Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Jubilee and Cosmic Liberation
85 Plays1 year ago
The ancient Hebrews were to hit the economic reset button every fifty years, restoring the people and the land they had accumulated back to the original tribal allotments God had proscribed. The Jubilee functioned as a time-designated practice in the Hebrew Bible for liberation, restoration, and the redistribution of wealth. In this episode, Matt and Nick explore the concept of Jubilee and its profound connection to the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. We delve into how Jesus embraced and expanded this concept, viewing Himself as the ultimate cosmic liberator. Through His teachings, Jesus redefined the idea of freedom and renewal, emphasizing a life marked by generosity, love, and communal well-being. We examine how Jesus’ call to His followers to embody these values reflects the spirit of Jubilee in a new, transformative light. The Jubilee ideal can have culture-shaping, world-changing significance when embodied by the community of Jesus, that is, if we dare not to leave it as a relic of bygone Bible days.
Interlude Music: Heavenly Bound by Aluvio
Theme Song: Believe by Posthumorous
Connect with Us: Website Youtube Instagram
Recommended
Transcript
Liberty Bell and Jubilee's Biblical Origins
00:00:28
Speaker
Do you know what the inscription on the US Liberty Bell says? I don't remember. I've been to the Liberty Bell, but I do not remember. I didn't kiss it or lick it or anything, or bow down to it. There's an inscription on the US s Liberty Bell that says, proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.
00:00:46
Speaker
It's a quotation from Leviticus 25.10. This is where you find the instructions for observing the Jubilee year. This is the great year of release for Israel. This once every 50-year event came to carry huge theological significance for Israelites who hoped to see God's restoration.
Jubilee Year: Societal and Theological Implications
00:01:01
Speaker
In his ministry, Jesus claimed fulfillment of jubilee restoration hopes, and he taught a jubilee way of life to his followers. Like a lot of what Jesus taught, if we want to appreciate his teachings, we're going to need to dive into the Old Testament and into God's instructions for ancient Israel first.
00:01:17
Speaker
Yeah, Jesus's context, his religious context. So, if we want to understand Jubilee specifically, we're going to dive into everyone's favorite book, Leviticus. Oh yeah, buddy. Leviticus has, among its many commandments, the instructions for keeping Sabbath. So, every seventh day, the Israelites were supposed to take a day with no work.
00:01:34
Speaker
Every seventh year, they were supposed to give a Sabbath year of rest for the land. It was also a year of debt forgiveness. And then every seven seventh year, after the 49th year, on the 50th year, they were supposed to have a jubilee. It was a year of a full reset, where any Israelite slave was supposed to be freed, and all lands that had been sold were supposed to be returned. Leviticus 25, 8-10 says, count off seven Sabbath years, seven times seven years, so that the seven Sabbath years amount to a period of 49 years.
00:02:04
Speaker
Then, have the trumpet sounded everywhere on the tenth day of the seventh month. On the day of atonement, sound the trumpet throughout your land. Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants.
00:02:15
Speaker
It shall be a jubilee for you. Each of you is to return to your family property and to your own clan." So this jubilee kind of functions like this giant reset button for the Israelite people and for the land that they'd been given, right? So every 50th year on the Day of Atonement, they proclaim liberty to the people and everything is reset when they sound this ram's horn.
00:02:36
Speaker
The Hebrew word for this horn blast is yo bail. That's where we get our English name Jubilee from. So it's literally the day of the horn blast. Oh, cool. That that is a crazy idea. That is some anti-monopoly type policy if I've ever seen it.
Jubilee as Israel's Divine Reset
00:02:51
Speaker
I think it's kind of interesting to think about why it's so important for things in Israel to be reset to the way they were, right? This isn't just kind of nostalgic yearning for the good old days. Yeah, please explain. Yeah, so I think you kind of have to dive into Israel's history, so let's do that for just a moment. Think about their exodus from Egypt, right? This is the beginning of Israel's story and it starts with God making a slave people free, providing them with a land that he'd promised previously to Abraham.
00:03:16
Speaker
In fact, he didn't just give them the land. He assigned specific portions of the land to the tribes of Israel. There are chapters of really detailed land allotments in the book of Joshua. Yeah. Chapters I definitely skim through when I'm reading them. Yeah, the whole second half of Joshua is pretty boring. After the first half is pretty like brutal and engaging. Yes, it starts getting to very specific land divisions for tribes and families and gets boring very fast.
00:03:40
Speaker
But the point is that God had established the Israelites as a free people and that He had allotted them land, specifically as He desired it to be allotted. So after the Israelites had settled this land, right, if they came into difficult times, people might have to sell themselves or sell their land to be able to get the food that they need to survive. This was actually a very normal practice in ancient cultures. But Israel wasn't just any other ancient culture. So when Israelites were sold into slavery or the land was sold to someone that God didn't assign it, it's a problem.
