The Year of Jubilee

As I look out the window of the Jesus Bus, I am left to wonder about how well the modern system of government provides a model for social stability. It seems that the family unit isin trouble. There are a lot of single parent families. And when the population is transient,there is often no strong sense of community.In many ways, the current model seems to be flawed. Yet, I'm hoping that it doesn't lead to serious social instability. That is the kind of result that benefits no one. Social order and justice is better than anarchy. These elements are probably more critical to social stability than the accumulation of 'wealth'. Do you want to live in a place where you are not safe outside the four walls of your house? You don't have to travel very far to find out what it's like. Go visit some inner cities. It
would be sad to see this happen in all of the
U.S. The Year of Jubilee gives us a model for social stability and how it relates to the redistribution of wealth.


Lev 25:8 You shall number seven Sabbaths of
years to you, seven times seven years; and there
shall be to you the days of seven Sabbaths of
years, even forty-nine years.


9 Then shall you send abroad the loud trumpet on
the tenth day of the seventh month; in the day
of atonement shall you send abroad the trumpet
throughout all your land.


10 You shall make the fiftieth year holy, and
proclaim liberty throughout the land to all the
inhabitants of it: it shall be a jubilee to you;
and you shall return every man to his
possession, and you shall return every man to
his family.


11 A jubilee shall that fiftieth year be to you:
you shall not sow, neither reap that which grows
of itself in it, nor gather [the grapes] in it
of the undressed vines.


12 For it is a jubilee; it shall be holy to you:
you shall eat the increase of it out of the
field.


13 In this year of jubilee you shall return
every man to his possession.


14 If you sell anything to your neighbor, or buy
of your neighbor`s hand, you shall not wrong one
another.


15 According to the number of years after the
jubilee you shall buy of your neighbor, [and]
according to the number of years of the crops he
shall sell to you.


16 According to the length of the years you
shall increase the price of it, and according to
the shortness of the years you shall diminish
the price of it; for the number of the crops
does he sell to you.


17 You shall not wrong one another; but you
shall fear your G-d: for I am Yhwh your G-d.


18 Therefore you shall do my statutes, and keep
my ordinances and do them; and you shall dwell
in the land in safety.


19 The land shall yield its fruit, and you shall
eat your fill, and dwell therein in safety.


20 If you shall say, What shall we eat the
seventh year? Behold, we shall not sow, nor
gather in our increase;


21 then I will command my blessing on you in the
sixth year, and it shall bring forth fruit for
the three years.


22 You shall sow the eighth year, and eat of the
fruits, the old store; until the ninth year,
until its fruits come in, you shall eat the old
store.


23 The land shall not be sold in perpetuity; for
the land is mine: for you are strangers and
sojourners with me.


24 In all the land of your possession you shall
grant a redemption for the land.


25 If your brother be grew poor, and sell some
of his possession, then shall his kinsman who is
next to him come, and shall redeem that which
his brother has sold.


26 If a man have no one to redeem it, and he be
grew rich and find sufficient to redeem it;


27 then let him reckon the years of the sale of
it, and restore the surplus to the man to whom
he sold it; and he shall return to his
possession.


28 But if he isn`t able to get it back for
himself, then that which he has sold shall
remain in the hand of him who has bought it
until the year of jubilee: and in the jubilee it
shall go out, and he shall return to his
possession.


29 If a man sell a dwelling-house in a walled
city, then he may redeem it within a whole year
after it is sold; for a full year shall he have
the right of redemption.


30 If it isn`t redeemed within the space of a
full year, then the house that is in the walled
city shall be made sure in perpetuity to him who
bought it, throughout his generations: it shall
not go out in the jubilee.


31 But the houses of the villages which have no
wall round about them shall be reckoned with the
fields of the country: they may be redeemed, and
they shall go out in the jubilee.


32 Nevertheless the cities of the Levites, the
houses of the cities of their possession, may
the Levites redeem at any time.


33 If one of the Levites redeem, then the house
that was sold, and the city of his possession,
shall go out in the jubilee; for the houses of
the cities of the Levites are their possession
among the children of Israel.


34 But the field of the suburbs of their cities
may not be sold; for it is their perpetual
possession.


35 If your brother has grown poor, and his hand
fail with you; then you shall uphold him: [as] a
stranger and a sojourner shall he live with you.


36 Take no interest of him or increase, but fear
your G-d; that your brother may live with you.


37 You shall not give him your money on
interest, nor give him your victuals for
increase.


38 I am Yhwh your G-d, who brought you forth out
of the land of Egypt, to give you the land of
Canaan, [and] to be your G-d.


