THE LORD SAID to Moses on Mount Sinai, 2“Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘When you enter the land I am going to give you, the land itself must
observe a sabbath to the LORD. 3For six years sow your fields, and for six years prune your vineyards and gather their crops. 4But in the seventh year the land is to have a sabbath of rest, a sabbath to the LORD. Do not sow your fields or prune your vineyards. 5Do not reap what grows of itself or harvest the grapes of your untended vines. The land is to have a year of rest. 6Whatever the land yields during the sabbath year will be food for you—for yourself, your manservant and maidservant, and the hired worker and temporary resident who live among you, 7as well as for your livestock and the wild animals in your land. Whatever the land produces may be eaten.
8“‘Count off seven sabbaths of years—seven times seven years—so that the seven sabbaths of years amount to a period of forty-nine years. 9Then have the trumpet sounded everywhere on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the Day of Atonement sound the trumpet throughout your land. 10Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you; each one of you is to return to his family property and each to his own clan. 11The fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you; do not sow and do not reap what grows of itself or harvest the untended vines. 12For it is a jubilee and is to be holy for you; eat only what is taken directly from the fields.
13“‘In this Year of Jubilee everyone is to return to his own property.
14“‘If you sell land to one of your countrymen or buy any from him, do not take advantage of each other. 15You are to buy from your countryman on the basis of the number of years since the Jubilee. And he is to sell to you on the basis of the number of years left for harvesting crops. 16When the years are many, you are to increase the price, and when the years are few, you are to decrease the price, because what he is really selling you is the number of crops. 17Do not take advantage of each other, but fear your God. I am the LORD your God.
18“‘Follow my decrees and be careful to obey my laws, and you will live safely in the land. 19Then the land will yield its fruit, and you will eat your fill and live there in safety. 20You may ask, “What will we eat in the seventh year if we do not plant or harvest our crops?” 21I will send you such a blessing in the sixth year that the land will yield enough for three years. 22While you plant during the eighth year, you will eat from the old crop and will continue to eat from it until the harvest of the ninth year comes in.
23“‘The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you are but aliens and my tenants. 24Throughout the country that you hold as a possession, you must provide for the redemption of the land.
25“‘If one of your countrymen becomes poor and sells some of his property, his nearest relative is to come and redeem what his countryman has sold. 26If, however, a man has no one to redeem it for him but he himself prospers and acquires sufficient means to redeem it, 27he is to determine the value for the years since he sold it and refund the balance to the man to whom he sold it; he can then go back to his own property. 28But if he does not acquire the means to repay him, what he sold will remain in the possession of the buyer until the Year of Jubilee. It will be returned in the Jubilee, and he can then go back to his property.
29“‘If a man sells a house in a walled city, he retains the right of redemption a full year after its sale. During that time he may redeem it. 30If it is not redeemed before a full year has passed, the house in the walled city shall belong permanently to the buyer and his descendants. It is not to be returned in the Jubilee. 31But houses in villages without walls around them are to be considered as open country. They can be redeemed, and they are to be returned in the Jubilee.
32“‘The Levites always have the right to redeem their houses in the Levitical towns, which they possess. 33So the property of the Levites is redeemable—that is, a house sold in any town they hold—and is to be returned in the Jubilee, because the houses in the towns of the Levites are their property among the Israelites. 34But the pastureland belonging to their towns must not be sold; it is their permanent possession.
35“‘If one of your countrymen becomes poor and is unable to support himself among you, help him as you would an alien or a temporary resident, so he can continue to live among you. 36Do not take interest of any kind from him, but fear your God, so that your countryman may continue to live among you. 37You must not lend him money at interest or sell him food at a profit. 38I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan and to be your God.
39“‘If one of your countrymen becomes poor among you and sells himself to you, do not make him work as a slave. 40He is to be treated as a hired worker or a temporary resident among you; he is to work for you until the Year of Jubilee. 41Then he and his children are to be released, and he will go back to his own clan and to the property of his forefathers. 42Because the Israelites are my servants, whom I brought out of Egypt, they must not be sold as slaves. 43Do not rule over them ruthlessly, but fear your God.
44“‘Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. 45You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. 46You can will them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly.
47“‘If an alien or a temporary resident among you becomes rich and one of your countrymen becomes poor and sells himself to the alien living among you or to a member of the alien’s clan, 48he retains the right of redemption after he has sold himself. One of his relatives may redeem him: 49An uncle or a cousin or any blood relative in his clan may redeem him. Or if he prospers, he may redeem himself. 50He and his buyer are to count the time from the year he sold himself up to the Year of Jubilee. The price for his release is to be based on the rate paid to a hired man for that number of years. 51If many years remain, he must pay for his redemption a larger share of the price paid for him. 52If only a few years remain until the Year of Jubilee, he is to compute that and pay for his redemption accordingly. 53He is to be treated as a man hired from year to year; you must see to it that his owner does not rule over him ruthlessly.
