The Jubilee Year

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The Day of Rest
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Biblical Teaching About Time

—An online book about rest and worship—
By Dr. Al Franzmeier
Chapter 5

The Jubilee Year
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Once the chosen people entered the promised land, the LORD not only promised them rest and security, He also asked them to trust that He would provide for them from the bounty of that land. The command to observe an entire Sabbath year every seven years put that faith to the test.

 1 The LORD said to Moses on Mount Sinai, 2 "Speak to the Israelites and say to them: 'When you enter the land I am going to give you, the land itself must observe a sabbath to the LORD. 3 For six years sow your fields, and for six years prune your vineyards and gather their crops. 4 But in the seventh year the land is to have a sabbath of rest, a sabbath to the LORD. Do not sow your fields or prune your vineyards. 5 Do not reap what grows of itself or harvest the grapes of your untended vines. The land is to have a year of rest. 6 Whatever the land yields during the sabbath year will be food for you—for yourself, your manservant and maidservant, and the hired worker and temporary resident who live among you, 7 as well as for your livestock and the wild animals in your land. Whatever the land produces may be eaten (Leviticus 25:1-7). 

The LORD assured them they would have enough to eat in those Sabbath years:

¹⁸ " 'Follow my decrees and be careful to obey my laws, and you will live safely in the land. ¹⁹ Then the land will yield its fruit, and you will eat your fill and live there in safety. ²⁰ You may ask, "What will we eat in the seventh year if we do not plant or harvest our crops?" ²¹ I will send you such a blessing in the sixth year that the land will yield enough for three years. ²² While you plant during the eighth year, you will eat from the old crop and will continue to eat from it until the harvest of the ninth year comes in (Leviticus 25:18-22). 

The purpose of the Sabbatical year was that the land might rest and have time to recover, a concept re-discovered in modern farming methods as crops are rotated.

In connection with the Sabbatical year, Exodus 21:1-6 describes how Hebrew servants were to be released in the seventh year, unless they voluntarily desired to be lifelong servants.

 2 "If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything. 3 If he comes alone, he is to go free alone; but if he has a wife when he comes, she is to go with him. 4 If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her master, and only the man shall go free.

 5 "But if the servant declares, 'I love my master and my wife and children and do not want to go free,' 6 then his master must take him before the judges. [a] He shall take him to the door or the doorpost and pierce his ear with an awl. Then he will be his servant for life.

Deuteronomy 15:1-18 teaches that the seventh year was also to be called the LORD'S release, and all debts were to be forgiven. This was a way to relieve the burden upon the poor. There is no comment, however on whether some of these same poor took advantage of that Law and avoided working to pay off their debts other than what is written in Deuteronomy 31:9-13. There the LORD instructed that the Torah be read at the end of the Sabbatical year, at the Feast of Tabernacles. That was to ensure that former debtors and servants were properly taught God's Law so they might not have to become poor again. In fact, no one among them, poor or rich, would suffer if they but observed the commands of their Creator and Redeemer.

 9 So Moses wrote down this law and gave it to the priests, the sons of Levi, who carried the ark of the covenant of the LORD, and to all the elders of Israel. 10 Then Moses commanded them: "At the end of every seven years, in the year for canceling debts, during the Feast of Tabernacles, 11 when all Israel comes to appear before the LORD your God at the place he will choose, you shall read this law before them in their hearing. 12 Assemble the people—men, women and children, and the aliens living in your towns—so they can listen and learn to fear the LORD your God and follow carefully all the words of this law. 13 Their children, who do not know this law, must hear it and learn to fear the LORD your God as long as you live in the land you are crossing the Jordan to possess."

These were rather extraordinary commands. Can you imagine everyone in your community taking a yearlong vacation and forgiving all debts?  Our national economy would collapse; our land would be over-run by criminals and foreigners. It wouldn’t work. Did it work for Israel?

It worked when they observed it, but they soon ignored the commands. They were warned from the beginning, of course, about what would happen if they did.

'If in spite of this you still do not listen to me but continue to be hostile toward me, 28 then in my anger I will be hostile toward you, and I myself will punish you for your sins seven times over. 29 You will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters. 30 I will destroy your high places, cut down your incense altars and pile your dead bodies on the lifeless forms of your idols, and I will abhor you. 31 I will turn your cities into ruins and lay waste your sanctuaries, and I will take no delight in the pleasing aroma of your offerings. 32 I will lay waste the land, so that your enemies who live there will be appalled. 33 I will scatter you among the nations and will draw out my sword and pursue you. Your land will be laid waste, and your cities will lie in ruins. 34 Then the land will enjoy its sabbath years all the time that it lies desolate and you are in the country of your enemies; then the land will rest and enjoy its sabbaths. 35 All the time that it lies desolate, the land will have the rest it did not have during the sabbaths you lived in it (Leviticus 26:27-36).

Hundreds of years later, the prophet Jeremiah warned that because Israel reneged and did not free their Hebrew servants, God would proclaim "liberty" unto these cruel taskmasters by turning them over to the sword, pestilence, famine and captivity. The result was the Babylonian captivity of the southern tribes.

The writer of the Chronicles of the kings of Israel also commented on the failure of the people to observe God’s commands with these words:

15 The LORD, the God of their fathers, sent word to them through his messengers again and again, because he had pity on his people and on his dwelling place. 16 But they mocked God's messengers, despised his words and scoffed at his prophets until the wrath of the LORD was aroused against his people and there was no remedy. 17 He brought up against them the king of the Babylonians, [g] who killed their young men with the sword in the sanctuary, and spared neither young man nor young woman, old man or aged. God handed all of them over to Nebuchadnezzar. 18 He carried to Babylon all the articles from the temple of God, both large and small, and the treasures of the LORD's temple and the treasures of the king and his officials. 19 They set fire to God's temple and broke down the wall of Jerusalem; they burned all the palaces and destroyed everything of value there.

