JUBILEE YEAR (יﯴבֵל, H3413; LXX ἄφεσις, G912, but later Gr. tr. transliterate as ἰωβηλ; OL annus remissionis, Vul. jobeleus/jubeleus; prob. giving up; in view of Exod 19:13 the meaning ram’s horn may be primary [BDB, s.v., M. Noth, Leviticus, ad loc.], cf. Josh 6:4-13, including a pl. form, but always constructed with “horn” or “trumpet” [Vul., “the horn used in the jubilee”]; ASV JUBILE, perhaps dissyllabic; the root has meanings bring, produce, in which North [Sociology, pp. 96-103] finds support for the LXX rendering, and Cazelles sees an indication of agricultural origin.)
1. Biblical occurrence. The law of the Jubilee is given (Lev 25:8-55; cf. Lev 27:16-25) for its effect on the dedication of property. It underlay the case of the daughters of Zelophehad, in which it was ruled that an heiress in possession could not marry outside her tribe, because her property would then not revert to her family even at the jubilee (Num 36:4). The jubilee (unlike the year of Sabbath, see below) is not mentioned elsewhere in the canonical or apocryphal scriptures.
2. Provisions of the law
a. Part I, Leviticus 25:8-17. (i) The jubilee announced on the Day of Atonement in the “fiftieth year”; (ii) the jubilee to consist in the return to alienated land of its original owners, including any who were in bondservice; (iii) prohibition of sowing, vintage, and harvest; (iv) land valuation to take into account the years to run to jubilee; guarantee of provision to cover the Sabbath (vv. 18-24), impliedly conditional on observance of these laws (relates also to vv. 1-7).
b. Part II (vv. 25-38). (i) Land may be redeemed within the jubilee period; (ii) redemption option on city dwellings limited to one year; if not so exercised, such property to be exempt from next release; Levitical property not subject to these provisions; (iii) the poor to be a charge on the community, in the last resort.
c. Part III (vv. 39-55). (i) Israelite bondmen to be discharged at the jubilee, and not subjected to the full rigors of slavery; (ii) Israelites bound to foreigners may redeem themselves or be redeemed by kinsmen, at a proportion of their original price depending on the years remaining to the jubilee; or else released at the jubilee.
3. Aims of the law. The primary aim was to re-unite owners (or their heirs) with their property, so far as practicable; thus (1) restricting the estates from growing to the detriment of small holders, and (2) maintaining the basic security of a property owning, agricultural community. It is assumed that owners would sell only in extreme necessity, which would usually entail going into hired service; the intention was to give such servants a fair opportunity to become self-supporting again. In practice, usury, and profiteering made recovery almost impossible (Neh 5 illustrates this).
The law would be frustrated unless bondservants were freed to claim their property. Further, as a buyer was virtually taking leasehold, there had to be a fair valuation of the lease in relation to expected yield, and definition of redemption rights.
The Mosaic law sought to forestall a tendency toward aggregation which, throughout history, has been a cause of political revolution.
4. Relation to the Sabbath year. The laws of the seventh year are found in Leviticus 25:1-7 (Sabbath, cf. Exod 23:10f.), and in Deuteronomy 15:1-11 (release, with attached provisions for individual release of slaves after six years’ service, Deut 15:12-19; cf. Exod 21:2-6). “Seven years” occurs as a time-unit from Genesis (29:8-30) to Daniel (9:25); but the term “weeks of years,” used freely in Daniel, is explained in Leviticus 25:8 as if it were unfamiliar.
The Deuteronomic “release,” or discharge, from indebtedness (shemitta) is not concerned with land; neither did a servant, released on expiry of his six years, necessarily recover any land (hence Deut 15:13f.). The jubilee property law, on the other hand, did not assume any outstanding debt, whereas the general release was merely to facilitate the restoration. R. North’s emphasis on “mortgage” is misplaced (Cazelles, Vet Test 5).
5. Observance of Sabbath and release laws. The prophet Jeremiah could appeal to the law limiting bondservice (34:14; although v. 8 does not refer directly to the law—or to the “Sabbath,” see Morgenstern IDB p. 142 s.v.—the non-observance of it had made release overdue). Nehemiah 10:31 also implies past neglect of a known law. The saying that the land would “keep its Sabbaths” during the Exile (Lev 26:34f., 43; Deut 31:10; 2 Chron 36:21), although connoting rest rather than a time interval, presumes the concept of a sabbath year, since the point is that crops would not be raised. In 163 b.c., warfare in the “Sabbath of the land” (1 Macc 6:49) or “seventh year” (v. 53) found cities unable to stand a siege because reserves of food were soon exhausted. Josephus refers to the Sabbath year as a fallow-year (Jos. Antiq. XIV. xvi. 2; XV. i. 2) asserting that both Alexander and Julius Caesar recognized this and granted remission of tribute (Jos. Antiq. XI. viii. 5, 6; XIV. x. 6). It involved abstaining from offensive war (Jos. Antiq. XIII. viii. 2, War I. ii. 4). He mentions the jubilee in his account of the law (Jos. Antiq. III. xii. 3), apparently taking the “fiftieth” as the seventh Sabbath, and discussing value adjustment as at release (based on profits) rather than as at sale (based on expected yield).
Jubilees regards the forty-ninth year purely as a calendar event. The official Mishnaic view is that the jubilee was abolished after the Exile (Sebi’it 10:3); expedients for avoiding release of debt relate, presumably, to the shemitta.
6. The problem of the fallow. Despite Josephus’ testimony and the more convincing (because it is incidental) evidence of 1 Maccabees 6:49, authorities have doubted whether a national fallow would be practicable; some have tried to relate Sabbath and jubilee to intercalary periods, despite the explicit mention of sowing and harvest. R. North (Sociology, p. 120) sees the fallow as applied to individual fields on a staggered basis, arguing that a general fallow would not help the poor. It is difficult, however, to imagine such restraint being introduced otherwise than generally. The law was directed primarily at stewardship of the land, and was only one of many measures aimed at the relief of poverty.
The apparent implication of a two year fallow in Leviticus 25:20-22 is difficult. Morgenstern (HUCA, X [1935], pp. 83ff.) infers a spring new year; the crop sown at the end of the sixth, unharvested, would provide food; and with no sowing in the next year, there would be no proper harvest in the eighth. Admittedly 25:8-11 suggests a fall new year; Morgenstern concludes that vv. 20-22 are editorial. The passage can hardly refer to a jubilee fallow after the seventh Sabbath, for despite its position, it refers to “seventh,” etc., not “forty-ninth, fiftieth”; Leviticus 23:15f. may show that “fiftieth” was used for a seventh sabbath, as Jos. and Jubilees understood it.
Bibliography R. North, Sociology of the Biblical Jubilee (1954); H. Cazelles, Vet Test 5, (1955), 321-324; W. Hallo, BA XXIII (1960), 48f.; N. Avigad, BASOR CLXIII (1961), 18-22.