Proclaiming the Jubilee, (colorized) p. 256, Ridpath's Universal History 1897. Archive.org
The last three chapters of Leviticus bring together three very different topics, held together structurally by a repeated formula that anchors the texts to Sinai:
Laws governing land and labor (ch. 25) – After opening with וַיְדַבֵּר יְ־הוָה אֶל מֹשֶׁה בְּהַר סִינַי, “YHWH spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai” (25:1),[1] the chapter presents legislation for the שַׁבַּת שַׁבָּתוֹן , “Shabbat of complete rest,” in which every seventh year the land lies fallow, and the יוֹבֵל (yovel), “jubilee,” in which, after seven sabbatical cycles, land returns to its ancestral owners and Israelite debt-servants go free.[2]
Blessings and curses (ch. 26) – With a sharp pivot to the covenant, this chapter begins with blessings for obedience, escalates to curses for violation, and at the end, offers a remarkable promise of restoration even after catastrophe. The chapter closes with a reference to the giving of laws at Sinai:
ויקרא כו:מו אֵלֶּה הַחֻקִּים וְהַמִּשְׁפָּטִים וְהַתּוֹרֹת אֲשֶׁר נָתַן יְ־הוָה בֵּינוֹ וּבֵין בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל בְּהַר סִינַי בְּיַד מֹשֶׁה.
Lev 26:46 These are the statutes and ordinances and laws that YHWH established, through Moses on Mount Sinai between Himself and the Israelite people.”
Laws for dedicating property to the sanctuary (ch. 27) – The book closes with instructions for dedicating persons, animals, houses, and fields to the sanctuary, and for redeeming them.[3] The final verse—of both chapter and book—again returns to the laws given at Sinai:
ויקרא כז:לד אֵלֶּה הַמִּצְוֹת אֲשֶׁר צִוָּה יְ־הוָה אֶת מֹשֶׁה אֶל בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל בְּהַר סִינָי.
Lev 27:34 These are the commandments that YHWH gave Moses for the people of Israel on Mount Sinai.
The final chapters of Leviticus not only are framed with references to Sinai; they also refer back to the text of the Decalogue, spoken at Sinai.
Referencing the Decalogue
Toward the middle of this Sinai frame sits a single verse with a compressed summary of the first two commandments of the Decalogue—no idols, no carved images:[4]
ויקרא כו:א לֹא תַעֲשׂוּ לָכֶם אֱלִילִם וּפֶסֶל וּמַצֵּבָה לֹא תָקִימוּ לָכֶם וְאֶבֶן מַשְׂכִּית לֹא תִתְּנוּ בְּאַרְצְכֶם לְהִשְׁתַּחֲוֹת עָלֶיהָ כִּי אֲנִי יְ־הוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם.
Lev 26:1 You shall not make idols for yourselves, or set up for yourselves carved images or pillars, or place figured stones in your land to worship upon, for I YHWH am your God.
The next verse paraphrases the fourth commandment, the observance of Shabbat,[5] but it also gestures toward the themes of all three chapters (25–27)—Shabbat, sanctuary, and YHWH:[6]
ויקרא כו:ב אֶת שַׁבְּתֹתַי תִּשְׁמֹרוּ וּמִקְדָּשִׁי תִּירָאוּ אֲנִי יְ־הוָה.
Lev 26:2 You shall keep my sabbaths and venerate my sanctuary: I am YHWH.[7]
Sacred time, in the form of Shabbat, looks back to chapter 25 and its sabbatical cycles. Sacred space, embodied in the sanctuary, looks forward to chapter 27 and its dedications of property to the sanctuary. Divine sovereignty—אֲנִי יְ־הוָה, “I am YHWH”—is the covenant claim that chapter 26 will elaborate at length.
ש.ב.ת, “To Cease”: A Key Leitwort
This structural frame that connects the chapters is reflected and reinforced by a dense network of lexical connections, with recurring roots, shared numerical patterns, and unusual forms running through chapters 25 and 26.[8] Some of these connections extend to chapter 27 as well.[9]
The most prominent Leitwort, “leading word,”[10] is the root ש.ב.ת, which carries both the concept of Shabbat and, more literally, of cessation. It appears seven times in chapter 25 and seven times again in chapter 26, a chapter whose subject matter has nothing intrinsically to do with Shabbat.[11]
In fact, the root ש.ב.ת that structures sacred agricultural time in chapter 25 returns in chapter 26 as the unit by which divine punishment is measured—when the people are exiled, the land will “rest” (תִּשְׁבַּת), making up for sabbaticals the people failed to observe:
ויקרא כו:לד אָז תִּרְצֶה הָאָרֶץ אֶת שַׁבְּתֹתֶיהָ כֹּל יְמֵי הֳשַׁמָּה וְאַתֶּם בְּאֶרֶץ אֹיְבֵיכֶם אָז תִּשְׁבַּת הָאָרֶץ וְהִרְצָת אֶת שַׁבְּתֹתֶיהָ.