54“‘Even if he is not redeemed in any of these ways, he and his children are to be released in the Year of Jubilee, 55for the Israelites belong to me as servants. They are my servants, whom I brought out of Egypt. I am the LORD your God.
THE THEME OF THE PROMISED LAND unifies the divine speech in Leviticus 25–26, which the Lord delivered to Moses on Mount Sinai (25:1; 26:46; cf. 7:37–38). In chapter 25 the Israelites must let their fields lie fallow every seventh year and allow ancestral land that has been sold to revert to its original owner in the Jubilee year. In chapter 26 the Lord puts teeth into his exhortation to obey his commands by saying that if the Israelites disobey, he will send them into exile away from the land, which can then enjoy its sabbatical rest.
The cyclical release of land and debt slaves in the Jubilee year is unparalleled in the ancient Near East. A number of Mesopotamian kings, such as Hammurabi and Samsuiluna, are known to have proclaimed times of release involving remission of commercial debts and manumission of private slaves.1 These were irregular and infrequent occurrences determined by the will of the monarch, generally near the beginning of his reign in order to demonstrate his concern to correct social inequity. The divine King of Israel, by contrast, set up a system of release at fixed intervals, which was not dependent on arbitrary human leadership.
The laws of sabbatical and Jubilee years in chapter 25 raise several questions. (1) How does the chronology of these years work? (2) How would the Israelites survive during fallow sabbatical and Jubilee years? (3) How would the release in the Jubilee year affect real estate ownership and servitude?
Chronology. The counting of sabbatical years was to begin when the Israelites conquered Canaan and owned their own fields (Lev. 25:2–3). After seven sabbatical years totaling forty-nine years, the Jubilee year is the fiftieth year, beginning on the tenth day of the seventh month, which is the Day of Purgation (25:8–11). Notice that although Exodus 12:2 puts the first month (= Nisan) in the spring, the Jubilee year begins in the fall and overlaps the spring-spring year the way modern July–July fiscal years overlap our January–January calendar.
Why does the Jubilee year begin on the Day of Purgation, ten days after the beginning of the seventh month? “The jubilee year, we are informed (Lev. 25:10, 12), was regarded as a holy period; accordingly it could not begin until the annual ceremony of purgation and resanctification had taken place.”2
How the ongoing cycles of sabbatical and Jubilee years are integrated is not obvious. The problem is that adding the Jubilee year as the fiftieth year would seem to put the previous and following sabbatical years, that is, the forth-ninth year of the previous cycle and the seventh year of the following cycle, eight years apart rather than seven:
49 50 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
A solution must take into account all the chronological factors indicated by the text. (1) Sabbatical years continue in unbroken succession (25:3–4). Compare the close relationship between the fallow law of Exodus 23:10–11 and the law of the weekly Sabbath immediately following it (23:12), which implies that sabbatical years follow the same regular pattern as weekly Sabbath days.
(2) The fiftieth year is a separate year following the forty-ninth year rather than coinciding with it.
(3) The ongoing Jubilee cycle is linked to the sabbatical cycle rather than independent of it.
(4) The text does not give a date for beginning sabbatical years, but presumably they begin at the seventh month like the Jubilee years.3 Support for a fall sabbatical year is found in the order of agricultural activities in Leviticus 25:4–5: “Do not sow . . . do not reap.” Fall was the normal time for sowing crops that were harvested in the following spring.
(5) The fact that 25:11 prohibits both sowing and reaping during the Jubilee year implies that it is a full year.
We can conclude: “Given an unbroken succession of sabbatical years in which the Jubilee year is a separate, full, 50th year following the seventh sabbatical year, the Jubilee Year must coincide with the first year of the following sabbatical cycle.”4
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
49 50
Because the fiftieth = first year was fallow, this would leave only five regular years of agricultural work (years 2–6) between the forty-ninth-year sabbatical and the seventh-year sabbatical of the following cycle. At first glance this would seem to conflict with Leviticus 25:3 (“For six years sow your fields . . .”). However, six years was simply the norm. Compare the fact that the weekly Sabbath commandment reads, “Six days you shall labor and do all your work” (Ex. 20:9), but extra ceremonial sabbaths (Lev. 23) could reduce the number of workdays to five in a particular week.
