Leviticus 25:18-22

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 ninthyear. 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.