Lev 26:34 Then shall the land make up for its sabbath years throughout the time that it is desolate and you are in the land of your enemies; then shall the land rest and make up for its sabbath years.[12]
שֶׁבַע, “Seven”
The number שֶׁבַע appears seven times in chapter 25, and serves to organize its laws—seven years to the sabbatical, seven sabbatical cycles to the jubilee:[13]
ויקרא כה:ח וְסָפַרְתָּ לְךָ שֶׁבַע שַׁבְּתֹת שָׁנִים שֶׁבַע שָׁנִים שֶׁבַע פְּעָמִים וְהָיוּ לְךָ יְמֵי שֶׁבַע שַׁבְּתֹת הַשָּׁנִים תֵּשַׁע וְאַרְבָּעִים שָׁנָה.
Lev 25:8 You shall count off seven weeks of years—seven times seven years—so that the period of seven weeks of years gives you a total of forty-nine years.
Where the number seven structures sacred time in chapter 25, in chapter 26, it becomes the meter of divine chastisement. After the blessings for obedience, five rounds of increasingly severe curses for disobedience are punctuated four times by a refrain of sevenfold punishment (vv. 18, 21, 24, 28).[14] For example:
ויקרא כו:יח וְאִם עַד אֵלֶּה לֹא תִשְׁמְעוּ לִי וְיָסַפְתִּי לְיַסְּרָה אֶתְכֶם שֶׁבַע עַל חַטֹּאתֵיכֶם.
Lev 26:18 And if, for all that, you do not obey Me, I will go on to discipline you sevenfold for your sins.
Rare Words as Leitwörter
Rare words are particularly effective as leading words. Their unfamiliarity draws attention, a “stretching of the usual lexicon” that functions like bold font or italics in a modern text. A hapax legomenon, a word that appears only once in a corpus, works as a spotlight.[15]
הָלַךְ...[בְּ]קֶרִי, “To Remain Hostile”
The idiom הָלַךְ...[בְּ]קֶרִי (halach...[be]qeri), lit. “to walk with hostility,” is unique to Leviticus 26 in the Bible, and itself appears seven times in the curse section.[16] For example:
ויקרא כו:כא וְאִם תֵּלְכוּ עִמִּי קֶרִי וְלֹא תֹאבוּ לִשְׁמֹעַ לִי וְיָסַפְתִּי עֲלֵיכֶם מַכָּה שֶׁבַע כְּחַטֹּאתֵיכֶם.
Lev 26:21 And if you remain hostile toward Me and refuse to obey Me, I will go on smiting you sevenfold for your sins.
When a nearby word echoes the sound of the Leitwort, the echo catches the ear, and the effect is cumulative. In this case, the effect of קֶרִי (qeri) is heightened by its alliteration with:
וּזְרַעְתֶּם לָרִיק זַרְעֲכֶם, “you shall sow your seed in vain (lariq)” (v. 16), and תַם לָרִיק כֹּחֲכֶם, “your strength shall be spent in vain” (v. 20); and
וַהֲרִיקֹתִי אַחֲרֵיכֶם חֶרֶב, “I will unsheathe (hariqoti) the sword after you,” (v. 33), a phrase that appears in the Torah only here and in the Song of the Sea (Exod 15:9), and otherwise only in Ezekiel.
קוֹמְמִיּוּת “Upright,” and תְּקוּמָה, “The Ability to Stand”
Two words from the root ק.ו.ם, “arise,” frame the entire arc of blessing and curse. The form קוֹמְמִיּוּת (qomemiyyut), “upright,” describing Israel walking free after the exodus, closes the blessings:
ויקרא כו:יג אֲנִי יְ־הוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם אֲשֶׁר הוֹצֵאתִי אֶתְכֶם מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם מִהְיֹת לָהֶם עֲבָדִים וָאֶשְׁבֹּר מֹטֹת עֻלְּכֶם וָאוֹלֵךְ אֶתְכֶם קוֹמְמִיּוּת.
