8-22--The Year of Jubilee

Leviticus 25:8-22
English Standard Version

The Year of Jubilee
8 “You shall count seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that the time of the seven weeks of years shall give you forty-nine years. 9 Then you shall sound the loud trumpet on the tenth day of the seventh month. On the Day of Atonement you shall sound the trumpet throughout all your land. 10 And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, when each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his clan. 11 That fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you; in it you shall neither sow nor reap what grows of itself nor gather the grapes from the undressed vines. 12 For it is a jubilee. It shall be holy to you. You may eat the produce of the field.

13 “In this year of jubilee each of you shall return to his property. 14 And if you make a sale to your neighbor or buy from your neighbor, you shall not wrong one another. 15 You shall pay your neighbor according to the number of years after the jubilee, and he shall sell to you according to the number of years for crops. 16 If the years are many, you shall increase the price, and if the years are few, you shall reduce the price, for it is the number of the crops that he is selling to you. 17 You shall not wrong one another, but you shall fear your God, for I am the Lord your God.

​18 “Therefore you shall do my statutes and keep my rules and perform them, and then you will dwell in the land securely. 19 The land will yield its fruit, and you will eat your fill and dwell in it securely. 20 And if you say, ‘What shall we eat in the seventh year, if we may not sow or gather in our crop?’ 21 I will command my blessing on you in the sixth year, so that it will produce a crop sufficient for three years. 22 When you sow in the eighth year, you will be eating some of the old crop; you shall eat the old until the ninth year, when its crop arrives.

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This is one of the most wonderful parts of the Law that has been fulfilled in Christ Jesus and has a "not yet" portion that is to be fulfilled in Christ at His second coming which we refer to as the Rapture.  We just studied how ever seven years, the land was to rest, but now the people are told to count off each group of seven and after the seventh seven, 49 years, and then the 10th day of the seventh month (so seven months after their celebration of Passover that year), the trumpet would sound--that is 10 days after The Feast of Trumpets which is Yom Kippur, The Day of Atonement.  There is some debate as to if this is an additional Sabbath year, or if it is the last of the seven Sabbath years

So let's take a moment to talk about some of the special things that happen during The Year of Jubilee.  First, we see that all land that was part of God's eternal covenant with the people not just on a corporate level, but at a family/clan level and an individual level would be returned to the owner, even though the owner may have had the land seized in forfeiture of assists due to a debt, sold it, or in any other way had had his eternal inheritance taken from him or his family by others or lost it by being careless with it.  God is faithful to keep His covenant with us even when we are not faithful to guard and protect that which is part of the eternal covenant that He has made with us.

Any sale or purchase of land that was made was to account for the fact that the land would be returned to its original owner at the next Year of Jubilee and therefore the value of the land would change based off of how long it was until The Year of Jubilee and they were not to charge each other for years in which the land was to lay fallow during a Sabbath year.  The people should not overvalue the land they are selling and take advantage of their neighbors (fellow citizens).

We'll also learn later that this is a time for every man who has been taken captive or has sold himself and/or his family into slavery or been taken as slaves because of a debt that they could not pay to be set free and have all of their rights restored, and all debts were forgiven--no matter the cost.  This brings to mind one of the prophecies of the coming of the Messiah from the book of Isaiah, Isaiah 61 to be exact.  In fact, this is the passage that Jesus read in the synagogue at the beginning of His ministry to define His mission and ministry (though only the first part of this passage as He came in His first coming to declare the year of the LORD's favor, but did not come to judge the nations at that time)  See how Jesus is promised to bring an even better "Year of Jubilee" in this passage, and we know that He gave a better inheritance, a better covenant, a better freedom, and a better forgiveness of not just monetary debts, but all the debt of sin that we owed against God.


Isaiah 61
English Standard Version

The Year of the Lord's Favor​
61 The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
    because the Lord has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor;
    he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
    and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
2 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor,
    and the day of vengeance of our God;
    to comfort all who mourn;
3 to grant to those who mourn in Zion--
    to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
    the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit;
that they may be called oaks of righteousness,
    the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified.
4 They shall build up the ancient ruins;
    they shall raise up the former devastations;
they shall repair the ruined cities,
    the devastations of many generations.

5 Strangers shall stand and tend your flocks;
    foreigners shall be your plowmen and vinedressers;
6 but you shall be called the priests of the Lord;
    they shall speak of you as the ministers of our God;
you shall eat the wealth of the nations,
    and in their glory you shall boast.
7 Instead of your shame there shall be a double portion;
    instead of dishonor they shall rejoice in their lot;
therefore in their land they shall possess a double portion;
    they shall have everlasting joy.

