A Survey of the Old Testament Law--Leviticus 24-25 (Part 3)

OK, so now we move on to the next topic, the Year of Jubilee. Leviticus 25:8-10—“‘8 And you shall count seven sabbaths of years for yourself, seven times seven years; and the time of the seven sabbaths of years shall be to you forty-nine years. 9 Then you shall cause the trumpet of the Jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the Day of Atonement you shall make the trumpet to sound throughout all your land. 10 And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a Jubilee for you; and each of you shall return to his possession, and each of you shall return to his family.’”

We’re going to use this Year of Jubilee as the basis for examining some of the other major themes in this chapter. Because some of the remaining themes have some relation to the Year of Jubilee. But before we go there, let’s look at a couple of parallels to this Year of Jubilee, one of which is that it paints one more picture of Christ in the Law. How did the people count the Year of Jubilee? Leviticus 25:8—“‘And you shall count seven sabbaths of years for yourself, seven times seven years; and the time of the seven sabbaths of years shall be to you forty-nine years.’” How did they determine the date of Shavuot (Pentecost)? Leviticus 23:15—“‘And you shall count for yourselves from the day after the Sabbath, from the day that you brought the sheaf of the wave offering: seven Sabbaths shall be completed.’” Shavuot: Count seven Sabbath days, celebrate the fiftieth day. Year of Jubilee: count seven Sabbath years, celebrate the fiftieth year.

 Second, turn to Daniel 9:24-25—“24  Seventy weeks are determined for your people and for your holy city, to finish the transgression, to make an end of sins, to make reconciliation for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy. 25 Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the command to restore and build Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince, there shall be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublesome times.” Seventy weeks—literally, seventy sevens. 490 years. Four hundred ninety years from the command to rebuild Jerusalem until the year the Messiah would come. So which command to rebuild Jerusalem serves as the starting point for counting the 490 years? Well, that depends on who you read. Bishop Edward Chandler writes,

 

“The commencement of the weeks (as he remarks) must be either from the 7^th of Artaxerxes, which falls on 457 B.C. or from the 20^th of Artaxerxes. [To] 457 B.C., [add] 26 years after Christ [i.e., after His birth, here and following-Ed.]—which is the number [by which] 483, or 69 weeks, exceeds 457 years—and you are brought to the beginning of John the Baptist's preaching up the advent of the Messiah. Add 7 years or one week to the former [John the Baptist preaching Messiah], and you come to the 33^rd year of A.D. which was the year of Jesus Christ's death. Or else compute 490 years, the whole 70 weeks, from the 7^th of Artaxerxes, by subtracting 457 years…from 490, and there remains 33, the year of our Lord's death.

 

Let the 20^th of Artaxerxes be the date of the 70 weeks, which is 445 B.C. and reckon 69 weeks of Chaldean years—seventy Chaldee years being equal to sixty nine Julian; and so 478 Julian years making 483 Chaldee years—and they end in the 33^rd year after Christ, or the Passover following.

 

[…]

 

But computing from either of these dates from the 7th or from the 20th of Artaxerxes by Julian or by Chaldee years these weeks II weeks will carry us to the reign of Tiberius the Roman Emperor for the death of the Messiah and consequently the destruction of the city and temple following the Messiah's death can be no other than that by Titus Vespasian It must be to in point of time j and again no other destruction was attended with all the circumstances in Daniel beside that by the Romans.”

[Chandler, Edward. “A defence of Christianity from the prophecies of the Old Testament; wherein are considered all the objections against this kind of proof, advanced in a late Discourse of the grounds and reasons of the Christian religion”. p. 115.]

