The jubilee had a twofold message. To the wealthy, the jubilee was a small picture of death, a reminder that worldly possession cannot be held onto forever. To the poor, the jubilee was a tangible hope that they were not condemned to perpetual poverty.

And the LORD spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying…Every portion of the Bible is God-breathed, and all of it is profitable. We have seen that it is profitable for teaching, for reproof, and for correction. Paul then adds a final profitability: for training in righteousness. The word translated as training is paideia. Paideia referred to the wholistic education in Ancient Greece. In fact, many scholars suggest that enculturation would be a better translation of the word. The Greeks used the works of Homer as the basis for their paideia. Children were taught the alphabet, learned grammar, copied, memorized, and meditated upon the Iliad and the Odyssey. Through those texts, children were not simply taught basic educational skills; they were guided into what it meant to be a Greek citizen. The Romans used Virgil’s Aeneid similarly. Paul takes that same idea but presents Scripture to us. In the Bible we have something far greater than an epic poem; we have the very Word of God. All Scripture is for enculturating us in righteousness, preparing us to be true citizens of heaven.

Leviticus 25 closes out the mini section of 23-25 that addresses how Israel was to worship Yahweh within sacred time. Chapter 23 commanded the Sabbath and the annual feasts and fasts to be kept. Last week, chapter 24 presented two seemingly unrelated sections: the lampstand and bread of the Presence, followed by the account of the blaspheming man. Yet we saw that the two scenes formed a unified contrast. The light of the lamp shining upon the bread of the Presence displayed the blessing of God, as God’s people are renewed Sabbath by Sabbath in the light of His presence. The second scene portrayed contempt for God’s Name and the curse that must follow. The first section highlighted the rhythms of sacred time (“Sabbath by Sabbath,” “regularly,” “a statute forever”), while the other highlighted the holiness of God’s name, which has been repeatedly declared since chapter 18.

This brings us to chapter 25, a large and rich passage that presents two closely connected concepts. Verses 1-7 introduce the sabbatical year, and verses 8-22 present the year of jubilee. The remainder of the chapter explains how the jubilee works in practice. Verses 23-38 focus on the redemption of property, while verses 39-55 address the redemption of persons. And as always, we will conclude by setting our eyes upon Christ and His fulfillment of this chapter.

The Sabbbatical Year—Verses 1-7

The command here is straightforward. Just as Israel was commanded to work six days and rest on the seventh, so they were also commanded to work the land for six years and let is rest on the seventh. During that seventh year, they were not to sow, prune, or harvest in the normal fashion. Instead, whatever the land naturally produced would be food for the Israelite, the servant, the sojourner, the livestock, and even the wild animals.

Notice in verse 2 who keeps this Sabbath: the land shall keep a Sabbath. The land is almost personified, and there is good reason for this. But we will save that for the end of the sermon.

So, why does God issue this command? At one level, the reasoning is similar to the weekly Sabbath. It is a provision of rest and worship, while also functioning as a test of Israel’s faith in Yahweh. Again, the weekly Sabbath was rather like a litmus test. If God’s people could not obey the command to stop working and rest, how would they keep any of the other commands?

The sabbatical year does this on a much larger scale. It entirely disrupted productivity. It challenged self-reliance head-on. And it taught Israel how to be dependent upon God. It forced them to trust in God’s provision for them. It pushed the weekly rhythm of trust to a deeper level. Could they trust Him to rest from work for an entire year? Of course, God issues this command while He is literally feeding them the bread of the angels in the wilderness.

Yet even though they were not to work, God promised to provide for them, saying, “The Sabbath of the land shall provide for you.” The land itself, under God’s hand, would be enough for them.

We should skip ahead a bit to verse 23 because it is essential for properly understanding what is happening here (and during the jubilee): The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine.

