Jubilee Defined (latest)

There has been so much hype about jubilee lately and it is important that we get the right understanding of the name as it is in the scriptures. This especially as we have mixed the political and the church descriptions, none of which is scripturally accurate.

The jubilee is more related to the Sabbath than anything else. In fact it could simply be defined as the Sabbath of the Sabbath years.

To understand the Jubilee it is important to understand the Sabbath year. This is because in scriptures we do not see God judging Israel for not keeping the Jubilee, yet we see him condemning them for not giving their land its Sabbath.

Moreover also I gave them my sabbaths, to be a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am the LORD that sanctify them. (Ezekiel 20:12)

 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. 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. 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. 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. For it is the jubilee; it shall be holy unto you: ye shall eat the increase thereof out of the field. In the year of this jubilee ye shall return every man unto his possession (Leviticus 25: 8 - 13)

The seventy year captivity was a release for the land to enjoy the Sabbaths Israel had denied it.

And I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a sword after you: and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste. Then shall the land enjoy her sabbaths, as long as it lieth desolate, and ye be in your enemies' land; even then shall the land rest, and enjoy her sabbaths. As long as it lieth desolate it shall rest; because it did not rest in your sabbaths, when ye dwelt upon it. (Leviticus 26: 33 - 35)

The main purpose of the jubilee was equalization. That also was the main purpose of the Sabbath year. It was a display of trust in God in that one simply released himself into God’s keeping by simply giving land rest for a whole year, releasing any Hebrew slave generously and forgiving any debts owed you. I must trust God adequately to do all that when I am not expecting anything from my land for at least two years. No wonder it was difficult for Israel to do!

God knew that people are different in their understanding of business and the driving force for success in business is exploitation. Capitalism may have been defined recently but it was in existence since men started interacting. Exploitation was thus in existence even then as people sought to take advantage of others to enrich themselves.

We will also realize that there were irresponsible, wasteful and lazy people even then who were not averse to wasting their inheritance at the expense of their posterity.

The combination of the shrewd capitalist and the irresponsible steward is the reason God brought about the Sabbath year and the jubilee. It was to protect the vulnerable who is the victim of the clash or partnership between the shrewd business type and foolish stewards. It was God’s solution to the exploitation of generations by opening up of options.

It gave room for someone to learn from his folly. If one wasted his property like the prodigal son, he could count on hiring himself out to deal with his debt for at most six years.

And if thy brother, an Hebrew man, or an Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and serve thee six years; then in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee. And when thou sendest him out free from thee, thou shalt not let him go away empty: Thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock, and out of thy floor, and out of thy winepress: of that wherewith the LORD thy God hath blessed thee thou shalt give unto him. And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt, and the LORD thy God redeemed thee: therefore I command thee this thing to day. (Deuteronomy 15: 12 - 15)

The purpose of the same was to demonstrate God’s love and care. The Sabbath was therefore one way of demonstrating God’s care over His people. Wealth was deemed secondary to nurturing God’s nature over our brothers. Even the returns from loaning of money became secondary to having God’s nature.

But thou shalt open thine hand wide unto him, and shalt surely lend him sufficient for his need, in that which he wanteth. Beware that there be not a thought in thy wicked heart, saying, The seventh year, the year of release, is at hand; and thine eye be evil against thy poor brother, and thou givest him nought; and he cry unto the LORD against thee, and it be sin unto thee. Thou shalt surely give him, and thine heart shall not be grieved when thou givest unto him: because that for this thing the LORD thy God shall bless thee in all thy works, and in all that thou puttest thine hand unto. (Deuteronomy 15: 8 - 10)

Thus beyond the aspect of disconnecting from the hassle of pursuing wealth the purpose of the Sabbath year was bringing some balance in society and raising the faith level of the people of faith by diverting their attention from the world to God and His values.

The jubilee was the pinnacle of the Sabbath year. It was the Sabbath of the Sabbath years. It was immediately after the seventh Sabbath year.

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. (Leviticus 25:10)

The Sabbath year dealt mainly with debts, lending and slavery. The jubilee dealt with the land.

The land shall not be sold for ever: for the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me. (Leviticus 25:23)

This was the purpose of the jubilee. It was acknowledgement of the fact that God owns the land and that was the reason the land reverted to the original allottee.

Therefore the thrust of the jubilee was the equalization of all by making land God’s property as a confession.