39 If your brother has grown poor with you, and
sell himself to you; you shall not make him to
serve as a bond-servant.


40 As a hired servant, and as a sojourner, he
shall be with you; he shall serve with you to
the year of jubilee:


41 then shall he go out from you, he and his
children with him, and shall return to his own
family, and to the possession of his fathers
shall he return.


"The name. --The name jubilee is derived from
the Hebrew jobel , the joyful shout or clangor
of trumpets, by which the year of jubilee was
announced. The time of its celebration. --It was celebrated
every fiftieth year, marking the half century;
so that it followed the seventh sabbatic year,
and for two years in succession the land lay
fallow. It was announced by the blowing of
trumpets on the day of atonement (about the 1st
of October), the tenth day of the first month of
the Israelites’ civil year (the seventh of their
ecclesiastical year). (Smiths Bible Dictionary)


Jubilee"a joyful shout or clangour of trumpets, the
name of the great semi-centennial festival of
the Hebrews. It lasted for a year. During this
year the land was to be fallow, and the
Israelites were only permitted to gather the
spontaneous produce of the fields (Leviticus
25:11,12). All landed property during that year
reverted to its original owner (13-34; 27:16-
24), and all who were slaves were set free
(25:39-54), and all debts were remitted."(Easton Bible Dictionary)


"The reasons for the institution of the jubilee.
--It was to be a remedy for those evils which
accompany human society and human government;
and had these laws been observed, they would
have made the Jewish nation the most prosperous
and perfect that ever existed. (1) The jubilee tended to abolish poverty. It
prevented large and permanent accumulations of
wealth. It gave unfortunate families an
opportunity to begin over again with a fair
start in life. It particularly favored the poor,
without injustice to the rich. (2) It tended to
abolish slavery, and in fact did abolish it; and
it greatly mitigated it while it existed. "The
effect of this law was at once to lift from the
heart the terrible incubus of a life-long
bondage --that sense of a hopeless doom which
knows no relief till death." --Cowles."(Smiths Bible Dictionary)


Yeah! This year I'm 49 years old. It's my year
of jubilee.


Besides the year of jubilee, there was the sabbatical year. The general idea is that if you can't
pay for something within seven years, you can't afford it. And all means of wealth production
(the land) are subject to a fifty year lease period. Every family unit will always have a means
of production by way of inheritance. Kinda' neat if you ask me.


Sabbatical year each seventh year, by the Mosaic code, was to be
kept holy. (Exodus 23:10,11) The commandment is
to sow and reap for six years, and to let the
land rest on the seventh, "that the poor of thy
people may eat; and what they leave the beasts
of the held shall eat. It is added in ( 15:1)
... that the seventh Year should also be one of
release to debtors. SBD.


There is the idea that the G-d in the Hebrew scriptures is a G-d of anger and wrath. That he is a mean and harsh Deity. I don't think so. It seems to me that he was interested mostly in social justice, especially for the poor. Those passages, and there are a few, that describe the destruction of the wicked, are meant to show that there is a day of justice for the people who refuse to turn from their evil ways. This is good because it removes from civil society the corrosive influence of corruption. So it lends stability to a society. Destructive influences are discouraged and creative activities are encouraged.


People talk about justice, but it's a two-edged sword. In scripture, there is recognition of the fact that those in power will often choose to exploit the poor and the powerless. This is not an example of good government. In
scripture, all people are treated equal under the law. Justice is a tough subject, because it goes straight to the point of what is right and true. Without truth, there will be no justice. When there is a wobbly idea about truth, justice cannot be done. That's one reason why I am skeptical about the way that modern courts handle the notion that the U.S. Constitution is an evolving document. But since I have no legal expertise, I have to defer. All I can say is that it smells fishy to me. And recognize the truth that justice serves the better interest of all parties, because nobody wants to be the
victim of injustice.


The whole idea behind these laws is to provide social stability to the nation. It does not favor one person over another. It simply allows for the debtor to be released from his burden and get a fresh start. My guess is that most of the population was hard working and fair minded. They did not accumulate debt, except when they had to, because of illness or injury. So the one who met with personal misfortune was allowed to recover. Since it was an
agricultural society, they had their land
returned to them and could begin working the
land again. This resulted in a stable
population, because the community included all
members of the extended family. The family is
the nucleus of the social structure.


It's an excellent system for social stability. Nobody is allowed to be poor forever and nobody is allowed to accumulate excess wealth. You can imagine that over time, the better managers will become wealthy, and the less able will always have a struggle to survive. But the extended family is always going to remain intact in the place that they have their inheritance, and that will provide long term stability.