On the other hand, Adam Clarke, rather than reckoning forward from a certain date, reckons backwards, using Julian measurement:

 

“Most learned men agree that the death of Christ happened at the Passover in the month Nisan, in the four thousand seven hundred and forty-sixth year of the Julian period. Four hundred and ninety years, reckoned back from the above year, leads us directly to the month Nisan in the four thousand two hundred and fifty-sixth year of the same period; the very month and year in which Ezra had his commission from Artaxerxes Longimanus, king of Persia, (see Ezra 7:9), to restore and rebuild Jerusalem. See the commission in Ezra 7:11-26, and Prideaux’s Connexions, vol. 2 p. 380.”

 Boiling all that down, we get this: from the time that Artaxerxes commanded Jerusalem to be rebuilt, until the time that Messiah would come, was given to the people in about as clear a picture as could be given. And they missed Him. But isn't that the way we humans are? Sometimes you have to paint us a picture—and we still don’t get it.

So then, the 70 weeks of Daniel completed the tenth Jubilee year after the order went out to rebuild Jerusalem. In those Jubilee years, slaves were set free and property was redeemed. Leviticus 25:10—“And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all its inhabitants.” Does that sound like something Messiah did? The word that came to Isaiah said that’s what He would do. Isaiah 61:1—“The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon Me, because the LORD has anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound.” And when the Lord Jesus came, that was what He came to do—to bring to pass what was spoken of Him in the Law, and in the scroll of Isaiah. Luke 4:17-19—16 So He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. And as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read. 17 And He was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written: “18 The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; 19 to proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD.” Behold, the year of His coming was the year of Jubilee, the time had come: for the poor in spirit to be made rich with the righteousness of God; for those broken over their sin to be saved from those sins; for those held captive by sin to be set free from their master Satan; for those whose eyes had been veiled to the gospel to be given sight by our Lord; for those held down and oppressed by their own human failings to rise up on eagle’s wings and soar; for God to come down and save those who had rebelled against Him and draw them to Himself.

Behold he comes!/Riding on the clouds!

Shining like the sun/At the trumpet's call!

So lift your voice!/It's the year of Jubilee!

For out of Zion's Hill salvation comes!

Leviticus 25:11-12—“‘11 That fiftieth year shall be a Jubilee to you; in it you shall neither sow nor reap what grows of its own accord, nor gather the grapes of your untended vine. 12 For it is the Jubilee; it shall be holy to you; you shall eat its produce from the field.’” Like in the seventh-year Sabbath, you were not to till your land. Not only do you let the land lay fallow, you don’t wholly reap of any kind of crop. You simply go out, every day, and pick what you need. It is as if God is giving the freeing the land from its burden of constantly being turned and sown to produce for those who derived their sustenance from it. But think about this as well: this Year of Jubilee would constitute the second half of a two-year span when the land would not be tilled and sown. Remember, the forty-ninth year was also a year of rest for the land, as was the fiftieth. So two years would pass before the people could plant any new crops; they had to rely on God to provide for not only year forty-nine, but Jubilee as well.

Leviticus 25:13-17—“‘13 In this Year of Jubilee, each of you shall return to his possession. 14 And if you sell anything to your neighbor or buy from your neighbor's hand, you shall not oppress 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 of crops he shall sell to you. 16 According to the multitude of years you shall increase its price, and according to the fewer number of years you shall diminish its price; for he sells to you according to the number of the years of the crops. 17 Therefore you shall not oppress one another, but you shall fear your God; for I am the LORD your God.’”  Now, it was according to this year of Jubilee that certain things were given their valuation. For example, if a neighbor wanted to buy from you a certain piece of land, the price was prorated according to how many years remained until Jubilee. If the value of that land was 1000 shekels, and 24 years had elapsed since the previous Jubilee, you have to value that land for this transaction at 500 shekels (1000 shekels divided by 50 years equals 20 shekels per year). Also, you then deduct any Sabbath years that would come up during the time that said neighbor retained the rights to that field. That would drop the price from 500 shekels to 400 shekels (since there would be no harvest in years 28, 35, 42, 49 and 50, those five lost years would knock 100 shekels off the valuation).

