Jubilee! (1) by J. Preston Eby

Jubilee!         (1)

by J. Preston Eby

Back to Savior of the World Series Index 

The Year of Jubilee 
The Inheritance 
 Tracing Our Inheritance 
 Inheritance Lost 
Redemption 
 Redemption vs. Jubilee 
 Limited Redemption 
Jubilee! 
The Blowing Of Trumpets 
 The Jubilee Trumpet 


THE YEAR OF JUBILEE 

For hours the trumpet sounds blasted and reverberated against the mountains, echoing and reechoing across the valleys of the land of Canaan. While the trumpets continued unrelentingly to proclaim their message, slaves said goodbye to their masters, forfeited farms and properties were judicially restored to their owners, and prisoners sang and shouted for joy as they left the prisons. What was going on? It was the Day of Atonement in the Year of Jubilee. Old men had waited fifty years for this to happen, and young men had never witnessed a day like it before!

The law of Jubilee is given in the book of Leviticus. "And you shall number seven sabbaths of years, seven times seven years; and the space of the seven sabbaths of years shall be unto you forty and nine years. THEN you shall cause the trumpet of the Jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month, in the Day of Atonement shall you make the trumpet sound throughout all your land. And you shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof, it shall be a Jubilee unto you; and you shall return every man unto his posession, and you shall return every man unto his family" (Lev. 25:8-10).

The rest of the chapter goes into detail about the law of Jubilee. Let us see what the word Jubilee actually means. The Hebrew word for Jubilee is YOBEL which means a loud, long blast by a ram's horn. It means first of all the ram's horn itself and the sound of the horn, but it further means the Festival introduced by the blowing of the ram's horn. In time the word YOBEL came to mean a trumpet. It is translated twenty-one times as "Jubilee," five times as "ram's horn," and once as "trumpet". Therefore Jubilee means a curved trumpet, the blowing of the trumpet, and the Festival the sounding of the trumpet introduces.

Every fifty years a change took place in Israel. There were four specific things ordained by God to take place in the Year of Jubilee. First, the land and the people were to enjoy a full year of holy vacation. A time of hilarious joy, there was to be no sowing or reaping, none of the toil of harvest or of vintage. The people were to live simply on what they had preserved from the previous year, and what they could gather from what grew spontaneously of itself. Second, all debts were cancelled. Every Israelite was released from his indebtedness and financial obligations. Third, liberty was proclaimed to all Israelites who were in bondage to any of their countrymen. It was the time of total release when every slave and every bondman in Israel working off bad debts or those in debtor's prison were released to a fresh start. The fourth feature of this year was that there was to be a return of ancestral possessions to those who had been compelled to sell them because of poverty or surrender them to creditors in payment for their debts. Every homestead was to be restored to the family to whom it had been allotted when the tribes originally inherited the land. These were the four main provisions of the Year of Jubilee: a year of sabbath for the land and for the people, release from all debt, a returning of every slave to his family, and the return of every man to his possession and inheritance.

On a practical level this law was very important. The Year of Jubilee was a refreshing sabbath-rest both to the people and to the land which God gave them. It was the chief of a series of sabbaths or rests given to Israel. They had a sabbath DAY every seventh day. The sabbath YEAR occurred every seventh year. In it the land was allowed to rest, no crops were to be planted, nor were they to prune or harvest. Walk through Israel's land at such a time, and, lo! every one sits under his vine and under his fig tree in peace. No sound of the oxen treading out the corn, no shouting from the vineyard; a strange stillness over all the land, while its summer days are as bright as ever, and its people as happy as a nation on earth could be found. Amid the rest which in a nation of agriculturists would be nearly equivalent to universal cessation from toil - how continually do the godly sing the praises of Jehovah! And, besides all this, no man appropriated to himself anything that the land then produced; all was common, to the rich, to the poor, to the Hebrew, to the stranger - a token of the restoration of mutual love. Rest on the ground, among the beasts of the field, in the dwellings of men, with praise and worship unceasingly ascending from harp and psaltery and gracious lips, while every man partook of earth's produce as freely as his neighbor - might not Israel say, "Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; let the sea roar, and the fullness thereof. Let the field be joyful, and all that is therein; then shall all the trees of the wood rejoice before the Lord" (Ps. 96:11-12).

Beyond these seventh-year sabbaths lay the grand Year of Jubilee. Israel was given a cycle of seven of these sabbath years, embracing a period of seven-times seven years, a total of forty-nine years; then there was to be a sabbath of sabbaths the fiftieth year -- the year of jubilee!

In that old Hebrew world that lies so far back in the dim twilight of the past, there are several customs, of more than transient interest, which claim our attention when we come to the Year of Jubilee. When Israel came into Canaan, the land was divided among them by lot, according to their tribes and families. Every family received a lot of inheritance, that is, a homestead. Success thereafter might increase, or adversity decrease, their individual possessions, as the case might be. If a man became involved in debt, he might be obliged to sell a part or even all of his property. But God made a bountiful provision for the unfortunate: He arranged that such adverse circumstances might not continue forever, but that all their accounts credits and debts - must be reckoned only to the Jubilee Year, when all must be freed from old encumbrances, etc., to make a fresh start for the next term of fifty years. The man of avarice, who had gone on adding house to house and field to field, gained no permanent advantage over his less fortunate neighbor.

