The Year of Jubilee, a Picture of God’s Redemption
The remainder of Chapter 25 of Leviticus introduces us to another Levitical celebration. So far, the celebrations have been memorial celebrations when the worshipper was to take time to remember; to look back and remember what God had done.
The Sabbath Day was a look back at God’s wonderful acts of creation. The Passover was a time to look back and remember God’s great acts of deliverance and protection.
Here the worshipper did not look back so much as they looked forward to the future and this future for the Israelite very often looked bright and glorious. They could start over. It was a time when they were released from their past sins and even the consequences of past bad decisions were forgiven and reversed.
If you had been placed into servitude for some reason or if you had to sell all the land you had for some reason or if there was something else of that nature at the Year of Jubilee all debts were erased and property restored. Family land went back to the family and children were not made to bear the sin of their fathers. This celebration was a celebration of redemption.
The poor were overjoyed to know they had a fresh start. Everyone was reminded that it was God’s land not theirs. They were also reminded that they all were God’s people and not just the wealthy that was to benefit from being in the Promised Land.
1. The Year of Jubilee, a Time of Forgiveness and Redemption (25:8-12)
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.
There was the seven years of the Sabbath year then on the fiftieth year on the Day of Atonement the trumpet was blasted and the Jubilee year was announced throughout the 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.
If someone sold themselves into servanthood they were released to go back home.
2. Many Practical Issues Concerning the Year of Jubilee (25:13-55)
A. God’s people are to be trustworthy in business (25:13-17)
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.
On the Jubilee, all could return to their land of inheritance.
Also, land transactions were naturally reduced in number due to the jubilee cycle. The price fixed based on how many years left before the property had to be returned to the original family.
Stated in the text is you shall not wrong one another.
In God’s wonderful sovereignty, the rich could not get too attached to the land and the poor would not feel doomed and hopeless.
B. God’s people are to rely on Him for food (25:18-22)
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.
I love this text because God anticipates the question His people will ask. We also saw this last week. So, the people were not to plant crops in the Jubilee Year so the question was…
20 And if you say, ‘What shall we eat in the seventh year, if we may not sow or gather in our crop?’
What is God’s answer?
21 I will command my blessing on you in the sixth year, so that it will produce a crop sufficient for three years.
The phrase, God will command His blessing to be upon them is a very strong and powerful truth. If His people will listen to Him and do what He commands then He will cause the sixth year to produce three years’ worth of crops for them to eat.
This taught them faith and responsibility. God would be faithful to them and they still needed to do certain things too.
C. God’s people are stewards not owners (25:23-38)
23 “The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine. For you are strangers and sojourners with me. 24 And in all the country you possess, you shall allow a redemption of the land.
25 “If your brother becomes poor and sells part of his property, then his nearest redeemer shall come and redeem what his brother has sold. 26 If a man has no one to redeem it and then himself becomes prosperous and finds sufficient means to redeem it, 27 let him calculate the years since he sold it and pay back the balance to the man to whom he sold it, and then return to his property. 28 But if he does not have sufficient means to recover it, then what he sold shall remain in the hand of the buyer until the year of jubilee. In the jubilee it shall be released, and he shall return to his property.
29 “If a man sells a dwelling house in a walled city, he may redeem it within a year of its sale. For a full year he shall have the right of redemption. 30 If it is not redeemed within a full year, then the house in the walled city shall belong in perpetuity to the buyer, throughout his generations; it shall not be released in the jubilee. 31 But the houses of the villages that have no wall around them shall be classified with the fields of the land. They may be redeemed, and they shall be released in the jubilee. 32 As for the cities of the Levites, the Levites may redeem at any time the houses in the cities they possess. 33 And if one of the Levites exercises his right of redemption, then the house that was sold in a city they possess shall be released in the jubilee. For the houses in the cities of the Levites are their possession among the people of Israel. 34 But the fields of pastureland belonging to their cities may not be sold, for that is their possession forever.
35 “If your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself with you, you shall support him as though he were a stranger and a sojourner, and he shall live with you. 36 Take no interest from him or profit, but fear your God, that your brother may live beside you. 37 You shall not lend him your money at interest, nor give him your food for profit. 38 I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan, and to be your God.
Next, we see how Israel was to transfer property. The main point of this section is that God owns the land not them. The principle that no land could be sold forever.
23 “The land shall not be sold in perpetuity here the word is literally beyond reclaim. The buyer had to grant redemption if the former acquired funds sufficient the land had to be returned.
