OK, so now we move on to the next topic, the Year of Jubilee. Leviticus 25:8-10—“‘8 And you shall count seven sabbaths of years for yourself, seven times seven years; and the time of the seven sabbaths of years shall be to you forty-nine years. 9 Then you shall cause the trumpet of the Jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the Day of Atonement you shall make the trumpet to sound throughout all your land. 10 And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a Jubilee for you; and each of you shall return to his possession, and each of you shall return to his family.’”
We’re going to use this Year of Jubilee as the basis for examining some of the other major themes in this chapter. Because some of the remaining themes have some relation to the Year of Jubilee. But before we go there, let’s look at a couple of parallels to this Year of Jubilee, one of which is that it paints one more picture of Christ in the Law. How did the people count the Year of Jubilee? Leviticus 25:8—“‘And you shall count seven sabbaths of years for yourself, seven times seven years; and the time of the seven sabbaths of years shall be to you forty-nine years.’” How did they determine the date of Shavuot (Pentecost)? Leviticus 23:15—“‘And you shall count for yourselves from the day after the Sabbath, from the day that you brought the sheaf of the wave offering: seven Sabbaths shall be completed.’” Shavuot: Count seven Sabbath days, celebrate the fiftieth day. Year of Jubilee: count seven Sabbath years, celebrate the fiftieth year.
Second, turn to Daniel 9:24-25—“24 Seventy weeks are determined for your people and for your holy city, to finish the transgression, to make an end of sins, to make reconciliation for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy. 25 Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the command to restore and build Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince, there shall be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublesome times.” Seventy weeks—literally, seventy sevens. 490 years. Four hundred ninety years from the command to rebuild Jerusalem until the year the Messiah would come. So which command to rebuild Jerusalem serves as the starting point for counting the 490 years? Well, that depends on who you read. Bishop Edward Chandler writes,
“The commencement of the weeks (as he remarks) must be either from the 7th of Artaxerxes, which falls on 457 B.C. or from the 20th of Artaxerxes. [To] 457 B.C., [add] 26 years after Christ [i.e., after His birth, here and following-Ed.]—which is the number [by which] 483, or 69 weeks, exceeds 457 years—and you are brought to the beginning of John the Baptist's preaching up the advent of the Messiah. Add 7 years or one week to the former [John the Baptist preaching Messiah], and you come to the 33rd year of A.D. which was the year of Jesus Christ's death. Or else compute 490 years, the whole 70 weeks, from the 7th of Artaxerxes, by subtracting 457 years…from 490, and there remains 33, the year of our Lord's death.
Let the 20th of Artaxerxes be the date of the 70 weeks, which is 445 B.C. and reckon 69 weeks of Chaldean years—seventy Chaldee years being equal to sixty nine Julian; and so 478 Julian years making 483 Chaldee years—and they end in the 33rd year after Christ, or the Passover following.
[…]
But computing from either of these dates from the 7th or from the 20th of Artaxerxes by Julian or by Chaldee years these weeks II weeks will carry us to the reign of Tiberius the Roman Emperor for the death of the Messiah and consequently the destruction of the city and temple following the Messiah's death can be no other than that by Titus Vespasian It must be to in point of time j and again no other destruction was attended with all the circumstances in Daniel beside that by the Romans.”
[Chandler, Edward. “A defence of Christianity from the prophecies of the Old Testament; wherein are considered all the objections against this kind of proof, advanced in a late Discourse of the grounds and reasons of the Christian religion”. p. 115.]
On the other hand, Adam Clarke, rather than reckoning forward from a certain date, reckons backwards, using Julian measurement:
“Most learned men agree that the death of Christ happened at the Passover in the month Nisan, in the four thousand seven hundred and forty-sixth year of the Julian period. Four hundred and ninety years, reckoned back from the above year, leads us directly to the month Nisan in the four thousand two hundred and fifty-sixth year of the same period; the very month and year in which Ezra had his commission from Artaxerxes Longimanus, king of Persia, (see Ezra 7:9), to restore and rebuild Jerusalem. See the commission in Ezra 7:11-26, and Prideaux’s Connexions, vol. 2 p. 380.”
