Commentaria in Leviticum
Chapter the Twenty-fifth
The seventh year of remission is described, and ver. 8 the fiftieth year of jubilee, in which all returned to their former inheritances, and Jewish servants were manumitted and made free, ver. 39.
1. And the Lord spoke to Moses in mount Sinai, saying: 2. Speak to the children of Israel, and thou shalt say to them:
When you shall have entered into the land which I will give you, observe the sabbath of the Lord. 3. Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and shalt gather the fruits thereof. 4. But in the seventh year there shall be a sabbath to the land, of the rest of the Lord: thou shalt not sow thy field, and thou shalt not prune thy vineyard. 5. Such things as the earth bringeth forth of its own accord, thou shalt not reap: and the grapes of the firstfruits thou shalt not gather as a vintage: for it is a year of rest to the land. 6. But they shall be unto you for meat, to thee and to thy manservant, to thy maidservant, and to thy hireling, and to the stranger that sojourneth with thee: 7. To thy beasts and to thy cattle all things that grow shall yield food. 8. Thou shalt also number to thee seven weeks of years, that is to say, seven times seven, which together make forty-nine years: 9. And thou shalt sound the trumpet in the seventh month, the tenth day of the month, in the time of the expiation, in all your land. 10. And thou shalt sanctify the fiftieth year, and shalt proclaim remission to all the inhabitants of thy land: for it is the year of jubilee. Every man shall return to his possession, and every one shall go back to his ancient family: 11. Because it is the jubilee and the fiftieth year. You shall not sow, nor reap the things that grow in the field of their own accord, neither shall you gather the firstfruits of the vintage, 12. Because of the sanctification of the jubilee: but as they are offered, you shall eat them. 13. In the year of the jubilee all men shall return to their possessions. 14. When thou shalt sell any thing to thy neighbour, or buy of him, grieve not thy brother, but according to the number of years from the jubilee thou shalt buy of him, 15. And according to the account of the fruits he shall sell to thee. 16. The more years remain after the jubilee, the greater shall be the price, and the less time is counted, the less shall the purchase cost: for it is the time of the fruits that he shall sell to thee. 17. Afflict not your countrymen, but let every one fear his God: because I am the Lord your God. 18. Do my precepts, and keep my judgments, and fulfil them: that you may dwell in the land without any fear, 19. And the ground may yield you its fruits, of which you may eat your fill, fearing no man’s invasion. 20. And if you shall say: What shall we eat the seventh year, if we sow not, nor gather our fruits? 21. I will give you my blessing the sixth year, and it shall yield the fruits of three years: 22. And you shall sow the eighth year, and shall eat of the old fruits until the ninth year: till new grow up, you shall eat the old store. 23. The land also shall not be sold for ever: because it is mine, and you are strangers and sojourners with me. 24. For which cause all the country of your possession shall be sold under the condition of redemption. 25. If thy brother being impoverished sell his little possession, and his kinsman will, he may redeem what he had sold. 26. But if he have no kinsman, and he himself can find the price to redeem it: 27. The value of the fruits shall be counted from that time when he sold it: and the overplus he shall restore to the buyer, and so shall receive his possession again. 28. But if his hand find not means to repay the price, the buyer shall have what he bought, until the year of the jubilee. For in that year all that is sold shall return to the owner, and to the ancient possessor. 29. He that selleth a house within the walls of a city, shall have the liberty to redeem it, until one year be expired from the time of the sale. 30. If he redeem it not, and the full year be ended, the buyer shall possess it, and his posterity for ever, and it cannot be redeemed, not even in the jubilee. 31. But if the house be in a village that hath no walls, it shall be sold according to the law of the fields: if it be not redeemed before, in the jubilee it shall return to the owner. 32. The houses of the Levites, which are in cities, may always be redeemed: 33. If they be not redeemed, in the jubilee they shall all return to the owners, because the houses of the cities of the Levites are for their possessions among the children of Israel. 34. But let not their suburbs be sold, because it is a perpetual possession. 35. If thy brother be impoverished, and weak of hand, and thou receive him as a stranger and sojourner, and he live with thee, 36. Take not usury of him nor more than thou gavest. Fear thy God, that thy brother may live with thee. 37. Thou shalt not give him thy money upon usury, nor exact of him any increase of fruits. 38. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that I might give you the land of Chanaan, and might be your God. 39. If thy brother, constrained by poverty, sell himself to thee, thou shalt not oppress him with the service of bondservants: 40. But he shall be as a hireling and a sojourner: he shall work with thee until the year of the jubilee, 41. And afterwards he shall go out with his children, and shall return to his kindred, and to the possession of his fathers. 42. For they are my servants, and I brought them out of the land of Egypt: let them not be sold as bondmen. 43. Afflict him not by might, but fear thy God. 44. Let your bondmen and your bondwomen be of the nations that are round about you. 45. And of the strangers that sojourn among you, or that were born of them in your land, these you shall have for servants: 46. And by right of inheritance shall leave them to your posterity, and shall possess them for ever: but oppress not your brethren the children of Israel by might. 47. If the hand of a stranger or sojourner grow strong among you, and thy brother being impoverished sell himself to him, or to any of his race: 48. After the sale he may be redeemed. He that will of his brethren shall redeem him. 49. And his uncle, and his uncle’s son, and his kinsman by blood, and his affinity. But if he himself also be able, he shall redeem himself, 50. Counting only the years from the time of his selling unto the year of jubilee: and the money, for which he was sold, according to the number of the years, and the reckoning of a hired servant. 51. If there be many years that remain to the jubilee, according to them shall he repay the price: 52. If few, he shall make the reckoning with him according to the number of years, and shall repay to the buyer what remaineth of the years, 53. The wages being reckoned that were before paid: let him not afflict him violently in thy sight. 54. And if by these means he cannot be redeemed, in the year of the jubilee he shall go out with his children. 55. For the children of Israel are my servants, whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt.
2. WHEN YOU SHALL HAVE ENTERED INTO THE LAND WHICH I WILL GIVE YOU, OBSERVE THE SABBATH OF THE LORD,—that is, observe the sabbath or rest of the land, making the land rest in the seventh year. Whence the Hebrew, Chaldee, Septuagint and some Latin copies have, let the land keep a sabbath, that is, rest, a sabbath of the Lord, that is, a rest ordained to the honour and worship of the Lord. For this was a ceremonial law pertaining to divine worship, commanding the seventh year to be celebrated by all in common as the seventh day: every seventh year, therefore, was a sabbath, that is, a rest of the land; hence these years were called sabbatical. This sabbath of the land God instituted, says St. Augustine, Quest. 89, that the very rest of the land might be as it were the rent of its habitation, and as it were the price of redemption from him whose it is, that is, from its creator God, that the Hebrews, namely, for the land given them by God might render him this sabbath as a kind of worship and homage.
Note: when you shall have entered the land: for before the entrance, namely in the desert, this law of the seventh year, as also of the jubilee, was not observed. For the seventh year and the jubilee were introduced to discharge debts, labours and servitudes; now no debts were incurred in the desert, since there was no poverty there; nor did they labour there or till the land, since all were equally fed from heaven with manna, and clothed always with the same garments remaining whole and uncorrupted, as is plain Deuteron. 8:4.
In the desert also there were no servitudes, which were introduced among the Jews on account of these debts and bodily necessities, as is hinted ver. 39.