Jubilee
year at the end of seven cycles of shmita (Sabbatical years)
Jubilee is the year at the end of seven cycles of shmita, and according to Biblical regulations had a special impact on the ownership and management of land.
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Quotes
edit- The first aspect of this legislation is simply that ‘In this year of Jubilee you shall return, every one of you, to your property.’ (Lev 25:13) Underlying this simple statement is the land division arrangement within Israel, in which every extended family was designated land, meaning that this legislation did not entrench the privileges of the minority but restored the equality, dignity, and economic independence of everyone.
- David Lazonby, "Applying the Jubilee to Contemporary Socio-Economic and Environmental Issues," Journal of European Baptist Studies 16:3 (2016), p. 37
- Count off seven sabbath years—seven times seven years—so that the seven sabbath years amount to a period of forty-nine years. Then have the trumpet sounded everywhere on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the Day of Atonement sound the trumpet throughout your land. Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you; each of you is to return to your family property and to your own clan. The fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you; do not sow and do not reap what grows of itself or harvest the untended vines. For it is a jubilee and is to be holy for you; eat only what is taken directly from the fields. In this Year of Jubilee everyone is to return to their own property.
- Jubilee serves the purpose of limiting the concentration of productive resources in the hands of the few.
- Jacob Rosenberg and Abi Weiss, "Land Concentration, Efficiency, Slavery, and the Jubilee," The Oxford Handbook of Judaism and Economics, edited by Aaron Levine (2010), p. 74
- Physical handicaps, death of a breadwinner, or lack of natural ability may lead some families to become poorer than others. But God does not want such disadvantages to lead to ever-increasing extremes of wealth and poverty with the result that the poor eventually lack the basic resources to earn a decent livelihood. God therefore gave his people a law to guarantee that no family would permanently lose its land.
- Ron Sider, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: Moving from Affluence to Generosity (2015)
