year of Jubilee

The Gospel as a Year of Jubilee

Lois Tverberg

by Lois Tverberg

In Leviticus, we read an intriguing law that God gave Israel about observing a year of Jubilee:

‘You are also to count off seven sabbaths of years for yourself, seven times seven years, so that you have the time of the seven sabbaths of years, namely, forty-nine years. ‘You shall then sound a ram’s horn abroad on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the day of atonement you shall sound a horn all through your land. ‘You shall thus consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim a release through the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, and each of you shall return to his own property, and each of you shall return to his family. ‘You shall have the fiftieth year as a jubilee; you shall not sow, nor reap its aftergrowth, nor gather in from its untrimmed vines. (Lev 25:8 – 11)

God proclaimed that every seventh year was to be a sabbath for the land: crops were not to be planted, and they were to live on what God had provided before that time and what grew up by itself.

After seven sabbath years came a year of Jubilee, which along with being a Sabbath for the land, also was a “year of release.” This meant that all Israelites who were in bondage were freed, and anyone who had sold his ancestral property would receive it back, and all debts were forgiven. The word “Jubilee” comes from the word Yovel, a Hebrew word for the ram’s horn that was used to proclaim the year.

Another name for it was a “year of release (deror).”  The Hebrew word deror means “release” or “liberty.” Early Americans, who knew their Bibles better than we do, placed Leviticus 25:10 on the Liberty Bell: “Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants thereof.”

Our founding fathers found inspiration in the year of Jubilee as they were establishing the United States. What did they find so special about this concept?

The Purpose of the Year of Jubilee

As part of God’s covenant with Israel, he promised to give the Israelites the land of Canaan. After the conquest of the land, it was divided among the tribes so that each family had its own share. In the ancient world, owning land was greatly prized because it was a source of food, income and security.

In that economy where people depended on the crops they raised, if a family had a bad harvest and ran out of food, they were forced to go into debt or even sell their land. If they couldn’t recover but fell further behind, they would have to sell themselves into slavery or leave the country, like Naomi and Elimelech in the book of Ruth.

People did not borrow money and sell land for business purposes, they did it only out of desperate economic need. So the Jubilee was for one main purpose — to provide for the poor who had gone into debt or lost their land, so that they would be able to start over again. Without it, the wealthy would always do better in bad years, and the land would tend to move into their hands while those who had lost their land would become permanently enslaved.

Another effect of the Jubilee would be to stop the destruction of families. If a man lost his land and sold himself and his family into slavery, or if he moved out of the country, he would likely never see his family together again. Part of the reason Naomi was distraught was because not only had she lost her hope for future descendants, but by leaving Israel, she also lost her family and past. When she returned, she was reunited with her family.

The year of Jubilee was to be a year that people returned home and families were brought together again.

The evidence suggests that Israel never observed the year of Jubilee. In 2 Chronicles it reports that they never allowed the land to have its Sabbath every seventh year, and if they never did that, they most likely never observed the year of Jubilee either. Several of the prophets lament the exploitation of the poor by the rich, which also hints that they never observed a Jubilee year.

There is, however, evidence from other Middle Eastern countries that years of release were proclaimed in ancient times when a new king came into power. It would be a way to ensure support from the masses when a king would declare all debts void and set free all those in bondage to debt.

It is interesting that the prophets thought of this association of a year of Jubilee with the coming of the Messiah. The primary image of the Messiah was that he would be a king like David, so just as the new kings of other countries declared a Jubilee when they came into power, the Messianic king would as well. Isaiah says:

The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me,
because the LORD has anointed me
to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners,
to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor. (Is 61:1-2)

This is a picture of the coming messianic King, right after he is anointed by God, declaring good news of the jubilee year. Each phrase is about how great the “year of the Lord’s favor” will be to those who have been imprisoned or enslaved because of their debt. The king will let them go home and start life over, to their great joy.

Jesus and the Year of Jubilee

In Luke 4, at the beginning of his ministry, Jesus reads the passage from Isaiah 61 in the synagogue in his hometown, and he says “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing!” his audience would have heard this as an obvious claim to be the Messiah who has now come into power.