The fiftieth year, beyond which no lease could run, was always approaching with silent but sure speed, to relax his tenacious grasp. However alienated, however unworthily or unthriftily sold, however strongly conveyed to the purchaser or the usurper an estate might be, this long-expected Day annulled the whole transaction, and placed the debtor in the position which either he or his ancestor had enjoyed.

The property which every man had in his dividend of the land of Canaan could not be alienated any longer than till the Year of Jubilee. Now this was no worry to the purchaser, because the Year of Jubilee was fixed, and every man knew when it would come, and made his bargain accordingly. A person under God's system never did sell his land permanently, but he could make leases for any limited term of years, not going beyond the next Jubilee. That year it would again revert to its rightful owner. Today we operate by leases. People may have a five-year lease, or a fifty-year lease, or a ninety-nine year lease. When the lease expires, the property returns to the owner. God worked on that basis, also. Anyone purchasing land, or any creditor foreclosing on a property, automatically understood that what he was receiving could only be held until the Year of Jubilee when all leases and liens expired. When selling (leasing) a property neither the buyer nor the seller must overreach. It must be settled what the clear yearly value of the land was, and then how many years' purchase it was worth till the Year of Jubilee. The scale of prices was to be regulated by the Jubilee. If that glorious event were at hand, the price was low; if far off, the price was high. It is easy to observe that the nearer Jubilee was the less must the value of the land be.

"And if you sell ought unto your neighbor, or buy ought of your neighbor's hand, you shall not oppress one another: according to the number of years after the Jubilee you shall buy of your neighbor, and according unto the number of years of the fruits be shall sell unto you: according to the multitude of years you shall increase the price thereof, and according to the fewness of years you shall diminish the price of it: for according to the number of the years of the fruits does he sell unto you" (Lev. 25:14-16). Such was the law of Jubilee!

The great reason for this is revealed in Lev. 25:23. Says the Lord, "The land shall not be sold forever: for the land is Mine; for you are strangers and sojourners with Me." The Amplified Bible reads, "The land shall not be sold into perpetual ownership, for the land is Mine; you are only strangers and temporary residents with Me." The Lord, in allusion to Egyptian affairs, says, "THE LAND IS MINE."

The land in Egypt was properly the king's; and all the people were his tenants, since the days of Joseph (Gen. 47:13-26). On the other hand, Israel's land belonged to Jehovah; and the people were His guests, or tenants, sojourners with Him." Here, then, we have the special feature of the Lord's land. HE would have it enjoy a sabbatic year, and in that year there was to be the evidence of the rich profusion with which HE would bless those who were tenants under Him. "And if you shall say, What shall we eat the seventh year? behold, we shall not sow, nor gather in our increase: then I will command my blessing upon you in the sixth year, and it shall bring forth fruit for three years. And you shall sow the eighth year, and eat yet of the old fruit until the ninth year; until her fruits come in you shall eat of the old store" (Lev. 25:20-22). Happy, highly privileged tenantry! What an honor to hold immediately under Jehovah! No rent! No taxes! No burdens! Well might it be said, "Happy is the people that is in such a case; yea, happy is the people whose God is Jehovah!"

The sweet singer of Israel expressed it thus: "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof; the world and they that dwell therein" (Ps. 24:1). In the light of this scripture I would like to reaffirm something which the world at large, and many Christians, seem to have forgotten: This is God's World! Long before time began ... long before a single heavenly body inhabited the vast regions of space...God was. I cannot imagine what it could have been like not to have a world ... with its towering mountains, its vast canyons, and its majestic waterfalls thundering down from the awesome heights in indescribable power, then sweeping on to the seas. The total absence of all these things is beyond my poor, limited comprehension. But the truth remains, as stated in the first four words of scripture: "In the beginning God..." Long before the worlds were made ... long before the billows rolled across the boundless seas ... long before the mountains thrust their towering, snow-capped peaks up through the clouds.. long before there was one flower, or the song of any bird, or the roar of any beast...yes, long before there was anything at all...There was God. Then the blessed Word of God rolls back the curtain of antiquity and shows us God at work, creating all that is, and all that ever was. This passage of scripture goes a mighty step further and establishes for all time and eternity the ownership of this world: "In the beginning GOD created the heavens and the earth." He made it, and it is His. No one can take it from Him. It was then that God wrote His signature of ownership - a signature that reaches from the earth to the farthest outposts of the cosmos.

For this reason no man in Israel, the Kingdom of God on earth, had any right to sell any portion of it in perpetuity. The Lord wished each tribe, and each family of a tribe, to retain its original hereditary possessions under Him, for it was given by God, and they were His people. As state earlier, on a practical level this law was very important. The wonderful provision of the Jubilee Year can better be appreciated when one considers, not only the beneficial results to the individual Israelites, but especially the effect on the nation as a whole. The Jubilee prevented the accumulation of land and wealth in the hands of a few. It prohibited the covetous and ambitious from "adding field to field" whereby the rich became richer and the poor became poorer. It raised legally and at regular intervals families and individuals out of destitution and gave them a fresh start. The slate was wiped clean. 

