Leviticus 25:8-12·~1 min

The Year of Jubilee

Israel is to count seven sabbatical cycles, then announce the fiftieth year with the sounding of the horn on the Day of Atonement. That year is set apart as Jubilee, proclaiming liberty and return.

A⁸nd you shall count off seven Sabbaths of years — seven times seven years — so that the seven Sabbaths of years amount to forty-nine years. ⁹Then you are to sound the horn far and wide on the tenth day of the seventh month, the Day of Atonement. You shall sound it throughout your land. ¹⁰So you are to consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty in the land for all its inhabitants. It shall be your Jubilee, when each of you is to return to his property and to his clan.

Like the Sabbath year, the Jubilee forbids sowing and ordinary harvesting. Its holiness means the people live directly from what the field yields.

¹¹The fiftieth year will be a Jubilee for you; you are not to sow the land or reap its aftergrowth or harvest the untended vines. ¹²For it is a Jubilee; it shall be holy to you. You may eat only the crops taken directly from the field.

Section summaryAfter seven cycles of sabbatical years, Israel is to consecrate the fiftieth year as Jubilee. Marked by the horn on the Day of Atonement, it brings liberty, return to property and clan, and another year in which the land is not sown or reaped.

Role in the chapterThis section enlarges the Sabbath pattern from a single year of rest to a national year of release and restoration. It introduces the chapter’s larger social reset, which the following sections will unfold in detail.