 20 He carried into exile to Babylon the remnant, who escaped from the sword, and they became servants to him and his sons until the kingdom of Persia came to power. 21 The land enjoyed its sabbath rests; all the time of its desolation it rested, until the seventy years were completed in fulfillment of the word of the LORD spoken by Jeremiah (2 Chronicles 36:15-21).

Harsh? Yes, but the LORD had no other choice. His people had forsaken Him by disobeying His commands. They were putting their faith in other gods. He had to bring them back to their senses. Notice also that the land did enjoy its Sabbaths for seventy years, the multiple of the two numbers indicating completeness in the Old Covenant: seven and ten.

The Jubilee Year
In addition to the Sabbatical year, the LORD also commanded the Jubilee year, the fiftieth year following seven Sabbatical years.

8 " 'Count off seven sabbaths of years—seven times seven years—so that the seven sabbaths of years amount to a period of forty-nine years. 9 Then have the trumpet sounded everywhere on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the Day of Atonement sound the trumpet throughout your land. 10 Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you; each one of you is to return to his family property and each to his own clan. 11 The fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you; do not sow and do not reap what grows of itself or harvest the untended vines. 12 For it is a jubilee and is to be holy for you; eat only what is taken directly from the fields.

 13 " 'In this Year of Jubilee everyone is to return to his own property.

 14 " 'If you sell land to one of your countrymen or buy any from him, do not take advantage of each other. 15 You are to buy from your countryman on the basis of the number of years since the Jubilee. And he is to sell to you on the basis of the number of years left for harvesting crops. 16 When the years are many, you are to increase the price, and when the years are few, you are to decrease the price, because what he is really selling you is the number of crops. 17 Do not take advantage of each other, but fear your God. I am the LORD your God (Leviticus 25:8-17).

The Hebrew term translated Jubilee year probably meant "ram,” which, by extension, stands for "the horn of a ram.” Thus the priests announced the year to the people by the blowing of the ram’s horn. In Ezekiel 46:17 the Jubilee year is called "the year of release;” hence some commentators have derived the Hebrew word for Jubilee from the Hebrew stem which means to “emit or liberate,” but the first derivation is generally more accepted.

As in the Sabbatical years, slaves were set free. This was also the great year to recall that the land did not belong to any single family or tribe. Any owner of landed property, who, for reason of poverty or otherwise, had been compelled to part with his land, had the right to receive his property back free in the Jubilee year, or to redeem it even before the Jubilee year, if either his own financial circumstances had improved, or if his next of kin would redeem it for him by paying back what was owed according to the price which regulated the purchase. Hence, the transfer of property was not, properly speaking, the sale of the land but the sale of its produce for a certain number of years, and the price was fixed according to the number of years which intervened between the year of the sale and that of the next year of Jubilee.

Accordingly, the right of possession of real estate was inalienable. Whether a landowner was ever allowed to part permanently with his property for speculation, or for any purpose other than poverty, is not explicitly stated, although according to later rabbinical interpretation, this was considered as legally unlawful.

Real estate in walled towns was made an exception to this law. An owner who had sold was permitted to redeem his property provided he did so within a year, but not afterwards.
The Jubilee year, therefore, emphasized that the LORD was Israel’s King. He had redeemed Israel from the bondage of Egypt to be his peculiar people, and allotted to them the Promised Land. He would not suffer any one to usurp his title as King over those whom he owned as his own. This is the idea of grace for all the suffering children of man, bringing freedom to the captive and rest to the weary as well as to the earth.

Consequently the Old Covenant prophets and the New Covenant Apostles saw the year of Jubilee as the symbol of the eternal year of grace, the Sabbath to come, ushered in when Messiah comes. Every Sabbath pointed to this glorious Day of Rest.  On that Day God’s people will enter His rest, all the conflicts in the universe shall be restored to their original harmony, and not only shall we sons of God, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, be restored, but the whole creation, which groans and travails in pain together until now, will share in our glorious liberty. The prophet Isaiah wrote:

1 The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me,
       because the LORD has anointed me
       to preach good news to the poor.
       He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
       to proclaim freedom for the captives
       and release from darkness for the prisoners, [a]

 2 to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor
       and the day of vengeance of our God,
       to comfort all who mourn,

 3 and provide for those who grieve in Zion—
       to bestow on them a crown of beauty
       instead of ashes,
       the oil of gladness
       instead of mourning,
       and a garment of praise
       instead of a spirit of despair.
       They will be called oaks of righteousness,
       a planting of the LORD
       for the display of his splendor (Isaiah 61:1-3).

This idea of Sabbath seems to have touched every part of Israelite life. Their laws about work, leisure, worship, their concepts of money and land, family and fellowship—everything was tied into the Sabbath.

Indeed. And the Sabbath laws all pointed forward to the freedom we have because Christ has set us free. In Him we have the certain hope of eternal Sabbath. So we Christians need to gain a deeper appreciation of this marvelous commandment. As in the case of the Old Covenant believers, our entire life is tied into what the Sabbath symbolizes. We’ll be looking into this more deeply in the next chapter.

Before we get to all that, however, we have a couple more lessons to learn from our Old Covenant brothers and sisters about remembering and keeping the Sabbath holy.
_______________to be continued . . .