OVERVIEW

The Jubilee year was a year of liberation and restoration to be celebrated every fifty years. For Israel, every seventh year was celebrated in some ways like a Sabbath (Leviticus 25:1-7). When seven series of seven years had passed (forty-nine years) the fiftieth year was celebrated as the year of Jubilee, a whole additional year set aside as belonging to the Lord.

The word “jubilee” simply means a ram’s horn; it came to mean a trumpet made from or in the shape of a ram’s horn. Such horns were exclusively for religious use. The sacred trumpet gave its name to the year of the ram’s horn, the jubilee year-a year to which the people of God were summoned in a striking and holy way. It was not simply a release from labor, not just a rest, but a year belonging to the Lord. Such a year was a Sabbath rest for the land, and it brought enjoyment “to the LORD” (Leviticus 25:4).

LORDSHIP

The first principle of the jubilee is God’s lordship over the whole earth, acknowledged by his people in their obedience to his command to set the year aside in this way. Just as the Sabbath expressed his right to order life, giving it the shape of six days’ work and one day’s rest, and just as the seventh year, linked in Deuteronomy 31:9-13 with the reading of his law, expressed his right to command the obedience of his people, so the fiftieth year expressed his sovereign possession of all: land, people, means of production, and life itself. Take the typical case of debtor and creditor. When God brought his people into possession of the land, he gave to each his inheritance. In a given circumstance a man might be compelled to sell his land in whole or part, but it must come back to him: “The land must never be sold on a permanent basis because it really belongs to me. You are only foreigners and tenants living with me” (Leviticus 25:23). In this verse “foreigners” carries the meaning “stateless persons,” “refugees,” “those who have sought political asylum”-in a word, those who have no rights except what mercy concedes. Such are the people of God and such they must acknowledge themselves to be when the jubilee year comes around. When a piece of real estate changed hands, the seller might congratulate himself on the astuteness with which he had solved his problem, and the buyer might rejoice in his skillful acquisitiveness, but in the Year of Jubilee seller and buyer alike are compelled to confess a different truth: neither is master, either of his own welfare or of the person and goods of another. Each has a Master in heaven. In the year of Jubilee the debts were to be forgiven and the land returned to its original owner.

REDEMPTION

According to the law, the trumpet that marked the beginning of Jubilee was sounded on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 25:9). That was the day on which the Lord proclaimed his people clean before him from all their sins (Leviticus 16:30). Forgiveness of sins ushered in the jubilee year. The verb “to redeem” and the noun “redemption” had strong commercial meanings. They referred to the recovery of property that had been used as collateral for loans. In the fiftieth year these words would have sounded and resounded as debtors confessed that they could not “redeem” and creditors forewent their “redemption” rights, each using the very vocabulary of the Lord’s action at the Exodus (Exodus 6:6). This is what the Lord had done for his people, and the divine action must be the norm of the human. Brotherly generosity was urged (Leviticus 25:35-38), liberty was granted (vv 39-43), and permanent slavery was forbidden (Leviticus 25:47-55) simply because the divine redemptive act made the redeemed into brothers, brought them into the Lord’s servitude, and canceled their bondage.

REST

The result of redemption is rest. This rest is vividly illustrated and enforced with the mandated rest from planting and harvesting.

1. Rest from the toil connected with promoting the next year’s crop (Leviticus 25:4);
2. Rest from the toil of harvesting, for the people of God were to live hand to mouth, gathering only what and when they needed food (Leviticus 25:5-7);
3. Rest from the anxious burden of debts incurred; and rest from slavery (Leviticus 25:10).

Like the Sabbath, this rest would have meant exactly what it said: freedom from toil; relaxation, refreshment, and recreation. Very likely tiredness was common among the people of God, and grace drew near to give them a holiday. And as with the Sabbath, release from the preoccupations of staying alive created time to be preoccupied with the Lord, his worship, his Word, and the life that pleases him. We can understand Isaiah 58 as binding the ideals of Sabbath and jubilee together. The Lord frees his people not for unbroken idleness but for the redirection of life toward himself. The jubilee year was a deliberate opting out of the rat race; it called a halt to acquisitiveness; it abandoned concern over the pressure to stay alive. It reordered priorities, giving a chance to appraise the use of time and the selection of objectives. For a whole year the people of God stood back, rested, stopped pursuing the good in order to get the best.

FAITH

But this standing back from life was not in the style of a dropout. It was the action of responsible faith. No one on earth can escape questions such as “What shall we eat?” The Lord foresees and provides (Leviticus 25:20); grace provides so that God’s people can enjoy the ordinances of grace (Exodus 16:29). When he commands a year off, he enables them to take it. The fiftieth year was a living testimony to his faithfulness. The last season of sowing and reaping would have been the forty-ninth year; in the final seventh year in the series the people would live off the casual growth; and in the fiftieth year nothing but the sheer attentive faithfulness of their God could provide for them (Leviticus 25:21). Here indeed their faith would be put to the test, for God spoke a word of majestic promise and called on them to believe. At the heart of their jubilee they took God at his word and found him faithful.

OBEDIENCE

Biblically, it is a central characteristic of the people of God that they do what he commands just because he commands it. In the ordinance of the fiftieth year the people of God must show themselves as his obedient ones, and in fact their obedience is the guarantee that they will keep the land he has granted to them. If they don’t obey, they would lose their land. The land then would receive the rest that the people had thrown away.

HOPE

In the fiftieth year the people lived in the light of the forgiveness of sins, walked by obedience in harmony with the God who redeemed them, and in freedom from toil, received from the ground its life-sustaining benefits without any sweat on their brows (Genesis 2:16; 3:19). It was a sort of a garden of Eden, as if the curse had been lifted temporarily-but also a yearlong taste of the future when God’s promises would all be fulfilled, the blood of the covenant in full effect, the prisoners of hope freed, and the trumpet of liberation heard throughout the world (Zechariah 9:11-14). The Year of Jubilee foreshadowed what would yet be the eternal inheritance and bliss of the people of God.

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