Day 52 —  We are in the second month! We’ve been reading for over a 1/12 of a year! Praise God! I hope that it’s become a GOOD habit that will continue.

   Day 52 – Leviticus 24 – 25 (blasphemy, retaliation, Sabbath years, Jubilee & restoration)

Leviticus 24 opens by reminding the people about holiness in the making of the oil for the Tabernacle Lampstands, and the flour in the bread for the Table of Presence, both are holy to the LORD.

Then there’s a cautionary story about a half-Egyptian son of a Jewish woman who blasphemes the Name of the Lord, and curses (Him).  God said to Moses to take him outside the camp and stone him to death. Pure and simple. Do not blaspheme the Name of I AM.

God then establishes the rule of retaliation that was first mentioned in Genesis 9:5-6, whoever kills a human, is to be executed. Life for life. Here, more details are added to RESTRICT, not INFORCE, retaliation. (Only) a fracture for a fracture, (only) an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Not more. Not death.

Chapter 25 deals with the time when Israel will be in the Promised Land. Currently they are to celebrate with rest the seventh DAY in every week. Then, they and their land would rest in the seventh YEAR.  No harvesting or planting. What grew of itself would be food for them to eat, but not for harvesting and storing.

Besides the seventh-year rest, all the land was to rest after 7×7 weeks of years, in the 50th year. it was to be called the year of Jubilee. Again they could eat the produce of the land for themselves, but not sow and harvest for storage or profit.

PLUS, in that year any land or person who had been sold to pay for debts would be returned to the owner, and released from servanthood.  The LORD would provide extra harvest in the year before, to carry them over until the harvests of the 51st year. God would be faithful provide their daily bread as they obeyed Him. If they did not…………..

(It is interesting that the prophets of Judah who observed them going into captivity said that the length of their exile was because they’d neglected this sabbath rest for their land.  Seventy years the land would rest while they were in Babylon… making up for the sabbaths they were deprived of, out GREED and lack of faith in their God.)

(Compare Leviticus 26:34-35 with (2 Chron. 36:21) “To fulfill the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its sabbaths, all the days of its desolation it (the land) kept sabbath until seventy years were complete.”)