Jubilee's Theological and Economic Principles
00:04:10
Speaker
it's actually depicted as a type of sin. So this yo bailing of the horn, proclaiming liberties throughout the land, occurred on the day of atonement. This is the day that's meant to deal with the polluting effects of sin, in this case, specifically the polluting effects of selling people and land. goes back to the conversation we had on sacrifice in which we talked a lot about atonement and the idea of cleansing this space, you know, spattering the blood on the people to cleanse the people so that like they are a consecrated people that can dwell in proximity with the divine.
00:04:42
Speaker
On the same day, these societal wrongs are also righted, and it's like a whole big reset day. So sins are very much attached to these actually societal practices of enslavement and of subjugation and stuff like that too.
00:04:58
Speaker
I think it's interesting to think of selling land or selling people as sin. It's kind of hard for us in our modern context to think of that as sin. But when you think about this as a people who've been given— Wait, wait, wait. Selling people, that's not hard to imagine as sin. Fair enough. But the selling land, specifically.
00:05:13
Speaker
Yeah, the American dream is to purchase land, right? Yes. Someone's selling it to you? Yeah. And so I think when we think about sins, we shouldn't be saying a specific action that somebody did was a sinful action. But if you think about this corporately, the whole nation of Israel had been allotted their land a very specific way. Anything that deviates from God's plans is basically a pollution of his design. This can be thought of as sort of a corporate sin, but not necessarily in the way that we normally think of sin.
00:05:40
Speaker
Got it. Okay. And so this is culturally specified and for this people group because of God's land allotment and the particular history that they have for them to buy and sell land and to accumulate more land than what was allotted to them and then to engage in some type of not chattel slavery, but economic indentured servitude, stuff like that.
00:06:03
Speaker
It was sort of a societal sin in the sense that the way you explained it in our sacrifice podcast where sins effects were thought of as like spilt milk seeping into the community, just kind of corrupting things, making them not as they were intended to be.
00:06:22
Speaker
yeah Yeah, the sacrificial system will differentiate between willful sins and then unwillful sins, or just kind of the sins that occur as a result of humans kind of doing human stuff. Got it, okay. yeah So even where people aren't intentionally doing wrong things, they will still naturally deviate from God's good plans. sure That is just the effect of sin in a culture.
00:06:42
Speaker
Yep. Leviticus tells us that there's even a more fundamental problem with the selling of land and selling of Israelites into slavery. And it's because the land and the people all belong to God. So if my father gave me a car and said, hey, I have a specific reason that I want you to have this car, a specific use in mind, and then I went and sold the car, that would be a problem.
00:07:02
Speaker
If my father loaned me a car, said, this car is mine, but you can use it for a specific purpose, and then I went and sold that car, that'd be even worse. Yeah, obviously so. So then Leviticus 25, 23-24, told, The land must not be sold permanently because the land is mine, and you reside in my land as foreigners and strangers. Throughout the land that you hold as a possession, you must provide for the redemption of the land.
Redemption and Release in Jubilee Practices
00:07:27
Speaker
and then later in verses 42-43. because the israelites are my servants whom i brought out of egyptip they must not be sold as slaves do not rule over them ruthlessly but fear your god These concerns expressed in the Jubilee system for the freedom of the people and for preservation of the land They're not specific to Jubilee, right? There's actually lots of ways built into Israel's law for people to redeem themselves or their relatives or for debts to be forgiven, to regain the land that had been allotted to their family. But the Jubilee functioned as a sort of catch-off when all these other systems failed. It was the mega-reset for the Israelites and for their land.
00:08:04
Speaker
So Jubilee is to societal, let's say, economics, what the Day of Atonement was for societal ritual purity. Yeah, and those two categories I don't think are quite even distinct in Israelite thinking.
00:08:19
Speaker
Well, they happen on the same day, so they must be connected. Yeah, this is kind of interesting. So the Day of Jubilee is, as the Septuagint translators call it, a day of release. And their word that they're using for release here is more flexible than what we would maybe use in English. So in Greek here, when slaves or captives are made free, they are released. When the land is to be returned, it's released. When a debt is canceled, it's released. When sins are forgiven, they're released.
00:08:47
Speaker
the Greek word that we translate as forgiveness means to let go. Yeah, exactly. So it's not surprising that when the Greek translators see the Jubilee instructions, they're going to be like, Oh, yeah, that's the day of release, because it covers all of these different things that are going on. Do they say the day of a female? Yes, they do.
