INTRODUCTION TO PART 5 And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubile unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family (Lev. 25:10).
The fifth section of Leviticus begins with Chapter 25, which lists the laws governing the jubilee year: inheritance inside the land's boundaries. The remainder of Leviticus deals with inheritance.
Modern evangelical theologians remain totally hostile to the theonomists' principle of biblical interpretation: any Mosaic law not annulled by the New Covenant is still judicially binding on church, State, or family. Nevertheless, prominent evangelical social commentators -- though not the theologians -- of the far right and the far left remain fascinated with the jubilee laws of Leviticus 25.
This is a very curious phenomenon. The jubilee laws were explicitly tied to the Promised Land. They were laws governing the sale of real estate and people. They were not revealed by God prior to the exodus, and they applied to no region on earth prior to the conquest of Canaan. Why should evangelical Protestant social commentators who denounce theonomy's hermeneutic of judicial continuity also proclaim the benefits of the jubilee laws? Is there some hidden agenda at work here?
There are two approaches taken by the evangelical commentators. Right-wing evangelicals argue that the jubilee's 50-year cycle was related to inherent limits on debt. Thus, we should in some way honor the jubilee's principle of debt limits. If we fail to do this through some sort of national bankruptcy law, a built-in economic cycle of economic depression and bankruptcy will do it for us. Far-left evangelicals argue that the jubilee law governed ownership in the broadest sense, not just real estate. Mosaic civil law specified that every rural plot be returned to its original family every 50 years. They conclude from this that the modern State should legislate a massive, compulsory redistribution of capital from the wealthy to the poor.
Both groups are wrong. Neither group comes close to the specifics of the jubilee law. Neither group comes close to the meaning of this law. This is because neither group actually goes to the actual jubilee law with the assumption that every aspect of this law as well as its Mosaic judicial context is judicially binding in the New Covenant. Neither suggests a principle of judicial continuity. Each side has an economic agenda, and each misuses the texts of Scripture to promote this agenda.
First, with respect to the right-wing analysis, the jubilee year had very little to do with debt limitation except insofar as a 50-year lease for land is a form of debt. How relevant is it today? Hardly anyone today signs a 50-year lease. This law had nothing to do with consumer debt or business debt for capital equipment, or anything besides Israelite bondservants, land outside of walled cities, and Levites' houses.
Second, with respect to the left-wing analysis, the jubilee law rested legally on God's mandate that Israel invade Canaan and wipe out all of its inhabitants. That is to say, the jubilee law rested on genocide. It was an aspect of the original spoils of war. It had nothing to do with a government program of systematic wealth redistribution from the rich to the poor. The jubilee law established that the conquering families of Joshua's era would permanently retain title to their land. This law was announced four decades before the conquest began. The return of rural land to the heirs of these original families every 50 years was not statist wealth redistribution; rather, it was the judicial defense of original title: a defense of private property.
The Meaning of the Jubilee The Mosaic law guaranteed that the Israelites would multiply if they obeyed God's law: longer life spans (Ex. 20:12) and zero miscarriages (Ex. 23:26). But a multiplying population leads to ever-shrinking land holdings. As time passed and the population grew, each family plot in Israel would shrink to the point of near-invisibility. Given the fact that the average family allotment at the time of the conquest was under eleven acres, a population that doubled every quarter century (3 percent growth per annum) could not remain an agricultural society for very long. Every 24 years, the average family's share of the farm would shrink by half. The average allotment would have been down to a little over an acre within a century with a population growth rate of 3 percent a year.
The jubilee law had nothing to do with the equalization of property except in the peculiar sense of eventually producing plot sizes so tiny that the value of any given family's landed inheritance was so small that it really did not make any difference. In today's world, an inheritance worth two dollars is twice as large as an inheritance worth one dollar, but in terms of what either inheritance will buy, the percentage difference between them really does not matter.
Then what was the jubilee law all about? First, it was a law that decentralized politics: every heir of a family of the conquest could identify his citizenship in a particular tribe because every family had an inheritance in the land. Ownership stayed inside the tribes. Second, it restricted the accumulation of rural land holdings by the Levites, who could never buy up the land. This geographically dispersed urban tribe would remain dispersed. Third, it kept the State from extending its land holdings on a permanent basis. Fourth, it kept foreigners from buying permanent residences outside of walled cities where homes were not under the jubilee law. Fifth, it pressured the nation to move into walled cities or emigrate out of Israel when population growth had its effect on farm size.
There was an overall economic principle at work here: those outside the covenants -- civil, familial, and ecclesiastical -- should be kept economically and numerically subordinate to those inside the covenants. This is not discussed by commentators.
If Israel remained covenantally faithful as a nation, the life style of the typical Israelite would not remain agricultural. A few generations after the conquest, the nation would have become an urbanized center of commerce. More than this: the old wineskin of the original grant of territory to Joshua's generation could not long hold the new wine of population growth. The Promised Land's boundaries would be breached. The Israelites would spread beyond the nation's borders.
Having said all this, now I must prove it. But there really isn't very much to prove regarding the fundamental economic aspect of this law. It is simple to comprehend. The economic value of each family's plot would have decreased over the generations, as covenant-keeping families multiplied. Yet for over two millennia, the commentators have ignored the obvious: a growing population will eventually fill up the land.
