Tanak Foundations-Concepts in Leviticus-Chapter 25

Lev 25.1-55 tells us that the people are getting ready to come into the land and the owner (God) is putting restrictions on it (the land).  Right off we are going to see a system of “sevens.”  We will have the Sabbatical year and the Yovel year (Jubilee).  Every seven years the land was to rest (be complete) from cultivation (if you were a farmer). This is called a “Shemitah” (release). Israel was “evicted” out of the land to Babylon for neglecting that command.

Every fifty years all debts were cancelled and the land rested two years (year 49 and 50). A great shofar (Shofar ha Gadol) was blown on Tishri 10 (Lev 25.9, or Yom Kippur) and this is called the Yovel (ram’s horn). One could move back to ancestral lands again. This will have a role when Yeshua returns at the sound of the great trumpet (shofar) in Matt 24.29-31. The exiles will return back to their ancestral lands from all over the world.

Every generation could be debt free every fifty years and the wealth was redistributed and the poor were elevated. Now, you could sell your property but you were only selling the number of harvests expected from the land to the next Yovel (Lev 25.16). For example, if you sold the land and you made ten thousand dollars off the land a year, and there were 10 years left to the Yovel, the price of the land was one hundred thousand dollars. This was the system that the Lord set up. It was really a form of leasing rather than selling. At the end of the Yovel, the land went back to the ancestral owners.

Economic deprivation is the source of many of the problems we have today. Every fifty years in Israel those problems were solved. The books were cleared and the next generation was not strapped with debt like today. In the spiritual, we don’t belong to ourselves. The Lord created us and chose us before the foundation of the world (Eph 1.4) and called us to him and gave us life. We belong to him. He has put restrictions on us to prove ownership and these restrictions are called Torah commands.

One of those restrictions concerned what to eat in Lev 11. These are food laws just like in Eden. Another restriction was rest on the Sabbath. Keeping the Sabbath designates who your God is. It is called “sign” in Exo 31.12-17. This sign of the Sabbath says that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is the creator, including us. Our life is not ours because we were created by God. Recognizing his authority over us is why we follow the Torah. His position is God and our position is we are his created beings. If we don’t follow the Sabbath we are not sending forth the “sign.”

For example, Yeshua said, “You claim to follow God, however, you reject the Son. Therefore, you don’t believe the Father. If you reject me, you reject the Father (Luke 10.16; Matt 10.33). In fact, he said that one cannot claim to follow the commandments and make up new ones. That means they were following a different God with different commandments. You can’t serve two masters (Matt 6.24) and Elijah said the same thing (1 Kings 18.21). If we claim to follow the Son, but reject the Father’s commandments, you have rejected the Son. The Torah commands are the commandments of Yeshua.

These six year cycles of days and years, with a seventh day or year as a Sabbath, is alluding to the seven thousand year plan of God (Psa 9.4; Talmud, Sanhedrin 97a; 2 Pet 3.8). Lev 25.20-22 is one of those verses that prove that the Bible is the word of God, and is true. If we wrote the Scriptures, would we put these verses in there? These verses, read, “But you say ‘What are we going to eat on the seventh year of we do not sow or gather in our crops?’ Then I will so order my blessing for you in the sixth year that it will bring forth the crop for three years. When you are sowing the eighth year, you can still eat old things from the crop, eating the old until the ninth year when its crop comes in.”

One cycle with a lack of food and that was it, starvation. Letting the land rest every seventh year was not done to replenish the soil. If you wanted to do that, you would plant for two years and let it rest one year. After six years it yielded the greatest crop and harvest, enough for three years. That just doesn’t make sense in modern agriculture, but that proves that this was written by a God who rules over nature. Let’s look at another angle to this. Israel is God’s down payment on the earth. A contract is in place (Torah) and we have evidence he runs it. Payment has been made to redeem it through the kinsman redeemer, the Goel, named Yeshua. Those that recognize that he is the rightful owner will recognize he is the master of the house. Those that do not recognize this does not recognize he is their master and their God.

