Leviticus 25:8

Hebrew Bible

8 “‘You must count off seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, and the days of the seven weeks of years will amount to 49 years. 9 You must sound loud horn blasts—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. 10 So you must consecrate the fiftieth year, and you must proclaim a release in the land for all its inhabitants. That year will be your Jubilee; each one of you must return to his property, and each one of you must return to his clan. 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. 12 Because that year is a Jubilee, it will be holy to you—you may eat its produce from the field.

Jubilees 50:4

Pseudepigrapha

2 And I told thee of the Sabbaths of the land on Mount Sinai, and I told thee of the jubilee years in the sabbaths of years: but the year thereof have I not told thee till ye enter the land which ye are to possess. 3 And the land also shall keep its sabbaths while they dwell upon it, and they shall know the jubilee year. 4 Wherefore I have ordained for thee the year-weeks and the years and the jubilees: there are forty-nine jubilees from the days of Adam until this day, [2410 A.M.] and one week and two years: and there are yet forty years to come (lit. 'distant') for learning the [2450 A.M.] commandments of the Lord, until they pass over into the land of Canaan, crossing the Jordan to the west.

 Notes and References

"... The length of a jubilee is somewhat ambiguous in the Bible: according to Leviticus 25:8, it is a period of 49 years, while according to Leviticus 25:11, 50 years. Te author of Jubilees held by the former interpretation. As a result, each jubilee divides easily into seven subgroups of seven years apiece; these subgroups are conventionally called “weeks,” although “groups of seven” would be a more accurate translation. In asserting that Cain was born “in the third week of the second jubilee,” therefore, Jubilees’ author means that Cain was born sometime after the world’s first jubilee (years 1-49) plus two more “weeks” (years 50-63), but before the start of the fourth week in the year 781 ..."

Kugel, James L. A Walk through Jubilees: Studies in the Book of Jubilees and the World of Its Creation (p. 2) Brill, 2012

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