Parish Work, Life and Thought
THE OLD TESTAMENT JUBILEE
The year 2000 has been selected by many organizations, including the Anglican Church, as a Jubilee year - one for new beginnings, and especially for forgiving the debts of the poorer nations. Jubilee as a means of debt relief has been used occasionally since ancient times. The Old Testament mentions it during the years when the Israelites were settling into Canaan after their long years in the wilderness. The concept is rooted in the covenant of Moses, and is just one of the many examples of the social obligations of a people living in a covenant relationship, not only with God, but with one another.
At the time the Israelites entered Canaan, the Canaanite kings owned all the land. The majority of the Canaanite population were peasants or tenants who paid taxes or rendered services to occupy the land. The Israelites adopted a different system for both historical and theological reasons. They were a people living under a covenant. Yahweh had promised them a land flowing with milk and honey: it was to be His gift, but a gift with conditions. God said the land "shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine; for you (Israelites) are strangers and sojourners with me." (Lev. 25:23) This law established a tradition by which the people were granted the right to use the land, ownership was retained by God.
According to the Covenant, the land was to be distributed equitably among the people; every tribe shall be given its inheritance according to its numbers. (Num. 26:52-53) Within each tribe, the land was to be divided by the clans, and within the clans by individual families, in order to protect the family as the basic unit in society, and to prevent a few powerful families, clans or tribes from accumulating large amounts of land. The inheritance system ensured that the land remained within the family.
In practice, all did not always go smoothly. Some Israelites were successful in the new land, others were not and fell into debt. As the land could not be sold to pay the debt, the creditor took possession and cultivated it in order to be paid. Sometimes the debtor had to sell his own and his family's labour to the creditor. This was known as bondage, and over the years became common. Special provisions ensured the protection of the inheritance in cases of bondage or takeover of land. Every 7th year would be declared a sabbatical year in which the debt would be erased. The sabbatical also applied to the land itself which was to be left fallow every 7th year. (Lev. 25:3-6) Every 7th sabbatical was to be jubilee year, when debtors were to be released from both debt and bondage, and the ancestral land was to be restored to the family. (Lev. 25:13) In this manner, families were protected from endless debt and servitude. Over the longer period, the creditor had time to recuperate at least some of the bad debt since he could cultivate the land, and, in the case of bondage, without having to pay for labour.
The Old Testament clearly indicates the jubilee obligations. But did it actually happen, or was it an utopian ideal? There is no documentary evidence, and scholars are divided on the answer. Some believe that it was a part of the law in the pre-monarchy, which later fell into disuse; others believe that Leviticus was part of the Holiness Code formulated at a much later time, and written back into the historical record, and, for all intents and purposes, it never existed.
The writer suggests a third possibility. The Israelites were pastoralists and nomads. They were unfamiliar with the concept of ownership of land, but were concerned with the use of land. Flocks were passed from father to son. As they gradually adopted a settled way of life, they simply adopted a system that was familiar to them for their changing needs.
For additional discussion of the topic, see Christopher J.H. Wright "Walking in the Ways of the Lord: the Ethical Authority of the Old Testament", to whom this writer is greatly indebted.
This is an abstract of a talk given by Suzanne Cross on January 24th, 1999.