We find other provisions pertaining to land and the Year of Jubilee in Leviticus 27. These cover the dedication of property to the vow of קָרְבָּן (qorban). We looked at the קָרְבָּן (qorban) back in Leviticus chapters 3 and 7 when we studied the Peace Offerings. The קָרְבָּן (qorban) was a voluntary Peace Offering of a vow (Leviticus 7:16). Leviticus 27:16-25—“‘16 If a man dedicates to the LORD part of a field of his possession, then your valuation shall be according to the seed for it. A homer of barley seed shall be valued at fifty shekels of silver. 17 If he dedicates his field from the Year of Jubilee, according to your valuation it shall stand. 18 But if he dedicates his field after the Jubilee, then the priest shall reckon to him the money due according to the years that remain till the Year of Jubilee, and it shall be deducted from your valuation. 19 And if he who dedicates the field ever wishes to redeem it, then he must add one-fifth of the money of your valuation to it, and it shall belong to him. 20 But if he does not want to redeem the field, or if he has sold the field to another man, it shall not be redeemed anymore; 21 but the field, when it is released in the Jubilee, shall be holy to the LORD, as a devoted field; it shall be the possession of the priest. 22 And if a man dedicates to the LORD a field which he has bought, which is not the field of his possession, 23 then the priest shall reckon to him the worth of your valuation, up to the Year of Jubilee, and he shall give your valuation on that day as a holy offering to the LORD. 24 In the Year of Jubilee the field shall return to him from whom it was bought, to the one who owned the land as a possession. 25 And all your valuations shall be according to the shekel of the sanctuary: twenty gerahs to the shekel.’”

Suppose a man inherited a piece of land from his father. Let’s suppose for a moment that this inheritance or purchase took place during the Year of Jubilee. The man says, “I dedicate 5 acres to the LORD.” And suppose it takes a homer of barley seed to sow that 5 acre tract. What happened next: the priest takes fifty shekels of sliver according to the shekel of the sanctuary (each shekel being the equivalent of 160 coffee beans, this would make for 9000 coffee beans, or 3 lbs. of coffee beans. So 3 lbs of silver) and gives that sum to the person. Now, if it is ten years since the Year of Jubilee when this dedication takes place, then the man would receive forty shekels; if it is twenty years after Jubilee, he would get thirty shekels. And suppose the man said, “You know, I’d really like to have that land back.” He would then go to the priest, who would count the number of years until the next Jubilee (for instance, let’s say there are ten years until Jubilee). The man would have to give not only the ten shekels of silver, but he would have to add two more shekels (one-fifth of ten) and give a total of twelve shekels of silver to the priest. Now, there are a couple more clauses we need to look at concerning the dedicated field. If you did not redeem it before the next Year of Jubilee, you did not get it back—when it was released, it became the possession of the priests. If you sold it to another, it could not be redeemed, and at the next Jubilee it likewise became property of the priests. All these conditions also applied to a piece of land that the man in question may have bought from a neighbor.

Leviticus 25:23—“‘The land shall not be sold permanently, for the land is Mine; for you are strangers and sojourners with Me.’” The earth belongs to God (Psalm 24:1). We do not own one square inch of it. In fact, we don’t own any single thing on the face of the earth. That is the reasoning behind the prohibition in verse 23. Besides, God was trying to drive home another message, one that He wants us as Christians under the New Covenant to know as well: we are strangers, sojourners, pilgrims. We are not to get too comfortable on this miserable planet, no matter how bright and shiny the objects the world tempts us with. Hebrews 11:13—These all died in faith… [and] confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. 1st Peter 2:11—Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul. This world is not the be-all end-all of everything. This world is not our final destination. This world is just a place we pass through until we reach the place where we will spend eternity. And if one desires to have the things of this world rather than the things of God, then they will have those things. And they will lose everything. Matthew 16:24-26—“24 If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. 25 For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. 26 For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?” The world says “Go ahead: long for and lust after the fruit of this world, which is so appealing to the eyes and to our flawed human senses. Be like Eve, who beheld the fruit and saw that it was good for food and pleasing to the eyes.” WRONG! 1st John 2:15-17—15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world. 17 And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever. From the International Critical Commentary—

 

“The evil desires which assail men through the lower part of their nature in general, or through the sense of vision in particular, or through the external good which falls to their lot, if regarded and used as opportunities for display, have their origin not in the Father, but in the world which has broken loose from Him. And the world and the desires which it fosters are alike transitory. Only that which falls in with God’s will, and carries forward His purpose, is of permanent value and lasting character.”

