God's Prorated Grace: The Economics of Holiness Text: Leviticus 27:16-25
Introduction: The World as God's Leasehold
We live in an age that is economically illiterate because it is theologically illiterate. Our culture thinks of property, money, and land in entirely autonomous terms. We speak of "my" house, "my" land, "my" money, as though we were the original source and final authority. This is the foundational lie of all materialism and all statist tyranny. The materialist thinks he owns his stuff in a brute, ultimate sense. The statist tyrant agrees, but simply believes that he is a bigger brute with a prior claim. Both are dead wrong.
The Bible, from Genesis 1 onward, establishes the absolute ownership of God over everything. He made it all, and therefore He owns it all. We are not owners; we are stewards. We are not landlords; we are tenants on God's great leasehold estate. And the terms of the lease are all laid out in His law. When we forget this, we get into all sorts of trouble. We either become arrogant hoarders, forgetting the Giver, or we become envious socialists, demanding what God has given to another. Both are forms of theft, because both deny God's ultimate property rights.
The book of Leviticus is a detailed instruction manual for a people who were being taught how to live in God's immediate presence, on God's specific plot of land. And the laws are not arbitrary. They are designed to shape the imagination, to instill a worldview, to teach the Israelites the grammar of reality. The laws concerning vows, redemption, and the Year of Jubilee are not just dusty regulations for an ancient agrarian society. They are a detailed, practical theology of property. They are God's economics class. And as we shall see, they are profoundly Christ-centered.
This passage deals with the valuation and redemption of land that has been vowed to the Lord. It seems complex and perhaps a bit tedious to our modern ears, full of shekels and homers of barley. But underneath the agricultural details are bedrock principles that govern all of life. God is teaching His people about the nature of their vows, the reality of His ownership, the blessing of redemption, and the rhythmic, cyclical grace of the Jubilee. These principles are as relevant to our mortgages and stock portfolios as they were to their barley fields.
The Text
‘Again, if a man sets apart as holy to Yahweh a portion of the fields of his own possession, then your valuation shall be proportionate to the seed needed for it: a homer of barley seed at fifty shekels of silver. If he sets apart his field as holy from the year of jubilee, according to your valuation it shall stand. If he sets apart his field as holy after the jubilee, however, then the priest shall calculate the price for him proportionate to the years that are left until the year of jubilee; and it shall be deducted from your valuation. If the one who sets it apart as holy should ever wish to redeem the field, then he shall add one-fifth of your valuation price to it so that it may stand as his own. Yet if he will not redeem the field, but has sold the field to another man, it may no longer be redeemed; and it will be that when it reverts in the jubilee, the field shall be holy to Yahweh, like a field that is devoted; it shall be for the priest as his possession. Or if he sets apart as holy to Yahweh a field which he has bought, which is not a portion of the field of his own possession, then the priest shall calculate for him the amount of your valuation up to the year of jubilee; and he shall on that day give your valuation as holy to Yahweh. In the year of jubilee the field shall return to the one from whom he bought it, to whom the possession of the land belongs. Every valuation of yours, moreover, shall be according to the shekel of the sanctuary. The shekel shall be twenty gerahs.
(Leviticus 27:16-25 LSB)
The Jubilee Calendar and Prorated Value (vv. 16-18)
The first section establishes the baseline valuation and the central importance of the Jubilee calendar.
"‘Again, if a man sets apart as holy to Yahweh a portion of the fields of his own possession, then your valuation shall be proportionate to the seed needed for it: a homer of barley seed at fifty shekels of silver. If he sets apart his field as holy from the year of jubilee, according to your valuation it shall stand. If he sets apart his field as holy after the jubilee, however, then the priest shall calculate the price for him proportionate to the years that are left until the year of jubilee; and it shall be deducted from your valuation." (Leviticus 27:16-18 LSB)
A man could make a vow to God and consecrate his ancestral land to the service of the sanctuary. This was a serious act of devotion. But notice, he doesn't actually give God the land in perpetuity. Why? Because the land already belongs to God. An Israelite could not permanently alienate his family's inheritance. This was a foundational principle of their society, designed to prevent the formation of a permanent underclass and a landed aristocracy. The land was God's, and He had assigned it to the tribes and families of Israel.
So, what the man is actually vowing is the use of the land, its productive value. The valuation is not based on abstract market speculation, but on its actual productive capacity: a field that requires a homer of barley seed is valued at fifty shekels of silver. This is a concrete, real-world standard.
But the crucial element here is the Jubilee. The fifty-shekel price is the full price, the valuation if the vow is made at the very beginning of a fifty-year Jubilee cycle. But if the vow is made after the Jubilee has started, the price is prorated. The priest is to calculate the value based on the number of years remaining until the next Jubilee. This is essentially a lease. You are vowing the value of the harvests from the time of your vow until the great reset button of the Jubilee is pressed.
This teaches us a profound theological lesson. All our work, all our stewardship, all our vows are made in time. And time is moving toward a great consummation, a final Jubilee. God's economy is not a static, endless affair. It is a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. The value of our earthly endeavors is always calculated in relation to that end. We are living in the "time remaining."
Redemption, Penalties, and Permanence (vv. 19-21)
Next, we see the provisions for redeeming the vowed land, and the consequences of failing to do so.
