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In addition to this, the Jubilee Year was to be observed after the manner of the sabbatic year, i.e. there should be neither sowing nor reaping nor pruning of vines, and everybody was expected to live on what the fields and the vineyards produced “of themselves,” and no attempt should be made at storing up the products of the land (Lev 25:11 f). Thus there are three distinct factors constituting the essential features of the Jubilee Year: personal liberty, restitution of property, and what we might call the simple life.
1. Personal Liberty:
The 50th year was to be a time in which liberty should be proclaimed to all the inhabitants of the country. We should, indeed, diminish the import of this institution if we should apply it only to those who were to be freed from the bonds of physical servitude. Undoubtedly, they must have been the foremost in realizing its beneficial effects. But the law was intended to benefit all, the masters as well as the servants. They should never lose sight of their being brothers and citizens of theocratic kingdom. They owed their life to God and were subject to His sovereign will. Only through loyalty to Him were they free and could ever hope to be free and independent of all other masters.
2. Restitution of Property:
The institution of the Jubilee Year should become the means of fixing the price of real property (Lev 25:15 f; compare Lev 25:25-28); moreover, it should exclude the possibility of selling any piece of land permanently (Lev 25:23), the next verse furnishing the motive: “The land is mine: for ye are strangers and sojourners with me.” The same rule was to be applied to dwelling-houses outside of the walled cities (Lev 25:31), and also to the houses owned by Levites, although they were built within walled cities (Lev 25:32).
In the same manner the price of Hebrew slaves was to vary according to the proximity of the Jubilee Year (Lev 25:47-54). This passage deals with the enslaving of a Hebrew by a foreigner living among the Jews; it goes without saying that the same rule would hold good in the case of a Hebrew selling himself to one of his own people.
In Lev 27:17-25 we find a similar arrangement respecting such lands that were “sanctified unto Yahweh.” In all these cases the original owner was at liberty to redeem his property at any time, or have it redeemed by some of his nearest relatives (Lev 25:25-27, Lev 25:29, Lev 25:48 ff; Lev 27:19).
The crowning feature, though, was the full restitution of all real property in the Jubilee Year. The primary object of this regulation was, of course, the reversion of all hereditary property to the family which originally possessed it, and the reestablishment of the original arrangement regarding the division of the land. But that was not all; for this legal disposition and regulation of external matters was closely connected with the high calling of the Jewish people. It was a part of the Divine plan looking forward to the salvation of mankind. “The deepest meaning of it (the Jubilee Year) is to be found in the
3. The Simple Life:
The Jubilee Year, being the crowning point of all sabbatical institutions, gave the finishing touch as it were to the whole cycle of sabbatic days, months and years. It is, therefore, quite appropriate that it should be a year of rest for the land like the preceding sabbatic year (Lev 25:11 f). It follows, of course, that in this instance there were two years, one after the other, in which there should be no sowing or systematic ingathering. This seems to be clear from Lev 25:18-22: “And ye shall sow the eighth year, and eat of the fruits, the old store; until the ninth year, until its fruits come in, ye shall eat the old store.” Thus in the 7th and 8th years the people were to live on what the fields had produced in the 6th year and whatever grew spontaneously. This shows the reason why we may say that one of the factors constituting the Jubilee Year was the “simple life.” They could not help but live simply for two consecutive years. Nobody can deny that this afforded ample opportunity to develop the habit of living within very limited means. And again we see that this external part of the matter did not fully come up to the intention of the Lawgiver. It was not the simple life as such that He had in view, but rather the laying down of its moral and religious foundations. In this connection we must again refer to Lev 25:18-22, “What shall we eat the seventh year?” The answer is very simple and yet of surpassing grandeur: “Then I will command my blessing upon you,” etc. Nothing was expected of the people but faith in Yahweh and confidence in His power, which was not to be shaken by any doubtful reflection. And right here we have found the root of the simple life: no life without the true God, and no simplicity of life without true faith in Him. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God” (Mat 4:4; compare Deu 8:3).
We may well ask: Did the Jewish people ever observe the Jubilee Year? There is no reason why they should not have observed it in pre-exilic times (compare Lotz in The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, X, under the word “Sabbatical Year” and “Year of Jubilee”). Perhaps they signally failed in it, and if so, we should not be surprised at all. Not that the institution in itself was cumbered with any obstacles that could not have been overcome; but what is more common than unbelief and unwillingness to trust absolutely in Yahweh? Or, was it observed in post-exilic times? Here, too, we are in the dark. There is, indeed, a tradition according to which the Jubilee Year has never been observed - neither in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah nor at any later period. The truth of this seems to be corroborated by the silence of Josephus, who, while referring quite frequently to the sabbatic year, never once mentions the Year of Jubilee.
Year of emancipation and restoration to be kept every 50 years. For Israel, the seventh year expressed at length the values of the seventh day Sabbath (Lv 25:1–7). When a series of seven years reached the perfection of seven sevens, the 50th year was heralded by the trumpet of jubilee and a whole additional year was set aside as belonging to the Lord.
The word “jubilee” simply means a ram’s horn; it came to mean a trumpet made from or in the shape of a ram’s horn. Such horns were exclusively for religious use. The sacred trumpet gave its name to the year of the ram’s horn, the jubilee year—a year to which the people of God were summoned in a striking and holy way. It was not simply a release from labor, not just a rest, but a year belonging to the Lord. In Leviticus 25 this exact expression occurs in connection with the seventh year rather than expressly with the jubilee year. Functionally such a year was a Sabbath rest for the land, and it brought enjoyment “to the Lord” (Lv 25:4). But nothing could more directly express the implications and orientations of the 50th year.