Throughout Jesus’ ministry he uses images from the year of Jubilee, but he takes the image of the poor person set free from debt, and uses debt as a metaphor of sin. For instance, when the sinful woman comes and washes his feet with her tears and Simon, his host, wonders if he knows what a sinner she is, he tells the parable:

Two men owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he canceled the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?” Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt canceled.” “You have judged correctly,” Jesus said. (Luke 7:41-43)

The poor who are set free in the Messianic kingdom are the poor in spirit, those who know they are in debt to God because of their sin. So the “good news of the kingdom of God” is that the Messianic King has come, and has declared complete forgiveness of debt — sin —for those who will repent and enter his kingdom. It is good news to the poor rather than to the rich who don’t see that they need to be forgiven.

We see in Jesus’ use of the picture of the Jubilee the greatest picture of God’s grace through Christ. Those in prison are those who are under a crushing debt they could never repay. We see Jesus, the new king, setting prisoners free of debt that they owe because of their sin. Through Jesus’ work on the cross, those who become a part of his Kingdom receive a forgiveness of a debt they cannot repay themselves so that they can start over as new person.

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Photos: Tony the Misfit on Flickr [CC BY 2.0], Nitin Bhosale on Unsplash, Peter Paul Rubens [Public domain]

Good News to the Poor

Lois Tverberg

by Lois Tverberg

The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed (“messiah”ed) me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor. Isaiah 61:1-2, quoted in Luke 4:18-19

Poor womanJesus stood up in in the synagogue at Nazareth and quoted the words of Isaiah 61, and then said, “Today these words are fulfilled in your hearing.” He was applying to himself the role of the “Anointed” one, the Messiah, who was bringing a year of Jubilee, “the year of the LORD’s favor.”

When we hear about a year of Jubilee as a picture of the coming of Christ, we think of it as a joyous year of celebration. We may think about how no one could till their land that year, so it sounds like a wonderful time of ease and rest, like heaven itself. Or we may think of how wonderful it would be to have all our debts forgiven.

The thing that is puzzling is that it describes the Jubilee as “good news to the poor.” Why wouldn’t the Jubilee be good news to everyone? If we look at the observance of the Jubilee year, it really would only be a delight for the poorest people in the land. For the rich who had bought land, they would have lost their holdings by giving it back to the original owners.

For all, it would have been a time of relative lack – they still had to feed their families, but the fields were not to be planted. That meant that for that one year, the farm-based society had to live on savings, or else glean from what grew up on its own, like the poor people did all the time. The day laborer, who earned barely enough each day to feed his family, would find that year especially difficult because he would not be able to get work on farms.

The only person who would greatly benefit from the Jubilee is the poorest of the poor, who had become so impoverished that he had to borrow (which was only done in desperation), or was forced to sell his land, or even be thrown in debtor’s prison. For him, he experienced the greatest joy at being released from debt that was strangling him.

That can actually teach us about Jesus’ mission, because if we see that debt was a metaphor for sin in the time of Jesus, we see his true mission on earth. It was only the truly poor in spirit who wanted mercy from the Messiah. Most of the society was looking for a Messiah who would come as military King who would judge and destroy their enemies and liberate them. They saw themselves as basically righteous, and their enemies as the sinners of the world. Only those who recognized their own sinfulness would see the great debt they were in, and would want a messiah to come who would come with forgiveness for both them and their enemies. For these, Jesus truly had come with the good news of Jubilee.

Photo: Augustus Binu

Time for a Change

Lois Tverberg

by Lois Tverberg

The LORD said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, “This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year.” Exodus 12:1-2

Egyptian CalendarThe very first instruction that God gave the Israelites as they were leaving Egypt was to establish a new calendar that was utterly unlike the Egyptian calendar. This may not seem significant to us, but how we measure time is fundamental for how we look at life. Our calendars define the importance of the day to the entire culture, saying whether we should work, rest or worship, or think about some great event in our past.

