Note 821 — Chapter VIII · THE HEBREW SABBATH

Leviticus, xxv, 11. Whether the Jubilee was celebrated after forty-eight years or after forty-nine years is a problem incapable of solution from the Old Testament evidence. As Schiaparelli has well shown (Astronomy in the Old Testament, pp. 146 sqq.), the twenty-fifth chapter of Leviticus combines two systems of rules which are not only different but actually irreconcilable with each other, the septennial system of the Sabbatical Year and the Jubilee system of fifty years.