NOTES for Lev 25:1-24
1 And the LORD spake unto Moses in mount Sinai, saying, |
2 Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye come into the land which I give you, then shall the land keep a sabbath unto the LORD. |
3 Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and gather in the fruit thereof; |
4 But in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, a sabbath for the LORD: thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard. |
5 That which groweth of its own accord of thy harvest thou shalt not reap, neither gather the grapes of thy vine undressed: for it is a year of rest unto the land. |
6 And the sabbath of the land shall be meat for you; for thee, and for thy servant, and for thy maid, and for thy hired servant, and for thy stranger that sojourneth with thee, |
7 And for thy cattle, and for the beast that are in thy land, shall all the increase thereof be meat. |
8 And thou shalt number seven sabbaths of years unto thee, seven times seven years; and the space of the seven sabbaths of years shall be unto thee forty and nine years. |
9 Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the jubile to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout all your land. |
10 And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubile unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family. |
11 A jubile shall that fiftieth year be unto you: ye shall not sow, neither reap that which groweth of itself in it, nor gather the grapes in it of thy vine undressed. |
12 For it is the jubile; it shall be holy unto you: ye shall eat the increase thereof out of the field. |
13 In the year of this jubile ye shall return every man unto his possession. |
14 And if thou sell ought unto thy neighbour, or buyest ought of thy neighbour's hand, ye shall not oppress one another: |
15 According to the number of years after the jubile thou shalt buy of thy neighbour, and according unto the number of years of the fruits he shall sell unto thee: |
16 According to the multitude of years thou shalt increase the price thereof, and according to the fewness of years thou shalt diminish the price of it: for according to the number of the years of the fruits doth he sell unto thee. |
17 Ye shall not therefore oppress one another; but thou shalt fear thy God: for I am the LORD your God. |
18 Wherefore ye shall do my statutes, and keep my judgments, and do them; and ye shall dwell in the land in safety. |
19 And the land shall yield her fruit, and he shall eat your fill, and dwell therein in safety. |
20 And if ye shall say, What shall we eat the seventh year? behold, we shall not sow, nor gather in our increase: |
21 Then I will command my blessing upon you in the sixth year, and it shall bring forth fruit for three years. |
22 And ye shall sow the eighth year, and eat yet of old fruit until the ninth year; until her fruits come in ye shall eat of the old store. |
23 The land shall not be sold for ever: for the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me. |
24 And in all the land of your possession ye shall grant a redemption for the land. |
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Leviticus prescribes fairly strict rules concerning the sabbath year and the jubilee year. Here, of course, especially with regard to the jubilee year, there is also a strictly social and property-related aspect: the requirement to return all communal land to the corresponding communities was meant to support social stability. There was, however, something else as well: people and the land had to receive rest from time to time.
The point here is not ecology; one year out of every seven changed nothing in this respect. The point is the meaning of the sabbath as such. What is the sabbath in its essence? A day of rest? Yes, undoubtedly. Rest is absolutely necessary. But how? One can rest by spending time in inactivity, or one can rest in communion with God. The sabbath presupposes communion with God, at least, with the fourth commandment in mind, once a week. The main thing is that it truly be time spent with God.
Spending time with God means, among other things, forgetting the daily rush for a while. It is not by accident that believing Jews during the sabbath are prescribed not only a prohibition on work; during the sabbath it is forbidden to speak and even to think about work. On this day work must be forgotten altogether. One must fall out of the circle in which a person, if he does not live in a monastery or somewhere in the mountains or in the forest, turns every day, sometimes like a squirrel in a wheel. Without such a stepping out of the flow of everyday life, full communion with God is impossible.
Yet the flow includes not only everyday life. Besides the daily cycle, there is also the yearly one, especially in an agricultural society, which Israel was when the prescriptions about the sabbath year and the jubilee year were given. The agricultural year is measured and more or less monotonous: sowing and harvesting replace one another with a regularity that trains a person in complete dependence on natural cycles and in an endless turning from which there is no exit, and no need for one.
Traditional paganism largely represents the consecration of this circle in its unending rotation. Meanwhile, the sabbath year, and especially the jubilee year, breaks it open, tearing a person out of the usual natural, spatial, and temporal matrix: a year without the usual occupations for a farmer accustomed to his labor can turn out to be a true inner shock and liberation, and this increases the chances of meeting God face to face, without which there can be no full spiritual life.
Readings for 14 November 2025
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