Boiling all that down, we get this: from the time that Artaxerxes commanded Jerusalem to be rebuilt, until the time that Messiah would come, was given to the people in about as clear a picture as could be given. And they missed Him. But isn't that the way we humans are? Sometimes you have to paint us a picture—and we still don’t get it.
So then, the 70 weeks of Daniel completed the tenth Jubilee year after the order went out to rebuild Jerusalem. In those Jubilee years, slaves were set free and property was redeemed. Leviticus 25:10—“And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all its inhabitants.” Does that sound like something Messiah did? The word that came to Isaiah said that’s what He would do. Isaiah 61:1—“The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon Me, because the LORD has anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound.” And when the Lord Jesus came, that was what He came to do—to bring to pass what was spoken of Him in the Law, and in the scroll of Isaiah. Luke 4:17-19—16 So He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. And as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read. 17 And He was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written: “18 The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; 19 to proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD.” Behold, the year of His coming was the year of Jubilee, the time had come: for the poor in spirit to be made rich with the righteousness of God; for those broken over their sin to be saved from those sins; for those held captive by sin to be set free from their master Satan; for those whose eyes had been veiled to the gospel to be given sight by our Lord; for those held down and oppressed by their own human failings to rise up on eagle’s wings and soar; for God to come down and save those who had rebelled against Him and draw them to Himself.
Behold he comes!/Riding on the clouds!
Shining like the sun/At the trumpet's call!
So lift your voice!/It's the year of Jubilee!
For out of Zion's Hill salvation comes!
Leviticus 25:11-12—“‘11 That fiftieth year shall be a Jubilee to you; in it you shall neither sow nor reap what grows of its own accord, nor gather the grapes of your untended vine. 12 For it is the Jubilee; it shall be holy to you; you shall eat its produce from the field.’” Like in the seventh-year Sabbath, you were not to till your land. Not only do you let the land lay fallow, you don’t wholly reap of any kind of crop. You simply go out, every day, and pick what you need. It is as if God is giving the freeing the land from its burden of constantly being turned and sown to produce for those who derived their sustenance from it. But think about this as well: this Year of Jubilee would constitute the second half of a two-year span when the land would not be tilled and sown. Remember, the forty-ninth year was also a year of rest for the land, as was the fiftieth. So two years would pass before the people could plant any new crops; they had to rely on God to provide for not only year forty-nine, but Jubilee as well.
Leviticus 25:13-17—“‘13 In this Year of Jubilee, each of you shall return to his possession. 14 And if you sell anything to your neighbor or buy from your neighbor's hand, you shall not oppress one another. 15 According to the number of years after the Jubilee you shall buy from your neighbor, and according to the number of years of crops he shall sell to you. 16 According to the multitude of years you shall increase its price, and according to the fewer number of years you shall diminish its price; for he sells to you according to the number of the years of the crops. 17 Therefore you shall not oppress one another, but you shall fear your God; for I am the LORD your God.’” Now, it was according to this year of Jubilee that certain things were given their valuation. For example, if a neighbor wanted to buy from you a certain piece of land, the price was prorated according to how many years remained until Jubilee. If the value of that land was 1000 shekels, and 24 years had elapsed since the previous Jubilee, you have to value that land for this transaction at 500 shekels (1000 shekels divided by 50 years equals 20 shekels per year). Also, you then deduct any Sabbath years that would come up during the time that said neighbor retained the rights to that field. That would drop the price from 500 shekels to 400 shekels (since there would be no harvest in years 28, 35, 42, 49 and 50, those five lost years would knock 100 shekels off the valuation).
