Saturday, October 17, 2015

Year of Jubilee (Part 2)



“The continued dwelling in the land was dependent upon the observance of the shemittah (Sabbatical Year) and Jubilee. (Shab. 33a)”2

What is the reason for the Sabbatical Year?  Some have theorized that the Sabbatical Year is an opportunity for the land to rest for all the Sabbaths that it missed during the previous six years.  One sage observed that there are 52 weekly Sabbaths and 7 Sabbaths associated with annual festivals each year.  Six years multiplied by 59 Sabbaths equals 354 days, or the number of days in a lunar year.  While mankind is afforded the opportunity to rest on every Sabbath, the fields are growing crops and are not afforded the same opportunity.  It is only in the seventh year, the Sabbatical Year, that the fields in Israel have a chance to rest.  The future Millennial Kingdom can be seen as a time for the world to rest from the 6000 years of Sabbaths that it missed.

As far as scripture conveys, the commandments associated with the Sabbatical Year were not practiced prior to the Babylonian exile.  The failure to follow the precepts of the Sabbatical Year are given as the specific reason that the nation was exiled to Babylon for seventy years, “to fulfill the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths.  All the days of its desolation it kept Sabbath until seventy years were complete,” (2 Chron 36:21).  With the return of the people back to the land of Israel came a re-commitment by the community to the application of the Torah and the laws of the Sabbatical Year.

“As for the peoples of the land who bring wares or any grain on the Sabbath day to sell, we will not buy from them on the Sabbath or a holy day; and we will forego the crops the seventh year and exaction of every debt,” (Neh 10:31)

From the time of Nehemiah until the days of Jesus, there is evidence that Israel maintained some level of observance of the Sabbatical Year. According to Josephus,

“When Alexander the Great reached Jerusalem during his march through Israel, he acceded to the high priest’s request that the Jews be exempted from paying tribute during the Sabbatical Year, when they did not work their land (Jos., Ant. 11:338).  During the Hasmonean War, the fall of Beth Zur…was attributed to a famine within the city since it was a Sabbatical Year (1 Macc. 6:49, 53-54).  Julius Caesar later reaffirmed this privilege of tax exemption during the Sabbatical Year since ‘they neither take fruit from the trees nor do they sow’ (Jos., Ant. 14:202).”[1]

In the century before Jesus, the Pharisees were concerned that Jews might harden their hearts against lending to their poorer brethren, who could not pay back in the Sabbatical Year, (Duet 15:8).  Hillel the Elder (100 B.C. – 10 A.D.), addressed this concern employing the principle of “tikkun olam” (repairing the world).  On the surface, the approach of Hillel looks like a way to circumvent the commandment.  In reality, Hillel's approach protects the well-being of the poor.

“Hillel therefore instituted the procedure know as “prozbol”. A document by which a lender transferred a debt due him into one owed to the court.  The man would bring evidence of the loan before judges who would affirm the lender’s right, as agent of the court, to collect the debt, even during and after the seventh year.  In theory, the Torah law canceling personal debts in the seventh year was still applicable; in practice, though, it was no longer observed…Hillel the Elder enacted the “prozbol…because he saw that people refrained from lending money to one another and violated what was written in the Torah, ‘lest you harbor the base thought.’” (Sifri, Re’eb 113)[2]

Since legal judgments were not negated in the Sabbatical Year, payments subject to legal judgments remained binding.  The action of Hillel supports a position that the Sabbatical Year was observed by some, if not all Jews, in the century before the coming of Jesus Christ.  “Josephus tells that in Herod’s conquest of Jerusalem in the summer of that year (i.e., 37 B.C.), the besieged in the city suffered from a food shortage because of the Sabbatical Year (Jos., Ant. 14:475).”[3]  Between the words of Josephus, the Talmud, and the actions of Hillel, we have some sense that the Sabbatical Year was kept during the days of Jesus. 

Despite evidence supporting observance of the Sabbatical Year in the first century, there is no reference to the Sabbatical Year in the Greek text, either in the gospel accounts, Acts, or the Epistles.  It would be reasonable to expect some reference if the majority of Jews had been keeping the Sabbatical Year.  At some point, Paul might have been compelled to gather support in the Diaspora for the brethren in Jerusalem, as Paul had done during the years of the world-wide famine, (Acts 11:27-30).  However, as the old saying goes, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.  Most of Acts and the Epistles are written to believers living outside the land of Israel where the laws of the Sabbatical Year were not applicable.


[1] Enclyclopaedia Judaica, Second Edition, Volume 17, page 629
[2] Hillel: If Not Now, When?, Joseph Telushkin, 2010 Edition, page 51
[3] Enclyclopaedia Judaica, Second Edition, Volume 17, page 627

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