The biblical account in Luke 4 is electrifyingly dramatic. Jesus walks into the Synagogue in Nazareth on a Sabbath day. Someone hands him the Scroll of Isaiah. Jesus unrolls it, finds the place where it says:
The Spirit of the Lord has been given to me
For he has anointed me
He has sent me to bring good‘ news to the poor
To proclaim liberty to the captives
And to the blind, new sight
To set the downtrodden free
To proclaim the Lord's year of favour. (Jerusalem Bible)
Jesus then rolls up the Scroll, gives it back to the Synagogue assistant, sits down, teaches with authority, from the chair, ex cathedra. Every eye is fixed on him. And he says: "Now at this moment this text is being fulfilled". (Luke 4:21)
What an astounding claim! Especially when one realizes what the background of this passage is in the Old Testament! The Hebrew expression "to proclaim liberty to the captives", is laden with powerful associations for all Jewish people. Qara deror (proclaim liberty) in Isaiah 61:1 is parallel to qara shenath—ratson layahweh (proclaim the year of Yahweh's favour) in 61:2.
The expression "to proclaim liberty" occurs in the Old Testament in a specific context — that of the Jubilee Year. The priestly document Leviticus (chapter 25) provides detailed legislation on how to celebrate the Jubilee Year: Every fiftieth year is to be declared sacred. " You will proclaim the fiftieth year holy And proclaim liberty to all the inhabitants of the earth". (25:10)
The background of the Roman Catholic Church celebrating 1975 as a "Holy Year" is to be found in this ancient practice of the Old Testament, though the extent to which the Holy Year is also a year in which the Church "proclaims liberty to all" does not seem very significant. What does it mean thus "to proclaim liberty to all the inhabitants of the earth"? The expression qara deror (proclaim liberty) which we found in Isaiah 61:1 is taken from Lev. 25:10. We should note first that this word deror is not very frequently used in the Old Testament, and is not translated as eleutheria or as freedom, in the Greek Old Testament. The usual translation is aphesis which really means letting go, release, freilassung, liberatio rather than libertas, but also means forgiveness or acquittal. The Hebrew word deror (liberation) is used only seven times in the Old Testament, and virtually every time in connection with the Jubilee Year. Let us look at the seven instances and study their context.
1. Lev. 25:10 "You will declare this fiftieth year holy and proclaim liberation in the land for all inhabitants (qeratem deror baarets leqol yeshbeyho)
2. Is. 61:1 To proclaim liberation to the captives (1iqro' lishbuyim deror)
3. Jer. 54:8 King Zedekiah had made an agreement with all the people in Jerusalem, to proclaim liberty to them (liqro lahen deror), for each man (to proclaim liberty) to his servant, etc.
4. Jer. 34:15-17 Thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel: "I made a contract with your fathers when I brought them out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, according to which, at the end of seven years each one of you is to let go (teshallehu) his brother Hebrew who has sold himself to you. He may serve you for six years, then you must let him go (shellaheto) free (hoohshi) from you. But your fathers would not listen to me nor did they obey me. Now again, today, you have repented and have done what is pleasing in my sight in each one proclaiming liberation (liqro deror) for his fellow human being. And you have entered into an agreement in my presence, in the temple that has my name called upon it. But then you changed your minds again and you profaned my name to re-enslave each one his man—slave and bondwoman whom he had let go free to live their own lives, and you have forced them into living as your slaves and bondservants.
5. Therefore, thus says Yahweh: Because you have not obeyed me by proclaiming
liberation (ligro' deror) each person to his brother and each to his fellow human being, therefore, behold, I proclaim
6. (liberation (giore' deror), says Yahweh, to the sword and to the famine and to the plague to do as please to you.
7. Ezek.46:17 It shall belong to the man until the year of (shenath—deror)
There are three preliminary facts to be noted here about these seven instances which are the only ones where the word ‘liberation’ is used in the Old Testament.
A. The primary passage for understanding liberation in the biblical context is the Leviticus 25 passage, which we need to study in some detail.
B. All the three major prophets have picked up the concept of "pro1aiming liberation" from the Leviticus passage, and made it a somewhat central element in their preaching. Even in Ezekiel, where it is not central, the Jubilee Year and the concept of property; being held in trust until the Jubilee Year only, seems to be taken for granted.
C. It is clear that the passage which our Lord read in the Nazareth synagogue and his subsequent announcement that "this day it is fulfilled in your ears" is a kind of a jubilee proclamation. The whole gospel in this sense has something to do with the Jubilee.
Let us ask three questions:
A. Was the Jubilee Year ever actually practiced by the Jews?
B. In the background of the concept of the Jubilee Year, can we understand the Synagogue declaration of Jesus in a fresh way?
C. What fresh meaning does the understanding of the Jubilee Year bring
to the concept of liberation today?
Brief Historical Background
The commandment to observe the Sabbatical Year occurs in all strata of the texts of Mosaic Law. The three primary texts representing the three layers are:
1. Yahwist Stratum. Exodus 25:10-11 lays down clearly the command that during the Seventh Year, the land should not be cultivated, but left for the poor and for the wild animals. Exodus 2l:2ff lays down that slaves should be freed in the Seventh Year.