The relationship between sabbatical and Jubilee years in Leviticus 25 parallels the relationship between seven weekly Sabbaths and the Feast of Weeks on the fiftieth day (23:15–16). Here the integration is simpler because the 7 × 7 = 49 + 1 = 50 cycle of days is not immediately followed by an identical cycle. However, column 21 of the Temple Scroll from Qumran specifies a series of subsequent fifty-day cycles from the Feast of Weeks to the Feast of Firstfruits of Wine and the Feast of Firstfruits of Oil. The last day of each fifty-day period counts as the first day of the next cycle (lines 12–14).5
Fallow years. The sabbath of the land in the seventh year was “to the LORD,” so letting the land revert to its natural state carried religious significance. According to Exodus 23:11 there was also a humanitarian purpose: “Then the poor among your people may get food from it, and the wild animals may eat what they leave.” Because there would be no sowing, whatever grew by itself from kernels spilled during the previous harvest would belong to anyone, human or animal, who needed it. Since there was no reaping, even of that which sprang up by itself (Lev. 25:5), the whole population would live off the land from day to day (cf. gleaning in 19:9–10; Ruth 2).
Even with eating what the land would produce by itself, the question arises: “What will we eat in the seventh year if we do not plant or harvest our crops?” (Lev. 25:20). God answers in the context of the last sabbatical period in the Jubilee cycle: “I will send you such a blessing in the sixth year that the land will yield enough for three years. While you plant during the eighth year, you will eat from the old crop and will continue to eat from it until the harvest of the ninth year comes in” (25:21–22).
6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
harvest 3x | (sabbatical) | plant (Jubilee) | harvest |
Here is the same principle as God’s promise to provide a double portion of manna on the sixth day of the week so that the Israelites would not need to collect any on the Sabbath (Ex. 16:5, 22–30). But the triple harvest in the sixth year had to provide for that year and last over a fallow sabbatical year, immediately followed by a fallow Jubilee year. We are reminded of the Joseph story, in which good agricultural years provided for following years of lack (Gen. 41).6
Since planting was in the fall and harvesting was in spring, crops planted in the fall of year 8 would be harvested in the spring of year 9. Working backward and filling in earlier years, we find that in Leviticus 25:20–22 years numbered (“sixth year,” “seventh year,” etc.) from the beginning of the last sabbatical period of a Jubilee cycle must start with the first month in the spring (cf. Ex. 12:2). However, because the sabbatical and Jubilee years commence in the seventh month in the fall, according to the agricultural calendar that follows the order of planting (fall) → harvesting (spring), they overlap the numbered spring years: sabbatical = year 6–7 and Jubilee = year 7–8.7 The following reconstruction accounts for the chronological data in Leviticus 25:20–22, as opposed to other options that are not consistent with the constraints of a 6–9 year framework with a threefold blessing on the harvest in year 6:8
If the sabbatical year begins in the seventh month (see above), why doesn’t it commence half a year after the beginning of the seventh spring year rather than half a year before, in the sixth year? The sabbatical year fallow follows the protocol for observance of rest on the Day of Purgation, when Jubilee years (and probably also sabbatical years) begin (25:9). Although the Day of Purgation is on the tenth day of the seventh month (16:29; 23:27; Num. 29:7), its sabbath of complete cessation runs from the evening before, on the ninth day, to the evening of the tenth day (Lev. 23:32). In Nehemiah 13:19, weekly seventh-day Sabbath rest commences on the evening of the sixth day of the week, just as we find that the seventh-year fallow begins in the sixth year. So it appears that sacred units of time commence before the equivalent units of secular time that they overlap.
Real estate release. The heart of the Jubilee law is in 25:10: “Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a Jubilee for you; each one of you is to return to his family property and each to his own clan.” Here is the ultimate New Year, a time of beginning again for disenfranchised Israelites. If they had been separated from their land (by sale) or from their clan (by entering servitude), they would be reunited with them. By contrast with the Egyptians, who permanently lost their land and became serfs of Pharaoh as a result of their progressive deterioration of economic circumstances during a seven-year famine (Gen. 47:13–26), the Israelites as privileged servants of the Lord were to recover their landed property and independence after a succession of seven sabbatical years, during which there were no crops.9 We will consider the release of land here and take up the question of servant release in the Bridging Contexts section.
The starting point for consideration of Israelite ownership of the land is the premise that it was all “crown property” in the sense that it belonged to the divine King (25:23). He gave it to the Israelites (25:38) to be subdivided equitably among their clans (Josh. 13–17; Num. 34:24). To protect this distribution from permanent alienation of ancestral land by sale, the Lord decreed that nobody outside the clan to which a given property was attached could hold more than a temporary interest in it (Lev. 25:23–24; cf. 1 Kings 21:3). In the event that a piece of such land was “sold” (i.e., really leased), its value was to be prorated according to the number of years remaining until the next Jubilee (Lev. 25:13–18). So it was use of the land, not the land itself, that was sold.
The Jubilee law is concerned with ancestral real estate necessary to maintain an agricultural livelihood. This includes houses in unwalled villages, which are zoned with open country, but not urban dwellings in walled cities (25:29–31). For ensuring that the land of a clan would be kept for the support of its members, the Jubilee release was the remedy of last resort. If a person became poor and “sold” part of his land, his kinsman should redeem it (25:25), that is, buy it back.10 If he had no redeemer but his situation later improved, he could redeem the property himself at a price that was prorated until the next Jubilee year (25:26–27). Failing the above options, the land would revert to the original owner at the Jubilee (25:28).
