The Jubilee Year Liberty
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- Category: Empire of Yahweh
Yahweh redeems the Israelite people from slavery under the Egyptian Empire, and gives them the Manna sharing principle, a weekly Sabbath rest, and the Sabbath Year Debt Release, all part of the laws of a society he creates as an alternative to oppressive man-made Empires. The Jubilee Year Liberty is yet another example of how this community is expected to operate under the reign of Yahweh.
You shall count off sabbaths of years, seven times seven years, so that the period of seven weeks of years gives forty-nine years. Then you shall have the trumpet sounded loud; on the tenth day of the seventh month—on the day of atonement—you shall have the trumpet sounded throughout all your land. And you shall hallow the fiftieth year and you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you: you shall return, every one of you, to your property and every one of you to your family. That fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you: you shall not sow, or reap the aftergrowth, or harvest the unpruned vines. For it is a jubilee; it shall be holy to you: you shall eat only what the field itself produces. In this year of jubilee you shall return, every one of you, to your property.
Lev 25:8-13.
The Jubilee Year proclaims the following liberties -
- A Year of Rest from working the land
- Return from debt slavery back to one’s own clan
- Restoration of ancestral property
The Sabbath Year imposes a Rest Year for the land where everyone gets to enjoy its natural produce
along with the landowners. The Jubilee Year goes beyond that concept and in reality, lays out the concept that land cannot be “owned”, but is rather “leased” for a limited term.
The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; with me you are but aliens and tenants. Throughout the land that you hold, you shall provide for the redemption of the land.
Lev 25:23-24
Yahweh invalidates all landlords. He declares he is the actual landowner and so everyone else is just a tenant that leases it from him for a jubilee period. By means of the Jubilee laws, Yahweh weaves together a safety net to catch those who fall through the cracks of society. This jubilee protection not only applies to land but other assets and properties as well.
If anyone of your kin falls into difficulty and sells a piece of property, then the next of kin shall come and redeem what the relative has sold. If the person has no one to redeem it, but then prospers and finds
Lev 25:25-28sufficient means to do so, the years since its sale shall be computed and the difference shall be refunded to the person to whom it was sold, and the property shall be returned. But if there are not sufficient means to recover it, what was sold shall remain with the purchaser until the year of jubilee; in the jubilee it shall be released, and the property shall be returned.
These laws go on further to describe similar Jubilee protections for urban houses, countryside abodes and Levite city properties, with a ban on predatory interest lending as well (Lev 25:29-37).
The same Jubilee liberty comes into vogue for human labor too. In fact, the Jubilee laws establish the strongest
prohibition of slavery among the Israelite people, once again demonstrating Yahweh’s penchant for issuing groundbreaking decrees in the ancient times.
If any who are dependent on you become so impoverished that they sell themselves to you, you shall not make them serve as slaves. They shall remain with you as hired or bound laborers. They shall serve with you until the year of the jubilee. Then they and their children with them shall be free from your authority; they shall go back to their own family and return to their ancestral property. For they are my servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt; they shall not be sold as slaves are sold.
Lev 25:39-42
The Jubilee laws also establish mechanisms through which bonded human labor can be redeemed (Lev 25:47-55).
The Jubilee Year Liberty is a revolutionary system of laws which turns the operating models of manmade Empires upside down. Just as the Sabbath Year Release takes care of both monetary and labor debts, where those who had indebted themselves to someone in terms of money or their own labor get to be freed from it every seven years, the Jubilee Year Liberty covers those who fall under harsh times and end up mortgaging off their agricultural land, property or themselves to someone.
Under Joseph’s Egyptian Empire, when the people wrote off their lands, properties and themselves to the Pharaoh in exchange for food, the Pharaoh became their owner in perpetuity. But under Yahweh’s reign, such lands, properties and debt slaves have to be returned during the jubilee year. By mandating this periodic return, Yahweh ensures that in his society, wealth will not get accumulated in the hands of a very few. This is a radical departure from how economies operate both in the ancient and present world.
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