Leviticus; The Law of Holiness and Grace

The Jubilee I

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Genre: Lessons with Q & A

Lesson: 67

Track: 67

Dictation Name: RR172AK67

Date: Early 70s

Let us worship God. This is the confidence we have in Him that if we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us. Having these promises, let us draw near to the throne of grace with true hearts in full assurance of faith. My voice shalt Thou hear in the morning, oh Lord, in the morning will I direct my prayer unto Thee and will look up.

Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God, how great Thou art and Thy mercies, ever new and ever great. Make us joyful in Thee. Make us ever mindful that Thy Word is truth and that Thy Word gives us victory and the promise that Thy kingdom shall prevail. Bless us now by Thy Word and Spirit as we give ourselves to the study of the things that are of Thee. In Christ’s name, amen.

Our scripture is Leviticus 25:8-17 and our subject, “The Jubilee.” This is the first of a series in which we will concentrate on the fact of the Jubilee. This is the great subject of the entire chapter. Leviticus 25:8-17.

“8 And thou shalt number seven sabbaths of years unto thee, seven times seven years; and the space of the seven sabbaths of years shall be unto thee forty and nine years.

9 Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month, in the Day of Atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout all your land.

10 And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family.

11 A jubilee shall that fiftieth year be unto you: ye shall not sow; neither reap that which groweth of itself in it, nor gather the grapes in it of thy vine undressed.

12 For it is the jubilee; it shall be holy unto you: ye shall eat the increase thereof out of the field.

13 In the year of this jubilee ye shall return every man unto his possession.

14 And if thou sell ought unto thy neighbour, or buyest ought of thy neighbour's hand, ye shall not oppress one another:

15 According to the number of years after the jubilee thou shalt buy of thy neighbour, and according unto the number of years of the fruits he shall sell unto thee:

16 According to the multitude of years thou shalt increase the price thereof, and according to the fewness of years thou shalt diminish the price of it: for according to the number of the years of the fruits doth he sell unto thee.

17 Ye shall not therefore oppress one another; but thou shalt fear thy God: for I am the Lord your God.”

As we saw last week, the jubilee makes very plain that the economics of God’s Law is very sharply different from all other economic systems. It does not permit long-term debt. Six years only. And it requires a radically different kind of living—providential living. After seven sevens of years, or seven sabbatical years, the jubilee, another sabbatical year is celebrated. This means two sabbatical years in a row, and this is a fact that is referred to in II Kings 19:29 and Isaiah 37:30. It is present (the fact of the jubilee) even more perhaps in the New Testament because our Lord cites the jubilee proclamation of Isaiah 61:1-6, that is verses 1 and 2, and he declares this day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears. His coming, in other words, marks the beginning of God’s greater jubilee, one that begins a new era in history and leads to total victory.

In the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes and elsewhere we have echoes of the Jubilee Law and Isaiah 61:1 and following. The Lord’s Prayer is a jubilee prayer, and the petition, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors” is an aspect of the jubilee law.

Now, the Jubilee Law has certain key provisions which we’ll discuss generally this time.

First of all, all rural or farm property was to be returned to the original owner or his family. In other words, sales were really leases for the number of years to the next jubilee. Urban properties could be sold permanently, but not rural properties. This creates a stable element in society. Because God is the owner of the earth (The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof), God dictates the terms of man’s possession thereof.

Second, Hebrew slaves could not be held for more than six years. The term slaves, of course, means bondservants. If you were guilty of a crime, you could be sentenced to bond servitude. If you were in debt, you worked it off as a bond servant. But the seventh year was the year of release. The jubilee not only celebrates their freedom but their return to their original home. God as the next of kin, the redeemer of these covenant peoples, orders their return to their families.

Then third, all debts were cancelled in the Sabbath years and also by the jubilee. By combining this cancellation of debts with the return to the land and to one’s family, the meaning of the release is intensified, so the fiftieth year was to be a year of celebration; a year when families came together, a year of rest, a year of freedom from debt.

