Jubilee - Leviticus 25

Chapter 25 is similar to chapter 23 in that, even though it’s kind of long, it’s pretty dry, the IM doesn’t say a lot about it, but TB has a 3 hour lecture about it. Chapter 25 is about the year of Jubilee, which is an event that happens every 50 years where the land can not be farmed for the whole year. If we remember from previously, every 7 years the land was to take a sabbath, where nothing could be planted or harvested. This jubilee was in addition to that 7th year, so essentially, every 50 years there was to be a double year of the land resting. The 49th year would be a year of sabbath for the land and then the 50th year would be a double sabbath for the land.

The question that the Israelites asked, rightfully, was “ok then what will we eat?” The first regular 7th year of land rest, God tells them that he will increase their harvest in the 6th year so that they can save up enough food for the next year, and the year of jubilee is similar, that God will provide two years’ worth of food on the 48th year. Additionally, there are some other options for them to eat food, because crops will spring up naturally, even though it won’t be organized or abundant, there will still be some, and it’s like, they couldn’t eat food that had grown up naturally, but they could eat it if it was like a left over stock or something, I don’t know, I didn’t really follow all of the rules.

However, the important part of this jubilee was the forgiving of debt. If someone was a bond servant to an Israelite family, then on the year of jubilee, they would be freed and their debt forgiven. If a family had sold their land to someone else because they couldn’t pay for it, then that debt was to be forgiven and the land restored to their original owners. There was even an equation given for figuring out how much you could sell your land for, given how close to jubilee it was, before the new owner had to give it back. TB notes that the linch pin in this whole scenario is the assumption that whatever land God gave the Israelites going all the way back to Abraham, was HIS land and he was just allowing them to use it while they were righteous. TB said it was like a leasing situation, you can use it like it’s your but it’s mine and I set the terms and as long as you follow them, we’re good.

If someone is so poor that they can’t make the payments on their land or they have to sell it because they are poor, then there was the principle of kinsman redeemer came in to play. Kinsman redeemer is the person who is closest to the person who lost their land or who became a bond servant over a debt, who is able to buy the land or the person back or out of bandage by paying the debt back. By the law of Moses, the person closest to the indebted man was obligated to pay the debt off for him so that he could remain free or keep the land. TB says, “More often a family member paid the redemption price on his behalf. In fact it was the duty of a family relative to redeem the land on his behalf, or to purchase that person’s freedom, if a family relative had the money to do it… A key principle of this system was that the kinsman redeemer did NOT get to keep the land he redeemed for his family member nor… did that family member now legally become the kinsman redeemer’s bondservant.” So the point is that the kinsman redeemer HAD to pay the debt back and they lost all that money and they got absolutely nothing in return.

This seems like it could become a problematic system where some family members constantly default on loans and the family members have to buy them back out of bondage. But it also became corrupted the other way, as TB explained that by the time of Christ’s birth, this principle had morphed into a right of first refusal. So instead of paying the debt and giving the family member their land back, the rich family member would have the option to buy the land first at the discounted debt price and if they took that option, they would own the land and not give it back to the indebted family member. So lots of ways for human nature to corrupt a practice that was meant to teach the most important gospel principle of all time.

The greatest gospel principle of all time that this practice was meant to teach was that Christ redeemed all of us because He paid the price for our sins and thus settled our debt with justice and because He did this we can be free to live with Him again, if we so choose. Performing the atonement gave Jesus no benefits at all, he didn’t get extra special spiritual points, he didn’t get to now keep us as slaves, he literally gained nothing by sacrificing himself for us, just like the kinsman redeemers were supposed to be. But he did it out of love and duty, and because of that we are all free to choose to accept the gospel or not, and the process of accepting or rejecting the gospel will be a very long one for most of us. There was a quote I read this week that I really liked that said, “you may be certain that as long as someone is in hell, Christ will remain there with him.” I feel like that sums up the process of accepting the gospel perfectly, we will all be taught the fullness of everything at the level of our understanding, meeting us where we are and only then, when we can see the fullness of the sun at noon day will we be knowledgeable enough to make our informed decision about whether or not we will accept the gospel. That’s why they say that the sons of perdition will have to fully understand that the sun is shining and deny it, they will confess that Jesus is the Christ, and that the gospel is true, and then reject it anyway.