You shall make the fiftieth year holy, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee to you; and each of you shall return to his own property, and each of you shall return to his family.
To release all Hebrew slaves in the Jubilee year
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְקִדַּשְׁתֶּם אֵת שְׁנַת הַחֲמִשִּׁים שָׁנָה וּקְרָאתֶם דְּרוֹר בָּאָרֶץ לְכָל־יֹשְׁבֶיהָ
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו לתקוע בשופר בעשרה מתשרי משנה זו לקרא דרור לעבדים ולצאת כל עבד עברי לחרות ביום העשירי מתשרי, והוא אמרו יתעלה והעברת שופר תרועה ונו' ואמר וקראתם דרור. והנה התבאר ששוה היובל לראש השנה לתקיעות ולברכות. וכבר התבארו משפטי תקיעות שופר של ראש השנה במסכת ראש השנה, וידוע כי התקיעה ההיא היא ביובל אמנם לפרסם החרות ושהוא מין הכרזה, והוא אמרו וקראתם דרור בארץ לכל יושביה בארץ הנזכרת, ואין ענינה כענין תקיעת ראש השנה כי היא זכרון לפני ה' וזהו להוציא את העבדים. (בהר סיני, זרעים הלכות שמטה ויובל פ"י):
That is that He commanded us to blow the shofar on the tenth day of Tishrei of this year to announce the freedom of the slaves, and that every Jewish slave go out to freedom on the tenth day of Tishrei. And that is His, may He be exalted, saying, "Then you shall sound the blowing of the shofar, etc." (Leviticus 25:9); and then He said, "and you shall proclaim freedom" (Leviticus 25:10). And behold that it has been explained that Jubilee and Rosh Hashanah are the same regarding the blows and the blessings; and the regulations of the blowing of the shofar of Rosh Hashanah have already been explained in Tractate Rosh Hashanah. However it is known that the blowing on the Jubilee is to publicize the freeing [of the slaves] and that it is a type of proclamation. And that is His saying, "and you shall proclaim freedom in the land for all of its inhabitants" - in the mentioned land. And its content is not the same as the blowing of Rosh Hashanah. As that is for remembrance before God, and this is to bring out the slaves. (See Parashat Behar; Mishneh Torah, Sabbatical Year and the Jubilee 10.)
Hebrew: Sefer HaMitzvot, Warsaw 1883 (public domain). English: Sefaria Edition, trans. Rabbi Francis Nataf, 2021 (CC0). Via Sefaria; translator’s footnotes omitted.
Literary form: a flat, unconditional command
Applicability
How the catalog describes where and when this commandment applies. These are independent descriptions, not a verdict on which laws still count.
- Binding in the land of Israel
Classical halakhic consequences
The consequences the classical halakhah attaches to this commandment, grouped by who imposes them. Where a category has none recorded, that absence is itself meaningful.
Imposed by a court
No court-imposed penalty is recorded.
At the hands of Heaven
No divinely-imposed consequence is recorded.
Ritual remedy
No ritual remedy is recorded.
How the streams of Judaism treat this commandment
The streams of Judaism read the same commandment differently — an ongoing plurality, not a ranking. Each position below is reported as the catalog records it; none is presented as the correct one.
- Orthodox Binding, with modification
- Conservative Kept as an ethical principle
- Reform Kept as an ethical principle
- Reconstructionist Kept as an ethical principle
- Karaite Binding, with modification
24 of 613 commandments have been examined in depth so far — this one is queued.
How later traditions received this commandment
How later traditions read or reworked this commandment, each attributed to its own voice. The catalog’s own classification of each reception is shown as it records it, never adopted as GEBible’s.
Qumran (the Dead Sea Scrolls)
- 11QMelchizedek (11Q13) ii reinterpreted it
- 4Q251 (Halakha A) The catalog describes this reception as: halakhic application
Rabbinic aggadah
- Sifra Behar, parashah 2 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 2.110-123 rationalized it
Josephus
- Ant. 3.282-283 described it
The New Testament
- Luke 4:18-19 read it spiritually Jesus reads Isa 61:1-2 deror-tradition as eschatological proclamation of release ('to set at liberty')
The Church Fathers
- Origen, Homiliae in Leviticum 15 read it allegorically
Beside the older legal codes of its world
The commandment set beside the ancient Near-Eastern legal collections scholars compare it to — a descriptive comparison, not a claim of dependence.
- edict of ammisaduqa royal debt and servitude release (andurārum) Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§20-21 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (1997)
- code of hammurabi release of a person sold or pledged for debt after three years' service (debt-servitude analogue, closer to Exod 21/Deut 15 than to the Jubilee deror) Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §117 Roth, Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, 2nd ed. (1997)
Where this commandment meets modern human-rights frameworks
One modern normative lens, attributed to it — not GEBible’s assessment. Each row names the framework it measures against and the catalog’s own classification of the relation.
This framework catalogues tensions; it records agreement in only one of its entries. The near-total tension rate is the shape of the instrument, not a finding.
No tension with the catalogued modern frameworks is recorded here.