there was to be a return of ancestral possessions to those who had been compelled to sell them because of poverty or surrender them to creditors in payment for their debts. Every homesteadwas to be restored to the family to whom it had been allotted when the tribes originally inheritedthe land. These were the four main provisions of the Year of Jubilee: a year of sabbath for theland and for the people, release from all debt, a returning of every slave to his family, and thereturn of every man to his possession and inheritance.On a practical level this law was very important. The Year of Jubilee was a refreshing sabbath-rest both to the people and to the land which God gave them. It was the chief of a series of sabbaths or rests given to Israel. They had a sabbath DAY every seventh day. The sabbath YEAR occurred every seventh year. In it the land was allowed to rest, no crops were to be planted, nor were they to prune or harvest. Walk through Israel's land at such a time, and, lo! every one sitsunder his vine and under his fig tree in peace. No sound of the oxen treading out the corn, noshouting from the vineyard; a strange stillness over all the land, while its summer days are as bright as ever, and its people as happy as a nation on earth could be found. Amid the rest whichin a nation of agriculturists would be nearly equivalent to universal cessation from toil - howcontinually do the godly sing the praises of Jehovah! And, besides all this, no man appropriatedto himself anything that the land then produced; all was common, to the rich, to the poor, to theHebrew, to the stranger - a token of the restoration of mutual love. Rest on the ground, amongthe beasts of the field, in the dwellings of men, with praise and worship unceasingly ascendingfrom harp and psaltery and gracious lips, while every man partook of earth's produce as freely ashis neighbor - might not Israel say, "Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; let the searoar, and the fullness thereof. Let the field be joyful, and all that is therein; then shall all the treesof the wood rejoice before the Lord" (Ps. 96:11-12).Beyond these seventh-year sabbaths lay the grand Year of Jubilee. Israel was given a cycle of seven of these sabbath years, embracing a period of seven-times seven years, a total of forty-nineyears; then there was to be a SABBATH OF SABBATHS the FIFTIETH YEAR - the YEAR OFJUBILEE!In that old Hebrew world that lies so far back in the dim twilight of the past, there are severalcustoms, of more than transient interest, which claim our attention when we come to the Year of Jubilee. When Israel came into Canaan, the land was divided among them by lot, according totheir tribes and families. Every family received a lot of inheritance, that is, a homestead. Successthereafter might increase, or adversity decrease, their individual possessions, as the case might be. If a man became involved in debt, he might be obliged to sell a part or even all of his property. But God made a bountiful provision for the unfortunate: He arranged that such adversecircumstances might not continue forever, but that all their accounts credits and debts - must bereckoned only to the Jubilee Year, when all must be freed from old encumbrances, etc., to make afresh start for the next term of fifty years. The man of avarice, who had gone on adding house tohouse and field to field, gained no permanent advantage over his less fortunate neighbor. Thefiftieth year, beyond which no lease could run, was always approaching with silent but surespeed, to relax his tenacious grasp. However alienated, however unworthily or unthriftily sold,however strongly conveyed to the purchaser or the usurper an estate might be, this long-expectedDay annulled the whole transaction, and placed the debtor in the position which either he or hisancestor had enjoyed.The property which every man had in his dividend of the land of Canaan could not be alienatedany longer than till the Year of Jubilee. Now this was no worry to the purchaser, because the Year of Jubilee was fixed, and every man knew when it would come, and made his bargainaccordingly. A person under God's system never did sell his land permanently, but he could make
Leave a Comment