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Lev. 25:1–7 The practice of allowing no organized farming in the seventh year clearly benefits the soil. It also recognizes that all produce belongs to God and that he gives it freely to his people.
Lev. 25:8–12 Jubilee was a year of release and liberty (v. 10), when people were to return to their ancestral property. Israelites who had sold themselves as servants were to be released and sent home. This provided a periodic restoration of the means to earn a living for each family in an agrarian society. The jubilee did not equalize all possessions in Israel, however, since possessions such as cattle and money were not reallocated. The land was to lie fallow for two years in a row: the forty-ninth year (sabbatical year) and the fiftieth year (jubilee). This law prohibited the creation of large estates, which would have reduced many Israelites to being tenants on their ancestral land (see Isa. 5:8).
Lev. 25:13–17 The price of property must be calculated in terms of how many years have passed since the jubilee, since it is not the property itself that is being sold but the amount of crops that can be harvested before the next jubilee. Since all the Israelites eventually return to their inherited land, the act of selling agricultural land essentially means leasing it (but see vv. 29–31 for land that could be sold permanently). The instruction you shall not wrong one another (vv. 14, 17) relates to the economic oppression of the poor and needy (compare 19:33).
Lev. 25:23–24 The land is the Lord’s, and the Israelites are strangers and sojourners. They are tenants, essentially.
Lev. 25:25–28 If an Israelite is forced to sell his land, the land can be brought back to the family in one of three ways: (1) a close relative, called a kinsman-redeemer, buys it; (2) the one who sold it can buy it back; or (3) it is returned at the jubilee.
Lev. 25:35–38 Israelites are to show mercy to one another because they have received mercy from God.
Lev. 25:39–46 A poor Israelite may have sold himself to a fellow Israelite. His right to return to his house at the jubilee means he has sold just his labor, and not his status as a free Israelite.
Lev. 25:47–55 The sojourner is required to keep the laws of Israel while residing in the land.
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