Lev 26:13 I YHWH am your God who brought you out from the land of the Egyptians to be their slaves no more, who broke the bars of your yoke and made you walk upright.
Its counterpart תְּקוּמָה (tequmah), “the ability to stand”—in this case referring to Israel’s inability to withstand their enemies—closes the curses:[17]
ויקרא כו:לז וְכָשְׁלוּ אִישׁ בְּאָחִיו כְּמִפְּנֵי חֶרֶב וְרֹדֵף אָיִן וְלֹא תִהְיֶה לָכֶם תְּקוּמָה לִפְנֵי אֹיְבֵיכֶם.
Lev 26:37 With no one pursuing, they shall stumble over one another as before the sword. You shall not be able to stand your ground before your enemies,
The distance between standing upright and being unable to stand is the measure of the chapter’s catastrophe.
יִמַּקּוּ, “They Shall Waste Away,” and מ.ו.ך, “To Be Impoverished”
The cluster closes with יִמַּקּוּ (yimmaqqu), “they shall waste away” (v. 39), from the root מ.ק.ק, which appears in the Torah only here, twice in a single verse.
A root with a similar sound, מ.ו.ך, “to be impoverished”—e.g., כִּי יָמוּךְ אָחִיךָ... (ki yamuch ʾachicha), “if your kinsman is impoverished...” (25:25)—links chapters 25 and 27 across the gap of chapter 26. This root appears four times in chapter 25, once in chapter 27—וְאִם מָךְ הוּא (we-ʾim mach huʾ), “if he is impoverished...”—and nowhere else in the Torah.
Redemption Inverted: ג.א.ל versus ג.ע.ל
One lexical thread in particular runs through all three chapters, connecting them in a way that is easy to overlook but difficult to forget once noticed: the roots ג.א.ל (g.ʾ.l) “to redeem,” and ג.ע.ל (g.ʿ.l), “to reject.” The roots are strikingly similar in sound, and opposite in meaning.[18]
The root ג.א.ל links chapters 25 (19 times) and 27 (12 times); in both chapters it is used in a technical legal sense: the redemption of land, houses, persons, and sanctuary dedications.[19] Between these two clusters, in the curses and blessings of chapter 26, ג.א.ל is entirely absent. Its place is taken by the root ג.ע.ל, meaning “to loathe,” “to spurn with disgust,” a root that does not appear anywhere else in the Torah.[20]
The first occurrence of ג.ע.ל is already a negation: In the blessings, YHWH promises not to ג.ע.ל, “spurn,” Israel, if Israel follows YHWH’s laws:
ויקרא כו:יא וְנָתַתִּי מִשְׁכָּנִי בְּתוֹכְכֶם וְלֹא תִגְעַל נַפְשִׁי אֶתְכֶם.
Lev 26:11 I will establish my abode in your midst, and I will not spurn you.
Then the curses begin, introduced with Israel’s rejection of YHWH:
ויקרא כו:טו וְאִם בְּחֻקֹּתַי תִּמְאָסוּ וְאִם אֶת מִשְׁפָּטַי תִּגְעַל נַפְשְׁכֶם לְבִלְתִּי עֲשׂוֹת אֶת כָּל מִצְוֹתַי לְהַפְרְכֶם אֶת בְּרִיתִי.
Lev 26:15 If you reject My laws and if you spurn My rules, so that you do not observe all My commandments and you break My covenant...
The word ג.ע.ל. now describes Israel’s posture toward YHWH, and it triggers everything that follows—disease, famine, defeat by enemies, and attacks by wild animals (vv. 16–29). At the structural center of the curses, the direction of the subject and the object associated with the verb reverses. YHWH declares:
ויקרא כו:ל וְהִשְׁמַדְתִּי אֶת בָּמֹתֵיכֶם וְהִכְרַתִּי אֶת חַמָּנֵיכֶם וְנָתַתִּי אֶת פִּגְרֵיכֶם עַל פִּגְרֵי גִּלּוּלֵיכֶם וְגָעֲלָה נַפְשִׁי אֶתְכֶם.
Lev 26:30 I will destroy your cult places and cut down your incense stands, and I will heap your carcasses upon your lifeless fetishes. I will spurn you.