Real estate belonging to Levites was unique. Because this tribe was to have cities surrounded by pastures (Num. 35:1–8)11 rather than large territories, their urban dwellings were to be released in the Jubilee as if they were in unwalled villages (Lev. 25:32–33). Their pastures could not be sold at all.
Bridging Contexts
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. I. Mendelsohn has pointed out that “the fundamental cause for the evermounting number of free-born citizens thrust into the arms of slavery was insolvency, for in case of default the insolvent debtor was seized by the creditor and compelled by him to perform service.”12 Once a person became a debt slave, it was difficult to get out of this situation.
According to A. Levy, the slave release laws of Exodus 21 and Deuteronomy 15 addressed the need for debt relief. These laws required release after a maximum six-year period of servitude, regardless of the size of the debt that an individual was working off. The problem was that a creditor could lose if the debt was greater than the value of the service. This would produce negative results: Well-to-do Israelites would refuse to lend, or they would seek to get their money’s worth by driving a servant too hard or refusing to release him or her on time.13
Levy sees Leviticus 25 as an attempt to mitigate debt bondage in a way that would be more acceptable to creditors. The maximum term is raised to forty-nine years, but the poor Israelite would be treated as a hired servant or resident alien rather than as part of the master’s property (vv. 39–43). I believe that Levy is on the right track and would further suggest that the reason why Leviticus 25 raises the maximum term to forty-nine years is due to practical linkage between freedom for debt servants and release of land (see below).
Although Leviticus 25 is legislation, it appears to tell a story of increasing want and desperation. Verse 25 begins, “If one of your countrymen becomes poor. . . .” By verse 28 he has sold some of his ancestral property and is waiting for the next Jubilee to retrieve it. Verse 35 reiterates: “If one of your countrymen becomes poor. . . .” Although the words are the same, his situation has deteriorated. “Poor” here means “poorer.” He is like an alien because he lacks land to support himself, without which his very survival is at stake, as indicated by the words “so he can continue to live among you.” Here “live” (root ḥyh) refers to living rather than dying, not living simply as residing.
The unfortunate Israelite is vulnerable to exploitation, but making a profit at his expense by charging interest or selling him food above cost is forbidden (25:36–37). Who says so? “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan and to be your God” (v. 38). This is a reminder of God’s generosity, which his people are to emulate, and also of his authority as their master and primary owner of the land.
In fact, the land, and the camp which prefigures it in important aspects, is viewed as an extension of the sanctuary. The Israelites, each of whom has received a holding of landed property, are pictured as asylants having found refuge on temple lands. In consequence, they have to honour the divine owner and Lord of the land, through their gifts and through observance of his laws.14
Verse 39 repeats: “If one of your countrymen becomes poor. . . .” By now he is completely unable to support himself, so that he “sells himself to you.” Why would anyone do this? The alternative is death by starvation, not a good way to go.15 As mentioned above, “you” are to maintain him in a dependent status like a hired servant until the next year of Jubilee (25:40–41).
Verses 47–55 regulate a scenario in which an Israelite sells himself to an affluent resident alien. Since the master is a foreigner, a relative of the Israelite may redeem him, in which case the Israelite will presumably work for the kinsman to pay off the redemption price.16 Alternatively, if he becomes sufficiently well off, he may redeem himself. This suggests that he could receive a small wage/allowance in addition to amortization of his debt. The price of redemption is calculated according to the wages of an ordinary hired servant, prorated over the time remaining until the next Jubilee.
Thus far we have found several connections between land tenure and debt bondage: (1) An Israelite who has been unable to support himself on his own land can end up with nothing of marketable value but himself and his children. (2) The value of persons and land depend on the length of time they can be utilized. (3) A debt servant remains in that state only until he reclaims the ancestral land that enables him to survive independently.
By contrast, Exodus 21:2 and Deuteronomy 15:12 get servitude over with in six years17 through relatively rapid debt amortization, a bargain basement standard of living, and no linkage to land at the end. Deuteronomy 15:18 places the value of a slave’s work as “double the service of a hired man” (NJPS). This is possible because the slave receives no wages and is supported at a subsistence level on half of what a hired worker would receive. So the profit margin applicable against the debt is much greater than in Leviticus 25, where a debtor is “to be treated as a hired worker or a temporary resident” (Lev. 25:40).