This took care of the generation of the people who had sold their lands for whatever reason. There were irresponsible parents who had sold out their posterity and left them destitute because of their greed or folly and had no way or willingness of redeeming the lands.

This was the reason God brought about the jubilee. This took care of the next generation as they would then have another chance at starting afresh. Even the wasteful parents might have learnt their lesson and may be wiser at handling the land issue after the jubilee.

Speaking of the jubilee as anything other than that may actually be a twisting of the scriptures. It may be the diversion of the word to more selfish purposes.

Jubilee has more to do with historical reparations than ‘blessings’. It is more about giving than receiving. It is more of a responsibility than access to a promise. It should involve more soul searching than celebration.

What is the jubilee to you? Is it just hype and excitement and expectation of ‘great things’ or is it guided by God’s word? Is my understanding of jubilee interested with the disadvantaged in society and my part in making a positive difference in their life or is it just an open mouthed expectation of a new chapter of even greater worship of mammon?

You see to the rich land owners, jubilee meant the surrender the lands he had acquired on a willing buyer willing seller basis simply because that is what God had ordered. It meant his reducing land ownership substantially as the only land he could own was what had been passed on by his ancestors. This came after he had released the slaves he had bought with his own money, and with very generous gifts, also because that is what God had ordered. Then he had left his land without cultivation for the past year, because God had said so. This meant that his land was providing free food for the widows, orphans, refugees and poor as that was one purpose of the Sabbath year. He had also forgiven all debts all his debtors owed him, because God said so.

Then he gets to the second year without cultivating the land, even the little that he originally owned before his business acumen and agricultural prowess elevated him to the state he had attained before the jubilee.

And no wonder that keeping the Sabbath year and jubilee brought a blessing to Israel. It simply transformed the society and redeemed relationships. It built the faith of the whole community as the relationships were enriched through that open and unselfish sharing of the resources they had.

It was the jubilee that dealt mammon a death blow since mammon exists to elevate self interest. It is such self interest that makes one to look at others as avenues for his self gratification and realization.

It did not devalue hard work and innovation. It did not create a welfare state. It was not communism though I am sure many communists would like to think so. It did not devalue private ownership of property. It did not promote laziness.

On the contrary it made hard work very valuable. What it did is bring balance in the same by dealing with the extremes of the same. It did what every politician and political party always promises to do but is unsuccessful in doing, reducing the gap between the rich and poor.

Even better than is the fact that it gives even the poor a new lease of life to attempt to also become wealthy. It therefore opened opportunities for all. Any society that pursued God’s law became a land of opportunity for all, and especially through the jubilee.

Compare that with USA, the famed land of opportunity. There is great inequality and people are groaning through lack of opportunity especially as their industries are being exported to lands where labor is cheap, leaving them to struggle with joblessness. People are losing their property since they can’t service loans because the banks and mortgage companies are in it for the kill. This makes the rich become richer as the poor are sinking deeper into hopelessness.

Kenya is no different. Having been in most parts of this country I have come to realize that in places where you will find the most prosperous communities you will without fail find the most desperate poverty indicators. As I have mentioned in my books the slums are the centre of the most affluent estates in our towns, meaning that it is the slums that provide cheap labor for the rich without any sense of guilt. The places with the largest parcels of land are the places with the most squatters to provide cheap labor for the farms.

Jubilee means equitableness, not equality. It means we seek to elevate someone deep in the dumps so that they can at least attain some sense of self value, and this not by giving them handouts. It is offering them opportunities.

How do you feel when you spend more money taking a friend to lunch than you pay your cook or watchman for a month? How do you feel spending more money on the upkeep of your dog than you pay its handler? How do you feel spending more on fuelling your car than you pay its driver?

Do those employees also eat and have a life? Do they have families and educate their children? Are you created differently from them? Is the God you worship different from the one they worship? Do you have more faith than them?

I think contextualizing the jubilee today would mean trying to narrow the gap between the rich and poor, and I repeat not by giving handouts. Let us try to offer them opportunities to improve their lot.

Is he a watchman because his parents could not afford to educate him? Make a difference by helping him educate his children. Did the house girl drop out of school because her parents could not afford to take her to high school? Then take her to a college where her qualifications could fit and give her a few hours off each day for the same.

Do you have land that you bought from drunken fathers? Sell a few acres affordably to the children of those fathers so that they can also get a chance to start their lives with a piece of land.