 

Part 4 next week

 

Jesus Christ is Lord.

Amen.

A Survey of the Old Testament Law--The Peace Offering Part 2 (3:1-17; 7:11-21)

Today we begin by examining the third type of Peace Offering of a vow, this being the “vow of destruction” (the Hebrew [חֵרֶם, cherem], or Greek [ἀνάθεμα, anathema]). Where have I heard the word ἀνάθεμα (anathema) before? Oh yeah. 1^st Corinthians 16:22 (KJV)—If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be ἀνάθεμα (anathema). Paul uses it in a couple other verses (although translated into English rather than transliterated from the Greek). Galatians 1:8-9—8 But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed (ἀνάθεμα (anathema)). 9 As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed (ἀνάθεμα (anathema)). Let him be devoted to destruction. We read about things being declared חֵרֶם (cherem) in Joshua 6. The things dedicated to חֵרֶם (cherem) were, of course, those things in the city of Jericho that the LORD commanded them to destroy. Joshua, son of Nun, makes this warning very clear to all within the sound of his voice when he declares in Joshua 6:16-18—16 And it came to pass at the seventh time, when the priests blew with the trumpets, Joshua said unto the people, “Shout; for the LORD hath given you the city. 17 And the city shall be accursed (חֵרֶם (cherem)), even it, and all that are therein, to the LORD: only Rahab the harlot shall live, she and all that are with her in the house, because she hid the messengers that we sent. 18 And ye, in any wise keep yourselves from the accursed thing (חֵרֶם (cherem)), lest ye make yourselves accursed, when ye take of the accursed thing חֵרֶם (cherem), and make the camp of Israel a curse (חֵרֶם (cherem)), and trouble it.” Anything that was devoted to destruction for the glory of God was to be destroyed. Not just for grins and giggles, but so that all things which call themselves “God” (which are not God) may be obliterated and the true God be magnified.

A person could put under the חֵרֶם (cherem) either land, or beasts, or even people. Leviticus 27 is the first place we read about putting something (or someone) under חֵרֶם (cherem). In Leviticus 27:16-21—“‘16 If a man dedicates to the LORD part of a field of his possession, then your valuation shall be according to the seed for it…17 If he dedicates his field from the Year of Jubilee, according to your valuation it shall stand. 18 But if he dedicates his field after the Jubilee, then the priest shall reckon to him the money due according to the years that remain till the Year of Jubilee, and it shall be deducted from your valuation. 19 And if he who dedicates the field ever wishes to redeem it, then he must add one-fifth of the money of your valuation to it, and it shall belong to him. 20 But if he does not want to redeem the field, or if he has sold the field to another man, it shall not be redeemed anymore; 21 but the field, when it is released in the Jubilee, shall be holy to the LORD, as a devoted field; it shall be the possession of the priest.’” To make it simple: if you declare a portion of your field to be חֵרֶם (cherem) during the year of Jubilee, you get 50 shekels. For every year after that, they knock a shekel off the price. Let’s say you declare a piece of land חֵרֶם (cherem) 7 years after the last Jubilee. If you want it back, you have to redeem it by paying back what you received, plus one-fifth. Now, if you declare it חֵרֶם (cherem) and you get your 43 shekels, and then you turn and sell that land to someone who is not of your tribe—it’s gone. And even closer to our point here, if you declare that piece of land חֵרֶם (cherem), and the next Jubilee rolls around, and you haven’t redeemed it—tough luck, Lucy. It belongs to the priests. It is חֵרֶם (cherem) to YHVH. Period, paragraph.