There is a reason for this error: those who write Bible commentaries rarely take the Mosaic law seriously. They pay little attention to the coherence of its details. They refuse to ask themselves the crucial question: How did each law actually work in relation to the other laws? The liberals assume that the judicial system could not have functioned coherently because multiple authors wrote the Pentateuch. A coherent system of law would undermine their presupposition of judicial incoherence. They discover what they assume: a patchwork of uncoordinated laws. They do not seek to discover the meaning of any law in terms of the whole. Meanwhile, the conservatives feel justified in ignoring the details of the law because they assume that the Mosaic law isn't relevant under the New Covenant. This almost contemptuous attitude toward the Mosaic law has hampered Christian scholarship. It is time for this contempt to end. It is time to search the law in depth to discover what God expects from us, just as David did (Ps. 119). The jubilee law is a better place than most to begin because it is clearly a coherent series of laws with many ramifications.
A Matter of Holiness God required the nation of Israel to hallow -- set apart -- the fiftieth year. This identified the fiftieth year as uniquely holy. It was the jubilee year. It was to be inaugurated by the blowing of the trumpet on the day of atonement (Lev. 25:9). The jubilee year was to be the year for claiming one's inheritance: of land, but far more important, of legal status as a citizen. Those circumcised men who were heirs of the original holy army that had conquered Canaan could not legally be disenfranchised except through the loss of their landed inheritance outside a walled city, or, in the case of the Levites, of their homes in Levitical cities.
Citizenship (freemanship) in Mosaic Israel was based on three religious factors: confession, circumcision, and lawful participation in God's holy army. One mark of citizenship was ownership of a share of the land once possessed by a conquering family under Joshua. This was not the only proof of citizenship, but it was the most universal. A man who had been judicially severed from ecclesiastical participation in the congregation could not retain his family's landed inheritance beyond the next jubilee. He became disinherited. His property would go to his next-of-kin: his kinsman-redeemer. He could legally buy title to a residence in a walled city, since this property was not governed by the jubilee law, but he might have to sell it in a crisis. It was risky to be excommunicated.
As an excommunicate, he was no longer an Israelite. He was a resident alien. As such, he became subject to the threat of lifetime servitude. So did his minor heirs (Lev. 25:44-46). He was no longer a freeman. In an economic crisis, he might also lose his status as a free man.
If Israel did not honor God's law, God threatened national disinheritance (Deut. 8:19-20). This placed every Israelite in jeopardy of becoming a slave. Slavery was a permanent sanction. A slave could not buy his way out of slavery. There were only three ways for a slave to escape his legal condition and still remain inside the land: 1) manumission, 2) liberation by an invading foreign army, or 3) adoption, either by his owner or some other Israelite.
The legal issue of inheritance is, in the final analysis, the theological issue of adoption by God (Ezek. 16). So is the legal issue of liberty. In this regard, consider the New Testament's doctrine of adoption through God's grace (John 1:12; Eph. 1:5): an act of the ultimate Kinsman-Redeemer.
Enforcement Was the jubilee law actually enforced? It is not clear from the historical sections of the Bible whether or not Israel ever observed the jubilee year. The Bible's silence indicates that it may not have been enforced, but we cannot be certain about this. Consider Ahab's theft of Naboth's land (I Ki. 21). On the one hand, Naboth refused to sell his land to King Ahab. This is evidence of one man's commitment to the Mosaic law's principle of jubilee inheritance. On the other hand, the fact that Ahab thought he could permanently steal the land from Naboth by having him executed indicates that the enforcement of the jubilee was sporadic or nonexistent in his day. Surely, Ahab was not Naboth's kinsman-redeemer. The incident reveals no clear-cut evidence with regard to the entire history of Israel.
The Mosaic law provided economic incentives for those who possessed the authority to declare the jubilee year to do so: the Levites. Because the homes of the Levites in Levitical cities were governed by the jubilee (Lev. 25:32-33), the Levites had an economic incentive to declare the jubilee on schedule twice per century -- far stronger than the incentive for them to declare a sabbatical year. Did they nevertheless defect? If so, why?
Conclusion The jubilee year was a year of liberty for all the inhabitants of Israel (v. 10). But there was an exclusionary clause in the jubilee law: the enslavement of heathens (vv. 44-46). The best way to avoid slavery was to become a citizen of the holy commonwealth. Unlike the other ancient nations, citizenship in Israel was open to any resident alien, or at least to his heirs (Deut. 23:2-8). The blessings of liberty could be secured through confession of faith in God, circumcision, and eligibility to serve in God's holy army. This was the Mosaic law's incomparable promise to all resident aliens. But to attain citizenship, a family would have to remain economically productive until the heirs of the promise could secure their claim. This promise was conditional: remaining productive and avoiding being sold into servitude.
The jubilee law pointed to the conditional nature of Israel's very existence as a nation: God's threat of disinheritance, which was a threat of servitude to foreigners. There were conditions attached to citizenship: covenantal stipulations. The jubilee law's stipulations (Lev. 25) -- point three of the biblical covenant -- were immediately followed by a list of promised sanctions (Lev. 26): point four.
Every true prophet of Israel came before the nation to bring a covenant lawsuit. This reminded them of the ethical basis of liberty. Israel's final prophet would bring Israel's final covenant lawsuit. He would declare liberty for the enslaved and slavery for the rebellious slavemasters. He would serve as the final go'el: the kinsman-redeemer and the blood avenger. He would adopt many and disinherit others. He would bring sanctions. He would announce the final jubilee year: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord" (Luke 4:18-19). Fulfilled!
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