Feasts and the Jubilee

In context

Leviticus 23 sets out Israel’s year: the weekly Sabbath, then the Lord’s “set feasts.” In spring came Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the first sheaf of the harvest, and fifty days later a feast with loaves of the new grain (Leviticus 23:5–17); its count of fifty gave it the Greek name Pentecost (Acts 2:1). In the seventh month, in the fall, came a day of trumpets, the Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Booths, when everyone born in Israel lived seven days in shelters to remember the journey out of Egypt (Leviticus 23:24–43).

Chapter 24 tells of a man, the son of an Israelite mother and an Egyptian father, who cursed the Lord’s name in a fight. At the Lord’s word the community stoned him (Leviticus 24:10–23). It is a hard passage, told briefly.

Chapter 25 gives the land a Sabbath every seventh year, and every fiftieth year a Jubilee: “proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants” (Leviticus 25:10), the verse cast on the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. In the Jubilee, land a poor family had sold went back to them, and Israelites who had sold themselves went free. For the land, the reason given is “the land is mine” (Leviticus 25:23).