Then, we read a little something that makes us pause. Leviticus 27:28-29—“‘28 Nevertheless no devoted offering that a man may devote to the LORD of all that he has, both man and beast, or the field of his possession, shall be sold or redeemed; every devoted offering is most holy to the LORD. 29 No person under the ban, who may become doomed to destruction among men, shall be redeemed, but shall surely be put to death.’” You could dedicate animals to the חֵרֶם (cherem), obviously. And once you declare that animal חֵרֶם (cherem) you could not redeem it. You dedicated it to destruction for the glory of God—it’s over, you don’t get it back. But the really odd thing here is you could dedicate people to the חֵרֶם (cherem). One could dedicate another person to destruction. That sounds bizarre to us. That sounds cruel and inhumane. BUT—let’s think about this, and not just rashly write this off as some insane addition that some corrupt scribe inserted here. For the most glaring example of rashly assigning one to חֵרֶם (cherem), we look at Jephthah. Judges 11:29-33—29 Then the Spirit of the LORD came upon Jephthah, and he passed through Gilead and Manasseh, and passed through Mizpah of Gilead; and from Mizpah of Gilead he advanced toward the people of Ammon. 30 And Jephthah made a vow to the LORD, and said, "If You will indeed deliver the people of Ammon into my hands, 31 then it will be that whatever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the people of Ammon, shall surely be the LORD's, and I will offer it up as a burnt offering." 32 So Jephthah advanced toward the people of Ammon to fight against them, and the LORD delivered them into his hands. 33 And he defeated them from Aroer as far as Minnith—twenty cities—and to Abel Keramim, with a very great slaughter. Thus the people of Ammon were subdued before the children of Israel. Sounds great, yeah? Good news, Jephthah led the people of Israel to a mighty victory. And as a Peace Offering, he makes a vow of חֵרֶם (cherem) of the first living thing that comes out of his house to greet him at home!

Not so fast. What was the first living thing to greet him when he got home? Judges 11:34-39—34 When Jephthah came to his house at Mizpah, there was his daughter, coming out to meet him with timbrels and dancing; and she was his only child. Besides her he had neither son nor daughter. 35 And it came to pass, when he saw her, that he tore his clothes, and said, "Alas, my daughter! You have brought me very low! You are among those who trouble me! For I have given my word to the LORD, and I cannot go back on it"…39 And it was so at the end of two months that she returned to her father, and he carried out his vow with her which he had vowed. What happened here? Well, this is one place where we must depart from the traditional translations. In verse 31, when Jephthah makes this fateful vow, what we have read had been the traditional rendering. However, it may not actually be accurate. At the risk of sounding like I have this notion that I have somehow solved one of the greatest difficulties in Scripture—one which the most learned of men have wrestled with for years—after pouring over much material, I must come to the conclusion that what happened here was NOT that Jephthah promised to take the first human that came out the door to greet him, take that person to the priest and have the priest kill, cut up, and burn that person. Let’s talk about this a moment.

If Jephthah had promised to offer the first person out the door as a Burnt Offering on YHVH’s altar, and if YHVH had held Jephthah to that vow—then any Israelite could put any other Israelite under חֵרֶם (cherem), and there would be all kinds of human sacrifice going on, and they would be no different form the pagans who worshipped Molech. Keil and Delitzsch—

“…the law concerning the ban and a vow of the ban [חֵרֶם (cherem)] could not possibly give any individual Israelite the right to ban [חֵרֶם (cherem)] either his own child or one of his household to the Lord, without opening a very wide door to the crime of murder. The infliction of the ban [חֵרֶם (cherem)] upon any man presupposed notorious wickedness, so that burnt-offering and ban [חֵרֶם (cherem)] were diametrically opposed the one to the other.”

