John Sietze Bergsma, «The Jubilee: A Post-Exilic Priestly Attempt to Reclaim Lands?», Vol. 84 (2003) 225-246

The article examines the hypothesis that the jubilee legislation of Lev 25 was a post-exilic attempt on the part of returning Judean exiles — particularly the priests — to provide legal justification for the reclamation of their former lands. This hypothesis is found to be dubious because (1) the jubilee did not serve the interests of the socio-economic classes that were exiled, and (2) Lev 25 does not show signs of having been redacted with the post-exilic situation in mind. A comparison with Ezekiel’s vision of restoration points out the differences between Lev 25 and actual priestly land legislation for the post-exilic period.

impression given by these sources is even approximately correct, any attempt on the part of the returnees shortly after 538 BCE to restore the land tenure situation to what it had been forty-nine years before would have invalidated the land claims of a majority — perhaps a large majority — of the returning exiles, who had been deported fifty-nine years previously.

        (2) The only large-scale simultaneous return of exiles for which we have information is the one under Zerubbabel, which is generally held to have occurred a decade or more after 538 BCE ⁴⁴, by which time the forty-nine-year period would no longer be appropriate.

        (3) There is no support in the text of Lev 25 to justify interpreting Cyrus’ edict as marking a year of jubilee⁴⁵. One has difficulty imagining how the exiles could advance such an argument, based on this text, in a title dispute against the actual inhabitants of the land of Israel.

        (4) Taking the edict of Cyrus as the end of the jubilee cycle ironically implies the cycle began in 587 BCE, the year the (second wave of) exiles left the land, not the year they entered the land, which runs directly counter to Lev 25,1.

        In addition to being implausible, the supposed explanation of the