Leviticus 25:9-13

25:9 You must sound loud horn blasts ¹  – 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, ²  and you must proclaim a release ³  in the land for all its inhabitants. That year will be your jubilee; ⁴  each one of you must return ⁵  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. ⁶  25:12 Because that year is a jubilee, it will be holy to you – you may eat its produce ⁷  from the field.

Release of Landed Property

25:13 “‘In this year of jubilee you must each return ⁸  to your property.

Luke 4:19

4:19 to proclaim the year ⁹  of the Lord’s favor.” ¹⁰ 

Luke 4:2

4:2 where for forty days he endured temptations ¹¹  from the devil. He ¹²  ate nothing ¹³  during those days, and when they were completed, ¹⁴  he was famished.

Colossians 1:2

1:2 to the saints, the faithful ¹⁵  brothers and sisters ¹⁶  in Christ, at Colossae. Grace and peace to you ¹⁷  from God our Father! ¹⁸ 

¹ 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).

² tn Heb “the year of the fifty years,” or perhaps “the year, fifty years” (GKC 435 §134.o, note 2).

³ 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.

⁴ 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).

⁵ tn Heb “you [plural] shall return, a man.”

⁶ tn Heb “you shall not sow and you shall not…and you shall not….”

⁷ tn That is, the produce of the land (fem.; cf. v. 7 above).

⁸ tn Heb “you [plural] shall return, a man.”

⁹ sn The year of the Lord’s favor (Grk “the acceptable year of the Lord”) is a description of the year of Jubilee (Lev 25:10). The year of the total forgiveness of debt is now turned into a metaphor for salvation. Jesus had come to proclaim that God was ready to forgive sin totally.

¹⁰ sn A quotation from Isa 61:1-2a. Within the citation is a line from Isa 58:6, with its reference to setting the oppressed free.

¹¹ tn Grk “in the desert, for forty days being tempted.” The participle πειραζόμενος (peirazomeno") has been translated as an adverbial clause in English to avoid a run-on sentence with a second “and.” Here the present participle suggests a period of forty days of testing. Three samples of the end of the testing are given in the following verses.

¹² tn Grk “And he.” Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.

¹³ sn The reference to Jesus eating nothing could well be an idiom meaning that he ate only what the desert provided; see Exod 34:28. A desert fast simply meant eating only what one could obtain in the desert. The parallel in Matt 4:2 speaks only of Jesus fasting.

¹⁴ tn The Greek word here is συντελεσθείσων (suntelesqeiswn) from the verb συντελέω (suntelew).

¹⁵ tn Grk “and faithful.” The construction in Greek (as well as Paul’s style) suggests that the saints are identical to the faithful; hence, the καί (kai) is best left untranslated (cf. Eph 1:1). See ExSyn 281-82.

¹⁶ tn Grk “brothers,” but the Greek word may be used for “brothers and sisters” or “fellow Christians” as here (cf. BDAG 18 s.v. ἀδελφός 1, where considerable nonbiblical evidence for the plural ἀδελφοί [adelfoi] meaning “brothers and sisters” is cited).

¹⁷ tn Or “Grace to you and peace.”

¹⁸ tc Most witnesses, including some important ones (א A C F G I [P] 075 Ï it bo), read “and the Lord Jesus Christ” at the end of this verse, no doubt to conform the wording to the typical Pauline salutation. However, excellent and early witnesses (B D K L Ψ 33 81 1175 1505 1739 1881 al sa) lack this phrase. Since the omission is inexplicable as arising from the longer reading (otherwise, these mss would surely have deleted the phrase in the rest of the corpus Paulinum), it is surely authentic.