Discovery BoxLeviticus 25:5-12 
Context25:5 You must not gather in the aftergrowth of your harvest and you must not pick the grapes of your unpruned 1 vines; the land must have a year of complete rest. 25:6 You may have the Sabbath produce 2 of the land to eat – you, your male servant, your female servant, your hired worker, the resident foreigner who stays with you, 3 25:7 your cattle, and the wild animals that are in your land – all its produce will be for you 4 to eat.
25:8 “‘You must count off 5 seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, 6 and the days of the seven weeks of years will amount to forty-nine years. 7 25:9 You must sound loud horn blasts 8 – 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, 9 and you must proclaim a release 10 in the land for all its inhabitants. That year will be your jubilee; 11 each one of you must return 12 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. 13 25:12 Because that year is a jubilee, it will be holy to you – you may eat its produce 14 from the field.
1 tn Heb “consecrated, devoted, forbidden” (נָזִיר, nazir). The same term is used for the “consecration” of the “Nazirite” (and his hair, Num 6:2, 18, etc.), a designation which, in turn, derives from the very same root.
2 tn The word “produce” is not in the Hebrew text but is implied; cf. NASB “the sabbath products.”
3 tn A “resident who stays” would be a foreign person who was probably residing as another kind of laborer in the household of a landowner (B. A. Levine, Leviticus [JPSTC], 170-71). See v. 35 below.
4 tn The words “for you” are implied.
5 tn Heb “And you shall count off for yourself.”
6 tn Heb “seven years seven times.”
7 tn Heb “and they shall be for you, the days of the seven Sabbaths of years, forty-nine years.”
8 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).
9 tn Heb “the year of the fifty years,” or perhaps “the year, fifty years” (GKC 435 §134.o, note 2).
10 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.
11 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).
12 tn Heb “you [plural] shall return, a man.”
13 tn Heb “you shall not sow and you shall not…and you shall not….”
sn See v. 5 above and the notes there.
14 tn That is, the produce of the land (fem.; cf. v. 7 above).
