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

God commanded the Israelites to practice a Sabbath year every seventh year, and a Jubilee year every 50th year.  Actually, I am not quite sure how the timing of the Jubilee year was supposed to work.  So, it is clear that the year after the seventh Sabbath year was supposed to be a Jubilee year, but did the next Sabbath year come six years after the Jubilee, or did the counting for the Sabbath year start over with the Jubilee year.  Which brings me to the next thing I find interesting about the schedule of Sabbath years and the Jubilee: the Jubilee year is the year following the seventh Sabbath year.  That means there would be two years in a row where nothing was planted or harvested.  For those two years the people would live off of what the land produced without any crop management.   I want to spend a little bit of time looking at the idea of the Year of Jubilee.  The Year of Jubilee leveled the playing field by canceling debts, freeing slaves, and returning land to the family to whom it originally belonged.   In among the rules for the Year of Jubilee there are rules allowing people to redeem land which they have sold.  Finally, I want to take note that the reason why land could not be permanently sold was because it does not belong to us, it belongs to God.  We should recognize that the land we live upon is on loan to us from God and treat it accordingly. As servants of God, we should seek to return the land to Him in as good or better shape than when He first gave it in to our care.  In fact, I believe that we should treat all property which comes into our possession as on loan from God, using it to further His will for us on this earth.

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