The Land Is the LORD’s, and Possession Has Limits

In mount Sinai names the place for the first time since 7:38. Rashi asked what the sabbatical year has to do with Mount Sinai, and his question, mah inyan shemittah etsel har Sinai, became a Hebrew idiom for two things with no obvious connection. His answer: every law, general and detailed, came from Sinai.

The land is the subject of the verb: the land shall keep a sabbath, shavtah. The land rests as a person rests. 2 Chronicles 36:21 reads the seventy years of exile as the land at last enjoying the sabbaths it had been denied.

Six years to sow and to prune: the pruning verb is zamar, which has a homonym meaning to sing. Six years of full work set up the seventh, just as six days set up the sabbath in 23:3.

A sabbath for the LORD: the year belongs to God, not to the farmer. The older law in Exodus 23:10–11 gave the fallow year a different reason, that the poor of thy people may eat, and what they leave the beasts of the field shall eat.

That which groweth of its own accord is safiach, grain that springs up from seed dropped in last year’s harvest. The vine undressed is literally thy Nazirite vine, nazir: left unpruned like the uncut hair of a Nazirite (Numbers 6:5).

The sabbath of the land shall be meat means the produce of the rest year is food for all. The list is personal: thee, thy servant, thy maid, thy hired servant, thy stranger, each with a possessive, as though the owner is reminded who belongs to his household.

Thy cattle are the domestic animals; the beast that are in thy land is chayyah, the wild animals. For one year the fence between the farm and the wild comes down, and both eat from the same fields.

Number seven sabbaths of years repeats the counting of 23:15, where seven sabbaths of days led to Pentecost. Here seven sabbaths of years lead to the fiftieth. The Hebrew says the days of the seven sabbaths of years, as if a lifetime were being measured in weeks.

Jubile comes from yovel, ram’s horn, the word used for the trumpets of rams’ horns at Jericho (Joshua 6:4). The English spelling was later influenced by Latin jubilare, to shout for joy, a different root. Trumpet here is shofar teru‘ah, the horn of blasting.

Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof is cast on the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. Liberty is deror, release, the word of Isaiah 61:1, to proclaim liberty to the captives, which Jesus read in the synagogue at Nazareth (Luke 4:18–19).

No sowing or reaping in the fiftieth year means two fallow years together, the forty-ninth being already a sabbath year. Some interpreters therefore count the fiftieth as the first year of the next cycle; others think the jubilee was the forty-ninth itself. The text does not resolve it.

Ye shall eat the increase thereof out of the field: straight from the field, not from what has been harvested and stored. The rabbis read it as permission to eat what grows where it grows, but not to gather it into barns as in a normal year.

Return, shuv, is the chapter’s central verb, used of people, families and fields. This short verse states the whole jubilee in one sentence, and every rule that follows is an application of it.

The Mishnah (Bava Metzia 4:3) built its law of overcharging on this verse: a sale priced more than one sixth above the market value could be undone. Neighbour’s hand pictures the transaction as a hand-to-hand exchange between people who know each other.

The count runs forward from the last jubilee. The buyer is buying the number of years of the fruits, the harvests, so the price is set by what the land will yield until it returns.

Years of the fruits are harvest years, so the rabbis deducted the sabbath years, which yield no crop, from the count. What is sold is literally a number of harvests, mispar tevu’oth. The sale is in effect a lease measured in crops.

Ye shall not oppress one another is said a second time, after verse 14. The Talmud (Bava Metzia 58b) read the first as wronging by money and this one as wronging by words, since it adds thou shalt fear thy God: a hurt only God can see.

In safety is lavetach, securely, without fear. The promise is spelled out in 26:5, ye shall dwell in your land safely. Doing the statutes and keeping the judgments is tied to living in the land without threat.

The land shall yield her fruit: the land is feminine, and in Hebrew she gives her fruit as a mother gives birth. Eat your fill is lasova‘, to satisfaction. 26:4 repeats the promise, the land shall yield her increase.

What shall we eat the seventh year? The law puts the objection in Israel’s own mouth. The manna followed the same pattern: a double portion on the sixth day so that no one gathered on the seventh (Exodus 16:22, 29).

I will command my blessing: the blessing is ordered like a servant. Psalm 133:3 uses the same phrase, there the LORD commanded the blessing. Three years means the sixth year’s crop must feed the sixth, seventh and eighth until the next harvest comes in.

Sowing in the eighth year means harvest only in the ninth. The farming year began in autumn with sowing, and the grain was reaped the next spring, so the sixth year’s crop must stretch across the gap.

For ever is litsmituth, in perpetuity, beyond recall, a word found only here and in verse 30. Strangers and sojourners is what Abraham called himself when he bought a grave in Canaan (Genesis 23:4), and what David confessed before God (1 Chronicles 29:15; Psalm 39:12).

Redemption is ge’ullah, the right to buy back. The one who does it is the go’el, the kinsman redeemer. Every sale of land in Israel carries this right with it: the land of your possession cannot be sold without it.

Waxen poor is yamukh, to sink low. When Jeremiah’s cousin came to sell his field in Anathoth, he said, the right of redemption is thine; buy it (Jeremiah 32:7–8). Boaz acts as this kind of redeemer for Naomi’s field in Ruth 4:4–6.

Where no kinsman can step in, the seller himself may redeem it if he becomes able. The Hebrew for himself be able is his hand reaches and he finds enough, as if the man has recovered his feet since the sale.

Restore the overplus is ha‘odef, the surplus. The seller pays back only the value of the years still left, having already given the buyer the harvests he used. The calculation is fair to both sides.