Fourth, the land must be allowed to lie fallow, and its volunteer crops or fruits are for the use of all. It is now known that fallowed land improves the productivity of the land thereafter. It is a renewal of the land. Agronomists have gone into the fact that micro-organisms are enabled to work freely in that year of release and to revitalize the soil.

Fifth, the jubilee year began on the Day of Atonement, the tenth day of the seventh month, comparable to half of our September and half of October. And it was thus inaugurated by the Atonement, indicating that freedom begins with our atonement.

Sixth, the great emphasis of the jubilee was on liberation. Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof. This verse has had a long history in Western civilization as a hope and faith. The Hebrew word for liberty means running free, finding oneself and it has the connotation of a happy glow of freedom.

Now the doctrine of land ownership set forth in scripture did establish itself firmly among the Hebrew peoples. In the case of Naboth and his vineyard and Ahab makes very clear. In Micah 2:2 we have an indictment of those who violate the land law. F.W. Grant said of this land law, “In the yielding up of the right of property every seventh year, the Israelite owned from whom he held it. For that year he was not proprietor. The harvest belonged to anyone as much as to him and it was expressly as a sabbath to Jehovah that this was appointed. That year Jehovah entertained all freely with that which sprang up under His hand apart from human cultivation. It was upon this recognition of the Divine Lordship Israel’s tender of it all depended. For the violation of this command, the land was to enjoy its sabbaths that had been wrested from it, lying vacant while the people were cast forth, and this clearly gives meaning to the jubilee restoration. Moreover, in His parable of the husbandman, the Lord expressly connects their rejection of Himself with the rejection of Jehovah’s rights over the vineyard which he let out to them. Here the idea conveyed in the sabbatical year is extended and developed in Matthew 21:33-41. The prophets had been His servants, sent to receive His fruits. Afterward, he sent unto them his son saying, ‘They will reverence my Son’ but when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, ‘This is the heir. Come let us kill him and seize upon his inheritance.’ Hence comes the righteous sentence upon them.”

This great jubilee of God toward which all creation looks begins with a new creation. It is called by Peter the time of the restitution of all things which God hath spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began. The doctrine of restitution is basic to the jubilee and to the biblical doctrine of liberty.

We have no longer a proper understanding of the New Testament because we neglect the Old. Only when we appreciate what for example, the law of the jubilee has to say, do we begin to understand some of these parables just cited. The Sermon on the Mount, especially The Beatitudes, the sermon of Peter in Acts 3, and much, much more—all these things have reference to the jubilee. The sad fact is, no study has been made of the law of jubilee in Western civilization—has never been studied. There are hints that it was once used. WE know that a phrase out of the jubilee law was put on the Liberty Bell. We do know that people did observe sabbatical years. There are just traces of it, but we do know that it was routinely done here in the United States. But for the past century, people have not felt this sort of thing is important and knowledge of it has disappeared.

It is worthy of note, however, that (and I quote from B.J. Bamberger) “An Armenian code of the 12th century put some bits of the Jubilee Law into practice. The rule that urban property could be redeemed only within one year after it was sold while property outside city walls was subject to redemption for seven years, a very considerable modification, but still an application of it.”

But to continue, one aspect of this Jubilee Law which is very important but which must be noted is the requirement of family members who are in the covenant. There’s a great deal of economic law in the jubilee, but basic to it is that all the relatives are to come together in a family reunion in the jubilee year. So in God’s Law economics and the family are essentially tied and the purpose of economic activity is to further the life of the family and the purpose of the economics in the Bible is to protect the life of the family and to enable the family to prosper.

When you realize today everything is done to destroy the life of the family, you can appreciate the difference between biblical economics and ours. In the Bible there’s no tax on the land, no way of taxing the home. That’s a violation of God’s Law. In the Bible, there is no inheritance tax or income tax. Those are means of protecting the family from the State. God’s Law says you cannot touch the life of the family here, so the family is made strong.