We find other provisions pertaining to land and the Year of Jubilee in Leviticus 27. These cover the dedication of property to the vow of קָרְבָּן (qorban). We looked at the קָרְבָּן (qorban) back in Leviticus chapters 3 and 7 when we studied the Peace Offerings. The קָרְבָּן (qorban) was a voluntary Peace Offering of a vow (Leviticus 7:16). Leviticus 27:16-25—“‘16 If a man dedicates to the LORD part of a field of his possession, then your valuation shall be according to the seed for it. A homer of barley seed shall be valued at fifty shekels of silver. 17 If he dedicates his field from the Year of Jubilee, according to your valuation it shall stand. 18 But if he dedicates his field after the Jubilee, then the priest shall reckon to him the money due according to the years that remain till the Year of Jubilee, and it shall be deducted from your valuation. 19 And if he who dedicates the field ever wishes to redeem it, then he must add one-fifth of the money of your valuation to it, and it shall belong to him. 20 But if he does not want to redeem the field, or if he has sold the field to another man, it shall not be redeemed anymore; 21 but the field, when it is released in the Jubilee, shall be holy to the LORD, as a devoted field; it shall be the possession of the priest. 22 And if a man dedicates to the LORD a field which he has bought, which is not the field of his possession, 23 then the priest shall reckon to him the worth of your valuation, up to the Year of Jubilee, and he shall give your valuation on that day as a holy offering to the LORD. 24 In the Year of Jubilee the field shall return to him from whom it was bought, to the one who owned the land as a possession. 25 And all your valuations shall be according to the shekel of the sanctuary: twenty gerahs to the shekel.’”
Suppose a man inherited a piece of land from his father. Let’s suppose for a moment that this inheritance or purchase took place during the Year of Jubilee. The man says, “I dedicate 5 acres to the LORD.” And suppose it takes a homer of barley seed to sow that 5 acre tract. What happened next: the priest takes fifty shekels of sliver according to the shekel of the sanctuary (each shekel being the equivalent of 160 coffee beans, this would make for 9000 coffee beans, or 3 lbs. of coffee beans. So 3 lbs of silver) and gives that sum to the person. Now, if it is ten years since the Year of Jubilee when this dedication takes place, then the man would receive forty shekels; if it is twenty years after Jubilee, he would get thirty shekels. And suppose the man said, “You know, I’d really like to have that land back.” He would then go to the priest, who would count the number of years until the next Jubilee (for instance, let’s say there are ten years until Jubilee). The man would have to give not only the ten shekels of silver, but he would have to add two more shekels (one-fifth of ten) and give a total of twelve shekels of silver to the priest. Now, there are a couple more clauses we need to look at concerning the dedicated field. If you did not redeem it before the next Year of Jubilee, you did not get it back—when it was released, it became the possession of the priests. If you sold it to another, it could not be redeemed, and at the next Jubilee it likewise became property of the priests. All these conditions also applied to a piece of land that the man in question may have bought from a neighbor.
Leviticus 25:23—“‘The land shall not be sold permanently, for the land is Mine; for you are strangers and sojourners with Me.’” The earth belongs to God (Psalm 24:1). We do not own one square inch of it. In fact, we don’t own any single thing on the face of the earth. That is the reasoning behind the prohibition in verse 23. Besides, God was trying to drive home another message, one that He wants us as Christians under the New Covenant to know as well: we are strangers, sojourners, pilgrims. We are not to get too comfortable on this miserable planet, no matter how bright and shiny the objects the world tempts us with. Hebrews 11:13—These all died in faith… [and] confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. 1st Peter 2:11—Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul. This world is not the be-all end-all of everything. This world is not our final destination. This world is just a place we pass through until we reach the place where we will spend eternity. And if one desires to have the things of this world rather than the things of God, then they will have those things. And they will lose everything. Matthew 16:24-26—“24 If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. 25 For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. 26 For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?” The world says “Go ahead: long for and lust after the fruit of this world, which is so appealing to the eyes and to our flawed human senses. Be like Eve, who beheld the fruit and saw that it was good for food and pleasing to the eyes.” WRONG! 1st John 2:15-17—15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world. 17 And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever. From the International Critical Commentary—
“The evil desires which assail men through the lower part of their nature in general, or through the sense of vision in particular, or through the external good which falls to their lot, if regarded and used as opportunities for display, have their origin not in the Father, but in the world which has broken loose from Him. And the world and the desires which it fosters are alike transitory. Only that which falls in with God’s will, and carries forward His purpose, is of permanent value and lasting character.”
Part 4 next week