This was especially critical as the Israelites left the powerful nation of Egypt, which had strongly influenced their thinking while they lived there. Egypt had a twelve-month solar calendar that was entirely organized around the veneration of their gods. Their year started in late June when the brightest star in the sky, Sirius, arose, about the time of the flooding of the Nile. They spent five days in feasting and worship beforehand, pleading with their gods for a good flood of the Nile and good harvest for that year. Each of the 36 ten-day weeks of the year was dedicated to a different god.

In contrast, God instructed Israel to mark time by remembering their redemption from Egypt. Their calendar no longer focused on idolatrous gods, but on permanently remembering the true God that loved them so much that he freed them from slavery. Every aspect of their calendar repeated this motif. The other major feast of the year, the feast of booths (Sukkot), also focused on reliving their time in the wilderness after God brought them out of Egypt. Even the seven-day week was founded on remembering how God had granted them rest from slavery:

You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out of there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God commanded you to observe the sabbath day. Deut. 5:15

Exodus

Also, the law to celebrate the fiftieth year as a Year of Jubilee was also founded on the idea that they set free those who are in debt, just as God set them free.

If one of your countrymen becomes poor among you and sells himself to you, do not make him work as a slave. He is to be treated as a hired worker or a temporary resident among you; he is to work for you until the Year of Jubilee. Then he and his children are to be released. Because the Israelites are my servants, whom I brought out of Egypt, they must not be sold as slaves. Lev. 25:39-41

All of their worship and time focused on remembering how God saved them and took them to be their people. In the same way, we as Christians should continually remind ourselves of our redemption in Christ, the Passover Lamb, by his death for our sins. Every day of our lives should revolve around living out of this truth.

Photo: Hans Bernhard (Schnobby) and Edward Poynter

The Coming of the Jubilee

Lois Tverberg

by Lois Tverberg

“A moneylender had two debtors: one owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they were unable to repay, he graciously forgave them both. So which of them will love him more?” Simon answered and said, “I suppose the one whom he forgave more.”
– Luke 7:41-43

In the parable above that Jesus tells after the sinful woman has anointed his feet, he likens the person who is a sinner to one who is a debtor. He also does this in the parable of the unmerciful servant, who has a debt to the king that he can never repay (Matt 18:23-35).

Jesus frequently uses the image of debt as a way to describe guilt from sin. To us they aren’t parallels because borrowing money or possessions isn’t sinful. But one of the words in Hebrew, hayav, that means “debtor,” also is used to describe a person who is guilty of sin. There is an overlap conceptually, because both require restoration – either of the money borrowed or reparations to the victim of the sin. In the Lord’s prayer, Jesus was most likely using the word hayav when he said “forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.”

Jesus' Feet WashedIt is interesting to relate this idea to another one that Jesus used in his ministry – the Year of Jubilee. During the Year of Jubilee in Israel, all debts were to be forgiven, and any land that a family had been forced to sell in a time of famine could be reclaimed by them. It is interesting that the prophets and rabbis connected this thought of the year of Jubilee with the coming of the Messiah. In fact, one of Jesus’ first public statements about his ministry was to quote Isaiah 61, which says that he was anointed to proclaim “the year of the Lord’s favor,” meaning, the Jubilee year (Luke 4:19).

Through Jesus’ use of the image of the Jubilee, we can see God’s enormous grace – those who have been forgiven the greatest debt, like the sinful woman in the painting, love the most in return. It is good news to the “poor in spirit,” the humble and contrite of heart who see the need to be forgiven of sin (Isaiah 66:2). Through Jesus’ gift on the cross, those who will become a part of his Kingdom receive a forgiveness of debt far greater than they could pay themselves, and a chance to start over with life anew.

Photo: Ermitage, Sankt Petersburg

John and His Baptism

Ed Visser

by Pastor Ed Visser

…the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the desert. He went into all the country around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. – Luke 3:2-3

Jordan RiverJohn the Baptist is an interesting character. A cousin of Jesus from a priestly family, John spent his time in the desert rather than the Temple. When he came out of the desert, he looked like Elijah — Jesus would later say that he was the “Elijah to come” — and he began baptizing people in the Jordan River.