The dynamic here is measure for measure.[21] Israel’s rejection of YHWH by worshipping at illicit cult sites is met with YHWH’s rejection of Israel. The word used for idols is גִּלּוּלִים (gillulim), a contemptuous term derived from the word for dung, and another soundplay on ג.ע.ל.[22]
The curses reach their conclusion with a chiastic repetition of verse 15 (וְאִם בְּחֻקֹּתַי תִּמְאָסוּ וְאִם אֶת מִשְׁפָּטַי תִּגְעַל נַפְשְׁכֶם, “if you reject My laws and spurn My rules), closing the inclusio of Israel’s sin:
ויקרא כו:מג וְהָאָרֶץ תֵּעָזֵב מֵהֶם וְתִרֶץ אֶת שַׁבְּתֹתֶיהָ בָּהְשַׁמָּה מֵהֶם וְהֵם יִרְצוּ אֶת עֲוֹנָם יַעַן וּבְיַעַן בְּמִשְׁפָּטַי מָאָסוּ וְאֶת חֻקֹּתַי גָּעֲלָה נַפְשָׁם.
Lev 26:43 For the land shall be forsaken of them, making up for its sabbath years by being desolate of them, while they atone for their iniquity; for the abundant reason that they rejected My rules and spurned My laws.
YHWH Refuses to ג.ע.ל, “Spurn,” Israel
ג.ע.ל (g.ʿ.l)—which appears first as a promise in the blessings (v. 11), then as Israel’s sin (v. 15), then as divine punishment (v. 30), then as the summary of Israel’s failure (v. 43)—arrives finally as the ultimate guarantee:
ויקרא כו:מד וְאַף גַּם זֹאת בִּהְיוֹתָם בְּאֶרֶץ אֹיְבֵיהֶם לֹא מְאַסְתִּים וְלֹא גְעַלְתִּים לְכַלֹּתָם לְהָפֵר בְּרִיתִי אִתָּם כִּי אֲנִי יְ־הוָה אֱלֹהֵיהֶם.
Lev 26:44 Yet, even then, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them nor will I spurn them so as to destroy them, annulling My covenant with them: for I YHWH am their God.
The five occurrences of ג.ע.ל thus enact the drama of the chapter: rejection threatened, rejection earned, rejection ultimately refused.
The blessings and curses (ch. 26) never use the word ג.א.ל, “redeem.” But the promise of לֹא גְעַלְתִּים is a redemption promise in everything but name, carried by a root that is strikingly similar in sound to ג.א.ל, which saturates chapters 25 and 27.
Israel is YHWH’s Servant That He Redeemed
The literary connections traced above converge on a single theological claim. To see it clearly, we need to examine the exodus theme that runs through both chapters. Leviticus 25 invokes the exodus three times, each time as the grounding for a legal restriction on Israelite servitude. The most explicit statement is:
ויקרא כה:מב כִּי עֲבָדַי הֵם אֲשֶׁר הוֹצֵאתִי אֹתָם מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם לֹא יִמָּכְרוּ מִמְכֶּרֶת עָבֶד.
Lev 25:42 For they are My servants, whom I freed from the land of Egypt; they may not give themselves over into servitude.
The argument is precise: because YHWH redeemed Israel from Egypt, the Israelites are already YHWH’s servants and therefore cannot be permanently enslaved to another human master. The jubilee mechanism that returns debt-servants to their families, and the ג.א.ל. legislation that allows a kinsman to buy back a relative’s freedom, are both expressions of this prior claim.[23]
Chapter 26 directly picks up on the Israelites being YHWH’s servants:
ויקרא כו:יג אֲנִי יְ־הוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם אֲשֶׁר הוֹצֵאתִי אֶתְכֶם מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם מִהְיֹת לָהֶם עֲבָדִים וָאֶשְׁבֹּר מֹטֹת עֻלְּכֶם וָאוֹלֵךְ אֶתְכֶם קוֹמְמִיּוּת.
Lev 26:13 I YHWH am your God, who brought you out from the land of the Egyptians to be their slaves no more, who broke the bars of your yoke and made you walk erect.