The Bible does not say that a poor Israelite would have an opportunity to choose between the Exodus-Deuteronomy or Leviticus options. If A. Schenker is right, the latter more lengthy servitude until the Jubilee applies only to Israelite men who are married with children—and therefore costly to maintain—before they enter slavery, a situation not covered by the Covenant Code of Exodus.18
Aside from providing for a higher standard of living, Leviticus addresses a practical problem that is implicitly recognized in Deuteronomy 15, which commands a master to provide a slave with liberal gifts when he releases him (Deut. 15:13–14). Such gifts temporarily help him make a transition to independence through a vulnerable time when he feels weak and emancipated and it would be easy to fall prey to slavery once again (cf. Jer. 34:11). Leviticus 25 declares a more permanent provision for independence: Precisely at the time when an Israelite is freed, he regains his ancestral land on which to make an agricultural living.
The Jubilee law thus represents 1) a reliable, ongoing decree by God, King of Israel, and owner of the land, 2) a protection of the distribution of ancestral land set up at the time of the settlement, 3) a realistic recognition of the fact that maintaining an independent livelihood in an agrarian society could be difficult without the use of agricultural land, and 4) a practical solution to the problem of debt-servitude which is fair to all parties involved. The provision for automatically receiving one’s land at the Jubilee would not encourage the farmer to be slothful, since losing land could involve a long wait to recover it. But it would ensure that the results of hard times would not be perpetuated from one generation to another.
“Under all is the land. . . .” Above all is God. Upon the land the people of God may fall into hard times, but these times should not be too hard, or for too long.19
Why did God tolerate slavery in biblical times? This question hits a nerve because of our revulsion for the degrading, racist type of servitude practiced in the United States until the Civil War. For us the term slavery instantly evokes images of tobacco plantations, cotton fields, abusive masters drawing blood with whips, and separated family members sold on the auction block. Our reaction is horror and anger at this kind of moral leprosy.
When we read the Bible, however, we find laws regulating slavery to mitigate its worst effects (Ex. 21; Lev. 25; Deut. 15), but we do not find what we want: a law totally banning slavery. So we are likely to ask: What is the matter with God? Why aren’t his moral sensibilities as keen as ours?
It is helpful to recognize that there are several kinds of slavery or servitude, with varying causes and effects on individuals. For example, many poor white people voluntarily emigrated to America in colonial times under a system called “indentured servitude.” Because they could not afford the fare for crossing the Atlantic, wealthy landowners in America would pay their way. Then the new immigrants were obligated to work for a period of time to pay off their debt. Today we find similar dynamics when an employer sponsors a person’s education in exchange for a commitment to work for that employer until the debt is fully amortized.
In the ancient Near East, a person could choose to sell himself or herself and/or one or more dependents into servitude, generally for food to survive (see above). However, there was another way to end up in the same situation. A person could voluntarily take out a loan for some reason, including survival, and if he or she was unable to pay and the loan went into default, the creditor had a right to seize collateral, as in modern foreclosure. The difference is that in those days persons were fair game as collateral. So a voluntary loan carried with it the risk of involuntary servitude. Bankruptcy as we know it did not exist. Even in times of general prosperity, death or incapacitation of a family’s primary earner could have disastrous consequences that could lead to enslavement of other family members (2 Kings 4:1).
In his Second Treatise of Government (1690), John Locke recognized the difference between servitude in the biblical law codes and the kind of slavery practiced in his day:
I confess we find among the Jews, as well as other nations, that men did sell themselves; but it is plain this was only to drudgery, not to slavery; for it is evident the person sold was not under an absolute, arbitrary, despotical power; for the master could not have power to kill him at any time whom, at a certain time, he was obliged to let go free out of his service; and the master of such a servant was so far from having an arbitrary power over his life that he could not, at pleasure, so much as maim him, but the loss of an eye or tooth set him free (Ex. 21).20
While we will never feel comfortable with the biblical servitude laws, we should take the following factors into account. (1) God did not institute slavery. Nor did he like it any more than he liked polygamy or divorce, which he also regulated to prevent their worst effects (Ex. 21:10–11; Lev. 18:18; Deut. 21:15–17; 24:1–4). Through Jeremiah, the Lord excoriated the people of Jerusalem who took back the slaves they had released (Jer. 34:12–22), and in Revelation 18:13, trafficking in human lives is one of the sins for which eschatological “Babylon” is destroyed.
(2) The revelation of God’s principles is progressive. For example, he tolerated Jacob’s marrying two sisters although he later outlawed this practice (Lev. 18:18). Already within the Pentateuch, we see advancement in the requirements for humane treatment of servants. By comparison with Exodus 21, Deuteronomy stipulates release of female slaves (Deut. 15:12) and introduces the command for a master when he frees a servant: “Supply him liberally from your flock, your threshing floor and your winepress” (15:14).
(3) It appears that in the context of Israelite tribal society, which was almost completely dependent on agriculture and lacked a state welfare system, God tolerated debt servitude as the lesser of two evils to keep people alive who would otherwise starve if they could not get help from relatives in times of distress (see above).
