Jubilee Year.
Year of emancipation and restoration to be kept every fifty years. For Israel, the seventh year expressed at length the values of the seventh day (Lv 25:1–7). When a series of seventh years reached the perfection of seven sevens, the fiftieth year was heralded by the trumpet of jubilee and a whole additional year was 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, as is seen in Joshua 6, where different words express the “ordinary” trumpet used by the people and the ram’s horn carried and blown by the priests. 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. In Leviticus 25 this exact expression occurs in connection with the seventh year rather than expressly with the jubilee year. Functionally such a year was a sabbath rest “for the land” (v 4), and in its spiritual motivation it was “to the Lord” or “belonging to the Lord” (v 4). But nothing could more directly express the implications and orientations of the 50th year.
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 50th 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 shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; for you are strangers and sojourners with me” (Lv 25:23). In this verse “strangers” 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 then must acknowledge themselves to be when the jubilee year comes round. 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.
Redemption.
According to the ordinance, the trumpet which heralded the year was sounded on the Day of Atonement (Lv 25:9). That was the day on which the Lord proclaimed his people clean before him from all their sins (Lv 16:30). The forgiveness of sins ushered in the jubilee year. The verb “to redeem” and the noun “redemption” had a strong commercial use in the recovery of property pledged against loans of money, and in the 50th 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 (Ex 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 is urged (Lv 25:35–38), liberty is granted (vv 39–43), slavery in perpetuity is forbidden (vv 47–55) simply because the divine redemptive act makes the redeemed into brothers, brings them into the Lord’s servitude, and cancels the bondage that would otherwise be theirs forever. In this way too the year is the Lord’s: that they should imitate the excellencies of him who brought them out of darkness into his marvellous light (1 Pt 2:9).
Rest.
The correlative of redemption is rest. This rest is vividly illustrated and enforced as Moses legislates for rest from all the toil connected with promoting next year’s crop (Lv 25:4); rest from the toil of harvesting, for the people of God were to live hand to mouth, gathering only what and when need dictated (vv 5–7); rest from the anxious burden of debts incurred, and rest from slavery (v 10). Like the Sabbath this rest would have meant exactly what it said: freedom from toil; relaxation, refreshment, recreation. Very likely tiredness was as endemic among the people of God then as now, and grace drew near to give them a holiday. But equally 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 which 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 thus 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, ceased from the good in order to attain the best.
Faith.
But this standing back from life was not in the style of a drop-out. 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 (Lv 25:20); grace provides so that God’s people can enjoy the ordinances of grace (cf. Ex 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 (Lv 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 for no other reason than that he commands it. In the ordinance of the 50th year the people of God must show themselves as his obedient ones, and in fact their obedience is the guarantee of continuance in the land he has granted to them. Thus, for example, Leviticus 26:34, 35 teaches that loss of tenure and loss of liberty is directly related to contravention of the principle of the sabbath, found on the seventh day, seventh year, and jubilee year. Refusal of the way of obedience goes hand in hand with loss of possession, leaving behind an empty land which then enjoys the sabbath rest it never received from its disobedient inhabitants.
Hope.
In the 50th 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 (Gn 2:16; 3:19). It was a sort of Eden restored, the curse momentarily held in abeyance—but also a prolonged foretaste of the coming day when the promises would all be fulfilled, the blood of the covenant efficacious without hindrance, the prisoners of hope (i.e., who had waited in hope for their release) freed, and the trumpet of liberation heard throughout the world (Zec 9:11–14; Is 27:13). The jubilee year in a limited but real way foreshadowed what would yet be the eternal inheritance and bliss of the people of God.
See Feasts and Festivals of Israel; Biblical Theology.