“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.
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