00:09:06
Speaker
Okay, so in English, we usually translate a FEME and its cognates as forgiveness. So you could translate it as the day of forgiveness. You could, but in English, you wouldn't describe a prisoner being set free as a forgiveness typically.
00:09:20
Speaker
in a sense, but it's not exactly overlapping. Exactly. I think release is a little easier to use across these categories. It kind of matches Afimi language a little better. Yeah, yeah. I think the fact that they're using this day of release to cover all these categories kind of helps illustrate for us how within Israel's story, the categories of losing land, financial debt, captivity or slavery, and sin all get overlapped. These are not distinct categories the way we tend to think of them.
00:09:48
Speaker
Something that happens once every 50 years is not a lot. Most people would only get to experience one of these in their lifetime. And if they got to, they'd be either very young or very old for one of them. But the Jubilee laws, the way they're set up, aren't meant to only have an impact once every 50 years. The way that these laws are set up, they're meant to have serious implications on the way land and services were bought and sold all the time. So this meant that the ownership of Israelites couldn't be sold. All you can sell is actually some of your time. You can sell years until the Jubilee.
00:10:20
Speaker
It also means you can't actually sell permanent ownership of the land. What you can really do is sell available years of crops until
Jubilee's Economic Impact and God's Ownership
00:10:27
Speaker
the year of Jubilee. Right. So actually a big portion of Leviticus 25, where you get all these Jubilee requirements and laws, is dealing with the specifics of buying and selling land and slaves between Jubilee years. This actually, I think, would have been kind of inconvenient for an economy, and that's sort of the purpose. Every time you want to buy land or slaves, you'd have to first sit and calculate the time left until the Jubilee.
00:10:50
Speaker
because they'd be worth less if you only have a couple years until Jubilee. Exactly. So imagine being a wealthy Israelite who has the finances available to purchase land from your neighbors when they need help.
00:11:01
Speaker
Every deal you do, you'd have to sit down and consider the Jubilee when working out the prices. So you'd be reminded every time that you want to buy land or people that they belong to God, that ownership is not really transferable. Every time you do this business, you're reminded that you cannot take advantage of these people that you're interacting with. And that's exactly what we're told in Leviticus 25, 16 through 17.
00:11:24
Speaker
When the years are many, you are to increase the price. When the years are few, you are to decrease the price. Because what is really being sold to you is the number of crops. Do not take advantage of each other, but fear your God. I am the Lord your God. Hmm.
00:11:39
Speaker
Leviticus is clear that the Jubilee requirements are not to be taken lightly. So these instructions come with a promised set of rewards for obedience and consequences for disobedience. So the Israelites are told that if they follow these decrees and are careful to obey the commands, that God will send rain, that they're going to have so many crops they won't know where to put them all, and that God will grant peace in the land and look on the people with favor.
00:12:04
Speaker
On the other hand, if they don't to obey, phase one of the punishment is that God will send disease. Israel will be defeated by their enemies, and the land won't yield good crops. If they continue refusing to listen, this goes into phase two of the plan, where God will lay waste to the land, Israel will be scattered among the nations, and they will perish there among the nations.
00:12:26
Speaker
We can see an example of Israel not following these laws correctly in Jeremiah 34. So, King Zedekiah made a covenant with the people to free their Hebrew slaves, but then they changed their minds. So, they took back the slaves they had freed and made them slaves again.
00:12:41
Speaker
God's message for this king was not a kind one. He says, Therefore, this is what the Lord says. You have not obeyed me. You have not proclaimed freedom to your own people. So now I proclaim freedom for you, declares the Lord. Freedom to fall by the sword, plague, and famine. o He tells Zedekiah that he's going to fall into the hands of his enemies, his cities will be destroyed, and nobody will be able to live in those cities.
00:13:06
Speaker
I think it's interesting that the punishments for not following the Jubilee commands is ultimately that the people lose the very things that Jubilee was meant to preserve.
Consequences of Ignoring Jubilee Laws
00:13:14
Speaker
So the Jubilee was meant to preserve the freedom of the people and the proper ordering and ownership of the land. But not following Jubilee leads to the loss of freedom for the people and to loss of the land itself. There's kind of a logical cosmic reasoning going on there.
00:13:29
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. And you see this elsewhere in the Bible as well. People talk about like Romans 1, where Paul definitely understands God's judgment on sin to be God's letting people have what they want and the consequences of what they want. It's like God's giving them freedom, so to speak. God allowing them to have the freedom to do what they want and to inherit the consequences of those decisions.
00:13:54
Speaker
in a similar way here. It doesn't say this explicitly, but it does make you like wonder, well, when there is exploitation going on and people taking advantage of one another, I wonder if it's like the end result of that just naturally would be economic insecurity, national insecurity, and all this other stuff.
