Today, I am reading and commenting on  Leviticus 24-25.

Today’s passage contains instructions for a Sabbath year every seven years.   The idea was that every seven years the land would be allowed to lie fallow and “rest”.  God told the Israelites that in the sixth year, they would harvest a bumper crop which would be sufficient to carry them through the sabbath year, with supplements from those crops which “volunteered” (If you have ever grown tomatoes, or one of many other vegetables, you know how you always end up with plants growing the following year from tomatoes which fell off the plant).  The passage goes on to describe the Jubilee, which was a kind of sabbath of sabbath years.  Every seventh sabbath year (or perhaps the year after the seventh sabbath year, depending on how you interpret the wording) would be a year of redemption: debts would be canceled, slaves freed, and property that had been sold returned to the person who sold it(or their heirs).  I don’t see how you could institute such a system today, but the passage contains an important point about the meaning of the Year of Jubilee, actually two such points.  The first of those points is that the land is the Lord’s.  In fact, everything in this world belongs to God.  We are but stewards of it using it to advance His kingdom.  The second point is that we should not take advantage of each other.  As I wrote this I realized there is a third lesson to be learned: if we do as God directs us, He will provide for us.  If we know that God has called us to endeavor which does not obviously provide for our needs we can be sure that He will meet those needs in some way as we do His will.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Leviticus 24-25.

God commanded the Israelites to practice a Sabbath year every seventh year, and a Jubilee year every 50th year.  Actually, I am not quite sure how the timing of the Jubilee year was supposed to work.  So, it is clear that the year after the seventh Sabbath year was supposed to be a Jubilee year, but did the next Sabbath year come six years after the Jubilee, or did the counting for the Sabbath year start over with the Jubilee year.  Which brings me to the next thing I find interesting about the schedule of Sabbath years and the Jubilee: the Jubilee year is the year following the seventh Sabbath year.  That means there would be two years in a row where nothing was planted or harvested.  For those two years the people would live off of what the land produced without any crop management.   I want to spend a little bit of time looking at the idea of the Year of Jubilee.  The Year of Jubilee leveled the playing field by canceling debts, freeing slaves, and returning land to the family to whom it originally belonged.   In among the rules for the Year of Jubilee there are rules allowing people to redeem land which they have sold.  Finally, I want to take note that the reason why land could not be permanently sold was because it does not belong to us, it belongs to God.  We should recognize that the land we live upon is on loan to us from God and treat it accordingly. As servants of God, we should seek to return the land to Him in as good or better shape than when He first gave it in to our care.  In fact, I believe that we should treat all property which comes into our possession as on loan from God, using it to further His will for us on this earth.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Leviticus 24-25.

This passage contains a rule which a society must follow in order to be a just society: the same law, the same rules, apply to everyone, foreigner and native-born alike.  That extends to our personal lives as well.  We should not have higher standards to which we hold others than that to which we hold ourselves, or those close to us.  I do think that it is OK to hold ourselves to a higher standard than that to which we hold others. This connects to the other part of this passage which I want to write about, but I am unsure how to express that connection.  While laying out the rules for the Year of Jubilee, the passage says that if one “your fellow Israelites” become poor and unable to support themselves help them as you would a foreigner and stranger.  First, I think that we should think of “fellow Israelite” as fellow Believer.  Now one might be inclined to think that one would not give much help to a foreigner, so that this passage is telling us not to give much help.  However, the next couple of verses make clear that is not the case.  Instead what we realize is that we should help the poor, whether they are fellow Believers, members of our “tribe”, or complete strangers (although it says that they are living amongst us, so they are people about whom we know something).  Further, it is an instruction about how we, as individuals, should interact with those in need, not something we can pawn off on the government.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Leviticus 24-25.

The instructions for the Sabbath Year make good sense and are easily workable.  On the other hand, I am not sure how the Jubilee Year would work., even in the circumstance of the Children of Israel entering the Promised Land.  That being said, if they had practiced it from the beginning of their entry into the Promised Land, I can see how it might have worked (and because God had commanded it, I believe that it would have worked). Despite that, the idea of giving everyone a fresh start every 49 years has real merit.  Giving those whose parents, or grandparents, had made decisions which left them impoverished the chance to get out from under that crushing burden does wonders for a society.  In many ways, the Year of Jubilee was designed to institutionalize the idea that everyone should rise, or fall, based on their own ability, not have their lot in life be determined by who their parents were.  This idea serves society well, and abandoning it leads to the gradual, or not so gradual, decline of a society.

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Leviticus 24-25.

I think the ideas presented with the Sabbath Year and the Year of Jubilee have real lessons for us.  The Sabbath Year solves a problem which modern farmers address by crop rotation and leaving fields fallow every so many years.  However, academia and mission organizations have adopted the idea of a sabbatical year from this concept.  The idea of the Year of Jubilee is to level the economic stratification which happens in society every so many years.  The idea being that everyone should have equal chances in life.  I do not see any way we could make the idea of the Year of Jubilee work in a non-agrarian society, but we should keep its ideal in mind.  Even in this passage there is an exemption made for property within cities.  The Year of Jubilee reminds us that we should seek ways to give those who suffer from the bad economic decisions of their parents, or even their own bad economic decisions, a chance for a fresh start.