Leviticus 25:15-16 limits land transactions to a very specific timeframe, forty- nine years. Thus, as verses 15-16 make clear, the price is determined by the number of crop years that are available before the Jubilee. In other words, a buyer is only purchasing its “productive capacity.”69 Israelites can only sell the rights to their land up until the Jubilee. Thus, if there are twenty–five years until the Jubilee, then the price is based on the price for twenty–five years’ worth of crops or twenty–five years’ worth of productive capacity.
If they do not keep the Sabbaths, then the Lord promises to visit them with difficulty, famine, and wasted effort in Leviticus 26:14ff. The curses go so far as to promise that they will be “sowed” out of the land (Lev 26:32, note the irony!) and the land will literally תצָרְהִ (“pay off”) its Sabbaths that were not observed (Lev 26:34, 43).73 The true landowner, Yahweh, keeps a tally of years when the land rights are used without permission. Israel’s land rights do not apply during the Sabbath and Jubilee years. The Chronicler reports that this is exactly why the exile was 70 years: “20 He took into exile in Babylon those who had escaped from the sword, and they became servants to him and to his sons until the establishment of the kingdom of Persia, 21 to fulfill the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths. All the days that it lay desolate it kept Sabbath, to fulfill seventy years” (2 Chr 36:20-21; cf. Jer 29:10;
25:12-12; Ezra 1:1; Dan 9:1-2).74 The exile allowed Yahweh to have exclusive land rights in order to pay back Israel’s debt of illegitimate land use over multiple centuries.
This covenant backdrop informs the first promise of Leviticus 25:18-19, which promises security, fruitful land, and filled bellies: “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.” Either the triangular relationship between Yahweh, Israel, and the land is in harmony, or it is broken and in complete disharmony. One must obey Yahweh and keep his Sabbaths in order to enjoy the fruit and rest of the land.
73 רָה is difficult to translate, especially in the hiphil stem, as here. In the qal, it has a range צָ
from “be pleased with” to “accept” to “make acceptable” to “pay” to “propitiate.” The ESV chooses the safe gloss of “enjoy,” which is surely insufficient given the lexical trajectory of this word. Nevetheless, the semantic range also carries a note of obligation to make right, whether relationally (“please”) or financially (“pay”). Thus, a wooden translation of the hiphil might read “to count out.” HALOT, s.v. “II רָה ”; BDB, צָ
s.v. “ רָה .”. HALOT sees two homonyms with the same consonants, which is not necessary. The hiphil is צָ
simply applying the relational category to a concrete financial scenario. Contra Bergsma, who argues
“enjoy” is a better gloss because “make restitution” makes the land morally culpable. Bergsma, The Jubilee, 209n16.
74 See treatments of Jer 25:11, 29:10, and 2 Chr 36:20–23 in chap. 5 of this dissertation, where it appears that the number of years in exile was in direct proportion to the number of unobserved Sabbaths.
Leviticus 25:20-22:
The Three-Year Crop
The second promise deals with an anticipated problem. If the land is to lie fallow for a year, what will Israel eat? Leviticus 25:20–22 return to the topic of 25:1–7, thus framing the Jubilee legislation within the imperative of the Sabbath year. The text reads:
And if you say, “What shall we eat in the seventh year, if we may not sow or gather in our crop?” I will command my blessing on you in the sixth year, so that it will produce a crop sufficient for three years. 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. (Lev 25:20-22)75
The Sabbath and Jubilee years are inextricably linked together. They are concurrent every seventh year and together they both form major pieces of Israel’s Sabbath spectrum, a key component of God’s covenant with them.76 It has been argued above that the Jubilee occurred every forty-nine years, meaning that the Sabbath-year fallow and the Jubilee fallow were concurrent. As discussed above, this leaves the question of how to interpret the language of “three years” in verse 21. If the consecutive view is granted, then year one is viewed as the fall and spring of the sixth year, year two is fall and spring of the seventh fallow year, and year three is the fall of the eighth year when sowing
commences. This also helps explain the language of the “ninth year.” There is a promise of a full three years’ worth of crops, meaning the sixth year crop will be sufficient to eat from for year seven, eight, and part of nine until the sowing of the eighth year is reaped.77
75 Milgrom sees a potential parallel structure here, with each parallel pane emphasizing God’s blessing. Analysis is beyond the scope of this work. See Milgrom, Leviticus 23–27, 2180 for explanation.
