Leviticus 25
18 Aug 2026 - Theology
A Perfect World
In the previous post (Leviticus 24), I mentioned that most commentators believe that Leviticus 25-27 were actually written earlier, before the construction of the Tabernacle. This theory stems from mainly one key verse:
Leviticus 25:1 - “And the Lord spake unto Moses in mount Sinai, saying,”
What is interesting is that the book of Leviticus does not take place on Mount Sinai, but instead takes place in the valley below the mountain, specifically within the Tabernacle. The last time Mount Sinai figured in the narrative was when Moses came down carrying the second set of tablets in Exodus 34. From then on, the focus is not on the mountain but in the valley below where the Israelites are constructing the Tabernacle. This portion (chapters 25-27) should have been in the book of Exodus. What we have, in other words, between Exodus 24 and Leviticus 25 is a massive parenthesis, some forty chapters long, by far the largest of its kind in the Torah.
If we look at the substance of this chapter we discover the same thing. It is about principles of social justice: the Jubilee year, the release of debts, and the liberation of slaves. Social justice is not a subject we associate with Leviticus, which is about the relationship between humans and God. It is, though, precisely the subject we associate with the book of Exodus. The obvious place for these laws is immediately after the civil legislation contained in Exodus 21-23, which deals with justice in the relationships between humans.
Leviticus 25
Exodus 23 stated: “Six years you shall sow your land… but in the seventh year you shall let it rest… Let the needy among your people eat of it…” This command to give the land one year of rest every seven years was later named Shemitah, meaning “untended”.
The P-tellers of Leviticus revisited this law:
Leviticus 25:3-6 - “Six years thou shalt sow thy field… 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. That which groweth of its own accord of thy harvest thou shalt not reap… for it is a year of rest unto the land. 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.”
The P-tellers add a new twist to Shemitah. Every seven years farmers stop working their fields for a year. And every seven times seven years, in the Jubilee Year (Yoveil), farmers stop working the land for an extra year (11). Would farmers really let the land grow wild two years in a row? Even going one year without working the land could cause grief. When seed is not sown and weeds are not cleared for a whole year, very little grows wild. If the land is not tended for two years, practically nothing would grow in the second year.
In a time when grain was the most important food, wouldn’t people starve in the second year? In fact, we have records showing that even one year without sowing could be too much. The first-century historian Josephus records three times (during the time of the Second Temple) when Shemitah years caused such great famine among the Israelites that many starved to death. Was this what the P-tellers had in mind when they put the law of Shemitah in the Lord’s commands to Moses at Mount Sinai?
And did they really mean that every forty-nine years the Israelites should put themselves in even greater jeopardy by not working the land for two years? It seems strange. How could Israelites be expected to mark a jubilee (a great celebration) if they were starving to death?
Leviticus 25:20-23 - “And if ye shall say, What shall we eat the seventh year? behold, we shall not sow, nor gather in our increase: Then I will command my blessing upon you in the sixth year, and it shall bring forth fruit for three years. 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. The land shall not be sold for ever: for the land is mine, for ye are strangers and sojourners with me.”
In return for the Israelites’ keeping the Yoviel year, the P-tellers promise that the Lord will deliver a miracler every fourty-nine years! The Lord will make so much grain grow wild that everyone will be free to celebrate and no one will starve either during the year of Shemitah or the year of Yoveil. There will be much more grain than usual, so much that the Israelites will be eating it even two years after the Yoveil year. Since we know that some Shemitah years did cause starving among the people, how can this promise be true?
The idea of Shemitah (a seven-year period) seems to be borrowed from other nations. We have an ancient text from the city of Ugar that tells of a ceremony for celebrating the end of a seven-year cycle. We know that Shemitah was observed in the days of the Second Temple. However, there is no trace of the Yoveil year ever being observed. So why did the P-tellers give us the laws of Yoveil if it was never observed?
By the time of the P-tellers, the world of the Greeks was well known to the Israelites. One popular subject for the Greeks was how to create a perfect world, such as the one Plato imagined in his book called “The Republic” in the fourth century BC. The P-tellers imagined how the Lord’s perfect world should look, and they placed their perfect world in the Torah. The P-tellers were picturing the way the world should be, not the way it was. The laws of Shemitah and Yoveil came together to shape a world where the Lord could promise that no year would ever come when the land would not give enough grain for everyone. The P-tellers placed their plan for this imaginary perfect Israel in the words of the Lord given to Moses at Mount Sinai.
Of course, keeping the laws of Shemitah was difficult enough, sometimes even dangerous. But keeping the laws of Yoveil was impossible, and everyone knew it. Later, the Rabbis of the Talmud set aside the laws of Yoveil entirely. But it seems that Yoveil, the Jubilee, never happened anyway. It was only an Israelite dream that was told in the way the Greeks had earlier told about perfect worlds.
References
- The Hebrew - Greek Key Study Bible (KJV Version)
- The Torah Portion-by-Portion by Rabbi Seymour Rossel (2007)