8 For I the Lord love justice;
    I hate robbery and wrong;
I will faithfully give them their recompense,
    and I will make an everlasting covenant with them.
9 Their offspring shall be known among the nations,
    and their descendants in the midst of the peoples;
all who see them shall acknowledge them,
    that they are an offspring the Lord has blessed.

10 I will greatly rejoice in the Lord;
    my soul shall exult in my God,
for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation;
    he has covered me with the robe of righteousness,
as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress,
    and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
11 For as the earth brings forth its sprouts,
    and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up,
so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise
    to sprout up before all the nations.

So the people were to always trust the Lord to Provide (Jehovah-Jireh) and to trust The Lord of the Harvest (Jehovah Sabaoth) to provide an abundance in the 6th year to provide food for them in the 7th year, and to provide a harvest that they did not work for to sustain them in the eighth year until the crops that they planted were ready to harvest.  Think of this in relation to the Parable of the Talents where the wicked servant says in verse 24 that his master is known for "reaping where [he] did not sow, and gathering where [he] scattered no seed."


Matthew 25:24-28
English Standard Version
24 He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, 25 so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.’ 26 But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? 27 Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. 28 So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents.
Isn't that great that God is going to have some harvest of believers that none of us worked for?  Yes, it is typical that God sends out us a laborers into His fields and into His vineyard to work the fields and gather the harvest, but there will be people in heaven that none of us worked to evangelize or disciple--it was simply the work of the LORD bringing His elect to salvation.  That does not mean that we should be lazy and not be about the work of The Great Commission.  On the contrary, the people were responsible to work hard for six years not only to have enough food for themselves during those years, but to make tithes and offerings and to feed their animals and servants, to help all those who were in need, and to still have enough leftover to get them through the time that God told them to rest.  This is the same God's pattern for us for each week (the Sabbath Day), and we see the pattern in the months that the 7th month (the Sabbath Month in which the Feast of Trumpets and the Day of Atonement was celebrated) was supposed to belong to the LORD, as was the 7th year (the Sabbath Year), and every 7th Sabbath Year (the Year of Jubilee).  God has established a pattern for His people, and the number 7 is closely associated with God's holiness, and we are told to obey these commands because the Lord our God is holy.  While too much is probably made of "hidden codes" in the numbers in the Bible, this pattern seems obvious and the pattern doesn't seem very hidden, so when you see references to 7 or multiples of 7 such as 70 or 77, stop and pay attention and look to see if there is some meaning of fullness, completeness, holiness, or something pointing to the Person or work of the LORD, as this is number most closely associated with Him and what makes Him unique/different.  For instance the reference to forgiving "seventy-seven" or "seventy times seven" times is an indication of a forgiveness that only God is capable of.  We see reference to the sevenfold Spirit (probably the Holy Spirit) the is among the seven lamps (of the Golden Lampstand) in heaven that represent the seven churches, and Jesus holds seven stars in His hand that represent the seven "angels" (probably better translated more directly as "messengers") of these seven churches, and of course there's the famous passage in Daniel of the 70 sevens (sometimes translated as "weeks" in some translations, but "sevens" is better as they are groups of seven years).  We'll find more of these numbers that are significant as we go through the Bible (6, 12, and 40 specifically come to mind) and these numbers can give us some context clues as to if the passage is talking about something "falling short" (usually what 6 and multiples of 6 refer to as it's just shy of 7 and neither man nor the devil can ever quite get to God's perfection that we desire to have in our pride as we desire to "be like god"--see Genesis 3), 12 which seems to be one of the numbers related to the God's people and the fulfillment of God's covenant to include all of His elect (we see 12 tribes, 12 apostles, 12 foundations to the New Jerusalem, 12 gates by which the people enter, and we see 24 elders--probably the 12 sons of Israel and the 12 apostles), and of course the number 40 and its multiples has to do with judgment and trials (40 days and 40 nights of rain in the flood, 400 years in slavery in Egypt, 40 years in Midian for Moses, 40 years wandering in the wilderness for God's people, and 400 years of silence between the Old Testament and New Testament are just some examples--there are many more).  Again, we should not make too much of what is sometimes referred to as numerology, but we also should not overlook where God is trying to say something to us, and to get back to today's text, it is obvious that God has established a pattern for us in the days, weeks, months, and years to remind us of the Sabbath rest and to trust in Him, the Creator of all things, for our provision in the short-term and in the long-term (even our eternal provision as we studied today in that His covenant is renewed with us and all the benefits are restored to those of us who were not careful to keep and care for that which we were entrusted with).