The Jubilee

Leviticus 25 legislates the Jubilee: every fiftieth year land reverts to the ancestral clan and Israelite debt-servants go free. The verb is shuv, return, and a one-year crack sits in the source — v.8 counts to forty-nine, v.10 sanctifies the fiftieth.

Geometry, Release: A reading: a return to the start, set on the longest clock in the law.

In plain words

Every fiftieth year, land returns to the family that held it and Israelite debt-servants go free. The Jubilee is a return to how things were, not a redistribution: the stranger, the widow and even the wild animals, who receive in the other release laws, get nothing from it.

The mechanism

RESTORATION — reversion to a fixed prior distribution, not redistribution; its warrant is divine freehold (25:23, ki-li ha'aretz), an inalienability rule. Its beneficiary is the ancestral clan defined by descent, so the ger, the almanah and the chayyah, who receive everywhere else in the release material, receive nothing at Jubilee.

Scripture

Leviticus 25:8–13, 23

How it was checked

• EvidenceT3 SCRIPTURE; Status: COMMITTED; a release
• Letter eraTHE LINE HELD THROUGH HELL Abraham to Solomon, c. 2000 to c. 930 BC
• SourcesSCRIPTURE — Leviticus 25:8-13, 23; the 49/50 ambiguity is ancient (Jubilees and the Qumran calendrical texts run 49, rabbinic tradition ran 50)