Reading… and Thinking

You shall count seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that the time of the seven weeks of years shall give you forty-nine years. Then you shall sound the loud trumpet on the tenth day of the seventh month. On the Day of Atonement you shall sound the trumpet throughout all your land. And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, when each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his clan. That fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you; in it you shall neither sow nor reap what grows of itself nor gather the grapes from the undressed vines. For it is a jubilee. It shall be holy to you. You may eat the produce of the field. In this year of jubilee each of you shall return to his property.

— Leviticus 25:6-13 (ESV)

God gave the nation of Israel a wonderful gift: the Sabbath. Unlike every other culture, God’s people were to have a day off every week. This was undoubtedly good for them physically, and there was also to be spiritual refreshment on that day. It was a day for doing good for others, for stopping long enough to think about God, to contemplate His word.

You may be aware there was another Sabbath, every seventh year, described in the beginning verses of Leviticus 25. The whole year was to be a Sabbath, in this case for the land. They were not to plow, plant, or harvest. God promised to give a bumper crop in the sixth year so there would be no hardship. Doesn’t it strike you as really cool to think about not working one year out of seven? There would be all those “someday” projects that could finally get some attention. Long visits with extended family. Rest.

And finally, there was the jubilee year. Every fifty years, God directed them to take another year off. (And He promised to give food for 3 years this time – verses 20-22.) The big deal about the jubilee was going home. If you, or your parents, had to sell your family land, it reverted back to you in the jubilee. If you had encountered hardship, and had indentured yourself as a laborer, you went free in the jubilee. If you had had to move away from home, you went back to it in the jubilee. It was to be an every-fifty-years reset, back to the time when the land was originally allotted. No indentured servants, no landless poor, families regathered, a fresh start for all.

There is no record that Israel ever kept the jubilee. It seems certain they didn’t keep the Sabbath years – God sent them into exile in Babylon for 70 years with the land lying dormant, “until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths” (2 Chronicles 36:21), seeming to indicate that the Sabbath years had not been observed. And it’s beyond doubt that Israel failed to keep the weekly Sabbath – God’s prophets are quite vocal about this.

The jubilee year is not referred to directly in the New Testament, but the Sabbath is. This isn’t just cold dead law – there is a spiritual application which is very important. Hebrews chapter 4 is well worth reading, as well as Psalm 95, which is quoted there. The writer makes the point that when God “rested” on the seventh day, this was prophetic. It points forward to the ultimate “rest” in God’s kingdom. The writer concludes: “So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.” (Heb 4:9-11) In effect, he says, “Don’t blow it the way Israel did! You came out of spiritual Egypt, but if you are rebellious you’ll lose out on the promised land like Israel did.”

All the Sabbaths under the Law – weekly, seven year, jubilee – point forward to the great rest God has promised to His people. The jubilee year seems to bring all the elements together: no laborious toil, set free, given the land, reconciled family, a brand new start.

Although not directly mentioned in the New Testament, the concepts behind the jubilee are certainly there. The Hebrew word jubilee literally means the blast of a trumpet. Paul tells us, “The trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised.” (1 Corinthians 15:52) And again, “For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.” (1 Thessalonians 4:16) This is the jubilee we look forward to, the trumpet blast that heralds the return of our Lord, the resurrection of the dead, and our being gathered to live forever with him. The ultimate release, the ultimate going home. The true year of jubilee. “Come, Lord Jesus!”