King James Bible Dictionary

A joyful shout or clangour of trumpets, the name of the great semi-centennial festival of the Hebrews. It lasted for a year. During this year the land was to be fallow, and the Israelites were only permitted to gather the spontaneous produce of the fields (Leviticus 25:11, 12). All landed property during that year reverted to its original owner (13-34; 27:16-24), and all who were slaves were set free (25:39-54), and all debts were remitted.

The return of the jubilee year was proclaimed by a blast of trumpets which sounded throughout the land. There is no record in Scripture of the actual observance of this festival, but there are numerous allusions (Isaiah 5:7, 8, 9, 10; 61:1, 2; Ezekiel 7:12, 13; Nehemiah 5:1-19; 2 Chronicles 36:21) which place it beyond a doubt that it was observed.

The advantages of this institution were manifold. "1. It would prevent the accumulation of land on the part of a few to the detriment of the community at large. 2. It would render it impossible for any one to be born to absolute poverty, since every one had his hereditary land. 3. It would preclude those inequalities which are produced by extremes of riches and poverty, and which make one man domineer over another. 4. It would utterly do away with slavery. 5. It would afford a fresh opportunity to those who were reduced by adverse circumstances to begin again their career of industry in the patrimony which they had temporarily forfeited. 6. It would periodically rectify the disorders which crept into the state in the course of time, preclude the division of the people into nobles and plebeians, and preserve the theocracy inviolate."

Called Acceptable Year of the Lord
Isaiah 61:2

Called The Year of Liberty
Ezekiel 46:17

Laws concerning
Leviticus 25:8-55; Leviticus 27:17-24; Numbers 36:4

JU'BILEE, noun [Latin jubilum, from jubilo, to shout for joy; Heb. the blast of a trumpet, coinciding with Eng. bawl, peal, Latin pello.]

1. Among the Jews, every fiftieth year, being the year following the revolution of seven weeks of years, at which time all the slaves were liberated, and all lands which had been alienated during the whole period, reverted to their former owners. This

was a time of great rejoicing. Hence,

2. A season of great public joy and festivity.

3. A church solemnity or ceremony celebrated at Rome, in which the pope grants plenary indulgence to sinners, or to as many as visit the churches of St. Peter and St. Paul at Rome.

1. the name.

   The name jubilee is derived from the Hebrew jobel , the joyful shout or clangor of trumpets, by which the year of jubilee was announced.

2. The time of its celebration.

   It was celebrated every fiftieth year, marking the half century; so that it followed the seventh sabbatic year, and for two years in succession the land lay fallow. It was announced by the blowing of trumpets on the day of atonement (about the 1st of October), the tenth day of the first month of the Isr'lites' civil year (the seventh of their ecclesiastical year).

3. The laws connected with the jubilee.

   These embrace three points: (1) Rest for the soil. (Leviticus 25:11,12) The land was to lie fallow, and there was to be no tillage as on the ordinary sabbatic year. The land was not to be sown, nor the vineyards and oliveyards dressed; and neither the spontaneous fruits of the soil nor the produce of the vine and olive was to be gathered, but all was to be left for the poor, the slave, the stranger and the cattle. (Exodus 23:10,11) The law was accompanied by a promise of treble fertility int he sixth year, the fruit of which was to be eaten till the harvest sown in the eighth year was reaped in the ninth. (Leviticus 25:20-22) But the people were not debarred from other sources of subsistence, nor was the year to be spent in idleness. They could fish and hunt, take care of their bees and flocks, repair their buildings and furniture, and manufacture their clothing. (2) Reversion of landed property. "The Isr'lites had a portion of land divided to each family by lot. This portion of the promised land they held of God, and were not to dispose of it as their property in fee-simple. Hence no Isr'lite could part with his landed estate but for a term of years only. When the jubilee arrived, it again reverted to the original owners."

   Bush. This applied to fields and houses in the country and to houses of the Levites in walled cities; but other houses in such cities, if not redeemed within a year from their sale, remained the perpetual property of the buyer. (3) The manumission of those Isr'lites who had become slaves. "Apparently this periodic emancipation applied to every class of Hebrew servants

   to him who had sold himself because he had become too poor to provide for his family, to him who had been taken and sold for debt, and to him who had been sold into servitude for crime. Noticeably, this law provides for the family rights of the servant."

   Cowles' Hebrew History

4. The reasons for the institution of the jubilee.

   It was to be a remedy for those evils which accompany human society and human government; and had these laws been observed, they would have made the Jewish nation the most prosperous and perfect that ever existed. (1) The jubilee tended to abolish poverty. It prevented large and permanent accumulations of wealth. It gave unfortunate families an opportunity to begin over again with a fair start in life. It particularly favored the poor, without injustice to the rich. (2) It tended to abolish slavery, and in fact did abolish it; and it greatly mitigated it while it existed. "The effect of this law was at once to lift from the heart the terrible incubus of a life-long bondage

   that sense of a hopeless doom which knows no relief till death."

   Cowles. (3) "As an agricultural people, they would have much leisure; they would observe the sabbatic spirit of the year by using its leisure for the instruction of their families in the law, and for acts of devotion; and in accordance with this there was a solemn reading of the law to the people assembled at the feast of tabernacles."

   Smith's larger Dictionary. (4) "This law of entail, by which the right heir could never be excluded, was a provision of great wisdom for preserving families and tribes perfectly distinct, and their genealogies faithfully recorded, in order that all might have evidence to establish their right to the ancestral property. Hence the tribe and family of Christ were readily discovered at his birth."

5. Mode of celebration.

   "The Bible says nothing of the mode of celebration, except that it was to be proclaimed by trumpets, and that it was to be a sabbatic year. Tradition tells us that every Isr'lite blew nine blasts, so as to make the trumpet literally 'sound throughout the land,' and that from the feast of trumpets or new year till the day of atonement (ten days after), the slaves were neither manumitted to return to their homes, nor made use of by their master, but ate, drank and rejoiced; and when the day of atonement came, the judges blew the trumpets, the slaves were manumitted to go to their homes, and the fields were set free."

   McClintock and Strong.

6. How long observed.

   Though very little is said about its observance in the Bible history of the Jews, yet it is referred to, and was no doubt observed with more or less faithfulness, till the Babylonish captivity.

   ED.)