00:14:14
Speaker
poor stewardship of the land and everything else. And then you'll inherit the attendant consequences of that, which would be takeover in that context. It's kind of interesting to think about if there's just a very organic connection yeah between community waywardness and especially the mistreatment of other human beings made in the image of God. And then the natural consequences of that is you'll lose the very thing that you're trying to take advantage of. Yeah. God tells people, if you start participating in these systems where you're going to try to take advantage of other people and use them for your own good, then you're going to interact with other people who are going to come and take advantage of you and use you for their own good. Yeah. Hmm. Wow. So kind of fast forwarding here, thinking about a Jewish people in captivity or under foreign rule. This is what happens later on in Israel's
Prophecies and Cosmic Jubilee Hopes
00:15:02
Speaker
story.
00:15:03
Speaker
It'd be easy to see that from their perspective, the solution for their problem would be another jubilee release from God, a sort of cosmic reset of God's plan for his people and for his land. Yeah, we don't even know how to get things back to where they're supposed to be. Can we just have a big old reset on this whole thing? Can we just start over? And we see that hope expressed in Isaiah 61. He talks about a coming figure who will announce a new day of release for Israel.
00:15:30
Speaker
The spirit of Yahweh God is on me because Yahweh has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and freedom to the prisoners, to proclaim the year of Yahweh's favor and the day of our God's vengeance, to comfort all who mourn.
00:15:49
Speaker
So he quotes Leviticus 25 here from the Jubilee instructions, and he describes this figure who's going to come proclaim relief for the captives announcing the year of Yahweh's favor. This passage goes on to say that this coming figure is going to rebuild the ancient ruins, restore the places long devastated, and renew the ruined cities. This undoing of all the things that happened to Israel as a result of not following the Jubilee, and it's solved through a figure who comes and proclaims a new Jubilee.
00:16:17
Speaker
Yeah, a cosmic Jubilee.
00:16:37
Speaker
You also see Jubilee hopes expressed in a really different way in Ezekiel. So the whole book of Ezekiel starts off really rough, describes things going from bad to worse to unimaginably bad for Israel. However, towards the end of the book, things take a very hopeful turn in a series of visions that depict a hope for a restored Israel. See at the famous dry bones vision, where you get an Israelite nation recreated in flesh and spirit.
00:17:02
Speaker
you get a vision of a restored temple, which is like comically huge, and all of its outer dimensions happen to be in jubilee increments of 50. From this temple flow the waters of release, which restore and regenerate life. And then, right after this temple vision, you get a reallotment of all of the land to the tribes of Israel. ah But this time, there's an interesting twist, because the foreigners living with the Israelites this time are to be treated as native-born Israelites.
00:17:31
Speaker
So they get a part of the allotment now too. They do, right along with the natural born Israelites. This isn't actually surprising within the Hebrew Bible canon even. Let's not forget that this whole Israel project was initiated so that they could then be a blessing to the rest of the world. That was the Abrahamic promise. So yeah, that's not surprising that the story is going here.
00:17:53
Speaker
that there is this after they fall away from their ideals, after they fall away from God's Torah, from God's commands, they experience the hardship, they experience the exile, and then the obvious hope is for restoration and a restart. Can we restart God? But then it's, you could maybe see it as a twist, but it's actually not surprising that included in that would be, let's take that Abrahamic promise to its conclusion, which is, and the nations will also be a part of it with us.
00:18:21
Speaker
yeah Yeah, Ezekiel starts to see this hope for a new Jubilee as something that extends beyond yeah the edges of what that initial Jubilee was meant to cover. Right, an expansiveness. Exactly. There's actually this book of Jubilees it's called um that was written in Second Temple Judaism, and it's told from the perspective of an angel who's talking to Moses on Mount Sinai.
00:18:43
Speaker
And this angel gives a heavenly perspective, retelling all the events of Genesis and part of Exodus. The angel retails these events and tracks all the time from creation in Jubilee increments. okay So like Noah started building the ark in the 27th Jubilee. Abram married Sarai in the 40th Jubilee.
00:19:03
Speaker
And then Israel's exodus from Egypt occurs in the 49th Jubilee and looks forward to the people entering the land of Israel on the 50th Jubilee. So the Book of Jubilees teaches that this Jubilee event was something that existed in heaven. It was sort of a cosmic way of ordering time that pre-existed the Torah.
00:19:20
Speaker
So when Moses received the instructions in Leviticus 25 regarding the Jubilee, he's actually being given instructions that were part of something much larger than Israel or their promised land, something connected to God's design for all people and all of creation. So they're already seeing this connection between God's purposes in creation and the Jubilee itself. They're recognizing that it's about Israel, but it's also about more than just that.