That is the fundamental issue here. The Sabbath is the ongoing proof who owns us and the creation. It is an ongoing sign or ownership. So, how could one prepare for the seventh and eighth year (v 18-21) if you can’t work? The Lord will provide three crops the sixth year. They had to trust God to feed them. God promised to give us out continual daily bread. He will cause the increase to be enough to cover that period.

But we dispute his ownership. We don’t like the idea that he has a right to put restrictions on us. We want him to be like us, we want to “negotiate.” What it really comes down to is either there is a God or there isn’t, and both cases are frightening. Most of us turn God “on or off” depending on when we need or not need him. But things don’t work that way. The concept of Teshuvah (repentance) is “turning to God. We need to turn the switch on to God and leave it there.

What we do ripples through other people. Exo 20.5-6 says our iniquities will ripple through the third and fourth generations and if we love him his lovingkindness will ripple to the thousandth generation. We would like to think that we are a plant, but we are a branch. We came from someone else to produce fruit. If it is a bad tree, the branches produce bad or no fruit. If it is a good tree, the branches produce good fruit.

There are things bigger than us. A person may only see one Yovel in his entire life, two if you were born at the right time. These periods are miraculous cycles, on a miraculous land for a miraculous people brought about by a miraculous God. We must understand who is supplying our needs, who owns the and controls the land and who controls our lives.  This chapter also deals with redemption of the land; redemption of houses; love for your neighbor in practical ways; no permanent servitude for any Israelite.

Holiness is…

v 1…The Lord then spoke to Moses in Mount Sinai (“behar Sinai”), saying,

v 2…”Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘When you come into the land (it does not apply outside of the land) which I will give you, then the land shall have a sabbath to the Lord (God is the owner and he is putting restrictions on the land; we learn from Gen 2.2 that God “rested” from his works and it carries the idea of “completion”; so after six years planting is “completed” and there will be a sabbath rest).

v 3…Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its crop;

v 4…but during the seventh year (during the seventh month of the year) that land shall have a sabbath rest (completion at the strictest level), a sabbath to the Lord; you shall not sow your field nor prune your vineyard.

v 5…Your harvest’s aftergrowth you shall not reap; and your grapes of untrimmed vines (in Hebrew the word for a Nazarite is used here, whose hair was to remain untrimmed; likewise the vines are not to be trimmed) you shall not gather; the land shall have a sabbatical year.

v 6…And all of you shall leave the sabbatical produce of the land for food (it will be enough); yourself, and your male and female slaves, and your hired man and your foreign resident, those who live as aliens with you (Gerim).

v 7…Even your cattle and the animals that are in your land shall have all its crops to eat (his care extends to the animals-Matt 10.29-31).

v 8…You are also to count off seven sabbaths of years for yourself; seven times seven years, so that you have the time of the seven sabbaths of years (equal to the time), namely forty-nine years.

v 9…You shall then sound (teruah) a ram’s horn (shofar) abroad (proclamation) on the tenth day of the seventh month (Tishri 10); on the day of atonement (Yom Kippur) you shall sound a horn (shofar) all through your land (Israel-Matt 24.31 says this trumpet is the Shofar Ha Gadol or the “great trumpet”).

v 10…You shall thus consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim a release (liberty) through the land to all its inhabitants.  It shall be a jubilee (“Hebrew “Yovel” or “ram’s horn”-Exo 19.13) for you, and each of you shall return to his own property, and each of you shall return to his family (this alludes to what will happen once Yeshua returns on a Yom Kippur).

v 11…You shall have the fiftieth year as a jubilee (yovel; named that because of the shofar blast by which it was announced); you shall not sow, nor reap its aftergrowth; nor gather in from its untrimmed (same word for Nazarite) vines.

v 12…For it is a jubilee (yovel); it shall be holy (It has a kedusha of limitations and restrictions) to you.  You shall eat iots crops out of the field (he cannot store the produce, but go out in the field to get what he needs).

