Seder 98: Lev 25---Land Sabbaths and the Year of Jubilee

The sabbath and festivals wouild provide regular rhythms of rest and worship in Israel.  The land Sabbath--Ex 23:10-11; Lev 25:1-7---is also part of that picture.  Every seventh year the land was to receive a rest from cultivation, giving a break to both people and animals.  Today there are some in Israel who are keeping the sabbatical year again.  In general, those who follow this sabbatical principle experience blessing.  (By the way, 2021-2022 is a sabbatical year in Israel.)  

Leviticua 25 also describes the year of Jubilee, to be held either on every seventh sabbatical year or on the year after every seventh sabbatical year.  During a Jubilee year personal debts are forgiven and families regain ancestral lands that they have lost.  

In the ancient Near East kings sometimes declared times of debt forgiveness.  Interest rates were high (e.g., in Mesopotamia 1/60 of the principal of a loan was due every month, a 20% annual interest rate).  In these cultures, a lot of the debt being forgiven was owed to the king.  Kings drew their armies from landholders, and a landholder couldn't go out to battle if he was working to pay off a debt to someone else.  So this policy was in a king's best interest.  The Lev 25 Jubilee was intended to put this kind of clean slate on a regular schedule.  

The Bible does not tell us about any Israelite Jubilees.  That does not mean that none were held. Still, it seems likely that the Jubilee was too often a gift that remained unwrapped.  A Jubilee would have alleviated the economic oppression that led to the division of Israel into northern and southern kingdoms during the reign of Rehoboam (1 Kings 12), for example.  Later prophets would call the elite of Israelite society to account for their lack of help for the poor.

In his Nazareth synagogue sermon (Luke 4), Jesus declared a kind of Jubilee in which good news would be announced to the poor and captives would be freed.  

In a sermon at Church of the Messiah on April 2, 2022, Kyle Kettering called upon the congregation to practice the Jubilee principle.