00:19:42
Speaker
Yeah. ah The authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls, they also wrote about the Jubilee. There's this scroll, it's called the 11 Q 13 scroll, but most people just call it the Melchizedek scroll. The kumranites had problems with the system of priesthood during their day. And when you say kumranites, you're saying the people at Qumran? Probably Essenes, some people disagree on that. But who we think had something to do with the Dead Sea Scrolls? Yes, that's where they found the Dead Sea Scrolls. So people living in Qumran were the authors here.
00:20:10
Speaker
they had issues with the system of priesthood during their day, which was actually more or less the same system that Jesus was dealing with. But they looked at this Melchizedek figure in Genesis 14 as a type of high priest who existed before and above the Levitical priestly system. Much like the author of Hebrews seemed to have, yeah. Yes, exactly. But the authors at Qumran here, they discuss the year of Jubilee in Leviticus 25, and they also talk about the figure in Isaiah 61, right? So they're connecting these dots.
00:20:36
Speaker
They wrote that the interpretation of this passage is about the Melchizedek figure, who will return them to what is rightfully theirs. He will proclaim to them the Jubilee, thereby releasing them from the debt of all their sins. He shall proclaim this decree in the first week of the Jubilee period that follows nine Jubilee periods.
00:20:55
Speaker
ah Okay. So this Jewish sect, right, they're connecting the dots of Scripture in the time leading up to Jesus' arrival.
Jesus and the Fulfillment of Jubilee
00:21:01
Speaker
So we can see that in the centuries and even the decades leading up to Jesus' ministry, they're looking at the Jubilee instructions of Leviticus 25, looking at Isaiah 61, and writing that a coming Melchizedek figure, somebody who pre-existed the Torah, would come to proclaim the needed Jubilee, releasing them from the debt of all their sins.
00:21:21
Speaker
This is the sort of expectation that's being expressed by Jewish writers leading right up to the time of Jesus' ministry. And that's the context for when Jesus comes on the scene. Yes. It's so interesting. I think I've said this before, but it's really important. We sometimes talk about the 400 years of silence. In our Protestant canon, we don't include any other books after Malachi until you get to the New Testament.
00:21:45
Speaker
So from Malachi to Matthew, there's whatever, 400 some years. So we sometimes call that the 400 years of silence. It depends on what you mean, I guess, maybe canonically speaking from a Protestant evangelical perspective, but only canonically speaking from a Protestant evangelical perspective, because this was some of the richest time of Jewish theologizing and literary pieces being written and hopes being expressed for restoration.
00:22:13
Speaker
I mean, this is where you get all the, what we now call the intertestamental literature. This was not an inactive period where the ancient Israelites were moping around and saying, woe is me, we've lost the kingdom, we are in exile. No, no, no. There was a bunch of Jewish sects that were theologizing about their scriptures and about where the story was heading.
00:22:36
Speaker
they were expressing the isionic hope. They were thinking about what that could look like when fulfilled. And into that very active scene where you have a bunch of sects very much engaged in theologizing about an eschatological like end times hope for Israel. That's the scene that Jesus is born into in the first century.
00:22:58
Speaker
Yeah, it's amazing that in the middle of all of this dialogue and conversation going on about what the Restoration was going to look like, you suddenly get one group of writers that start declaring, it has happened, we saw it happen, and it happened through a man named Jesus. They are writing into that conversation. They're not just writing something in a vacuum. They're very much answering the questions that people have been having about what this Restoration is going to look like, and they're excited to say, we know now, we've seen it.
00:23:27
Speaker
Exactly. The Jesus movement is an interpretation of the Jewish story. It is not its own religion. One could be forgiven for imagining that it is its own religion. For the characteristics this movement took on when it went itself to power with Constantine, Theodosius, etc.
00:23:46
Speaker
It very much kind of did become its own religion when conjoined to political power like that. But it needs to be said that the original Jesus movement, it is not an original invention, it is an interpretation that sees the Jewish story as coming to fruition through Rabbi Jesus of Nazareth. When he launches his ministry, he goes into a synagogue and reads Jewish scriptures and then claims to be the fulfillment of those scriptures.
00:24:13
Speaker
Yeah, Jesus says in the synagogue, the spirit of the lord is on me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor he has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind to set free the oppressed to proclaim the year of the lord's favor And then he rolled up the scroll and he gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fixed on him.
00:24:37
Speaker
he began by saying to them today as you listen this scripture has been fulfilled The exact Isaiah 61 passage that Melchizedek's scroll said was about a coming figure who would proclaim a jubilee release for the people is the one that Jesus picked up, read, and then gave the absolute mic drop sermon about, today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.