v 13…On this year of jubilee (yovel) each of you shall return to his own property (God owns the land, but one could move back to his ancestral property every fifty years.  The wealth was redistributed and the poor were elevated; you could sell your property but you were only selling the number of harvests expected from the lan to the next Yovel (25.16); for example if he made $10,000 a year on crops, and there were ten years to the next Yovel, you could sell the land for $100,000; this was the system God set up and was more in the form of leasing rather than selling; every fifty years the economic problems were solved).

v 14…If you make a sale, moreover, to your friend, or buy from your friend’s hand, you shall not wrong one another.

v 15…Corresponding to the number of years after the jubilee, you shall buy from your friend, he is to sell to you according to the number of years to crops.

v 16…In proportion to the extent of the years (of harvesting he would enjoy) you shall increase its price, and in proportion to the fewest of the years, you shall diminish the its price; for it is a number of crops he is selling to you (not the land).

v 17…So you shall not wrong one another, but you shall fear your God; for I am the Lord (Yehovah) your God.

v 18…You shall thuis observe my statutes (chukim), and keep my judgments (mishpatim), so as to carry them out, that you may live securely on the land.

v 19…Then the land will yield its produce, so that you can eat your fill and live securely on it.

v 20…But if you say, “What are we going to eat on the seventh year if we do not sow or gather our crops?”

v 21…Then I will so order my blessing for you in the sixth year that it will bring forth the crop for three years (a triple crop (this is one of the evidences that the Torah is from God because if man wrote it, why would they even put these verses in there?  You would think the land would be depleted after six years, but no, it would yield a triple crop; this alludes to the double portion of manna on the sixth day-Exo 16.22).

v 22…When you are sowing the eighth year, you can still eat old things from the crop, eating the old until the ninth year when its crop comes in.

v 23…The land, moreover, shall not be sold permanently, for the and is mine; for you are but aliens and sojourners with me (Israel is like God’s down payment on the earth; a contract is in place called the Torah and we have evidence that he runs it; payment has been made to redeem it through the kinsman redeemer, the “Goel” named Yeshua; one day all the earth will be under the rule of the Messiah in the Messianic KIngdom).

v 24…Thus for every piece of your property, you are to provide for the redemption of the land (grant to the seller the liberty to buy it after two years).

v 25…If a fellow-countryman of yours becomes so poor he has to sell part of his property, then his nearest kinsman (Goel) is to come and buy back what his relative has sold.

v 26…Or in the case a man has no kinsman, but so recovers his means as to find sufficient for its redemption (becomes rich enough to buy it back himself);

v 27…then he shall calculate the years since its sale and refund the balance to the man to whom he sold it, and so return to his property (the land never passes out of the hereditary possession of the seller).

v 28…But if he has not found sufficient means to get it back for himself, then what he has sold shall remain in the hands of its purchaser until the year of jubilee (Yovel), but at the jubilee it shall revert, that he may return to his (ancestral) property.

v 29…Likewise, it a man sells a dwelling house in a walled city, then his redemption right remains valid until a full year from its sale; his right of redemption lasts a year.

v 30…But if it is not bought back for him within the space of a full year, then the house that is in the walled city passes permanently to its purchaser throughout his generations, it does not revert back in the jubilee (unless it was a Levite who had to live in certain cities-v 32; this would put a lot of pressure on people to disperse and not live in walled cities).

v 31…The houses of the villages, however, which have no surrounding wall shall be considered as open fields (subject to the same law; being indispensable to the farmer who had to work the fields); they have redemption rights and revert (to the original owner) in the jubilee.

v 32…As for cities of the Levites (six cities of refuge and forty-eight others), the Levites have a permanent right of redemption for the houses of the cities which are their possession.

v 33…What, therefore, belongs to the Levites may be redeemed and a house sale in the city of this possession reverts in the jubilee, for the houses of the Levites are their possession among the sons of Israel.

v 34…But pasture fields of their cities (2000 cubits on every side around a city-Num 35.5) shall not be sold, for that is their perpetual possession (and never taken away from them).

