Israel’s Jubilee Year

“The year of Jubilee was a Sabbath of rest and refreshing, both to the people and to the land, which God gave them. It was the chief of a series of Sabbaths or rests.

They had a Sabbath DAY every seventh day; and once every year (following Passover) these typical Sabbath days reached a climax–i.e., a cycle of seven of these Sabbaths, thus marking a period of forty-nine days (7 x 7 = 49), was followed by a Jubilee Day, the 50th day (Lev. 23:15,16), known among the Jews as Pentecost. It was a day of rejoicing and thanksgiving.

The Sabbath YEAR occurred every seventh year. In it the land was allowed to rest and no crops were to be planted. A climax of these Sabbath (rest) years was reached in the same manner as the Pentecost or fiftieth day-Sabbath. Seven of the Sabbath years, embracing a period of seven times seven years, or forty-nine years (7 x 7 = 49), constituted a cycle of Sabbath years; and the year following, the 50th year, was the Year of Jubilee.

Let us examine the account of it and mark its fitness as an illustration of the great millennium of restitution.

When Israel came into Canaan, the land was divided among them by lot, according to their tribes and families. Success thereafter 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, and with his family go into servitude. But God made a bountiful provision for the unfortunate: He arranged that such adverse circumstances might not continue forever, but that all their accounts—credits and debts must be reckoned only to the Jubilee Year, when all must be freed from old encumbrances, etc., to make a fresh start for the next term of fifty years.

Thus, every fiftieth year, counting from the time of their entrance into Canaan, was to Israel a year of Jubilee, a time of rejoicing and restitution, in which broken families were reunited and lost homesteads were restored. No wonder that it was called a Jubilee. If property had been sold for debt, it was to be considered merely as a grant of such property until the Jubilee year; and the price it would bring if sold depended on whether the coming Jubilee was near or far distant.

The account of this observance is found in Leviticus 25, Verses 10 to 15

“Ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof. It is a Jubilee unto you, and ye shall return every man unto his possession (return to him his own [ancestral] property [that which was sold to another because of poverty] or any such thing) and ye shall return every man unto his family (sold into bondage and servitude due to debt) …and if thou sell ought to thy neighbor, or buys aught of thy neighbor’s hand, ye shall not oppress one another. According to the number of years after the Jubilee thou shall buy of thy neighbor, and according unto the number of years of the fruits he shall sell unto thee. According to the multitude of the years thou shall increase the price thereof, and according to the fewness of the years thou shall diminish the price of it.”

This arrangement provided by God through their leader and typical mediator, Moses, though itself a blessed boon, foreshadowed a still greater blessing which God had in view –the release of all mankind from the debt of sin and its bondage and servitude, through Christ our Lord, the greater Mediator and Deliverer, whom Moses typified. (Deut 18:15)

It was thus, in types, which Moses wrote of Christ and the blessings to come through him (John 5:46; 1:45) —the Great Restitution and Grand Jubilee to come to the entire race, now groaning under the bondage of corruption and slavery to Sin.

If the shadow brought happiness and joy to the typical people, the substance (the reality), the real restitution, will cause boundless joy and will indeed be a grand Jubilee to all people—all the world, including Israel, being typified by that people, even as their priesthood represented the Church, the “royal priesthood.” Even if we were not definitely informed, what would be more reasonable than to surmise that the same infinite love which provided for the temporary welfare of Israel, a “stiff-necked generation,” would much more make provision for the lasting welfare of the whole world, which God so loved as to redeem while yet sinners? And here it may be well to note what will be more fully shown hereafter, that while in one aspect the Israelite’s were typical of the believers of the Gospel age, in another they represented all who, in any age, shall believe God and accept his leading. And in this character, we are now viewing them.

Their covenant, sealed with the blood of bulls and goats, was typical of the New Covenant, sealed with the precious blood of Christ, under which the reconciling of the world shall be affected in the next age. Their day of atonement and its sin-offerings, though in type to that people, and for their sins only, typified the “better sacrifices” and the actual atonement “for the sins of the whole world.” (B175-178 edited)

Continued with next post.