Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

JUBILEE, YEAR OF

The 50th year in a series of seven Sabbatical Years. The Year of Jubilee (from Heb. yôḇēl, “ram’s horn”) is the last layer in the extension of the sabbath principle that begins with the day of rest every seventh day, extended in the Sabbatical Year fallow every seventh year, to the Jubilee. It begins in the middle of the seventh sabbatical year (every 49th year) on the tenth day of the seventh month (the Day of Atonement), and extends, presumably, into the seventh month of the 50th year, thus overlapping by just over half a year with the regular Sabbatical Year. A ram’s horn was to be sounded throughout the land and the Jubilee proclaimed, during which land was to be restored to its original inherited line of ownership, and Israelite debt-slaves freed to return to their own land. The Jubilee Year, like the Sabbatical Year, was also to be a year of “rest” for the land, in which sowing, reaping, and harvesting were prohibited. The redemption price of land or slave was to be pro-rated according to the number of years left until the next Jubilee. These Jubilee laws are detailed exclusively in Lev. 25, , not being mentioned in the parallel legislation of Deut. 15:1-15 or the Covenant Code in Exod. 21:2-4; 23:10-12. Conversely, no mention is made in Lev. 25 of the cancellation of debts mandated in Deut. 15 (perhaps because this cancellation was predicated upon the charging of interest, whereas interest is prohibited outright in Lev. 25:35-38), though later tradition consistently connects these provisions. Nor does Lev. 25 mention the seventh-year release of debt-slaves (though the method prescribed in vv. 47-53 for the calculation of redemption price necessarily assumes it — the calculation only working when the Jubilee should happen to intervene within the normal six-year period of servitude), perhaps secondarily edited out to emphasize a political point about release from Babylonian Exile after 50 years of captivity.

The Jubilee legislation in Lev. 25 deals primarily with issues of social welfare — exhortations regarding helping the poor: providing food in the Sabbatical Years, loaning money without interest, taking them in as hired workers, redeeming them and their land. The Jubilee itself is styled as only a last resort when all other help had failed. The issues at hand were debt and debt slavery, inheritance and land tenure, kinship responsibilities and redemption, and equitable distribution of farmland (i.e., the principal means of production in agrarian societies; houses within walled cities were exempt; Lev. 25:29-30). The theological underpinning of such legislation is found in the concept that God owns all of the land and the people as well, having redeemed them from slavery in Egypt. Thus the people could not be permanently enslaved to others nor the land sold permanently. It could only be leased temporarily — the use of it sold for a limited period of time until the next Jubilee when it would be restored to the inherited line. This would prevent a few wealthy landowners from accumulating all of the land and enslaving the general population.

Aside from a few other incidental references (Lev. 27:16-25; Num. 36:4; Ezek. 46:16-18) plus Josephus Ant. 3.12.3, no specific mention of the Jubilee is made outside of Lev. 25, , though the descriptions in Isa. 37:30 (= 2 Kgs. 19:29); 49:8-9; 61:1-2; Jer. 34:8-22; Neh. 5:1-13 may well also reflect a Jubilee tradition. There is no evidence that the Jubilee as legislated here was ever practiced, aside from fallow provisions (which were also part of the Sabbatical Year laws) during the Second Temple period (1 Macc. 6:48-54). Some scholars would see the entire Jubilee tradition as merely utopian construct or an invention of the restoration period, used to justify the usurpation of land by the returnees. Yet one wonders how effective such an appeal to “law” could be unless it already held some familiarity and respect among the people. Later tradition did, however, connect the Jubilee release of debt-slaves and restoration of property with release from the Babylonian captivity and subsequent restoration of Israel from exile (cf. Isa. 61:1-2), still later eschatologized in the Dead Sea Scrolls (11QMelch 2:1-9) and the NT (Luke 4:16-21). The book of Jubilees uses the 50-year Jubilee cycle as a normative organizing principle for history.

See Sabbatical Year.

Robin J. DeWitt Knauth

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

JUBILEE, YEAR OF

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)