Leviticus 25:16, commentary and pictures

The price of land was to be set by the number of harvest years left until the Jubilee, with more years of crops requiring a higher price and fewer years a lower price. The land was not sold outright, because God was the householder and owner of the land and the people were His tenants. In that setting the land itself had a yearly sabbath: every seventh year was a sabbatical year with no cultivation of the soil and an intermission of agricultural work so worn-out soil would be invigorated, while its spontaneous growth benefited the poor and was freely open to strangers and to flocks and herds.

The fiftieth year was the jubilee, given to encourage liberality and overcome stinginess by teaching that it was the Lord's land and that He would make it productive by His blessing on an obedient people. The Lord cares for the poor and provided for them by special interposition, with land under God's supervision yielding in the sixth year enough for three years as a constant lesson of His ownership and care. As part of the scriptural injunctions about duties to one another, this presents actual practical missionary work and the principles of Christianity, the gospel of the Old Testament given when the Lord was over the whole earth, requiring liberality and open hearts toward brethren working in hard fields instead of selfish refusal to help.

It gives one of God's laws for the distribution of property which, if carried out in the world today, would change people's condition and prevent the evils that in all ages have come from oppression of the poor by the rich and hatred of the rich by the poor. Applied today, the law would hinder the amassing of great wealth while preventing the ignorance and degradation of tens of thousands whose ill-paid servitude is required to build up colossal fortunes, bringing a peaceful solution to problems that now threaten to fill the world with anarchy and bloodshed.