The phrasing is subtly but significantly different from the standard exodus formula. It does not simply say “I brought you out of Egypt.” It says: I brought you out from being their slaves. The emphasis falls on the termination of one servitude, with the implication that another has taken its place.[24]
Following the coda that declares לֹא מְאַסְתִּים וְלֹא גְעַלְתִּים, “I will not reject them or spurn them” (v. 44) is an explicit reassurance that YHWH will remember the covenant with the ancestors, whom he brought out of Egypt:
ויקרא כו:מה וְזָכַרְתִּי לָהֶם בְּרִית רִאשֹׁנִים אֲשֶׁר הוֹצֵאתִי אֹתָם מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם לְעֵינֵי הַגּוֹיִם לִהְיֹת לָהֶם לֵאלֹהִים אֲנִי יְ־הוָה.
Lev 26:45 I will remember in their favor the covenant with the ancients, whom I freed from the land of Egypt in the sight of the nations to be their God: I am YHWH.
The covenant he remembers is anchored in the exodus.[25] The exodus is the act of redemption—ג.א.ל—that creates the obligation expressed as לֹא גְעַלְתִּים. The wordplay is not incidental. It is the argument.
It is a covenantal statement grounded in the master-servant relationship established at the exodus. A master who redeems a servant cannot simply abandon that servant. God’s לֹא גְעַלְתִּים, “I will not spurn them,” is the national and covenantal counterpart to the clan-based ג.א.ל, “redeem,” of chapter 25: the divine Redeemer cannot ultimately reject what he has redeemed.
Why Sinai?
The Midrash Sifra (3rd century C.E.) opens with a pointed question:
ספרא בהר א:א מה ענין שמיטה אצל הר סיני.
Sifra Behar 1:1 What does the sabbatical year have to do with Mount Sinai?
The Sifra’s answer sidesteps the specific question and turns a literary puzzle into a theological principle:
ספרא בהר א:א והלא כל המצות נאמרו מסיני? אלא מה שמיטה נאמרו כללותיה ודקדוקיה מסיני אף כולם נאמרו כללותיהם ודקדוקיהם מסיני.
Sifra Behar 1:1 Were not all the commandments given at Sinai? Just as the general rules and specific ordinances of the sabbatical year were given at Sinai, so too the general rules and specific ordinances of all of [the commandments] were given at Sinai.
But why are these chapters, at this moment, framed by the mountain of revelation? The literary composition of these chapters suggest an answer that goes beyond that of the midrash.
The sabbatical year belongs at Sinai because it embodies, in concrete social legislation, what the Sinai covenant means: that YHWH is Israel’s redeemer, that this relationship creates obligations on both sides, and that even when Israel fails those obligations, the Redeemer does not finally abandon the redeemed.
Chapter 25 translates that claim into land law.
Chapter 26 translates it into covenant consequence and into the wordplay that holds these chapters together.
Chapter 27 extends it into the sanctuary.
Redemption, it turns out, is not contingent. It is the premise.
Postscript
One Text or Many?
Scholars generally classify Leviticus 17–26 as the Holiness legislation, a distinct literary and legal corpus within the Priestly tradition, with Leviticus 27 functioning as a later appendix. The latter’s subject matter—the valuation of vows and sanctuary dedications—is different in tone and focus from the legislation that precedes it. Within that framework, chapters 25 and 26 are understood as a continuous unit: the jubilee and redemption laws of chapter 25 are followed by the covenant sanctions of chapter 26, which serve as their formal conclusion.
Mary Douglas, the 20th century anthropologist and biblical scholar, reading Leviticus as a series of ring compositions, argued that chapters 25 and 27 form a frame around the covenant drama of chapter 26, joined by the theme of redemption.[26] The literary connections traced above do not resolve the question of chapter 27’s origin, which belongs within a broader shift in how scholars think about the growth of biblical texts. Rather than asking simply which text came first, recent scholarship has moved toward more complex models of literary development, in which texts grow, respond to one another, and encode connections that may be authorial, editorial, or somewhere in between.[27]
The literary argument made here does not depend on the history of the composition of chapters 25–27. Whether chapter 26 was composed with chapter 25 in view, or edited to stand alongside it, the antithetical relationship between ג.א.ל and ג.ע.ל is a feature of the text in its final form. What the wordplay may suggest is that at some stage of the text’s development, a writer or editor knew that ג.א.ל saturated chapter 25 and chose or recognized ג.ע.ל. to carry the covenant theme of chapter 26. The same redemption vocabulary then returns in chapter 27. Whether that shaping was authorial or redactional, the final text encodes it. The Sinai frame holds it together.[28]