Moreover, as one scholar in New Zealand, Knight, has pointed out, the modern view of the Bible is altogether warped because it centers everything on the salvation of the soul, which of course is basic, it’s the ABC of the Bible, but if you limit it to that, you destroy the meaning of scripture, because far more is involved. The family is important. The whole earth is important. Scripture’s message is for the redemption of all things. The covenant family must rest in the jubilee year and come together to be renewed in their love and their faith and the land must have its jubilee rest so that the land may be renewed or (to use the language if we were translate it properly to English) it must be born again. God begins with our being born again and he says the world is fallen all around you. Now with my sabbath year and my jubilee year, the land must have an opportunity to be born again also. What happened with the fall and the flood, the destruction because of sin, must be undone and all things must be made new through Christ and dedicated to His kingdom and service.

The Jubilee Law makes clear that inheritance is not a personal and individualistic fact. It is religious and it looks to the transmission of wealth and property and other forms of assets to generations yet to come to be used for the Lord and His glory. No man can view himself as anything but a trustee under God of whatsoever He possesses. You know, it’s a sad fact that it’s been sociologists that have spoken of the biblical system of property and land ownership as the trustee family type. And where do you ever hear that preached? The ungodly recognize what it is but the Christians are not told that in the scripture, we are not the owners. The family is the trustee under God. And this is why Naboth said he could not sell his land to Ahab and Ahab had to kill him to get it. Because, he said, it’s a trust given to me by my forefathers to be handed to my descendants. We are trustees in terms of God’s Law. Thus, the law of the jubilee makes clear that economics is an aspect of family life and together with the family as a part of our life in the Lord in terms of His Law.

It is interesting by the way, that an economist of some years ago (about 100 years ago), Henry George, the single tax man. Not a Christian, very wrong-headed in many of his ideas about things, nonetheless borrowed the best in his ideas out of the Jubilee Law.

In Ruth 4, we see an aspect of the family duties required by this law.

Now, modern man has created false divisions in his life by isolating the various spheres of life needlessly, separating economics from the family, separating religion from economics, separating politics from religion and so on and on. Then, the unity of things is not seen in God but it is imposed by the State. The State says we’re going to control all things when the Bible says all things must be placed under the control of the Lord.

The false unity of the State is a destructive one. In the biblical perspective, the unity is under God and the local, the center on earth is the family. Humanism always leads to false emphases, ultimately to totalitarian ones. And those to whom economics is the key insist on an economic or free market perspective on everything. And some, like the Randians, say that prostitution must have equal status with marriage because the free market for them is everything. Others see the State as the unifying agent and this always leads to socialism, totalitarianism in some form.

Now the jubilee deals with economic facts, but its perspective is theological, religious, as economics must be. The concluding statement in verse 17, “…ye shall not therefore oppress one another, but thou shalt fear thy God, for I am the Lord your God,” is a religious statement governing an economic fact.

Now, Christ’s coming is a jubilee fact because it declares that both restitution and liberty are basic to His kingdom together with a victorious rest. Romans 8:19 and following celebrates the great jubilee at the end of history. And our Lord speaks of that jubilee in Matthew 19:27-30, Matthew 25:34, as does Peter in I Peter 1:4 and in many, many other verses. The references are to the jubilee. The law of the jubilee tells us that both time and eternity result in victory.

The past four days, I was in Fort Worth, Texas or at the airport of Dallas/Fort Worth in one of the hotels there for a conference. And one of the things that was interesting was that Bob Mumford in speaking said that over the years, he had gotten what he had preached for. And he said when I concentrated on preaching about apostasy, I got apostasy! So I stopped the negative preaching, which means I didn’t deal with sin, but he said, I began to preach more positively. And at the same time he began to move from pre-millennialism to post-millennialism, so he said, I started to preach victory, and I told people this is the verdict of God. Whether you like it or not, victory is ahead. You are condemned to victory. You had better enjoy it and work for it and delight in it. That’s what the jubilee is about—it celebrates victory: victory now, and the fullness in the time to come. That is what the glorious message of salvation is about, our victory over the power of sin and death, our victory in our lives, in our families over the whole earth, because Christ’s victory is to be, Paul tells us, cosmic in its scope.