A Jewish practice, baptism was by self-immersion, which explains why the earliest picture of John baptizing Jesus (from catacombs in 2nd century) shows John standing on the bank, extending a hand to help Jesus out of the water. John’s baptism is described as a ritual immersion for ‘forgiveness of sins,’ a term related to Jubilee. The Jubilee year begins on Yom Kippur, looking forward to God sending the Redeemer after he forgave their national sins. John is calling Israel to take a step of repentance & obedience, believing the Redeemer to be at hand.

When Jesus appears on the scene, John senses the time has come. But as the months go by, John begins to have some questions — especially when he is thrown into prison by Herod Antipas.

When John heard in prison what Christ was doing, he sent his disciples to ask him,“Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?” Matthew 11:2-3

John’s confusion comes from his expectation that Jesus would begin baptizing not only with the Spirit, but with fire — the fire of judgment on Israel’s enemies. But John wasn’t seeing the fire! Jesus later tells his disciples that there would be two comings: his first would offer salvation; his second would bring the fire of judgment on those who deserved it (as well as final vindication for his people, eternally). John died, however, without the full explanation.

Jordan RiverThe New Testament places John’s ministry in the desert in the regions of the Jordan. As we toured Israel, we discussed the idea that the term for desert (midbar) could simply mean “unsettled places” where flocks could graze. There are many such places around the Jordan, especially north of the Sea of Galilee. Dr. Steven Notley, one of our guides, suggested that it was likely John spent more of his time at the northern Jordan, immersing where the river is “pure” (south of Galilee, several other rivers join with the Jordan, making it apparently “impure” by rabbinic standards). Later, Jesus would meet crowds who were like “sheep without a shepherd” in this area. These may have been John’s disciples, looking for a new leader (Jesus!).

Jesus in the Synagogue

Ed Visser

by Pastor Ed Visser

On the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read. The scroll of Isaiah the prophet was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me …” Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them,
“Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
Luke 4:16-21

Moses SeatMany of the places we visited in Israel boasted the ruins of ancient synagogues. As we read in this passage, Jesus was in the habit of attending synagogues in Galilee, often being asked to read the
Bible and preach. In those days, that entailed reading a prescribed Torah passage & a self-chosen portion from the prophets, all done standing. Then the reader would sit in Moses’ Seat and share what the Scripture meant to him (the sermon).

One Sabbath Jesus was invited to do so in his hometown synagogue in Nazareth. We don’t know what the Torah portion was for the day, but Jesus chose to read Isaiah 61:1-2, changing the reading in a couple of important ways: 1) he dropped the last half of Isaiah 61:2, “the day of vengeance of our God”; and 2) he added a phrase from Isaiah 58:6, “to release the oppressed.” While this may seem like Scriptural manipulation to us, it was a a very acceptable form of biblical interpretation for the Jews, in which they linked verses that contained similar words or phrases to make their point. So what was Jesus’ point?

CapernaumSynagogueThe Isaiah 61 passage had been linked with the biblical theme of Jubilee, freedom from slavery and return to the land (when in exile). But it also was seen as the promise of the coming messiah, who would bring not only Jubilee for Israel, but God’s judgment on their oppressors. Thus, many (including John the Baptizer) expected messiah to bring freedom by coming with a sword.

Jesus’ changes in the reading were his way of challenging faulty expectations. Messiah was not coming with “vengeance” (at least not yet), and Jubilee was to be a mutual effort of Messiah and the people of God. Messiah brought freedom from sin. But Isaiah 58 is a message calling Israel to enact Jubilee themselves by taking care of the poor & oppressed among them, not waiting for Messiah to do it! Jesus then sat on the Seat of Moses and told them that he was Messiah. But, as we gather from the Wheat & Weeds parable, the final judgment would come later, when he returned.

Until then, they, and we today, live in the Kingdom of God and are called to enact Jubilee on earth. How are we doing?