76 See chap. 3 of this dissertation for a full explanation of Israel’s Sabbath spectrum.
77 My interpretation follows that of Chirichigno, Debt-Slavery, 302-11. Milgrom argues that the text should read with the numbers 48, 49, 50, and 51. See Milgrom, Leviticus, 2182. Hartley argues that vv. 20-22 were originally part of vv. 1-7 and were later moved and affixed to the Jubilee legislation.
Hartley, Leviticus, 437. Such redactional explanations are not necessary. The Jubilee year is indeed special, yet it remains a Sabbath year. In the logic of an Israelite, they would have counted in seven-year increments regardless of the Jubilee to determine which year was the fallow year. This presumed logic is yet another reason why the Jubilee likely is forty-nine years and concurrent with the fallow year. See also Wenham, who argues similarly. Wenham, Leviticus, 320
The practical question is, how can a field that normally provides enough for one year provide enough for two to three years? David Hopkins has argued that Israelite and ANE farmers in general likely followed a practice of biennial crop rotation.78 In other words, they only worked half their land each year, rotating with the other half year to year. By this system, it is conceivable that a farmer could work both halves in year six, providing a double crop. The half of the farm used two years in a row could then be rested in both the fallow year and year eight to ensure it maintained appropriate rest.79 Whether or not Hopkins is correct, the point of these verses is that God’s blessing will defy normal logic and expectation. There is a very real concern that letting land lie fallow may result in starvation. The fallow rest of the Sabbath year and Jubilee year inculcate faith in the God of the covenant, Yahweh. C. J. H. Wright agrees with this assessment:
“The theological principle was that obedience to the economic legislation of Israel would require, not prudential calculations, but faith in the ability of Yahweh to provide through his control of nature as well as history.”80 Such faith would also be required to obey the other provisions of the Jubilee. Releasing debts and releasing hired workers (units of work) would certainly cost the Israelite master. However, Israel was not to live on the basis of their own efforts but to trust in Yahweh to provide for their needs. Their first duty was to obey Yahweh and give way to his demands for the way his land is used and his people are treated.
78 See David C. Hopkins, The Highlands of Canaan: Agricultural Life in the Early Iron Age, Social World of Biblical Antiquity Series 3 (Sheffield: Almond, 1985), 201.
79 Hopkins, The Highlands of Canaan, 201, 273. Hopkins explanation has gained popular assent. He is cited in several of the more extensive and modern treatments on the Jubilee. See Milgrom, Leviticus 23–27, 2249; Bergsma, The Jubilee, 87; Chirichigno, Debt-Slavery, 310.
80 C. J. H. Wright, Walking in the Ways of the Lord: The Ethical Authority of the Old Testament (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1995), 203.
Structure of Leviticus 23:23-55
These verses begin the second major section of Leviticus 25, which argue that the Jubilee is for the redemption of land. While the content is focused on the laws of redemption which can preempt the Jubilee, the fact that each major law includes the Jubilee shows that the Jubilee concern has not left the author’s mind. The Jubilee is the framework within which the laws for redemption of land and persons operate. This second section of Leviticus 25 follows a consistent structure, with each successive stage of destitution marked out by the formula: “If your brother becomes poor” (Lev 25:25, 35, 39, and 47).81 This protasis is repeated four times since the third stage imagines two different worse-case scenarios, one in which an Israelite sells himself to another Israelite and another in which an Israelite sells himself to a foreigner. The structure follows a general “principle of priority,” with each successive stage of destitution demanding more attention and priority.82 In other words, the first stage is not as dire of a situation as the second stage, so on and so forth. The first section is interrupted by an excursus regarding the sale of city dwellings in verses 29-34, thus answering the practical question of
whether urban houses applied or not. The third stage also deals with the practical question of foreign slaves in verses 44-46.