It shall go out uses yatsa’, the verb for a Hebrew slave going out free in the seventh year (Exodus 21:2) and for Israel going out of Egypt. The field is released as a person is released.

Within a whole year is literally days shall be his redemption; yamim, days, often means a full year, as in 1 Samuel 1:3, where Elkanah went up yearly. A walled city was a place of trade and craft, not farmland.

Established for ever uses litsmituth, the word of verse 23, but here the permanent sale is allowed. The Mishnah (Arakhin 9:6) lists which cities were walled in Joshua’s day, since only those counted under this rule.

Villages is chatserim, open settlements, the same word as the courts of the tabernacle, meaning enclosures. Without walls, they belong to the countryside and its fields, and they return at the jubilee like farmland.

The Levites received no tribal territory, only forty-eight cities with their pastures (Numbers 35:7). May redeem at any time is literally an everlasting redemption, ge’ullath ‘olam. Their houses are their only land, so the walled-city rule does not apply to them.

The Hebrew is difficult: it reads if one of the Levites redeems, and the King James’s if a man purchase of the Levites smooths it. The Latin Vulgate adds a negative. The sense is clear enough: Levitical houses always come back to the Levites at the jubilee.

Suburbs in 1611 meant the land around a town, not residential streets. The Hebrew migrash, from garash, to drive out, means pasture where the cattle were driven. Numbers 35:4–5 measures it at a thousand cubits from the walls.

Fallen in decay is literally his hand falters, matah yado. Relieve him is hechezakta bo, take hold of him, strengthen him. Maimonides placed the highest form of charity here: to strengthen a man before he falls, with a loan or work, so he need not ask.

Usury is neshekh, from nashakh, to bite, as a snake bites; increase is tarbith, growth. Psalm 15:5 counts among the righteous him that putteth not out his money to usury, and Ezekiel 18:8 lists it among the marks of a just man.

Money lent for usury and victuals lent for increase: the two words of verse 36 are matched to two kinds of loan, coin and food. Lending grain in winter to be repaid with extra at harvest is forbidden. Deuteronomy 23:20 allows interest from a foreigner.

To give you the land of Canaan, and to be your God combines two promises first made to Abraham together (Genesis 17:8). The ban on interest is signed with the Exodus: a God who freed a nation of debtors from Egypt forbids them to exploit each other.

Bondservant is literally the service of a slave, ‘avodath ‘eved. The man may be sold to a fellow Israelite through poverty, but the work must not be slave’s work. Exodus 21:2 releases a Hebrew servant after six years, and how the two laws fit together is long debated.

As an hired servant, and as a sojourner, sakhir and toshav, the same pair of 22:10. He is to be treated as a worker living with the family, not as property. Rabbinic law made the six-year rule and the jubilee rule work together by releasing him at whichever came first.

He and his children go out together, back to his family and to the possession of his fathers. Naboth refused the king’s offer in the same words: the LORD forbid it me, that I should give the inheritance of my fathers unto thee (1 Kings 21:3).

My servants is ‘avadai, the same word as servant of the LORD, the title of Moses. Sold as bondmen is literally a slave’s sale, mimkereth ‘aved: the auction of a slave. An Israelite already has a master and cannot be sold like property.

With rigour is befarekh, the word of Exodus 1:13–14, where the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigour. The Hebrew master must not repeat on his brother what Egypt did to the nation.

The Hebrew word ‘eved serves for Israelite and foreign servant alike; what differs is origin, not vocabulary. The heathen round about are goyim, the surrounding nations. Which thou shalt have assumes the institution already exists and regulates it.

The children of the strangers are toshavim, foreign residents. Which they begat in your land means that birth inside Israel’s land does not change the family’s foreign status under this law. They shall be your possession uses ’achuzzah, the word for landholding.

Take them as an inheritance uses the verb for inheriting land, hithnachaltem, so these servants pass down like property. The verse then turns on its final clause, but over your brethren the children of Israel, restating the limit of verse 43.

The stock of the stranger’s family is ‘eqer, an offshoot or descendant, a word found only here. The case imagines the reverse of verse 39: a foreign resident grows rich, and an Israelite sells himself into his household.

One of his brethren may redeem him: the duty of go’el passes to kin. The same word becomes a title of God, thy redeemer, the Holy One of Israel (Isaiah 41:14), borrowed from exactly this household duty.

Uncle, then cousin, then any near kinsman: the list has an order. In Ruth 3:12 Boaz says, there is a kinsman nearer than I, because the right passed by degrees. Himself last: the man may buy his own freedom if he prospers.

He shall reckon with him that bought him: the account is settled between the buyer and the one bought. The rate is that of an hired servant, so the man’s remaining years are valued as wages, not as the price of a possession.

The Talmud (Kiddushin 20a) reasoned that the calculation favours the servant: if his value has risen since the sale, he still redeems at the old price; if it has fallen, he pays the lower. Many years behind means many still to run.

Count with him uses chishev, the verb that in 17:4 imputed blood to the man who killed an animal outside the tabernacle. Here the same verb does the arithmetic of freedom: few years left, a small price.

A yearly hired servant is sekhir shanah, a labourer hired by the year. Isaiah 16:14 uses the term for an exact span, within three years, as the years of an hireling, a term that would not be allowed to run a day over.

In these years may be read by these means, bi’elleh, that is, if none of the forms of redemption just described is used. Even then the jubilee sets him free, and his children leave with him.

For unto me is ki li, the same emphatic opening as verse 23, ki li ha’arets, for the land is mine. The chapter makes two claims of ownership, over the land and over the people, and they are put in exactly the same words.