It’s hard not to read a lot of these laws in the Old Testament and wonder how they would translate to 21st century America.
What if (and I realize this is a big ask) our congress proposed a Year of Jubilee-type event in America? Every fifty years, you go back to whatever land is in your family’s history, release all debts, and eat only what naturally came of the ground. How do you think everyone would handle it?
The temptation would be to ignore it completely; after all, I don’t want to move back to our ancestral home in Wales when I am perfectly at home in Texas. My life is here, my family has a life here, and I’ve worked hard to be where I’m at. Why hit reset?
From my own perspective, a year of Jubilee would be a step backwards, but for so many, it could be a step up. Those who have had a couple generations of hardships would all of a sudden find what they lost completely restored. It would be a fresh start for them and might just give them the leg up that they need to get back on track.
In our world’s competitive landscape though, any sense of letting other people squeak ahead of us is usually frowned upon. Maybe that’s why God warns the people that, during the year of Jubilee, they are not to “wrong each other.” The temptation was there to suppress any advantage others might gain during this time.
But how could they “wrong each other,” practically speaking? If you knew that everything reset next year, for example, how could you abuse the system?
For starters, you could intentionally increase the price of the land, selling the land back to it’s inherited owners at 300% of the cost (Leviticus 25:16). You could refuse to lend money if you knew you wouldn’t get it back (Deuteronomy 15:9). You could argue that your slaves weren’t really Hebrews and refuse to set them free (Leviticus 25:40-46).
Or, of course, you could just ignore the Year of Jubilee completely.
It’s not hard to imagine a world where most Israelites did exactly that, because, let’s be honest, most people anywhere would probably do that. As refreshing and rejuvenating as the Year of Jubilee was designed to be, it’s also a huge expense. The poor would be willing to hit the reset clock, but those in power would do everything possible to postpone it.
It goes back to the heart of the Law though: Do you really love your brother or not? All of these regulations inside Leviticus speak to this core idea, and while people could technically fulfill the Law, they could also circumvent nearly every single one of them through legal loopholes.
Which they did. One of the many things that Jesus chastised the people for was their desire to do only what people could see and avoid the unseen parts of the Law. Love. Charity. Mercy. Grace. Those are the principles that govern all of this, and no commandment revealed that more than the year of Jubilee.