00:25:00
Speaker
Yeah, that's me. Yeah, he steps right into this conversation going on within Judaism, where people are expecting a coming figure who's going to fulfill this passage. And he reads it and says, I'm him. I think in Jesus, we see the fulfillment of this kind of expanded cosmic jubilee hope, both in scope and in degree. We see the hopes extended beyond just the nation of Israel to include all the nations.
00:25:26
Speaker
We see a release that's from more than just financial debt. The restoration of the land is expanded to all of creation. The jubilee practices of Leviticus 25 were always meant to point to something bigger, and we see in Jesus the fulfillment of that greater hope. Colossians 1 says, And giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light.
00:25:48
Speaker
For He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness, and brought us into the kingdom of the Son He loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness, or the release from sins." Romans 8. I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.
00:26:03
Speaker
For the creation awaits an eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subject to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.
00:26:20
Speaker
It's so interesting how much more meaning these New Testament passages have when given a little bit of understanding that what Paul is talking into is very much like this Jewish dialogue. In this case, you're focusing on the Jubilee dialogue that was going on.
00:26:36
Speaker
but I wouldn't even see that and if I wasn't aware that this was a dialogue going on. I wouldn't see Paul's mentioning forgiveness of sins and release as having anything to do with anything other than just maybe individual moral guilt before God or something, and maybe it's about that too, but the context here tells us that it's actually bigger. When Paul was talking about the release of sins, the forgiveness of sins,
00:27:01
Speaker
It's kind of neat, he's talking about the restoration, or at least the beginning of the restoration of the community, but not only the community.
Forgiveness and Jubilee in Jesus's Teachings
00:27:09
Speaker
Like you said, the Qumranic community hopes for the restoration of all people too.
00:27:14
Speaker
You mention not necessarily seeing these hopes all the time. Here's one that I found very interesting, because this is a prayer that I've said consistently. So, in the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus taught his followers how to pray, it says, "'This then is how you should pray. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Release us from our debts, as we also release our debtors, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.
00:27:41
Speaker
If you hear that release us from our debts as we also release our debtors, you hear a pretty clear jubilee hope right in there. Yeah, and that actually contextualizes that and makes a little bit more sense of it too. Yeah. That's not a normal thing that I think in my context that like really seeing people from their debts is a big deal. In fact, I can't even think of anyone who's indebted to me. Why would I pray that like every day? Having a little bit of this background is making way more sense of that now. Yeah, I think praying release us from our debts as we release our debtors probably feels strange to a lot of moderns or English speakers even.
00:28:16
Speaker
So it's not really surprising, though a little unfortunate, that a lot of translations like the KJV, which is the famous one that has kind of driven the way a lot of churches and people recite this prayer, it reads, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, which is like a super interpretive translation. It's funny, the KJV gets a reputation for being really formal or word for word, and then sometimes it'll just go super interpretive. But it causes us to miss this connection.
00:28:40
Speaker
We tend to think of financial and spiritual matters as being very distinct, and I think our use of language reflects our understanding of that distinction. We've gotten really good at reading Jesus' words about release from financial debts and very quickly spiritualizing them, or in this case, simply translating them such that we English readers never see any references to finances. I think we would do well to sit in this worldview that views spiritual matters and financial matters as much more integrated.
00:29:07
Speaker
especially when you're reading the Bible. Immediately following this prayer that Jesus teaches, he says, For if you release other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also release you. But if you do not release the sins of others, your Father will not release your sins. That blessing and warning at the end of the Lord's Prayer actually feels a lot like the promises and warnings given right after the Jubilee commands.
00:29:29
Speaker
Yeah, to those ancient Israelites. Later in Matthew, Peter asks Jesus, Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times? And Jesus' answer is either 70 seven times or 70 times seven. If it is 70 times seven, that gives you 490, which is a sort of super decajubilee number. And then Jesus goes on to immediately tell the parable of the king who wanted to settle his accounts.
00:29:55
Speaker
So he called in the servant who owed him 10,000 talents and released him from his debt. And then that forgiven servant went on to one of the other servants who owed him 100 silver coins and wouldn't forgive it. So the master when he found out about this was furious at the servant. The master called the servant in, you wicked servant, he said. I released all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?
00:30:18
Speaker
and anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured until he should pay back all he owed. This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you release your brother or sister from your
Practical Implications of Biblical Teachings
00:30:29
Speaker
heart. It's heavy. It is. Just as the Israelites were supposed to live in a way that reflected God's design and God's ownership of the people and of the land, we're called to live in a way that reflects God's design and his ownership of all people and of all creation.
00:30:44
Speaker
I think it's really easy when we go in these conversations from looking at Israel's laws and practice and then moving into Christianity to just kind of lose the practical aspect, right? To spiritualize everything into just some kind of guiding principle to be believed.