v 35…Now in the case a countryman (brother) of yours becomes poor and his means in regard to you falter (because of unavoidable circumstances so he cannot support his family; and not because he is lazy or negligent), then you are to sustain him, like a stranger or a sojourner that he may live (continue in the land).

v 36…Do not take usurious interest from him (get him back on bis feet without interest), but revere your God (who tells you to do this), that your countryman (brother) may live with you.

v 37…You shall not give him your silver at interest, nor your food for gain.

v 38…I am the Lord (Yehovah) your God (power), who brought you out of the land of Egypt to give you (for free) the land of Canaan and to be your God (freely you have received, freely give).

v 39…And if a countryman (brother) of yours becomes so poor with regard to you that he sells himself to you, you shall not subject him to a slave’s service (like the pagans would who bought them or took them in war; not to be abased or mistreated).

v 40…He shall be with you as a hired man (no degrading work, but agricultural work or some type of skilled labor, such as a free man might do), as if he were sojourning with you, until the year of jubilee (he serves six years and goes free in the seventh; if the jubilee occurs he regains his personal freedom along with his property-Exo 21.2; Deut 15.12).

v 41…He shall then go out from you, he and his sons with him (his family was not sold and had a right to go), and shall go back to his family, that he may return to the property of his forefathers.

v 42…For they (the poor Israelite) are my servants (not anyone else’s) whom I brought (not you) out from the land of Egypt; they are not to be sold in a slave sale (I have already freed them from slavery).

v 43…You shall not rule over him with severity (the biblical concept of a hired man or woman  was you were not to treat or abuse them in any way).

v 44…As for your bondmen and bondmaids (“avdaycha” and “eved” or servant is the root) whom you may have (but not Israelites); shall be from the pagan nations (goyim) round about you, of them shall you buy bondmen and bondmaids.

v 45…Moreover, of the sons of the strangers (toshavim) that do sojourn (gerim) among you, of them may you buy, and of their families that are with you (if you think you need servants), which they have produces in your land; and they may be your possession.

v 46…You may even bequeath (as an inheritance) them to your sons after you, to receive as a possession; you can use them as permanent (olam) bondmen.  BUt in respect to your countrymen (brothers), the sons of Israel, you shall not rule with severity over one another.

v 47…Now if the means of a stranger (ger) or a sojourner (toshav) with you becomes sufficient, and a countryman (brother) of yours becomes so poor with regards to him as to sell himself to a stranger who is sojourning with you, or to the descendants of a stranger’s (ger) family (mishpochah);

v 48…then he shall have redemption right after he has been sold.  One of his brothers may redeem him.

v 49…Either his uncle, or his uncle’s son, may redeem him, or one of his blood relatives from his family may redeem him; or of he prospers he may redeem himself.

v 50…He, then with his purchaser, shall calculate from the year when he sold himself to him up to the year  of jubilee (yovel); and the price of his sale shall correspond to the number of years (if the total sum paid was for a definite number of years; whether fewer or more).  It is like the days of a hired that he shall be with him (as if he had been hired for so much a year; and according to the number of years he had been with him, so much per year was to be deducted from the original purchase price).

v 51…If there are still many years (to the jubilee, he shall refund part of his purchase price in proportion to them for his own redemption;

v 52…and if few in years remain until the year of jubilee, he shall so calculate with him.  IN proportion to his years he is to refund the amount for his redemption.

v 53…LIke a hired man hired year by year he shall be with him; he (the person he was sold to) shall not rule over him with severity in your sight (a Israelite neighbor looking on).

v 54…Even if he is not redeemed by these means, he shall still go out (of service to him) in the year of jubilee, he and his sons with him.

v 55…For the sons of Israel are my servants (and are not to perpetually belong to anyone else), whom I brought out from the land of Egypt.  I am the Lord (Yehovah) your God.

Posted in All Teachings, Articles, Idioms, Phrases and Concepts, Prophecy/Eschatology, The Festivals of the Lord, The Tanak, Tying into the New Testament

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