Today, I am reading and commenting on  Leviticus 24-25.

Today’s passage contains instructions for a Sabbath year every seven years.   The idea was that every seven years the land would be allowed to lie fallow and “rest”.  God told the Israelites that in the sixth year, they would harvest a bumper crop which would be sufficient to carry them through the sabbath year, with supplements from those crops which “volunteered” (If you have ever grown tomatoes, or one of many other vegetables, you know how you always end up with plants growing the following year from tomatoes which fell off the plant).  The passage goes on to describe the Jubilee, which was a kind of sabbath of sabbath years.  Every seventh sabbath year (or perhaps the year after the seventh sabbath year, depending on how you interpret the wording) would be a year of redemption: debts would be canceled, slaves freed, and property that had been sold returned to the person who sold it(or their heirs).  I don’t see how you could institute such a system today, but the passage contains an important point about the meaning of the Year of Jubilee, actually two such points.  The first of those points is that the land is the Lord’s.  In fact, everything in this world belongs to God.  We are but stewards of it using it to advance His kingdom.  The second point is that we should not take advantage of each other.  As I wrote this I realized there is a third lesson to be learned: if we do as God directs us, He will provide for us.  If we know that God has called us to endeavor which does not obviously provide for our needs we can be sure that He will meet those needs in some way as we do His will.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.