00:30:58
Speaker
If you go into the New Testament or anywhere in the Bible and you're just looking for the theology parts, it can be very frustrating because the authors never do a good job of keeping their practice and their theology in neat, tidy categories. Because I think for them, that theology is always deeply practical. We have a God with a plan for humanity and a plan for His will. We truly believe that His way is best. We're going to have to seek to live in accordance with His plan.
00:31:38
Speaker
So on that, I agree. Like, it obviously makes sense if God made the world to work a certain way, installed humans as his stewards of the land, to care for creation, to rule well over it, not to rule or take advantage of one another, as Carmen Ayams pointed out.
00:31:57
Speaker
Obviously, the world will work better when we are doing that well. Our own lives will be better. The lives of the other creatures of the land will be better. The land will be better. And all of that will work to advantage us again, like in the long haul. Everything will just be more prosperous and work better.
00:32:14
Speaker
I always find it an interesting observation to observe that when God comes to Abraham and gives him promises and then gives promises to his descendants and then eventually, you know, has all these stipulations and rules for the ancient Israelites. I always find it interesting that he allows a lot of their cultural understandings, belief systems and practices to maintain and almost just like tweaks them into a more liberative and restoration driven direction.
00:32:42
Speaker
but doesn't completely discard them altogether and start afresh. I would almost expect God to go to those ancient people from the Canaan land with all their weird beliefs and enlighten them with Western philosophy and the end all be all of economic systems, capitalism. Give them an American flag, teaching the Pledge of Allegiance. I just feel like this is the kingdom come. This is the restoration of creation, the Constitution of the United States, the Bill of Rights, and the Magna Carta as well. like You would expect God to just shatter their paradigm, their belief systems, the practices. I'm thinking very practically of like slavery, even economic slavery, very different than chattel race-based slavery that we've you know experienced in our American history.
00:33:31
Speaker
But nonetheless, everyone still intuitively is like, yeah, but even economic slavery where you, I guess, sell your freedom to somebody to control your life for the next whatever, six years until the release year or for the next 49 years until the big release year in Jubilee.
00:33:47
Speaker
I think everyone's still kind of intuits and they're like, well, that doesn't seem right still that you would basically have no freedom and almost be owned by the person that you're indebted to or that you've put yourself in subjection to. It doesn't seem right that any human would have that kind of power over any other human.
00:34:05
Speaker
So why didn't God do away with it altogether? And why didn't God tell the Israelites, hey, here's a much more enlightened way to do economic stewardship and to handle debts. I mean, here's the prison system and here's fines and stuff like that, like stuff we do now instead of enslaving them.
00:34:22
Speaker
Yeah, it is interesting when you study the cultures around Israel and you realize, oh, in a lot of ways, they're actually very similar. A lot of the sacrificial system, a lot of even the understanding of purity laws and cultural practices. The practices in the Torah depend on a worldview that's shared with their neighbors like all the time.
00:34:42
Speaker
Yeah, so like you said, God is very much willing to work within their culture. They still very much would have remained an ancient Near Eastern culture. like God wasn't seeking to change that through Torah, but He absolutely changes elements of that to try to bring it more into line with His purpose for creation.
00:35:01
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I didn't have a point other than to say it's always been an interesting observation to me that that's what God decides to do. And it is an important observation too. Sometimes the Old Testament gets a bad rap because it is super brutal and it is Joshua and Judges.
00:35:19
Speaker
I don't even know how to theologize about that stuff other than to be like, Jesus is the ultimate revelation of God. I got through Jesus and then the rest of the questions that don't make sense to me. We'll figure those out someday, maybe. But the Old Testament is often criticized, and along with that, the Jewish worldview and the Christian religion too, as being barbaric. Look, God never condemned slavery, stuff like that, which is technically true. But when we observe that God for some reason, again the interesting observation is that God for some reason just allows them to kind of persist in a lot of their understandings and a lot of their social norms and just tweaks them. When we understand that, when we actually get to know these ancient Near Eastern cultures,
00:36:05
Speaker
All of a sudden, we actually have the complete opposite reaction when we see the stipulations, these laws, these regulations that God gives to the ancient Israelites. And all of a sudden, we see that these are actually very humanitarian. This is some progressive economic policy here.
Unique Aspects of Jubilee in Israelite History
00:36:21
Speaker
Yes. Very much so. It's crazy to think if the Jubilee had been practiced consistently by Israel, they would have been the only nation in the ancient Near East where it was not a small oligarchy of people that ended up controlling the vast majority of the land.
