Leviticus 25:21

Then I will command my blessing upon you in the sixth year,.... Upon their fields, vineyards, and oliveyards, and make them exceeding fruitful, more than in other years; all fruitfulness at any time

Then I will command my blessing upon you in the sixth year, and it shall bring forth fruit for three years.

i.e. Give my blessing. Commanding is oft used in Scripture either for the performance of promised blessings, as 133:3, or for the execution of threatened judgments, as ; both being acts of God’ s providential will, as the command is of his legislative will. For three years; not completely, but in great part, to wit, for that part of the sixth year which was between the beginning of harvest and the beginning of the seventh year, for the whole seventh year, and for that part of the eighth year which was before the harvest, which reached almost until the beginning of the ninth year. And by this expression we may understand the meaning of that eminent passage of Christ’ s being three days and three nights in the grave, to wit, one whole day, and part of two days; of which more, if God please, in its proper place. This is added to show the equity of this command. As God would hereby try their faith, and exercise obedience, so he gave them an eminent proof of his own exact providence and tender care over them, in making provisions suitable to their necessities. Albeit it be also probable that divers of them, especially such as were more solicitous or distrustful of God’ s providence, did lay up something of the fruits of former years against this time.

Leviticus 25:21 Then I will command my blessing upon you in the sixth year, and it shall bring forth fruit for three years.Ver. 21. Command my blessing.] Now if God send his mandamus, who shall gainstand it?

(21) Then I will command my blessing. That is, He will send out His Divine command to the soil in the sixth year that it should be a blessing to them, and it shall be done. (See Deuteronomy 28:8; Psalms 42:8; Psalms 44:4; Psalms 68:29.) It shall bring forth fruit for three years.—Better, it shall bring forth produce. This special blessing will be manifested in the abundant crop of the harvest preceding the sabbatical year. Just as at the institution of the weekly Sabbath, when God enjoined abstention from labour, He sent down a double portion of manna every sixth day to make up for the day of rest (Exodus 16:22-27), so He will exercise a special providence every sixth year by blessing the soil with a treble crop to compensate for giving the land a septennial sabbath. As the sabbatical year began the civil year, viz., 1 Tishri, which was in the autumn or in September, the three years here spoken of are to be distributed as follows: (1) the remainder of the sixth year after the harvest; (2) the whole of the seventh year; and (3) the period of the eighth year till the harvest is gathered in from the seeds sown in the eighth year. It will thus be seen that the question anticipated in Leviticus 25:29, viz., “What shall we eat the seventh year?” properly applies to the eighth year, since the requirements for the seventh year are supplied by the regular harvest of the sixth year, and it is the eighth year for which the harvest of the seventh is wanted. To meet this difficulty, one of the most distinguished Jewish expositors of the Middle Ages translates Leviticus 25:20 : “And if ye shall say in the seventh year ‘What shall we eat’” i.e., in the eighth year. It may, however, be that the question expresses the anxiety which the people might feel in eating their ordinary share in the seventh year, lest there should be nothing left for the eighth year, since in all other years the harvest is ripening for the next year whilst the fruits of the past year are being consumed.

18–22. A hortatory addition, relating to the sabbatical year and interrupting the Jubile regulations. It is thus clearly out of place, and should properly follow Leviticus 25:7. Its tone is that of H, and is in accord with such hortatory passages as Leviticus 18:25 ff., Leviticus 20:22 f., Leviticus 26:3 ff. It may be conjectured that the redactor’s reason for placing it here out of its proper context was to indicate that it applies to the regulations for the Jubile as well as the sabbatical year. The mention of the ninth year (Leviticus 25:22), combined with the words ‘three years’ (Leviticus 25:21), seems to point to the view (see introd. note to ch.) that the Jubile year was really the 50th, not the 49th, and that thus the land on such occasions was to have two years (the seventh and eighth) of rest. On the other hand, Leviticus 25:20 has ‘the seventh year’ (not the seventh and eighth), and Leviticus 25:22 ‘ye shall sow the eighth year’ (not the ninth). It is probable that the redactor, with the object mentioned above, introduced into Leviticus 25:22 mention of the ninth year. So Dillm. who further makes the ‘three years,’ originally meaning the sixth, seventh, and eighth (i.e. the produce of the sixth year was to last abnormally till the harvest time of that sowed in the earlier part of the eighth instead of the seventh year) to have been taken by the redactor to mean seventh, eighth, and ninth, so as to fall in with his view that the Jubile followed, instead of coinciding with, the last year of the cycle of seven sabbatical years.

21. Fruit for three years — The fact that three years are here provided for instead of two, which the sabbath year required, is evidence that the jubilee succeeds the seventh sabbath year and is not