The biblical release laws benefited Israelite slaves/servants. Non-Israelites could be held in perpetuity, whether they were acquired through purchase (Lev. 25:44–46) or conquest (Deut. 20:10–15). This is much more difficult for us to deal with. Why did God allow his people to do this, and how does it differ from slavery in America? Without attempting to arrive at a definitive answer, we can make some preliminary observations in the following paragraphs. For one thing, without the release legislation, the default situation would have allowed perpetual slavery for Israelites. What is exceptional is not that non-Israelites could be held in perpetuity, but that Israelites could not. God elevated their status in accordance with their election and redemption. They had already served their time in Egypt (Lev. 25:42; Deut. 15:15)!
God’s intention for other nations was to bless them through the descendants of Abraham (Gen. 12:3; 22:18), not to exploit them. The Israelites were to be a channel for revealing divine principles so that other peoples would want to join them in serving God; they were not to be an elite, exclusive caste. Nonetheless, the Israelites came in conflict with a number of other peoples. When hostilities broke out between Israel and a city not located in their Promised Land, the Israelites were to make an offer of peace. “If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. When the LORD your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it” (Deut. 20:11–13).
Here we see the usual ancient Near Eastern alternatives: slavery or death. At first glance it is simply the law of the jungle, with the strong preying on the weak. However, in the book of Numbers we will find that on a number of occasions the Israelites were up against enemies who wanted to destroy them (Num. 21–22; 25; 31). In the absence of a “United Nations,” Israel could only survive by eviscerating such threats through controlling or destroying enemy males, who posed military danger. To go on the offensive was the only viable defense.
In biblical Israel there seems to be no hint of the racist attitude associated with American slavery, namely, that a person is inferior because of his or her skin color, so that it is legitimate to hold that individual as a slave. In spite of the pseudo-exegetical acrobatics of southern white ministers before the Civil War, there is no biblical justification for subhuman slavery as it was practiced in America.
Exodus 21:20–21, 26–27 appears to protect all slaves, whether Israelite or not, from injury because of physical abuse by their masters. These laws lack the qualification “Hebrew” (see 21:2) and are separated from the part of the chapter dealing with Hebrew slaves (21:1–11). That God did hold Israel responsible for treatment of at least one group of non-Israelite slaves (i.e., the Gibeonites; cf. Josh. 9) is graphically illustrated in 2 Samuel 21:1–14.
According to the New Testament, ethnic divisions, slave or free status, and gender are irrelevant to participation in the new covenant (Gal. 3:26–29). The New Testament does not attempt to attack slavery in a political manner (see Philemon) because the new covenant community is not a political group. Christ repeatedly stressed that the purpose of his kingdom of grace (before he returns to earth) is not to right all wrongs in the world by force. The church was not to become another Spartacus revolt against Roman slavery, which would end similarly with thousands of crosses lining the Appian Way. Rather, the converting power of the gospel would undermine evils such as slavery by drawing human beings of varying social statuses into spiritual fellowship with each another.
The New Testament approach does not mean that modern Christians in democratic countries have no moral obligation to lift their voices and votes against social evils. But before we criticize the New Testament writers, we should remember that they were not living under a democracy; they had neither voice nor vote in shaping the policies of the Roman empire.
Contemporary Significance
THE SABBATICAL PRINCIPLE and society. We generally think of Sabbath in religious terms as the chief day of worship, or in individual terms as the day of special rest. In an academic or otherwise professional context, a “sabbatical” is also for an individual professor. Leviticus 25 radically extends the sabbatical principle of rest and relief to the human environment, economy, and society. We find an earlier inkling of this approach in Exodus 23:10–12, where the seventh-year fallow benefits both the poor and wild animals in addition to the land, and the seventh-day cessation from work benefits not only Israelites but also beasts of burden and marginalized persons—slaves and aliens—whom Jesus could have called “the least of these brothers [or sisters] of mine” (Matt. 25:40).
Leviticus 25 carries the sabbatical year over and builds on it. A “Jubilee” year following a sabbatical of sabbaticals (i.e., 7 × 7 = 49 years) is what amounts to a “super-sabbatical.” Not only does the land rest; it returns to its original owner. Not only do agricultural workers rest by not planting or harvesting; they return to their own clans and land. Not only does the economy rest; debts that have kept people under obligation claim them no more. This legislation stresses the desirability of economic self-sufficiency and the need to treat people undergoing economic hardship with kindness and respect.
At the time of Jubilee, accumulation of economic and social imbalance tending toward feudalism was to be restored to a decentralized, egalitarian equilibrium.21 This was to avoid the kind of class struggle between rich and poor that plagued the monarchies of Israel and Judah and much later incited Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to advocate abolition of private property.22 Every Israelite who lived a normal life span was supposed to have at least one opportunity to erase the oppression of circumstances and make a new start—all this without government bailouts, taxes, or even insurance companies!