So, what was the vow that Jephthah vowed? Well, Dr. William Hales, a Hebrew scholar from the 1800’s, interprets it thus:

“When Jephthah went forth to battle against the Ammonites, he vowed a vow unto the Lord, and said, ‘If thou wilt surely give the children of Ammon into my hand, then it shall be that whatsoever cometh out of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall either be the Lord’s, or I will offer it up (for) a burnt-offering.’ According to this rendering of the two conjunctions…the vow consisted of two parts: 1. That what person soever met him should be the Lord’s or be dedicated to his service; and, 2. That what beast soever met him, if clean, should be offered up for a burnt-offering unto the Lord. This rendering and this interpretation is warranted by the Levitical law about vows.

“The נדר  (neder), or vow, in general, included either persons, beasts, or things dedicated to the Lord for pious uses; which, if it was a simple vow, was redeemable at certain prices, if the person repented of his vow, and wished to commute it for money, according to the age or sex of the person (see Leviticus 27:1-8): this was a wise regulation to remedy rash vows. But if the vow was accompanied with חֵרֶם (cherem), devotement, it was irredeemable, as in the following case, Leviticus 27:28—‘“Notwithstanding, no devotement which a man shall devote unto the Lord, (either) of man, or beast, or of land of his own property, shall be sold or redeemed. Every thing devoted is most holy to the Lord”’

“…there are three distinct subjects of devotement to be applied to distinct uses: the man to be dedicated to the service of the Lord, as Samuel by his mother Hannah (see 1^st Samuel 1:11); the cattle, if clean, such as oxen, sheep, goats, turtle-doves, or pigeons, to be sacrificed; and if unclean, as camels, horses, asses, to be employed for carrying burdens in the service of the tabernacle or temple; and the lands, to be sacred property.

“This law therefore expressly applied…to Jephthah’s case, who had devoted his daughter to the Lord, or opened his mouth to the Lord, and therefore could not go back…she was, therefore necessarily devoted, but with her own consent to perpetual virginity in the service of the tabernacle, and such service was customary, for in the division of the spoils taken in the first Midianitish war, of the whole number of captive virgins the Lord’s tribute was thirty-two persons (see Numbers 31:15-40). This instance appears to be decisive of the nature of her devotement.”

To summarize, although Jephthah did indeed offer his daughter to YHVH as an עֹלָה (olah), he did not necessarily devote her to destruction as a חֵרֶם (cherem). Therefore, she need not be slaughtered a bloody עֹלָה (olah), but she was presented, as Paul encourages us to present ourselves, as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God (Romans 12:1). And indeed, Adam Clarke bolsters this argument by quoting the great Hebrew scholar of the 1600’s, Charles Francois Houbigant on the last verses in this chapter, Judges 11:39-40, which have come to us as reading, And it became a custom in Israel that the daughters of Israel went four days each year to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite. Monsieur Houbigant rather renders it thus: “But this custom prevailed in Israel that the virgins of Israel went at different times, four days in the year, to the daughter of Jephthah, that they might comfort her.” Mister Clarke concludes from this rendering (and, I believe, rightly so), that, “This verse also gives evidence that the daughter of Jephthah was not sacrificed: nor does it appear that the custom or statute referred to here lasted after the death of Jephthah’s daughter.” Many, many years later, Solomon would warn us about making hasty vows in Ecclesiastes 5:2-5—2 Do not be rash with your mouth, And let not your heart utter anything hastily before God. For God is in heaven, and you on earth; Therefore let your words be few…4 When you make a vow to God, do not delay to pay it; For He has no pleasure in fools. Pay what you have vowed—5 Better not to vow than to vow and not pay.

So that covers the Peace Offerings (שֶׁלֶם (shelem)) “of a vow”—the vow of devotion, the vow of abstinence (קָרְבָּן (qorban)), and the vow of destruction (חֵרֶם (cherem)). Next week we will turn our attention to the “voluntary” (or “freewill”) offering.