St. Ignatius of Loyola
Peter Paul Rubens
1600s
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California
Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam (To the Greater Glory of God)
From: Leviticus 25:1, 8-17
Rules About the Sabbatical Year
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[1] The LORD said to Moses on Mount Sinai,
[8] "And you shall count seven weeks' of years, seven times seven years, so that the time of the seven weeks of years shall be to you forty-nine years. [9] Then you shall send abroad the loud trumpet on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the day of atonement you shall send abroad the trumpet throughout all your land. [10] And you shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants; it shall be a jubilee for you, when each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his family. [11] A jubilee shall that fiftieth year be to you; in it you shall neither sow, nor reap what grows of itself, nor gather the grapes from the undressed vines. [12] For it is a jubilee; it shall be holy to you; you shall eat what it yields out of the field.
[13] "In this year of jubilee each of you shall return to his property. [14] And if you sell to your neighbor or buy from your neighbor, you shall not wrong one another. [15] According to the number of years after the jubilee, you shall buy from your neighbor, and according to the number of years for crops he shall sell to you. [16] If the years are many you shall increase the price, and if the years are few you shall diminish the price, for it is the number of the crops that he is selling to you. [17] You shall not wrong one another, but you shall fear your God; for I am the Lord your God."
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Commentary:
25:1-7. Here we can see concern for the conservation of land, trying to ensure that short-term productivity is not obtained at the cost of deterioration in the long term. It is always made clear that the earth is a gift from God: therefore, God's sovereignty over the land has to be periodically acknowledged. This is the primary reason for these rules about allowing the land to lie fallow.
Exodus 23:10-11 also talks about the sabbatical year, but here there is reference to additional reasons for it, to do with the welfare of the under-privileged. These rules did not all have to be put into effect at the same time, because that might have created a huge problem of generalized idleness. In the book of Maccabees, for example, there are references to difficulties that arose at that time due to one sabbatical year (cf. 1 Mac 6:49).
25:8-22. Here again the number seven, by being applied to the calendar, creates a special situation. Now we have seven weeks of years, that is a run of forty-nine years; and this leads to the following year, the fiftieth, being a jubilee year. The rules about letting the land lie fallow are applied to the jubilee year; special clauses are added, such as that to do with the redemption of property. So, in the jubilee year, land acquired had to be returned to its original owner This custom meant that what in fact was sold was the usufruct of the land and its price would be a function of the number of years' use the buyer was getting.
Again, underlying this is the idea that the land is a divine gift which ought always to revert to those to whom the Lord originally granted it. Even so, these regulations were not obeyed very well. Thus, we find the prophets vigorously denouncing the way some people built up land holdings to the detriment of others. The basic reason for their complaint was not just a fine sense of social justice but the fact that God's rules were being violated (cf. Is 5:8; Mic 2:2).
Verses 14-15 here are [as in the Spanish edition, which is also in line with most modern vernacular translations] divided differently from the Nev Vulgate division.
Verses 18-22 round off the previous passage and introduce what follows. They remind people about the promises God makes to those who are faithful to his commandments, and they are meant to encourage those who might be tempted to think that God will not look after them if they have to face three years without harvest (the sabbatical year, the jubilee year and the year after it, at the end of which a harvest would be reaped). A provident God will ensure that those who stay true to him will experience no want.