Before we decide to run for public office on a platform of Leviticus 25, we should be aware that implementation would be challenging. Obviously individual farmers are free to observe a seventh-year fallow. However, although only a minority of our population makes an agrarian living, shutting down even a small percentage of our agricultural sector every seven years would be a monumental upheaval and, at least in the case of a two-year fallow at the end of a “Jubilee” period, would require religious faith in divine blessing.
Also difficult for a “Jubilee” release of land is the historical question: Who is the “original” owner, to whom ownership should revert? Does Manhattan go back to the Indians? According to the Pentateuch, God gave the Jubilee legislation even before ancestral land was divvied out, so people would know from the outset what a real estate “sale” meant. But attempting to impose a theoretical ideal on an already functioning system of land tenure, as the communists attempted to do during much of the twentieth century, can have catastrophic results.
Some kind of debt amnesty would indeed be helpful. Individuals are crushed under accumulating loads of debt, from which they are unable to extricate themselves. In fact, many credit card debts are set up in such a way that they are self-perpetuating. Making regular payments of the stipulated amount will never pay off the debt because the payments are not enough to overcome the accumulation of interest.
Developing nations are also strapped with colossal debts, many of which amount to billions of dollars and drag down the lives of millions of people as they struggle to make ends meet and improve their standard of living. Banks, businesses, governments, and the International Monetary Fund provide bailouts, but always with big “strings” attached. Undoubtedly some of these strings are necessary to ensure that help goes where it is needed rather than into “black holes” of poor management and corruption. But there is a widespread craving for some kind of “Jubilee” relief.23
Milgrom describes an international Jewish-Christian Symposium on the Jubilee, sponsored by the World Council of Churches and held at the Ecumenical Institute in Bossey, Switzerland, in 1996. This conference highlighted the plight of economically shackled Third World countries, which are suffering declining per capita incomes while the global market economy booms, and the environments of which are being polluted and irreversibly depleted by large business interests.24 A particularly serious tragedy has flourished in democratic India, where in 1992 it was estimated that five million adults and ten million children were held in bonded labor. Almost all of them are Untouchables (the lowest caste). Working without wages to pay off real or imaginary debts, they have almost no hope of escape.25
Debtor countries have demanded of creditor nations that their debts be cancelled, land and resources be restored to their original owners, pilfering and pollution of natural resources be stopped, and economic slavery be terminated by mandating minimum wages on which people can survive.26 Milgrom points out: “The Jubilee prescribing remission of debts, restoration of land, sabbath rest for land and people, and release from economic servitude corresponds to all four demands.”27
Implementation of such measures in favor of the oppressed would undoubtedly be opposed by the rich and powerful, who would stand to lose, as in ancient Judah (cf. Jer. 34:8–11). Nevertheless, in modern times there is evidence in Tonga and South Korea that restoring and maintaining individual ownership of land are highly effective in promoting general prosperity, which ends up benefiting everyone.28 This practicality, possibly reinforced by allusions to Jubilee years in biblical Judah (e.g., Jer. 34),29 suggests that the legislation of Leviticus 25 is not simply utopian. In the narrative of Numbers 36, the Gileadite chieftains certainly did not understand the Jubilee release to be utopian, or they would not have factored it into their practical concern that the daughters of Zelophehad could remove property from their clan by marriage (Num. 36:4).
With debt release the big question is: Who picks up the tab?30 Unlike ancient Israelites, who owed individual creditors, our debts are primarily to organizations, such as banks, credit unions, credit card companies, or government organizations such as the FHA. How do you get an organization to exercise compassion? If debt release is enforced, why would lenders want to extend credit again in the future?31 Of course, creditors already lose at least part of many loan amounts through a modern form of remission: bankruptcy.
While it would not be fair or feasible to require modern lending organizations to give up the principal amounts of loans or to abstain from charging some interest under normal conditions, our society would do well to ponder the practical implications of Leviticus 25:35–37: “If one of your countrymen becomes poor and is unable to support himself among you . . . do not take interest of any kind from him. . . . You must not lend him money at interest or sell him food at a profit.”32 Many of the fiscal woes that we face on all levels, from the individual up to the international, are a result of debts with interest. Most of these are not incurred for survival. Many of them are for worthy causes, such as education and development of resources, but many are simply because we want things before we have the money to pay for them. If we would base our spending more on earnings and savings and less on loans, some things would happen a bit slower, but we would ultimately pay a lot less and be better off.
Taking out a loan can be risky, especially when it is most needed. In Nothing to Do but Stay: My Pioneer Mother, Carrie Young tells of her mother’s desperate lack of money when the wheat crop failed for the fourth year in a row. She owned plenty of land and hated the word “mortgage.”
But for her children’s education she would do anything, and one hot windy day in August she walked into the Citizens National Bank of Williston and requested a loan of a thousand dollars. As collateral, she offered 320 acres of the most productive land in Williams County. The president of the bank told her, in the most high-handed manner, that even if she owned all of the farmland in the entire state of North Dakota he wouldn’t lend her a thousand dollars.
