20 `And when ye say, What do we eat in the seventh year, lo, we do not sow, nor gather our increase?
And the servant of the man of God riseth early, and goeth out, and lo, a force is surrounding the city, and horse and chariot, and his young man saith unto him, `Alas! my lord, how do we do?' And he saith, `Fear not, for more `are' they who `are' with us than they who `are' with them.' And Elisha prayeth, and saith, `Jehovah, open, I pray Thee, his eyes, and he doth see;' and Jehovah openeth the eyes of the young man, and he seeth, and lo, the hill is full of horses and chariots of fire, round about Elisha.
And they speak against God -- they said: `Is God able to array a table in a wilderness?' Lo, He hath smitten a rock, And waters flow, yea, streams overflow. `Also -- bread `is' He able to give? Doth He prepare flesh for His people?'
`Because of this I say to you, be not anxious for your life, what ye may eat, and what ye may drink, nor for your body, what ye may put on. Is not the life more than the nourishment, and the body than the clothing? look to the fowls of the heaven, for they do not sow, nor reap, nor gather into storehouses, and your heavenly Father doth nourish them; are not ye much better than they? `And who of you, being anxious, is able to add to his age one cubit? and about clothing why are ye anxious? consider well the lilies of the field; how do they grow? they do not labour, nor do they spin; and I say to you, that not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed as one of these. `And if the herb of the field, that to-day is, and to-morrow is cast to the furnace, God doth so clothe -- not much more you, O ye of little faith? therefore ye may not be anxious, saying, What may we eat? or, What may we drink? or, What may we put round? for all these do the nations seek for, for your heavenly Father doth know that ye have need of all these; but seek ye first the reign of God and His righteousness, and all these shall be added to you. Be not therefore anxious for the morrow, for the morrow shall be anxious for its own things; sufficient for the day `is' the evil of it.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Leviticus 25
Commentary on Leviticus 25 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 25
The law of this chapter concerns the lands and estates of the Israelites in Canaan, the occupying and transferring of which were to be under the divine direction, as well as the management of religious worship; for, as the tabernacle was a holy house, so Canaan was a holy land; and upon that account, as much as any thing, it was the glory of all lands. In token of a peculiar title which God had to this land, and a right to dispose of it, he appointed,
Lev 25:1-7
The law of Moses laid a great deal of stress upon the sabbath, the sanctification of which was the earliest and most ancient of all divine institutions, designed for the keeping up of the knowledge and worship of the Creator among men; that law not only revived the observance of the weekly sabbath, but, for the further advancement of the honour of them, added the institution of a sabbatical year: In the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, v. 4. And hence the Jews collect that vulgar tradition that after the world has stood six thousand years (a thousand years being to God as one day) it shall cease, and the eternal sabbath shall succeed-a weak foundation on which to build the fixing of that day and hour which it is God's prerogative to know. This sabbatical year began in September, at the end of harvest, the seventh month of their ecclesiastical year: and the law was,
Lev 25:8-22
Here is,
Lev 25:23-38
Here is,
Lev 25:39-55
We have here the laws concerning servitude, designed to preserve the honour of the Jewish nation as a free people, and rescued by a divine power out of the house of bondage, into the glorious liberty of God's sons, his first-born. Now the law is,