Discovery BoxLeviticus 25:8-12 
Context25:8 “‘You must count off 1 seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, 2 and the days of the seven weeks of years will amount to forty-nine years. 3 25:9 You must sound loud horn blasts 4 – in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, on the Day of Atonement – you must sound the horn in your entire land. 25:10 So you must consecrate the fiftieth year, 5 and you must proclaim a release 6 in the land for all its inhabitants. That year will be your jubilee; 7 each one of you must return 8 to his property and each one of you must return to his clan. 25:11 That fiftieth year will be your jubilee; you must not sow the land, harvest its aftergrowth, or pick the grapes of its unpruned vines. 9 25:12 Because that year is a jubilee, it will be holy to you – you may eat its produce 10 from the field.
1 tn Heb “And you shall count off for yourself.”
2 tn Heb “seven years seven times.”
3 tn Heb “and they shall be for you, the days of the seven Sabbaths of years, forty-nine years.”
4 sn On the “loud horn blasts” see the note on Lev 23:24, but unlike the language there, the Hebrew term for “horn” (שׁוֹפָר, shofar) actually appears here in this verse (twice).
5 tn Heb “the year of the fifty years,” or perhaps “the year, fifty years” (GKC 435 §134.o, note 2).
6 tn Cf. KJV, ASV, NAB, NIV, NRSV “liberty”; TEV, CEV “freedom.” The characteristics of this “release” are detailed in the following verses. For substantial summaries and bibliography on the biblical and ancient Near Eastern material regarding such a “release” see J. E. Hartley, Leviticus (WBC), 427-34, and B. A. Levine, Leviticus (JPSTC), 270-74.
7 tn Heb “A jubilee that shall be to you.” Although there has been some significant debate about the original meaning of the Hebrew word translated “jubilee” (יוֹבֵל, yovel; see the summary in J. E. Hartley, Leviticus [WBC], 434), the term most likely means “ram” and can refer also to a “ram’s horn.” The fiftieth year would, therefore, be called the “jubilee” because of the associated sounding of the “ram’s horn” (see B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 172, and the literature cited there).
8 tn Heb “you [plural] shall return, a man.”
9 tn Heb “you shall not sow and you shall not…and you shall not….”
sn See v. 5 above and the notes there.
10 tn That is, the produce of the land (fem.; cf. v. 7 above).