When she emerged from the bank that day my mother was angrier than I had ever seen her. She was not a swearing woman, so she uttered the worst word she could bring herself to say: “Stygging!” Nasty fellow.
Not until years later did my mother realize that this was one of the luckiest days of her life. What she couldn’t have known on that summer morning in 1933 was that six more crop failures in a row were coming up and never in any of those years would she have been able to meet the mortgage payments. She would have lost her homestead land as surely as she stood in the bank that day putting it up as security.33
The dynamics of this story are much like those behind Leviticus 25. Unlike Carrie’s mother, our culture has become addicted to loans. It is to the advantage of powerful lenders to feed on our addiction by encouraging us to spend greedily beyond our means to buy that new SUV, dream vacation, or all those inexpensive trinkets that add up to big bucks. We see, therefore we buy. It’s a lot more glamorous than saving, especially when the interest earned on savings accounts is so low.
The solution? If we were legislators, we could talk about making lending less predatory and profitable, with caps on usurious credit card interest and a ban on indefinitely self-perpetuating terms. We could also look for ways to encourage financial institutions to earn more of their money through investing what people deposit and less on loans. If we are ordinary citizens, we can still encourage ourselves and others to control our desires, buy as we can pay, and save. Too many of us, including myself, have confirmed by hard experience the ancient dangers of debt and interest recognized long ago by Leviticus.
As we seek to be responsible with our resources, it is helpful for us to remember that ultimately they come from God. “God’s foremost rule of finance is: We own nothing. We are managers, not owners. Stewards, not landlords. Maintenance people, not proprietors. Our money is not ours; it is his.”34
The author of Leviticus 25 would certainly agree (cf. v. 38). He would add: “If one of your countrymen becomes poor and is unable to support himself among you, help him . . . so he can continue to live among you”
(v. 35). Why manage our resources well? So we can be secure and have more to spend on ourselves, like a rich man with an edifice complex, of whom Jesus spoke (Luke 12:15–21)? No. Our good management is the first phase of a ministry of sharing. By taking good care of the blessings God gives us and passing them on, we acknowledge that they are not simply our own. Even with all our efforts, we would have nothing without the ability that he has given us (Deut. 8:17–18). We can’t take it all with us, anyway. “Hearses pull no U-Hauls.”35
In the 1960s, President Lyndon Johnson waged war on poverty with his “Great Society” initiative. After getting entire generations addicted to state welfare and spending billions of dollars on all kinds of projects, poverty is alive and flourishing. This is no surprise. Deuteronomy 15:11 says: “There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land” (cf. Matt. 26:11). The question is not how to eradicate poverty but how to maintain intelligent compassion as we seek to alleviate its worst effects.
While it is important that the church not try to take over functions of the state, the church is not exempt from addressing social problems, such as poverty and equality, or ecological concerns just because the state is working on the same problems. Leviticus 25 teaches us that for those who believe in God, faith and ethics impact the larger context of our lives.36
Another biblical passage that powerfully integrates social and sabbatical themes for the community of God’s people is Isaiah 58. Here social kindness and cessation from work are linked to self-denial (Isa. 58:3) and therefore to the Day of Purgation, which was a Sabbath (cf. vv. 13–14) and the only regular fast day prescribed in the Hebrew Bible (Lev. 16:29, 31; 23:27–32). It was also the time of humanitarian celebration when the Jubilee year began (25:9). On the Day of Purgation, when the sins of the Israelites were purged out of the sanctuary so that they could be morally pure (ch. 16), it was more inappropriate and hypocritical than ever to commit more rebellious faults and sins of social unkindness (Isa. 58:1–5).
Self-denial, social kindness, and sabbath/Sabbath coordinate to reveal important priorities involved in our relationships with God and with each other.
• Holiness: We can emulate God, who rested at creation (Gen. 2:2–3) and does not need human food (Ps. 50:12–13), and Christ, whose self-sacrificing kindness involved humbling himself to death on a cross (Phil. 2:8).
• Humility: Those who fast and keep Sabbath become weaker, stop seeking their own welfare, and remember the Creator who sustains them. This voluntary observance prepares them to recognize the needs of poor people, who involuntarily go hungry and whose work is insufficient to sustain them.
• Equality: The diet and work of those who fast and keep Sabbath is alike whether they are rich or poor.37 Abraham Heschel describes the Sabbath:
A reminder of every man’s royalty; an abolition of the distinction of master and slave, rich and poor, success and failure. To celebrate the Sabbath is to experience one’s ultimate independence of civilization and society, of achievement and anxiety. The Sabbath is an embodiment of the belief that all men are equal and that equality of men means the nobility of men. The greatest sin of man is to forget that he is a prince.38