00:36:34
Speaker
not just ancient people, like the only people of all time to ever pull that off. Yeah, yeah they would have been radical among all human nations. I think we fail to appreciate that even their economic indentured servitude laws or economic slavery laws. These are very radically, we would call them progressive in our context for their time and place, for their cultural context.
00:36:58
Speaker
The direction God is going with these laws, stipulations, rules for the community is towards the liberty that we ultimately find in the law of Christ and in the life of Christ.
00:37:11
Speaker
Yeah, I think if you put those commands within their narrative context in the Bible, it's very easy to see the way that they are moving towards what Christ fulfills. And I think understanding Christ's fulfillment as a part of that narrative helps us to much better appreciate what Jesus is doing.
Divine Ownership and Stewardship Teachings
00:37:29
Speaker
It almost helps us appreciate the radicalness of how this story ends up getting fulfilled. You made a point earlier in this conversation about how a lot of these regulations were for the purpose of not thinking that you own a person or that you own any of this land.
00:37:47
Speaker
It is all God's, and you're stewarding God's world. It's interesting to me how Jesus seems to have that same worldview and his thoughts about like paying taxes to Caesar. So skeptics of his ministry try to catch him between a rock and a hard place.
00:38:04
Speaker
Because there's kind of like Roman sympathizer groups and then kind of hardcore radicals against Rome. And so they do this quite often in different ways to try to legitimize him. So the one time they say, should you pay taxes? Should we pay taxes? And Jesus is like, let me see that coin. And he's like, who's inscriptions on that? And they're like, well, obviously Caesar's.
00:38:26
Speaker
And he's like, ah, give to Caesar, what is Caesar's? Give to God, what is God's? So he avoids giving a clear-cut answer that could be interpreted by, you know, whatever group that didn't like him against him, you know what I'm saying? Like, if he said, yeah, pay taxes to Caesar, the anti-Roman groups would be like, look, this guy's a sellout. Or if he's like, nah, don't pay taxes. Well, then the people who are in bed with Rome could be like, hey, did you hear this guy? Let's lock him up real quick. Yeah. So it could be trouble either way.
00:38:54
Speaker
But it's funny, Jesus' worldview seems to be like, you know like money? These coins that Rome mints? This is all just like superficial stuff. And if Caesar thinks he owns this stuff, ah okay, it let him think he owns this stuff and yeah, sure, give it back to him.
00:39:12
Speaker
Who really cares? The real reality is much bigger and much deeper. And that is to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Love your neighbor as yourself. As Paul would say, oh, no one anything except love and good works.
00:39:28
Speaker
I do wonder if Jesus's thought here is in line with this whole conversation about Jubilee and even attitude towards land possessions, people in the ancient context. His view is that none of it is any humans. Currency is not any mans or systems or empires. Currency is just made up by humans because of unfair trade practices. But it shouldn't even exist in an ideal world.
00:39:56
Speaker
The reality is that God owns everything. There's enough for everybody. And if Caesar and the Romans think they own stuff, okay, whatever. Let them think their thing, be peaceful, but they don't understand the truth. I wonder if there's a connection there.
00:40:11
Speaker
Well, you definitely see that, especially in the Sermon on the Mount. Your finances shouldn't cause you to compromise the way you treat people because your finances are ultimately reflective of where you've put your true hope. And it warns consistently about putting your hope in earthly wealth or in trying to store up wealth for yourself.
00:40:26
Speaker
Yeah, Jesus would tell parables, the person who thinks they are the master of their own fate, the person that thinks they actually own land and own possessions that will give them security, they don't know what they're talking about because tragedy could strike at any moment.
Practical Questions and Applications of Jubilee
00:40:44
Speaker
And there is nothing you can do in the face of some tragedy to underscore the point that no human owns any of this.
00:40:52
Speaker
no human owns other humans, or wealth, or land, or anything. It's all God's creation. We're called to steward it, and we're called to love the other humans who we're also supposed to steward in.
00:41:05
Speaker
yeah once you hit at the heart of what jubilee is all of a sudden it's like well now there's just like a ten thousand other things yeah talk but Once you start trying to integrate all these things, I think just recognizing that they are integrated within the text. It's like, well, how do I like put a neat bow on this now? Because this should launch you into just a thousand questions about how you live this stuff out practically. For sure. There's an early Christian writing called The Epistle of Barnabas. He's addressing what sort of fasting God desires.
00:41:31
Speaker
And I think in his answer here, he expresses a desire for what hope of release should look like in the life of a believer in a really beautiful way. so right this is the fast which i choose says the lord release every bond of wickedness cancel the bonds of harsh agreements forgive the bruise tear off every unjust contract and give your bread to the hungry if you see a naked man cloth him bring the homeless man into your house neither you nor your