DURING the early part of last month (May) the subjects of King George were celebrating the semi-jubilee of his accession to the throne. Throughout his vast Empire there was much rejoicing and acknowledgment of loyalty to the throne. But it is not to this jubilee that the above title refers but to the institution set up in Israel which, though now defunct, has still its lessons for the Church of Christ. Its institution is brought before us in the book of Leviticus, xxv. 10: “Ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof; it shall be a jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession; and ye shall return every man unto his family.” The provision made for the needy in Israel is one of the wise ordinances of God to keep the people ever mindful of their relation to Him and their dependence upon Him. God had promised to Abraham that his seed should inherit the land though all that Abraham had of it was but a burying place, but the promises of God never fail and when God’s appointed time came Israel entered into the Land of Promise and the land was apportioned to the tribes and the different families composing the tribes so that every Israelite who had faith could say, every time he looked on the land, God’s promise has been fulfilled. The land was to be a standing memorial of this as long as they remained true to God. Circumstances might arise, however, when through one cause or another the owners of the land might find themselves in financial difficulties. It was to meet such cases that the law of the year of jubilee came to the rescue of the person in such difficulties. He might sell the land to a rich neighbour and if he had not money to redeem it the purchaser in paying the price had to take into account that the land must return to the owner at the year of jubilee. If there were only five years to run to the year of jubilee the price paid would not be so much as if thirty years were to run. The purchaser paid according to the number of years that were to elapse before the year of jubilee. This year, therefore, would be a very joyful year to every Israelite who, through straitened circumstances, had been forced to sell his land. It was a year of restoration throughout the land. When the trumpet of jubilee was sounded it was a glad sound to all those whose land was to be restored to them. The acceptable year of the Lord may be called the year of God’s jubilee when the gospel trumpet was blown announcing the restoration to believers of those blessings which had been lost in the fall. It was not the loss of earthly blessings but of spiritual and these could only be restored by Him who came in God’s great name to save. What a wonderful restoration of righteousness there was and such a righteousness. And not only of righteousness but of holiness also and communion with God. The year of jubilee with its glad message proclaiming restoration to the poor in Israel was but a shadow of the acceptable year of the Lord when the poor had the gospel message preached to them.
The law of the year of jubilee also made provision for the setting free of those who had become hired servants to their kinsmen or to strangers and who had sold themselves for their service. No Israelite was to be bought as a slave or bondman by his brethren in the flesh but if through poverty he sold himself for service he was to be regarded not as a bond-servant but as a hired servant and as a hired servant a certain price might have been agreed upon for his services but the amount paid was to be according to the number of years of service until the year of jubilee. When that year came the Israelite whether he had sold himself to an Israelite or to a stranger in the land went forth free and his servitude came to an end. One can only faintly imagine what it would mean to one who had a hard master and whose work was oppressive when he heard the trumpet of the jubilee. In the beautiful words of the Evangelist we read: “And He came to Nazareth where He had been brought up, and, as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up for to read. And there was delivered unto Him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath appointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. And He closed the book, and He gave it to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on Him. And He began to say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears” (Luke iv. 16-21).
The jubilee was a year of rest. Every seventh year was to be observed as a Sabbath year when the land was to rest. Seven times of these Sabbatic years ushered in the jubilee (Lev. xxv. 8). In this year says Dean Law: “No toiling hand may move. The sickle and the spade are laid aside. Tillage and harvest sleep. No seed may be sown. No crop may now be reaped. The grape, the olive, wave their treasures, but no gatherer collects. Repose is the one law for man, for beast, for soil. A year-long Sabbath reigns. Here God asserts His sovereign right to earth. No fields are to be tilled or used, except as He is pleased to grant.” The sixth year preceding each Sabbatic year was to produce a threefold supply (Lev. xxv. 20-22). The whole arrangement even though we are not told, was most certainly a divine institution. No leader, however eminent he was and however much the people reposed their confidence in him would have risked his reputation by saying that every sixth year such a supply would be forthcoming. Furthermore we are told that when the Jews were carried into captivity one of the reasons of their punishment was that they had set aside this divine arrangement and God by allowing their enemies to carry them into captivity was to give the land its Sabbaths. It has been said that the purpose lying behind this arrangement was to increase the fertility of the land but may there not be something deeper than that? May it not be that the whole arrangement was to teach Israel that all their temporal blessings came from God and that they were entirely dependent upon Him for these, that even in the years when they toiled not, according to His law, they would be supplied by Him with all that they needed to sustain the life of man and beast. The ushering in therefore of the year of jubilee as the seventh of the Sabbatic years was fitted to impress every spiritually minded Israelite of his or her dependence upon God. This in itself gave significance and distinction to the year of jubilee. If this was so in regard to temporal blessings was it not specially so in regard to spiritual blessings brought nigh in the acceptable year of the Lord?
It is further to be noted that the year of jubilee began on the day of atonement, the most solemn of all the feasts of the Jews,—“Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month; in the day of atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout all your land” (Lev. xxv. 9). The day of atonement in the year of jubilee would have special significance to all those who had their land returned to them or who had been restored to their families after years of servitude. And is it not the case in regard to the true Israel of God as a people for whom great things have been done that God’s atonement is great and wondrous in their eyes? The joy of the jubilee year would thus be tempered by that sobriety which would characterise all God-fearing Israelites on the day of atonement. They would join trembling with their mirth. Such are a few of the thoughts suggested by the divine institution of the year of jubilee.