Jubilee

Image by Robert Dodd

"The land must not be sold forever,

for the land belongs to Me (God).

You are only foreigners and

tenant farmers working for Me."

~Leviticus 25:23

Back when I thought the Old Testament was mostly evil, I though that the Book of Leviticus was pretty well the prime example of that. I have to say that my opinions are much changed since then (though some parts I still find questionable, like not planting two kinds of seed in one field - ever hear of mixed cover crops?) Some parts of Leviticus though are breathtaking in their economic and social justice aspects, and even in their ecological and environmental justice aspects. Unfortunately as regards the Jubilee, the Israelites seem to have abandoned those commandments the minute they arrived in Canaan. There is no evidence that Jubilee was ever observed in anything like the way that God commanded it in Leviticus. While the Sabbath Year was somewhat more likely to have been observed at least some of the time, I am not sure that the observance of this was very consistent either. It required a certain amount of faith to NOT plow or plant one year out of seven. This means you would have not only not had any food production for one year, but you would have had to wait for the second year's harvest to get any new food in your pantry. This in some ways was a re-enactment of the Israelites absolute dependence on God in the Sinai desert during the Exodus.

THE SABBATH YEAR

According to Leviticus, not only human beings were required to observe the Sabbath. The land itself had its own Sabbath, once every seven years. Back in those days, people did not know that letting the land lie fallow restored its fertility, but in retrospect we can see that this was in keeping with what we would call sustainable land practices. In this way the farmers would not wear out the land but would give it a chance to recover naturally from the depredations of farming. During the Sabbath Year, farmers could not plow or sow or participate in any of their normal food-growing activities. If their land produced something anyway, they could not store or sell it but had to eat it right there in the field or let it lie, and any animals or passersby could do the same in your field and you were not to prevent it. It is not clear to me how pastoral people (which were the majority of people in Judah at least) would observe this as they weren't farmers but herders of sheep and cattle and goats and such. I suppose in a sense they were always observing it as they typically would not plow or plant or harvest.

Lets digress a moment to consider what a Sabbath, any kind of Sabbath, is. Genesis said that on the seventh day the Lord rested and so we should, and that clearly applies to the rejuvenating effects of a Sabbath Year on the land itself, but that does not exhaust what a Sabbath means in its entirety. For six days human beings look at what THEY are doing, they are concerned and thinking about what THEY are doing, but on the seventh they observe what GOD is doing and their own action is forbidden. It is also clear that in certain contexts human work was considered unclean and human-worked objects were also considered unclean in certain contexts. This ties in to the iconoclasm of Judaism: no image and nothing like an image of the Lord was allowed, and even human words were kept at a respectful distance. When Moses met God, God simply referred to himself as "I am what I am." God's name is not truly Jehovah, it is referred to as (YHVH) and the true Name is not capable of being spoken by a human mouth. Even the name (YHVH) is circumscribed in ritual and prohibition, you are not truly supposed to ever really say that or any vowel substitution of it. You say "Adonai" which is the majestic plural of "My Lord." Many Jews prefer the name "Hashem" which simply means "The Name." This is an indication that human concepts, words, images, physical works, idols certainly, are considered contaminated as respects God. So the Sabbath Day is not only a day of rest, it is a day set apart to God which human action should not tread upon. The Sabbath Year is the same way.

In modern ecological terms, the Sabbath Year, a year in which the whole land of Israel is allowed to grow wild, is clearly beneficial to the recovery of the native plant and animal species as well as the soil. For human beings though, it is a year in which farmers can make no money and are entirely dependent on stored foodstuffs and what they can gather. It is a test of faith, potentially a very trying test of faith. There is very little doubt that people cheated on this, grew food on the Sabbath Year, and so undermined the whole ultimately beneficial process. So it is quite unlikely that the Sabbath Year was ever observed consistently over the whole of the Holy Land. Yet again the people of Israel, being people, being fickle and selfish as all humans are, forgot all about God once their personal conditions were improved.

THE JUBILEE YEAR

"Jubilee either means 'a trumpet-blast of liberty' or a "shout for joy" depending on the interpretation of the root. Israel's frequent defiance of the Sabbath Year commandments was nothing compared to their defiance of the Jubilee Year. There is no evidence that this was EVER observed once the Hebrews entered Canaan. Nowadays those Jews who still consider this a thing, say that the Jubilee cannot be observed because the Lost Tribes have not returned to Israel so there is no one to return to their ancestral lands. I am not sure where God ever allowed that as an exemption, but there is no doubt that the concept of the Jubilee Year is very drastically hostile to the way humans do business in general. So even if the Lost Tribes return, which will happen about the same time cows jump over the Moon, it ain't happening because people don't want it to.

After a week of sabbath years, 7x7=49 years, there was supposed to be a sort of super-Sabbath Year which was the Jubilee Year. A Jubilee Year was sort of total reset of everything: every member of every tribe was supposed to go back to the ancestral lands of their tribe, abandoning their land if it was part of the ancestral land of another tribe. Every debt was erased, every Hebrew slave freed. Those who had become huge wealthy landowners since the last Jubilee had to return whatever land belonged to those original landowners. Had this been done, the effects on economic injustice and social cohesion would have been tremendous. Instead of poor people being trapped for generations in unpayable debts, which often happened, they were relieved of their debts on the Jubilee Year. Instead of slaves being slaves forever, they were released. The members of a tribe would have had to get along in order to apportion land fairly that hadn't been home to some of them in their lifetimes. Imagine if in this country (America,) the reset button were hit every 49 years and the whole landmass of the country were fairly apportioned to its millions of households. Structures would have to be bulldozed, suburban sprawl turned to the plow, every household in America suddenly being apportioned an average of 20 acres in places they don't now live. It's incomprehensible.

The concepts of the Jubilee and the Sabbath Year are the ultimate in what we today call sustainability and permaculture (a culture capable of continuing indefinitely without destroying either human beings or the environment):

Socially, because debts are forgiven, slaves are freed, and familial and tribal bonds are renewed.

Politically because they reinforce the sovereignty of God

Ecologically because the fallow land refreshes itself and wild plants and animals and the soil have their chance to recover from human depredations.  

Economically because the poor get to start over and the rich are prevented from concentrating wealth at the expense of the welfare of the majority of people. 

Both the Sabbath Year and the Jubilee Year are based on a fundamental concept: if you live in the Holy Land, it's not YOUR land at all. It's GOD's land, which he is kindly letting you live on. You are a tenant, not an owner. This would be true of the whole planet too, but only the Israelites were talking to God, so they were the only ones to hear that word (which they tended to ignore.) This is a faith and a submission that seems too high for us to live, and was too high for the Israelites too, but is ultimately fundamental to the way the Earth and the human destiny on it should be perceived. What was the Flood but God taking back what is his? What will be the apocalypse if not God taking back what is his? We may think we own it and the devil may think he has dominion over it, but ultimately the landlord is going to throw out the bad tenants. The land is the LORD'S, not ours. And the Lord cares for HIS LAND no less than he cares for HIS people. His, not ours. The land like his servants are belonging to and in submission to Him.

This brings to mind the promise from Revelation:

"The nations were angry, and your wrath has come.
The time has come.. to destroy those who destroy the earth."

~Revelation 11:18

While neither the Israelites nor humans generally do a very good job of observing God's laws, the Sabbath Year and the Jubilee which was intended to express God's rule over the Holy Land is also a foreglimpse of the ultimate Kingdom of God as Isaiah in 2:2-4 and elsewhere shows us. A kingdom not ruled by human kings, but by God alone. But it is not only a vision of a future world, it is a challenge to us today to live as much as possible according to those commands.