Chapter 25
The LORD spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying, [Lev 25:1 ESV]
Not sure which trip up this might be. The previous chapters, many of them, start with "The Lord spoke to Moses...", but this one adds that it is on Mt. Sinai. Maybe all these laws were given up there, and then Moses recounts them in the narrative as they were given? MSB does not comment on the phrase here.
Seventh years holy for the land. It stays fallow every seventh year. Nothing was to be harvested or pruned this seventh year. Had not noticed the "no pruning" part of it before. Vines are mentioned, but not figs, but I expect it applied to everything perennial. It says they weren't to harvest, but it says the Sabbath of the Land will provide food for them...though it also says they weren't to even harvest "volunteer" crops. It says no reaping, no gathering...then says the land will provide. MSB says they were allowed to harvest the volunteer crops. Don't quite understand the wording and phrasing and order of things here...
....they weren't to gather what grows of itself...I assumed that meant volunteer crops, but maybe not. Maybe it means no wild figs, berries, and so on. Maybe ONLY volunteer crops could be harvested. You couldn't gather grapes from "undressed vines", but maybe you could from your own "un-pruned ones". Might be able to untangle this by looking at the actual words used for undressed and what grows of itself and see if they are translated from words understood to mean something not obvious in English.
....then this verse, just when you think you might have it figured out...
21 I will command my blessing on you in the sixth year, so that it will produce a crop sufficient for three years. 22 When you sow in the eighth year, you will be eating some of the old crop; you shall eat the old until the ninth year, when its crop arrives. [Lev 25:21-22 ESV]
So that makes it look like no harvesting at all of any kind, wild or volunteer, and the land would yield a bumper crop in the sixth year for them.
2022 - I don't see how you can read it any other way. The sixth year gave them so much that they did not plant in the seventh year at all. So it must be that what you plant this year is reaped next year. That's how they reckoned the planting season.
Jubilee every 50 years. Slaves freed, debts forgiven.
2025 - This verse: 23 "The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine. For you are strangers and sojourners with me. [Lev 25:23 ESV]. The land has never, and will never, belong to Israel. It belongs to God and Israel will always be strangers there. The land is not theirs to sell in perpetuity. The land belongs to God, allocated by tribe and then family, and it is to remain so forever. Israel will forever be renters of the land on which they live.
35 "If your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself with you, you shall support him as though he were a stranger and a sojourner, and he shall live with you. 36 Take no interest from him or profit, but fear your God, that your brother may live beside you. [Lev 25:35-36 ESV]
This law was not a voluntary thing. Does not say support him if you want to. Says to do it. The "loophole", I suspect, is whether the brother became poor of his own doing, of his own laziness, bad habits, and so on. But there is a lot to think about here.
"If your brother becomes poor beside you and sells himself to you, you shall not make him serve as a slave: he shall be with you as a hired worker and as a sojourner. He shall serve with you until the year of the jubilee.
Leviticus 25:39-40 ESV
Brothers were not be treated as slaves, but as hired workers. This means that there were true slaves, and they were allowed - at least so far. But your own people who came on hard times were not to be treated as slaves. I suppose that means that their children remained theirs, instead of following the laws previously given for slaves.
Vss 44-46 are clear that slaves from among the surrounding nations could be bought, sold, and possessed as property. They could be inherited, and so on. There is no getting around this, God allowed full out slavery here - as long as the slaves were not Hebrews or their descendants.
But those of other nations...
You may bequeath them to your sons after you to inherit as a possession forever. You may make slaves of them, but over your brothers the people of Israel you shall not rule, one over another ruthlessly.
Leviticus 25:46 ESV
Last verse in the chapter:
55 For it is to me that the people of Israel are servants. They are my servants whom I brought out of the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God. [Lev 25:55 ESV]
Hebrews are God's own slaves, because He redeemed them with His own power out of Egypt. They are His alone, and always. So even Hebrews are slaves, but they all have one master. This makes slavery the rule, not the exception, the way of things, not a horror. This is quite surprising.