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Jubilees

About this book

Sabbaths, Weeks, and Jubilees

Chapter 50

1 And after this commandment I made known to you the days of the Sabbaths in the desert of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai. 2 And I told you of the Sabbaths of the land on Mount Sinai, and I told you of the jubilee years in the sabbaths of years: but I have not told you the year of it until you enter the land which you are to possess. 3 And the land also shall keep its sabbaths while they live on it, and they shall know the jubilee year. 4 Therefore I have ordained for you the year-weeks and the years and the jubilees: there are forty-nine jubilees⁠ from the days of Adam until today,⁠ and one week and two years [2410]: and there are yet forty years to come (lit. 'distant') for learning the commandments of the Lord, until they cross into the land of Canaan, crossing the Jordan to the west [2450]. 5 And the jubilees shall pass by, until Israel is cleansed from all guilt of sexual immorality, and impurity, and pollution, and sin, and error, and lives securely in all the land, and there shall be no more a Satan or any evil one, and the land shall be clean from that time forevermore.

The Sabbath Commandments

6 And here is the commandment regarding the Sabbaths — I have written (them) down for you — and all the judgments of its commandments. 7 Six days you shall labor, but on the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no kind of work, you and your sons, and your male and female servants, and all your cattle and the resident foreigner also who is with you. 8 And the man that does any work on it shall die: whoever desecrates that day, whoever lies with (his) wife, or whoever says he will do something on it, that he will set out on a journey on it in regard to any buying or selling: and whoever draws water on it which he had not prepared for himself on the sixth day, and whoever takes up any burden to carry it out of his tent or out of his house shall die. 9 You shall do no work whatever on the Sabbath day except what you have prepared for yourselves on the sixth day, so as to eat, and drink, and rest, and keep Sabbath from all work on that day, and to bless the Lord your God, who has given you a day of festival and a holy day: and this day is a day of the holy kingdom for all Israel among their days forever. 10 For the honor is great which the Lord has given to Israel that they should eat and drink and be satisfied on this festival day, and rest on it from all labor which belongs to the labor of the human beings except burning frankincense and bringing offerings and sacrifices before the Lord for days and for Sabbaths. 11 This work alone shall be done on the Sabbath-days in the sanctuary of the Lord your God; so that they may atone for Israel with sacrifice continually from day to day for a memorial well-pleasing before the Lord, and that He may receive them always from day to day just as you have been commanded. 12 And every man who does any work on it, or goes on a journey, or cultivates (his) farm, whether in his house or any other place, and whoever lights a fire, or rides on any animal, or travels by ship on the sea, and whoever strikes or kills anything, or slaughters an animal or a bird, or whoever catches an animal or a bird or a fish, or whoever fasts or makes war on the Sabbaths:⁠ 13 The man who does any of these things on the Sabbath shall die, so that the children of Israel shall observe the Sabbaths according to the commandments regarding the Sabbaths of the land, as it is written in the tablets, which He gave into my hands so that I should write out for you the commandments of the seasons, and the seasons according to the division of their days. With this the account of the division of the days is completed.

Texts in conversation

Compare Leviticus 25:8 and Jubilees 50:4

Hebrew Bible · Pseudepigrapha, Hebrew Bible Expansions

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Summary

Leviticus is unclear about whether the Jubilee comes every 49 or 50 years. Jubilees, a rewriting of Genesis and Exodus, settles this by choosing 49 years, dividing time into even blocks of seven years and using that pattern to organize its narrative.

Passages

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.
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Leviticus

Jubilees 50:4

Pseudepigrapha, Hebrew Bible Expansions
2 And I told you of the Sabbaths of the land on Mount Sinai, and I told you of the jubilee years in the sabbaths of years: but I have not told you the year of it until you enter the land which you are to possess. 3 And the land also shall keep its sabbaths while they live on it, and they shall know the jubilee year. 4 Therefore I have ordained for you the year-weeks and the years and the jubilees: there are forty-nine jubilees from the days of Adam until today, and one week and two years [2410]: and there are yet forty years to come (lit. 'distant') for learning the commandments of the Lord, until they cross into the land of Canaan, crossing the Jordan to the west [2450].
170–125 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Jubilees

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

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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Leviticus 25:8 and Jubilees 50:4

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