Tht ytno/ysu qf l/v 2S.— That this chapter contains earlier ftBd Ut«l element* is generally admitted. Uillmaon, Kuenen,
and Nowack consider that there are no sure grounds on which to discriminate these. Driver and White (* Leviticus' in SBO'F) treat the jubile tor the land as ori^'inal in the Uulinesa legislation (Pt"), but ascribe to a later hand the extension to ]tersons. Wellhausen thinks that the llrst draft placed tho freeing of slaves and re<leniption of land in the 7th year, and, if Oillmann criticizes this reconstruction as involving an un- workable arrangement, Uolzinger points out, on the other hand, that the priestly scribes were not always very uracticaL Another solution is offered in the Oa/ord Ufxat>^udi, ii. 177, on Lv 25. It is there suggei,ted that the regulations on the sabbath year, w.-b-7. 1b--22^ belong to the first draft of l'^ ; that tlie block of material on the jubile, vv,s-l7, which now inter- rujits the former, is itself composite, as is shown (I) by the number of doublets, and (2) by trie recurrence of phrases which recall Pb ; that a second draft of l'^ underlies this pa.ssage and also the remainder of the chapter ; that in this second draft the emancipation of slaves and redemption of land, and possibly a 50 years' term, were included ; and that the rest, embracing all the clauses in which the term 'jubile' occurs, is by a later priestly editor. Addis and llaentsch take a similar view. The blowing of the trumpets on the 10th day of the 7th month is thought by many to be a provision earlier than the appoint- ment of the same day as the solemn day of atonement, so that v.'"' will be later than v.^.
II. Hlstorical Character. — (i.) The Seventh Year Fallow. — The custom of a periodical fallow is so common a feature in agricultural practice that we should almost require evidence ti) prove that there was nothing of the kind amongst the Hebrews from the beginning of their settled life ; and the 7 years' period, which is still observed in Palestine and Syria, has every argument from analogy in favour of it. Moreover, the fact that the Covenant Book in Ex 23 is throughout directed to defining and reflating ex- isting customs, and bears no mark of introducing any novelty (cf. the prob. allusion in Jer 17^ [Heb.] ; see Driver, Dent. 174), weighs in the same scale. The silence of the earlier historical books must be regarded as entirely natural if the fallow was not simultaneously observed. It would not be a feature that would call for mention. It is other- wise with so serious an interruption of the common life as would be occasioned by the observance of the same year as a universal fallow year, so that all workers on the land would be keeping holiday for 12 months. Moreover, the tradition at the Exile explicitly denies the observance of the sabbath years in the pre-exilic times (2 (^h 30'-', cf. Lv 26'"'- •»}. In fact, the first historic al refer- ence to the sabbatical year as an institution within the range of practical politics is in Neh 10^', where it occurs among the items included in the covenant that was entered into at the prompt- ing of Neheniiah. Even there the allusion is not quite certain. The language ' leave (k's; ; = ' let lie fallow,' Ex 23") the seventii year, and the exaction of every debt,' recalls the "law of the fallow in Exodus ; but the clause is elliptical and far from explicit, and the following words, which recall Dt 15 , make it doubtful whether the remission of debts in the 7th year is not the institution in view. It is not, in fact, till we reach the Greek period that we come upon undisputed references to the observance of the sabbatical j'ear (Jos. AtU. XI. viii. 26) : for Maccabtean times, see 1 Mac 6"- " ; Jos. Atit. XHI. viii. 1, XIV. X. 0, XV. i.2;BJ I. ii. 4 ; and for the Ilerodian era, Jos. Ant. Xiv. xvi. 2, XV. i. 2 ; Pliilo in Eus. Frcep. ad Ev. viii. 7 ; and Tac. HUl. v. 4.
(ii.) 'I'he Emancipation of Slaves at the Seventh Year. — This is once refeiTeid to in .Jer 34""-, * where tho custom is shown to be more honoured in the breach than in the observance, and to be most difficult to enforce. Tho postponement of libera- tion to the 50th year may be another witness to the same fact.
(iii.) Tlie liemission or Suspension of Debts. —
• Note here the techn. phrase im Nip (' proclaim liberty 'X W.9.1S. 17; also Is Oil of captives (cf. Kzk 40"» the 'year of im,' either of the jubile, or of tho year of emancipation of slavchi and Lv 26>o of the Jubile. (8. K. b.J.
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SACKBUT
Unless Nell 10" refer to this, history is silent as to the observance of any such custom.
(iv.) The Redemption of Real rruperty. — That there was some provision in law or custom against alienating land is clear from the instance of Naboth, and the institution of the (jc'uUnh, Jer 32*"-, Ru 4. An obscure allusion in tzk 7'-'- may be taken in the same sense ; and it is, of course, possible that the ' year of liberty ' in Ezk 46" refers to the 50th year as an institution already known. Neither is there anything impracticable in the provisions themselves. See for parallels among other nations, Maine, Village Communities, 81-88; Early Hist, of Institutions, 81 f., 100 ff.; von Maurer, Durfocrfassuiig, i. 304 ff. This kind of tenure is known as the ' sliifting severalty.' Strabo speaks of the Dalmatians redistributing land ever3- S j'oars, a practice wliich would supiiort Wellliauscu's theory that the term was ori'^inally 7 years and uot 50. Tlie denunciations of land- grabbing in Isaiali and Micah show that no such law was operative even if in existence. Moreover, uo single undisputed liistorical allusion to the jubile exists, and the dating of the 3 sabbatical years that can be securely traced in B.C. 164-163, 38-37, and A.D. 68-09 leaves no room for the inter- calation of the jubile year. For this reason, and because of the difficulty of the two fallow years in succession, the text has been strained to permit the identification of the 7th sabbatical year with the jubile year. The evidence from the literature is therefore rather against the jubile year having ever been historically observed. Neither is the anthropological evidence such as to rebut this presumption.