Let us pray.

Oh Lord our God, great and marvelous are Thy ways, and Thy Word, Thy victory which Thou hast set forth in scripture, make us joyful in these things, earnest in Thy service, and bold and confident that the kingdoms of this world shall indeed be the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ. Bless us to this end we beseech Thee, in Christ’s name. Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson?

Yes.

[Audience] It appears that a revision of our debt to taxation structures would be necessary as a prerequisite to implementing the law of the jubilee. What are some other steps that a modern society or legislature could take to begin to implement the law of the jubilee?

[Rushdoony] Well, first of all, we need to recognize that the jubilee puts a limit on debt. The whole law of the jubilee of which the laws of sabbath are a part, once every seven years, debt must end, so you don’t get anybody to lend you money on a long-term basis. It means, too, that you live providently, because if you’re going to have to live on your income that you’ve saved during the seventh year and during the 49th and 50th years, you’re going to be provident.

Well, if you’re not paying interest, as I pointed out last week, long-term interest, which means in the case of many people in the cities who are buying their houses out of monthly payments of $1400, $1000 - $1100 goes for interest. Save that for six years and you’ve got enough to live on in the seventh. And it was within my lifetime that houses were sold on a five-year note with ¼ down.

You see, it creates a totally different pattern of living to live debt-free. It means, too, you work for the abolition of the various ungodly taxes, like the property tax and the income tax and the inheritance tax. I’m happy to say there are groups working toward that end. And they have had some limited results. But that too would set us free.

But it also means that we have to begin taking over the government because social financing has to be provided. We have to start taking care of needs locally. I cited sometime back the cynical statement of a senator, a liberal senator, that if the conservatives and Christians wanted to solve all the problems of welfare, it was very simple. If every synagogue and church would take one welfare family and provide for it, permanently, the problem would disappear. Well, not every congregation, but a number could take ten or twenty, or two or three, and other congregations could divide them, one family amongst them in terms of the support.

It’s interesting that in one of the better speeches he made, Reagan picked up that fact, I think it was in Boston and cited it and appealed to the churches. And whether it was evangelical churches or the Catholic Church, or the modernist churches, they all protested. They said that was terrible! In other words, they said we’re not going to do what the Church over the centuries has done—provided health, education and welfare. Those have historically been a part of the diaconal mercy work of the church: providing the schools, providing the hospitals, providing the welfare. You see, we have to wake up and take back these responsibilities. [0:32.03.5]

Yes.

[Audience] Even the most {?} of states has some expenses and those expenses have to be paid. What’s an appropriate structure for raising the funds to pay those expenses?

[Rushdoony] In the Bible there is a civil tax. It was half a shekel for all males 18 years old and older. This meant that you could not have a big power state. You provided enough to provide justice and to provide for defense. All the other things, the people had to take care of. And this historically was the pattern.

[Audience] …A per capita flat tax.

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] On males only?

[Rushdoony] For men only. Yes.

Any other questions or comments?

Yes.

[Audience] The {?} must have said that the law of the jubilee shows that the plan of God for redemption is comprehensive and it covers more than just for individual soul. Can we conclude from that that, uh to implement the law of jubilee would require just a comprehensive restructuring of our modern society?

[Rushdoony] Yes, but it begins with the Christians and the churches taking back government.

Now, consider two things: on the local level, your property and other taxes and the state level, 60-80% depending on where you live, of your taxes, go for welfare and for education. And on the federal level, both are very, very high also. If we take those back, it will shrink the power of the federal government and the state governments to a startling degree.

Now, we’re not more than a generation or a generation and a half away from taking back education. I believe we now have ah, a fourth to a third of the school children are home schools or Christian schools. In the major cities, the flight from the public schools is accelerating. In some of the eastern cities, it is particularly rapid.

