Permanent Deeds

Set this year apart as holy, a time to proclaim freedom throughout the land for all who live there. It will be a jubilee year for you, when each of you may return to the land that belonged to your ancestors.   Leviticus 25:10

Every fifty years, the trumpet was to sound, and the land was to be returned to its original owners. Ownership of the land could never be permanently transferred because the land really belonged to the Lord (see Leviticus 25:23).

Imagine the impact this would have on a community. Once in a lifetime, the poor would be given a fresh start with the land the Lord had given that family at the beginning, and the rich would not be able to rely on massive inheritances of land.

Land sold in the fortieth year of the cycle would sell low because the buyer could use the land for only ten years. Land bought in the tenth year of the cycle would be sold high because the buyer could use the land for forty years. All that could be bought or sold was the use of the land for a limited time.

Would you have liked to live under these laws? Your answer to that question would probably have depended on whether you were a lender or a borrower. Borrowers were probably grateful for these laws, but lenders probably viewed them differently.

The Sabbath rest for the land was systematically ignored. God’s people failed to let the land rest seventy different years, but God kept track, and when the Babylonians took God’s people into exile, the land enjoyed its rest in one long Sabbath that lasted seventy years in a row (see 2 Chronicles 36:21)!

Do you know how often the Jubilee happened? Never! Not once. The people who had the power to call the Jubilee never had the will to do so, because for them it would have been very costly. Jesus proclaimed, “The Spirit of the LORD is upon me, for he has anointed me . . . to proclaim . . . that the time of the LORD’s favor has come” (Luke 4:18-19). Jesus was saying, “The Jubilee is here! God will cancel all debts; God will restore lost inheritances.” Indeed, in Jesus Christ, that is exactly what he has done.

For further reading, see Luke 4