Do you have a well paying job yet you have a neighbor who is struggling to put food on the table for his children because he is jobless? Give him small jobs that you pay generously to make him at least feed his family. Empower the widows and orphans that you know. Invest in making a positive difference in the society even as you are using them to make your millions.  That is what Apostle James teaches in his book.

I think that is the essence of jubilee. We access the blessing of the season by operating by the spirit of the season. Just mentioning the season yet operating contrary to its spirit will very easily attract the judgment that comes from defying God’s order.

But if ye will not do so, behold, ye have sinned against the LORD: and be sure your sin will find you out. (Numbers 32:23)

Keeping the spirit of the Sabbath year and the jubilee are not optional just like obedience is not optional. There are consequences whichever you choose. The one thing you can be sure is that whatever you choose will determine on what side God will be in respect to you position. Obedience brings Him to your corner whilst disobedience makes Him your opponent. And it does not really matter whether you are a Christian or not. The only thing you can be sure of is that judgment will begin in the house of faith and that because we have the truth of God and choose to take another route.

I am sure you want some examples.

Our area was a hotbed of the Mau Mau uprising. My father was among those in the forest fighting the colonialists for land (we were later told they were fighting for independence). When that independence came, the colonialist handed the reins of power to their bootlickers so that the queen’s interests are protected in the independence season. This gave the demarcation of the land to the colonialist’s henchmen and home guards who were sworn enemies to the freedom fighters and their families. Since families had been moved from their lands to reserves and camps during the struggle, it was very easy to punish the Mau Mau since there was nobody living on their land.

The Mau Mau thus lost their lands. I was shown the man who swore to make sure that my father got no land, and that is what happened to most freedom fighters.

Without land, the freedom fighters lost everything as they could not educate their children or even farm. It was an uphill struggle from then on.

Fast forward to the same people giving their inheritance to their children. I have observed over the years God reversing the situation in one generation (think jubilee). God has done the equalization Himself, many times even judging the oppressor. Most of the land has reverted to the original owners and the ones who fought for it through their children. How? It is interesting that these old men would share their land (and they really gave themselves huge chunks) to their children and the children would sell most (some even all) of the land, and to the children of the disfranchised. Many children of the freedom fighters would barely have any education but God would bless their hand in farming (many through getting land in the forest to farm as they tend the trees) and business however small it started.

There are people who knew the value of land before their brothers, many times because they were the ones who received some education at the expense of their siblings. These grabbed family land and assets at the expense of their brothers. Some disinherited their brothers’ widows. That land has been taken from them or their children.

There are people who mistreated or despised others and God reversed the situation.

I will also highlight some humor on God’s side. When He sends Judah in exile for among other things denying the land its Sabbaths, what do we find?

And he carried away all Jerusalem, and all the princes, and all the mighty men of valour, even ten thousand captives, and all the craftsmen and smiths: none remained, save the poorest sort of the people of the land (2 Kings 24:14)

But the captain of the guard left of the poor of the land to be vinedressers and husbandmen (2 Kings 25: 12)

God reverses the tide so that the people who were the probable cause of that poverty have to leave all that land they had exploited in the hands of the exploited, and that free of charge.

I can give you case after case of real people and situations I have seen over my not so few years. Suffice it when I say that respecting the spirit of the jubilee has rewards just as ignoring it has judgment. Like I have mentioned that the main reason for the Jewish exile was precisely that (2 Chronicles 36: 21; Jeremiah 25: 8 - 11)

David exhibits the jubilee spirit when he flees. Though the main army was against him, we know that he had enough friends to raise an army at short notice. Even the crown prince Jonathan could easily have joined him had he as much as hinted as we know he could even visit him in exile! Many in Israel knew that he was the king Samuel had anointed after Saul rebelled against Him. Even Saul confessed as much. Yet what do we see?

And every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him; and he became a captain over them: and there were with him about four hundred men. (1Samuel 22: 2)

David chose (or was probably followed by) the lowest in society. He gave them hope and a chance to reverse their situation. When you look at the mighty men he had, you will even see refugees. His jubilee spirit released hopeless people into great usefulness and faith in God. Such people became sold out to his cause that they became an army like no other. I believe that is among the things the jubilee was supposed to accomplish. Compare that with Saul in 1 Samuel 22: 7, 8?

This I believe is what we should be talking about as we make all the noise about jubilee this or the other because I believe this is what God is ultimately interested in.