Notice the beautiful tension in this chapter. Verse 2 says, the land that I give to you… But verse 22 says, the land is mine. Which is it? The answer, of course, is yes. God would give them the land to be their possession, yet He remains the ultimate owner. He is the Maker of heaven and earth, so He certainly owns Israel as well. As the psalmist says, God owns the cattle on a thousand hills. The land does truly belong to Israel, but they are also hold it as tenants under their Lord.

I think it is worth pausing here to reflect upon our own relationship with rest. Here in the West, we tend to be both workaholics and deeply slothful. Those two things may sound like opposites, but they actually work together quite well. You see, busyness is the counterfeit of godly work. It drains us and leaves us empty. We then typically collapse into idleness, which is the counterfeit of godly rest. While idle, we shut our brains off and normally descend into a pit of mindless entertainment. Guilt then pushes us out of idleness and back to busyness. And the cycle repeats.

God’s Word gives us a different pattern to follow. Godly work is meant to lead to godly rest, which then feeds back into godly work. It is meant to be a healthy and holy cycle. To break the destructive loop of busyness and idleness, we must learn to work and rest to the glory of God.

Ultimately, our true rest is found only in Christ. He invites the weary to come to Him: “Come to me all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” That is the heart of true Sabbath rest. So, as we reflect on the sabbatical year, we should ask ourselves: Am I resting in Christ? Am I entrusting my work, my time, my work and rest to Him?

The Year of Jubilee—Verses 8-22

In verse 8, we are told about the year of jubilee:

You shall count seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that the time of the seven weeks of years shall give forty-nine years. 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. 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. That fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you; in it you shall neither saw nor reap what grows of itself nor gather the grapes from the undressed vines. For it is a jubilee. It shall be holy to you. You may eat of the produce of the field.

The Jubilee, as you may already be able to tell, was a kind of super sabbatical year. It was to occur every fifty years. Because it immediately followed the seventh sabbatical year, it gave the Israelites two consecutive years of rest.

Interestingly, we do not know exactly what the word jubilee means. Some connect it with the Hebrew word for ‘to return,’ which fits with the theme of returning to one’s property and clan. Others argue that it is related to ‘ram’s horn’ or ‘trumpet,’ which also fits because the jubilee was announced with trumpet blasts on the Day of Atonement. Whichever is correct, the occasion was certainly joyous. That is why our English word jubilation still carries the idea of exuberant rejoicing. The year of jubilee was a year of celebration through Israel.

But what was the main point of the jubilee?

Verse 10 gives us the big picture: liberty. The jubilee was a time when property was released back to its original owner and when servants were set free. It was essentially a massive social reset. Any land you had purchased from another Israelite was returned to its original family. Any Israelite who sold himself into servitude was released.

Indeed, notice that the year of jubilee began on the Day of Atonement, after the sins of the nation were atoned for. This is fitting because liberty cannot come without atonement. Sin is slavery, and there is no freedom without forgiveness of sin.

Gordon Wenham summarizes the purpose well, noting that because the year of jubilee occurred every fifty years. If a person sold himself into slavery immediately after the jubilee, he would only be enslaved for a maximum of forty-eight or forty-nine years. “Thus, about once in any man’s lifetime the slate was wiped clean. Everyone had a chance to make a fresh start” (317). The wealthy released the land and servants that they had accumulated, and the poor regained the land and freedom that they had lost.

Thus, the jubilee had a twofold message. To the wealthy, the jubilee was a small picture of death, a reminder that worldly possession cannot be held onto forever. To the poor, the jubilee was a tangible hope that they were not condemned to perpetual poverty.

This is also why verses 13-17 warn against wrongdoing. Even a year of liberty could become a point of exploitation. Because the jubilee reset ownership, the value of land fluctuated depending on where one was in the cycle. Land sold just before the jubilee would be cheaper than land sold right after. The first might only be used by the purchaser for several years, while the second could be used for several decades. God gives these laws, however, to prevent manipulative business. For instance, we can imagine an Israelite trying to profit off someone’s forgetfulness or vulnerability by selling a property for a high price close to the jubilee, hoping to make money and then get his property back soon. The laws prevent such practices.

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