Now, we’re not too far away from taking that away, and all kinds of groups are now in existence to minister to welfare. And some are doing remarkable work. They’re incurring hostility from the State as they’re taking over, like the Roloff work among juvenile delinquents. They’re still in hiding; that is they had to run to get out of Texas, into Missouri, but they were ministering to thousands of delinquent children and having close to a 95% rehabilitation and conversion.

Well, there are at least a hundred such organizations now ministering to delinquents and doing a remarkable job. As we take back government from the State, first we will succeed where they cannot. Consider the 95% rehabilitation. The State would be thunderstruck if they reached 5%. So Christians have to start giving and doing these things. It’s urgent that it be done.

Any other questions or comments?

Yes.

[Audience] What about those families where, or those instances where people had to work like hospitals? On the seventh year?

[Rushdoony] Oh, on the seventh year, yes. Alright, God says that if we obey all His law, including dietary laws, we’re going to see a remarkable health. He will put none of these diseases upon us. And we know that those groups like the Adventists who go beyond what God requires, and the Orthodox Jews who still go beyond it, but they observe the biblical laws of diet. They have a low incidence of diseases and a longer life expectancy with better health.

During the Medieval plagues of Black Death, the persecution of the Jews broke out, precisely because they were not getting sick. Everybody else was coming down and dying, being decimated, one fourth to one third depending on where you were. But not the Jews. Why?

Well, they assumed it was they were poisoning everybody when the truth was, they were observing God’s Law and prospering because of it. They were in good health because of it. So health has an aspect.

[Audience] I don’t think she meant that. I think what she was talking about is working in the seventh year. But that has already been taken care of because God says essential work goes on.

[Rushdoony] Oh, yes, works of necessity always go on, so you will have hospitals, but I’m saying we will eliminate a great deal of the necessity because it will make a difference—a dramatic difference in health.

Yes.

[Audience] The welfare system bothers me because the Church backing out have made it a situation where those people depend on the government not God for provisions, for {?} and they do it many times, from what I’ve heard, through hate. In other words if the government stops the money flow, they hate the government because they’re not giving it to them anymore. It’s not through God’s love, but I don’t see much in that as far as the fruits that we were promised we’d see as Christians. I don’t see any fruits in that.

[Rushdoony] You don’t see any fruits in….

[Audience] In the welfare system {?} church backing up, I think they’ve made a…

[Rushdoony] Welfare system only aggravates things. I know that one man through their church and Christian school began when there was massive unemployment in their area, he began a welfare program. He contacted stores, he contacted wholesale houses, he got food packages and things that were slightly damaged, cans of food that were slightly damaged, clothing that wasn’t selling was taken off the rack and given to him, so he had all kinds of things to give to people and he put a note into the paper and said anyone who was in need could come and they would help them, if they would simply apply and they’d check out to authenticate their need and within a day they would have things. It was interesting how many refused when they found out it was a church because they said if I take it from you, I’ll have to be grateful! And it’s my right from the federal government.

Well, it does mean it’s not going to be easy to make the change. But slowly, such people are making the change. They are working with people like that, and they are going to have to change because sooner or later the whole of this welfarism is going to collapse. Consider the fact that one economist has said that in not too many years, a 100% income tax won’t suffice to meet the national debt, just servicing the interest. What’s going to happen then?

In the 70s when inflation heated up for a while, the foster-child service began to collapse because none of the foster parents wanted the children since inflation was moving faster than the grants. So they were losing money on it. You see what I mean? What’s ahead is going to wipe out the federal government and its programs. They won’t work. The whole thing will collapse and it will mean chaos unless Christians begin to assume the responsibility which slowly but surely is being done now. Then maybe we can begin to see a change, but we will go through the ringer first, no question about it. And a lot of people will have to change their perspective because it’s going to be clobbered out of them by events.

Well, our time is up, let us bow our heads now in prayer.

Oh Lord our God, we thank Thee that as we work to reorder all things in terms of Thy Law, that we are not alone, that Thy power is ever with us as we are with Thee. Bless us therefore as we seek to reorder all things in terms of the law of Thy kingdom. And now, go in peace. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you this day and always. Amen.