Albert Barnes Commentary Leviticus 25:8-13

"And thou shalt number seven sabbaths of years unto thee, seven times seven years; and there shall be unto thee the days of seven sabbaths of years, even forty and nine years. Then shalt thou send abroad the loud trumpet on the tenth day of the seventh month; in the day of atonement shall ye send abroad the trumpet throughout all your land. And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family. A jubilee shall that fiftieth year be unto you: ye shall not sow, neither reap that which groweth of itself in it, nor gather [the grapes] in it of the undressed vines. For it is a jubilee; it shall be holy unto you: ye shall eat the increase thereof out of the field. In this year of jubilee ye shall return every man unto his possession." — Leviticus 25:8-13 (ASV)

The land was to be divided by lot among the families of the Israelites once its possession was obtained (Numbers 26:52–56; Numbers 33:54 and following). At the end of every seventh sabbatical cycle of years, in the year of Jubilee, each field or estate that had been alienated was to be restored to the family to which it had been originally allotted.

Leviticus 25:8: Seven sabbaths of years — this means seven weeks of years.

Leviticus 25:9: Cause the trumpet of the jubile to sound — Rather, cause the sound of the cornet to go through (the land). The word "jubile" does not occur in this verse in the Hebrew.

The trumpet is the shofar (שׁפר shôphār) — that is, the cornet (rendered “shawm” in the Prayer Book version of Psalms 98:7), either the horn of some animal or a metal tube shaped like one.

Just as the sound of the cornet (see Leviticus 25:10 note) was the signal of Yahweh's descent when He came down upon Sinai to take Israel into covenant with Himself (Exodus 19:13, 16, 19; Exodus 20:18), so the same sound announced, at the close of the great Day of Atonement, after the Evening sacrifice, the year that restored each Israelite to the freedom and blessings of the covenant.

Leviticus 25:10: The fiftieth year — The Jubilee probably coincided with each seventh sabbatical year and was called the fiftieth, as being the last of a series of which the first was the preceding Jubilee.

A jubile — Commonly spelled jubilee. The original word first occurs in Exodus 19:13, where it is rendered “trumpet,” margin “cornet.” It most probably denotes the sound of the cornet, not the cornet itself, and is derived from a root signifying to flow abundantly, which by a familiar metaphor might be applied to sound.