Leviticus 25:1-34 - Perfect Provision and Redemption

Leviticus 25:1-34

The Sabbath of the Seventh Year (Deuteronomy 15:1–11)

1 And the LORD spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying, 2 “Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them: ‘When you come into the land which I give you, then the land shall keep a sabbath to the LORD. 3 Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard, and gather its fruit; 4 but in the seventh year there shall be a sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a sabbath to the LORD. You shall neither sow your field nor prune your vineyard. 5 What grows of its own accord of your harvest you shall not reap, nor gather the grapes of your untended vine, for it is a year of rest for the land. 6 And the sabbath produce of the land shall be food for you: for you, your male and female servants, your hired man, and the stranger who dwells with you, 7 for your livestock and the beasts that are in your land—all its produce shall be for food.

The Year of Jubilee

8 ‘And you shall count seven sabbaths of years for yourself, seven times seven years; and the time of the seven sabbaths of years shall be to you forty-nine years. 9 Then you shall cause the trumpet of the Jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the Day of Atonement you shall make the trumpet to sound throughout all your land. 10 And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a Jubilee for you; and each of you shall return to his possession, and each of you shall return to his family. 11 That fiftieth year shall be a Jubilee to you; in it you shall neither sow nor reap what grows of its own accord, nor gather the grapes of your untended vine. 12 For it is the Jubilee; it shall be holy to you; you shall eat its produce from the field.

13 In this Year of Jubilee, each of you shall return to his possession. 14 And if you sell anything to your neighbor or buy from your neighbor’s hand, you shall not oppress one another. 15 According to the number of years after the Jubilee you shall buy from your neighbor, and according to the number of years of crops he shall sell to you. 16 According to the multitude of years you shall increase its price, and according to the fewer number of years you shall diminish its price; for he sells to you according to the number of the years of the crops. 17 Therefore you shall not oppress one another, but you shall fear your God; for I am the LORD your God.

Provisions for the Seventh Year

18 So you shall observe My statutes and keep My judgments, and perform them; and you will dwell in the land in safety. 19 Then the land will yield its fruit, and you will eat your fill, and dwell there in safety.

20 ‘And if you say, “What shall we eat in the seventh year, since we shall not sow nor gather in our produce?” 21 Then I will command My blessing on you in the sixth year, and it will bring forth produce enough for three years. 22 And you shall sow in the eighth year, and eat old produce until the ninth year; until its produce comes in, you shall eat of the old harvest.

Redemption of Property

23 ‘The land shall not be sold permanently, for the land is Mine; for you are strangers and sojourners with Me. 24 And in all the land of your possession you shall grant redemption of the land.

25 If one of your brethren becomes poor, and has sold some of his possession, and if his redeeming relative comes to redeem it, then he may redeem what his brother sold. 26 Or if the man has no one to redeem it, but he himself becomes able to redeem it, 27 then let him count the years since its sale, and restore the remainder to the man to whom he sold it, that he may return to his possession. 28 But if he is not able to have it restored to himself, then what was sold shall remain in the hand of him who bought it until the Year of Jubilee; and in the Jubilee it shall be released, and he shall return to his possession.

29 ‘If a man sells a house in a walled city, then he may redeem it within a whole year after it is sold; within a full year he may redeem it. 30 But if it is not redeemed within the space of a full year, then the house in the walled city shall belong permanently to him who bought it, throughout his generations. It shall not be released in the Jubilee. 31 However the houses of villages which have no wall around them shall be counted as the fields of the country. They may be redeemed, and they shall be released in the Jubilee. 32 Nevertheless the cities of the Levites, and the houses in the cities of their possession, the Levites may redeem at any time. 33 And if a man purchases a house from the Levites, then the house that was sold in the city of his possession shall be released in the Jubilee; for the houses in the cities of the Levites are their possession among the children of Israel. 34 But the field of the common-land of their cities may not be sold, for it is their perpetual possession.

The pattern for perfect provision and redemption is set in these statutes for God’s people.  The number seven has often been symbolic of perfection in the scriptures and here it is used for the seventh year of sabbath rest for farming the land, seven groups of seven years for a redemption jubilee year to set men and their possessions free, and a promise of provision when the seventh year fallow of the land provided no harvest for that year; instead , God provided three years worth of food in the sixth year to more than meet their needs if they followed His word to fallow the fields on the seventh years.  Even in the property laws redemption was spelled out to be restored on the year of seven sevens, the Jubilee.  The land owned and sold was to be restored because it was permanently owned by the original owners it had been bequeathed to by the LORD!  This pattern points us to the perfect redemption of Jesus Christ for our salvation from sin’s penalty of eternal punishment due to every child of Adam since the fall in Eden’s Garden.  It is a reminder of the permanence of that salvation that cannot be revoked or sold off to another because we are secure in the grip of God’s hand (John 10:28-29) of eternal grace sealed by his Spirit as the mark of His ownership (Ephesians 1:13-14) and promise of return to Him at the Jubilee of death when we stand at last (Job 19:25-27, 1 Corinthians 13:12, Revelation 22:4) before His face.  The gospel promises what was foreshadowed in these statutes long ago to be revealed in Jesus Christ as our eternally perfect provision and redemption.  Our resurrection then is the fulfillment of the Jubilee when we are in possession of all things in heaven left behind in our lives on earth as our perfect redemption makes us perfect and complete in Him in our glorified bodies apart from the presence of sin there.  What a jubilee we will celebrate!