Lordship
The first principle of the jubilee is God’s lordship over the whole earth, acknowledged by his people in their obedience to his command to set the year aside in this way. Just as the Sabbath expressed his right to order life, giving it the shape of six days’ work and one day’s rest, and just as the seventh year, linked in Deuteronomy 31:9–13 with the reading of his law, expressed his right to command the obedience of his people, so the 50th year expressed his sovereign possession of all: land, people, means of production, and life itself. Take the typical case of debtor and creditor. When God brought his people into possession of the land, he gave to each his inheritance. In a given circumstance a man might be compelled to sell his land in whole or part, but it must come back to him: “The land must never be sold on a permanent basis because it really belongs to me. You are only foreigners and tenants living with me” (Lv 25:23, nlt). In this verse “foreigners” carries the meaning “stateless persons,” “refugees,” “those who have sought political asylum”—in a word, those who have no rights except what mercy concedes. Such are the people of God and such they must acknowledge themselves to be when the jubilee year comes around. When a piece of real estate changed hands, the seller might congratulate himself on the astuteness with which he had solved his problem, and the buyer might rejoice in his skillful acquisitiveness, but in the Year of Jubilee seller and buyer alike are compelled to confess a different truth: neither is master, either of his own welfare or of the person and goods of another. Each has a Master in heaven.
Redemption
According to the ordinance, the trumpet that heralded the year was sounded on the Day of Atonement (Lv 25:9). That was the day on which the Lord proclaimed his people clean before him from all their sins (16:30). Forgiveness of sins ushered in the jubilee year. The verb “to redeem” and the noun “redemption” had a strong commercial use in the recovery of property pledged against loans of money, and in the 50th year these words would have sounded and resounded as debtors confessed that they could not “redeem” and creditors forewent their “redemption” rights, each using the very vocabulary of the Lord’s action at the exodus (Ex 6:6). This is what the Lord had done for his people, and the divine action must be the norm of the human. Brotherly generosity is urged (Lv 25:35–38), liberty is granted (vv 39–43), and slavery in perpetuity is forbidden (vv 47–55) simply because the divine redemptive act makes the redeemed into brothers, brings them into the Lord’s servitude, and cancels the bondage that would otherwise be theirs forever.
Rest
The correlative of redemption is rest. This rest is vividly illustrated and enforced as Moses legislates rest from all the toil connected with promoting next year’s crop (Lv 25:4); rest from the toil of harvesting, for the people of God were to live hand to mouth, gathering only what and when need dictated (vv 5–7); rest from the anxious burden of debts incurred; and rest from slavery (v 10). Like the Sabbath, this rest would have meant exactly what it said: freedom from toil; relaxation, refreshment, and recreation. Very likely tiredness was as endemic among the people of God then as now, and grace drew near to give them a holiday. But equally with the Sabbath, release from the preoccupations of staying alive created time to be preoccupied with the Lord, his worship, his Word, and the life that pleases him. We can understand Isaiah 58 as binding the ideals of Sabbath and jubilee together. The Lord frees his people not for unbroken idleness but for the redirection of life toward himself. The jubilee year was thus a deliberate opting out of the rat race; it called a halt to acquisitiveness; it abandoned concern over the pressure to stay alive. It reordered priorities, giving a chance to appraise the use of time and the selection of objectives. For a whole year the people of God stood back, rested, ceased from the good in order to attain the best.
Faith
But this standing back from life was not in the style of a dropout. It was the action of responsible faith. No one on earth can escape questions such as “What shall we eat?” The Lord foresees and provides (Lv 25:20); grace provides so that God’s people can enjoy the ordinances of grace (cf. Ex 16:29). When he commands a year off, he enables them to take it. The 50th year was a living testimony to his faithfulness. The last season of sowing and reaping would have been the 49th year; in the final 7th year in the series the people would live off the casual growth; and in the 50th year nothing but the sheer attentive faithfulness of their God could provide for them (Lv 25:21). Here indeed their faith would be put to the test, for God spoke a word of majestic promise and called on them to believe. At the heart of their jubilee they took God at his word and found him faithful.
Obedience
Biblically, it is a central characteristic of the people of God that they do what he commands for no other reason than that he commands it. In the ordinance of the 50th year the people of God must show themselves as his obedient ones, and in fact their obedience is the guarantee of continuance in the land he has granted to them. Thus, for example, Leviticus 26:34–35 teaches that loss of tenure and loss of liberty is directly related to contravention of the principle of the Sabbath, found on the seventh day, seventh year, and jubilee year. Refusal to obey goes hand in hand with loss of possession, leaving behind an empty land, which then enjoys the Sabbath rest it never received from its disobedient inhabitants.
Hope
In the 50th year the people lived in the light of the forgiveness of sins, walked by obedience in harmony with the God who redeemed them, and in freedom from toil, received from the ground its life-sustaining benefits without any sweat on their brows (Gn 2:16; 3:19). It was a sort of Eden restored, the curse momentarily held in abeyance—but also a prolonged foretaste of the coming day when the promises would all be fulfilled, the blood of the covenant efficacious without hindrance, the prisoners of hope (i.e., who had waited in hope for their release) freed, and the trumpet of liberation heard throughout the world (Is 27:13; Zec 9:11–14). The Year of Jubilee in a limited but real way foreshadowed what would yet be the eternal inheritance and bliss of the people of God.
See also Feasts and Festivals of Israel.
Aquifer Open Bible Dictionary © 2026 Mission Mutual, an adaptation of the Tyndale Open Bible Dictionary © 2023 Tyndale House Publishers. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.