The Holy Years

a. The sabbatical year

Yahweh spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai and said: 'Speak to the Israelites and say to them: When you enter the country which I am giving you, the land must keep a Sabbath's rest for Yahweh. For six years you will sow your field, for six years you will prune your vineyard and gather its produce. But in the seventh year the land will have a sabbatical rest, a Sabbath for Yahweh. You will neither sow your field, nor prune your vineyard nor reap grain which has grown of its own accord, nor gather the grapes from your untrimmed vine. It will be a year of rest for the land. But what the land produces in its Sabbath will serve to feed you, your slave, male and female, your employee and your guest residing with you; for your cattle too. and the wild animals of your country, whatever it produces will serve as food. ' (Leviticus 25:1-7)

b. The year of jubilee

You will count seven weeks of years -- seven times seven years, that is to say a period of seven weeks of years, forty-nine years. And on the tenth day of the seventh month you will sound the trumpet-call; on the Day of Expiation you will sound the trumpet throughout the land. You will declare this fiftieth year to be sacred and proclaim the liberation of all the country's inhabitants. You will keep this as a jubilee: each of you will return to his ancestral property, each to his own clan. This fiftieth year will be a jubilee year for you; in it you will not sow, you will not harvest the grain that has come up on its own or in it gather grapes from your untrimmed vine. The jubilee will be a holy thing for you; during it you will eat whatever the fields produce. (Leviticus 25:8-12)

Introduction

I suggest that you first read the whole of chapter 25 of the Book of Leviticus. However, enough of the chapter has been quoted above to give the feel for the great liberation intended by this piece of legislation. Every 7th year in the Promised Land is to be a sabbatical year - a year of rest for the land - in which the land will lie fallow and will not be worked by human hands. The 7th sabbatical year, i.e. every 49th year, is to be a very special sabbatical year. Moses is to sound the trumpet throughout the land of Israel, declare this 49th/50th year to be sacred, proclaim the liberation of all Israelites: "each of you is to return to his ancestral property, each to his own clan". The beginning of the Jubilee year then was to be a period of great rejoicing. Leviticus gives the impression of a great home-coming celebration.

Reading the passage just like that and at the same time keeping in mind verses one and two, we might furrow our brows trying to picture the whole situation. Yahweh is speaking to Moses in the third month after the Israelites' great liberation from Egypt. Moses is on Mount Sinai, which is a long way from the Promised Land. The Israelites, camped at the foot of the mountain, have yet to break camp and set out on the long journey, murmur against Yahweh and Moses many times on the way and as a result spend 40 years in the desert - as is described in the Book of Numbers. Furthermore the conquest of the promised land, as described in the Book of Joshua, has not yet taken place. Why then should there be this great rejoicing in the 49th/50th year after entry into the land? And what is this talk of liberation and of each one re- turning to his own inheritance and his own clan? Even Moses would have been perplexed.

Later in chapter 25 there is mention of buying and selling land "among yourselves" [v.l4], saying it is not to be sold outright [v.23]. Next there is mention of an Israelite being reduced to poverty [vv.25, 35, 39], and a question of loans without interest and even of a man having to sell himself [v.39]. All these things happen among Israelites, but in v.47 there is the possibility of an Israelite selling himself to a person who is not an Israelite. These references show that, in fact, the chapter is closely connected with the economic life and the structure of a society based on a land economy.

This suggests that a long story has to be told if we are to grasp the full import of chapter 25 of the Book of Leviticus and the kind of liberation the Jubilee Year was meant to bring.