Without Jubilee there was a good possibility of one tribe eventually incurring such debt so as to completely lose all their inheritance, their possession, their identity. So God gave them a law that every fifty years, no matter how much debt someone owed, it was to be cancelled. You can be certain that every lender took Jubilee into consideration when making a loan! The Jubilee prevented a great internal debt and its resultant false prosperity, bringing inflation, deflation and business depression. The national economy would always be stable and the nation would have no crushing debt (Deut. 15:6). If these laws had been observed, it would have made Israel the most prosperous and perfect and powerful nation ever to have existed!

If an Israelite, through the stress of bad seasons and disappointing harvests, or unwise business practices, were to fall into deep indebtedness to some rich neighboring creditor so much so that he owed him more than even the land of his inheritance was worth - he was permitted, not only to alienate his land till the Year of Jubilee, but to sell himself and/or his family into slavery so as to work off his debt. Let me give you an illustration of what this law meant to Israel. In II Kings chapter four we read of a case where a widow is faced with a large debt left by her husband, and the creditors are coming to take her two sons into slavery to pay off the debt. In this case, Elisha the prophet provided a miracle of multiplying oil to pay off the debt. But in many cases like this there was no Elisha around with a miracle, and the sons were taken away from their home and their mother to work for a stranger as a slave. But only until the year of Jubilee!

Let me give you and example. Jacob owed a huge debt to a Hittite by the name of Ephron, and as the years passed by it became increasingly evident that he would never get it paid off. In fact, each year he fell further and further behind. Finally, there was nothing to do but surrender the property to Ephron and himself with his wife, Sarah, and their young son, Eli, as bond servants in payment for the debt. It was a painful thing for Jacob and his loved ones to say farewell to his humble home and endeared possessions, in which his forefathers had lived and thrived, to go forth into the service of another. With tears of sorrow they walked around the sprawling plot, which he might not live to revisit. Ephron turned out to be a hard task-master and compelled Jacob's family to work long hours. Within a few years Jacob's health began to fail, and soon thereafter he died. A few years later his wife, Sarah, also died of a fever. Little Eli, now fifteen years old, was left alone as the slave of the cruel Ephron. There lingered in his memory cherished thoughts of his carefree childhood on the old home place when the children played together and had such fun. No time for fun now! He was not his own, and there was nowhere to go. What a miserable way to live, he often thought, yet as long as he was alive there was hope that someday, somehow, things would be different.

Soon after Eli's eighteenth birthday Ephron departed on a journey. One afternoon Eli was strolling through his master's field when he heard an unexpected sound. It was the long blast of a trumpet in the distance. The trumpet continued to blow, becoming louder and louder, as other trumpets joined its note from various directions. While standing in wonderment as to what was the meaning of this event, he heard a great commotion. It appeared that a group of people were running along the road in a state of great excitement, shouting and laughing as they went. Finally he waxed bold and stopped an old man with a long, white beard and asked what was going on. "Why, son, haven't you heard? This is the Year of Jubilee. Just started today - this very hour, to be sure. Can't you hear the trumpet? Oh, I guess you're so young you've never seen a Jubilee before! It's the time when all debts are cancelled, and all slaves are freed, and all homesteads restored to their rightful owners." Eli stood transfixed on the side of the road, his mouth open, his eyes wide with astonishment and disbelief. "All slaves are fr ... free ... freed?" he stuttered. "Yes, my boy," the old man assured him, "all slaves are as free as the birds as of right now." "But ... but I'm a slave!" Eli blurted. "Then leave this place, lad," commanded the white-haired stranger, "you're as free as the air. Go home! Go to your family, sit under your own vine. What rightfully belongs to you is really yours now."

The chains of servitude fell from the soul of the exulting slave. Within the hour he gathered his meager belongings and set forth from the house of bondage, and felt himself possessed of liberty which no hand of power or of fraud might invade. He made his way across the miles to the old home place, to his father's farm, and ordered the strangers occupying it to vacate. He started living in his childhood home again, and eating the fruit of his own land. No more serving as a slave; he was working for himself, in his own inheritance. And it was not by anything he had done. He had not earned his freedom. It was just the sovereign law of God that set him free. All that he had to do was believe it, head for home, and claim his inheritance! Thus every fiftieth year, counting from the time of their entrance into Canaan, was to Israel a Year of Jubilee, a time of rejoicing and restitution, in which families were reunited and lost homesteads were restored. Restoration of every man to his own possession brought great joy, cancellation of all debts brought relief and gladness, and release of all slaves inspired much jubilation and celebration. So marked was the wisdom, so manifold were the blessings of this divine institution! No wonder it was called a JUBILEE!.......

http://www.tentmaker.org/articles/savior-of-the-world/