"If the one who sets it apart as holy should ever wish to redeem the field, then he shall add one-fifth of your valuation price to it so that it may stand as his own. Yet if he will not redeem the field, but has sold the field to another man, it may no longer be redeemed; and it will be that when it reverts in the jubilee, the field shall be holy to Yahweh, like a field that is devoted; it shall be for the priest as his possession." (Leviticus 27:19-21 LSB)
God makes a way for the man to buy back the use of his land. If his circumstances change, he can redeem it. This is a picture of grace. But grace is not cheap. To redeem the land, he must pay the prorated valuation plus a twenty percent penalty. Why the penalty? This is to ensure that vows are not made lightly. God takes our commitments seriously, and He expects us to do the same. This one-fifth penalty discourages frivolous vows and reinforces the sanctity of one's word given to God. It makes you think twice. It says, "Don't write checks with your mouth that your piety can't cash."
But there is a line that can be crossed. If the man, after vowing the land to God, decides not to redeem it and instead sells the lease to someone else, the right of redemption is forfeited forever. He has treated the holy thing as a common commodity to be trafficked for his own gain. He has demonstrated contempt for his vow and for the Lord to whom he made it. The consequence is severe. When the Jubilee comes, the land does not revert to his family. It becomes permanently holy to the Lord, like a "devoted field," and its stewardship is given to the priests. He has, through his cavalier attitude, permanently alienated his inheritance.
This is a sober warning. While God provides a way of redemption, there is a point of no return. To trifle with holy things, to treat God's grace as a cheap bargaining chip, is to invite permanent loss. It is the principle we see in Hebrews: it is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
The Purchased Field and Ultimate Ownership (vv. 22-24)
The law then addresses a different scenario: vowing land that was not part of one's ancestral inheritance.
"Or if he sets apart as holy to Yahweh a field which he has bought, which is not a portion of the field of his own possession, then the priest shall calculate for him the amount of your valuation up to the year of jubilee; and he shall on that day give your valuation as holy to Yahweh. In the year of jubilee the field shall return to the one from whom he bought it, to whom the possession of the land belongs." (Leviticus 27:22-24 LSB)
An Israelite could buy the use of another man's field, but he was only buying the lease until the next Jubilee. He could not buy the land itself. This passage says that if he then vows that field to the Lord, the same principle of prorated valuation applies. The priest calculates the value of the remaining years, and the man pays that amount to the sanctuary.
But the key provision is in verse 24. "In the year of jubilee the field shall return to the one from whom he bought it, to whom the possession of the land belongs." This is the bedrock principle again. The man who bought the field was only a temporary steward. The man who vowed it was only vowing his temporary stewardship. Ultimate ownership resided with the original family to whom God had allotted that land. The Jubilee ensures that the original, God-ordained order is restored.
This is a powerful polemic against all forms of economic injustice that lead to the permanent dispossession of families from their land. God's law has a built-in economic stabilizer. It prevents the rich from accumulating all the land and turning their countrymen into a permanent class of landless serfs. God's design is for a nation of freeholders, of families with a stake in the land, a tangible inheritance to pass on to their children. The Jubilee is God's great declaration that the earth is His, and He will not allow His foundational pattern of ownership to be permanently overturned by human greed or misfortune.
The Unchanging Standard (v. 25)
The passage concludes with a reminder of the ultimate standard of all these transactions.
"Every valuation of yours, moreover, shall be according to the shekel of the sanctuary. The shekel shall be twenty gerahs." (Leviticus 27:25 LSB)
All these valuations, all this buying and selling and redeeming, must conform to a fixed, objective standard: the shekel of the sanctuary. This wasn't a fluctuating, fiat currency. It was a standard of weight and purity, kept at the Tabernacle. It was God's standard. This is the foundation of all just economics. There must be a fixed, reliable standard of value. When men invent their own standards, when they clip the coins or print money out of thin air, they are fundamentally engaged in theft. They are violating God's order.
God's economy is not based on feelings, or good intentions, or the whims of a central bank. It is based on objective truth, on a just weight and a just measure. The shekel of the sanctuary reminds us that all our economic activity is ultimately accountable to God and must be measured by His unchanging standard of righteousness.
The Jubilee in Christ
Now, how does this intricate system of land redemption point us to the gospel? In every possible way. This entire chapter is a magnificent type and shadow of the work of Jesus Christ.
First, we, like the Israelites, are tenants on God's earth. But through the sin of our father Adam, we forfeited our lease. We sold ourselves into bondage to sin and death. We lost our inheritance and became dispossessed, spiritual vagrants with no claim to the land of the living.
But God, in His mercy, provided for a redemption. Jesus Christ is our great High Priest who calculates the price of our redemption. And He is our Kinsman-Redeemer who pays it. The price was not prorated shekels of silver, but His own precious blood. He paid the full price to buy us back.
And when He did so, He added the "one-fifth." He not only met the demands of justice, He went above and beyond. He paid our debt and purchased for us a righteousness that is not our own. He didn't just restore us to our pre-fall status; He glorified us, uniting us to Himself, making us co-heirs of all things. That is the twenty percent penalty paid in grace.
And Christ has inaugurated the final Jubilee. When He stood up in the synagogue in Nazareth, He read from Isaiah, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor" (Luke 4:18-19). That "year of the Lord's favor" is the Year of Jubilee.
In Christ, all debts are canceled. All bondages are broken. And our lost inheritance is restored. We are brought back to the land, not a patch of dirt in the Middle East, but to the presence of God Himself, which is our true home. The land reverts to its rightful owner. We were made by God and for God, and in the Jubilee of the gospel, we are returned to Him.
Therefore, we must live as a Jubilee people. We must conduct our affairs by the shekel of the sanctuary, by God's unchanging truth. We must be quick to forgive debts, as our great debt has been forgiven. We must be generous with our possessions, knowing that we are but stewards of what is ultimately God's. And we must live with our eyes fixed on the final trumpet, when the great Jubilee will be consummated, and we will enter into our eternal inheritance, the new heavens and the new earth, the home of righteousness.