The exception was a house purchased within a walled city. That became the buyers forever. This was different from a house outside the walled city because there that house had farmland attached to it.
In all these cases, we see while there is the opportunity for redemption it would be the Year of Jubilee that God would become His people’s redeemer. In the case of farmland, a family member could help by becoming the redeemer of the land or the person by paying the money himself.
Every 50 years, God became the Kinsman Redeemer for all His people.
Ruth 4:1–6 (ESV)
4 Now Boaz had gone up to the gate and sat down there. And behold, the redeemer, of whom Boaz had spoken, came by. So Boaz said, “Turn aside, friend; sit down here.” And he turned aside and sat down. 2 And he took ten men of the elders of the city and said, “Sit down here.” So they sat down. 3 Then he said to the redeemer, “Naomi, who has come back from the country of Moab, is selling the parcel of land that belonged to our relative Elimelech. 4 So I thought I would tell you of it and say, ‘Buy it in the presence of those sitting here and in the presence of the elders of my people.’ If you will redeem it, redeem it. But if you will not, tell me, that I may know, for there is no one besides you to redeem it, and I come after you.” And he said, “I will redeem it.” 5 Then Boaz said, “The day you buy the field from the hand of Naomi, you also acquire Ruth the Moabite, the widow of the dead, in order to perpetuate the name of the dead in his inheritance.” 6 Then the redeemer said, “I cannot redeem it for myself, lest I impair my own inheritance. Take my right of redemption yourself, for I cannot redeem it.”
D. God’s people must care for the needy (25:39-55)
39 “If your brother becomes poor beside you and sells himself to you, you shall not make him serve as a slave: 40 he shall be with you as a hired worker and as a sojourner. He shall serve with you until the year of the jubilee. 41 Then he shall go out from you, he and his children with him, and go back to his own clan and return to the possession of his fathers. 42 For they are my servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt; they shall not be sold as slaves. 43 You shall not rule over him ruthlessly but shall fear your God. 44 As for your male and female slaves whom you may have: you may buy male and female slaves from among the nations that are around you. 45 You may also buy from among the strangers who sojourn with you and their clans that are with you, who have been born in your land, and they may be your property. 46 You may bequeath them to your sons after you to inherit as a possession forever. You may make slaves of them, but over your brothers the people of Israel you shall not rule, one over another ruthlessly.
47 “If a stranger or sojourner with you becomes rich, and your brother beside him becomes poor and sells himself to the stranger or sojourner with you or to a member of the stranger’s clan, 48 then after he is sold he may be redeemed. One of his brothers may redeem him, 49 or his uncle or his cousin may redeem him, or a close relative from his clan may redeem him. Or if he grows rich he may redeem himself. 50 He shall calculate with his buyer from the year when he sold himself to him until the year of jubilee, and the price of his sale shall vary with the number of years. The time he was with his owner shall be rated as the time of a hired worker. 51 If there are still many years left, he shall pay proportionately for his redemption some of his sale price. 52 If there remain but a few years until the year of jubilee, he shall calculate and pay for his redemption in proportion to his years of service. 53 He shall treat him as a worker hired year by year. He shall not rule ruthlessly over him in your sight. 54 And if he is not redeemed by these means, then he and his children with him shall be released in the year of jubilee. 55 For it is to me that the people of Israel are servants. They are my servants whom I brought out of the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.
Here we see another piece of this Year of Jubilee. It was how the Israelite was to treat other Israelites who had to indenture themselves as servants to pay a debt. God’s way of indebtedness is that if you owed money to someone you worked for them until you paid off the debt. They were not slaves.
This section tells us how they were to be treated…
39 “If your brother becomes poor beside you and sells himself to you, you shall not make him serve as a slave: 40 he shall be with you as a hired worker and as a sojourner. He shall serve with you until the year of the jubilee.
Summary of this text for today…God’s sovereignty over His people and their possessions leads to compassionate treatment of the poor because at the Jubilee, everyone is released from bondage.
3. Looking to the New Testament
We see in Christ the Bringer and Herald of the Year of Jubilee for all Christians. It is in Christ that God has forgiven all our debts. Jesus is our Great Kinsman Redeemer.
John 19:30 (ESV)
30 When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
Literally, paid in full. All the debts of God’s elect were paid on that day. The cross becomes our jubilee. Debts forgiven and slaves set free…Jesus is our jubilee.
Isaiah 61:1–3 (ESV)
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.
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