2. Priestly Stratum, Leveticus 25 elaborates on the Yahwist material, and after laying down the rule about the Seventh Year as "a sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a sabbath to the Lord" (Lev. 25:4), goes on to legislate a Sabbath of Sabbaths at the end of seven seven-year cycles. It lays down certain additional rules of economic significance for the Jubilee Year.
3. Deuteronomist Stratum. Deuteronomy 15:1-18 has the Sabbatical Year reaffirmed and elaborated with fresh provisions, but no mention of the Jubilee Year. Here this sabbatical year gets a special name — "the Year of Release" or Shenath-ha-shemittah (See Deut.31:10.
This Year of Release was actually practised by the Jewish people with varying degrees of faithfulness, but throughout its history. The restoration under Nehemiah reiterates the covenant that "we will forego the crops of the Seventh Year and the exaction of every debt" (Neh. 10: 31b). Even the conquerors of Israel, both Greeks and Romans; recognised the Sabbath Year. Alexander the Great ordered that the Jews were not to be taxed during the Seventh Year because they did not cultivate their land during that year. This was at the request of the High Priest. (Josephus: Antiquities 11:338). The same concession was reinstated by Julius Caesar.(antiquities 14:202)
It was only after the destruction of the temple in 69 A.D. That the Sabbath Year fell into disuse due to economic hardship and pressure from the Romans to pay taxes even in the Sabbatical Years.
There were three elements to the observance of the Sabbatical Year:
a) Letting the land lie fallow so that the poor and the strangers and the animals can enjoy what grows of itself without hum labour (a return to paradise?)
b) The remission of all debts incurred during the previous six years and the restoration of all property sold during the six years to the original owner.
c) The liberation of all slaves purchased during the previous six years.
The rules were relaxed later on, in the wake of famines, foreign oppression and so on. In the modern period, the shemittah or Sabbatical Year has largely remained an academic problem for Jewish scholars, but even as late as 1899, there was fresh Jewish legislation about the Shemittah and how to get around it by selling the land to non—Jews or engaging non-Jewish labour. The next Sabbatical Year according to Jewish calculation should be 1979/80 (Year of Creation 5740). In some of the more conservative circles of Orthodox Judaism in Israel, attempts will be made probably to grow vegetables in water (hydroponics) so that the land does not have to be cultivated. But is that the point?
The Jubilee Year as Background for the Nazareth Declaration of Jesus
The Jubilee Year (50th) as distinct from the Sabbatical Year (Shemittah does not seen to have been operative since the destruction of the First Temple. Before the Exile, however, it seems to have been an operative concept. Numbers 56:4 looks forward to it. In Leviticus 27:l6-25, the valuation of land is clearly based on the number of years during which the purchases can occupy the land before the Jubilee Year, when he must return it to the original owner.
The Jubilee Year does not come into effect automatically on New Year's day (Rosh ha-shanah) of the 50th year. It has to be officially announced by the Jewish administrative office or bet din by the sounding of the horn (the shofar or yobel). But then every individual Jew joins in by blowing his own horn, and there is a massive jubilation.
The ground-motif of the Jubilee Year seems to be that of rejoicing in paradise. There is no sweat of the brow, which began only after the expulsion from paradise. There are no more debts, no more poverty, no more work, no more slaves. In the old homogeneous days of Israel, it must have been a kind of restoration, at least in principle, to the situation as it was when the the tribes of Israel at the time land was equitably divided among of the occupation of Canaan.
The prophets used this concept of the Year of Release as an eschatalogical notion -- as a situation to be achieved when the Messiah establishes the Kingdom of righteousness. The context of Jeremiah 34 makes this very clear. The Book of the Covenant (Jeremiah 56-35) is the immediate background for the references to the Year of Release in Chapter 54. The Covenant of King Zedekiah is a covenant of liberation. (34:8)
"King Zedekiah made a contract with all the people in Jerusalem, to proclaim liberation to them, so that each person lets go of his Hebrew slaves, both male and female, so that no one would keep in slavery his brother Jew. And the people obeyed all the rulers and all the people who entered into the contract to let his servant go free - whether male or female, and never to enslave then again. They fulfilled the terms of the contract and set them free". (Jer. 34: 8- 10). But obviously, the act of compliance with the demands of the law was extremely short-lived. And Jeremiah gives the impression that it was mostly a "symbolic" act, for soon after liberating the slaves, the masters seem to have gone back and re-enslaved them. And the prophet tells us that this act of deceiving Yahweh is partly the reason for Israel being punished by the Assyrian and Babylonian scourge and driven into exile.
In Deutero-Isaiah, the context is more clearly messianic. The element are basically related to the Jubilee Year and the Year of Release:
"The Spirit of the Lord Yahweh is upon me
For Yahweh has anointed me (made me Christ)
He has commissioned me to announce good news to the oppressed
To bind up the wounds of the broken—hearted
To proclaim liberation to the enslaved
And release to the prisoners
To proclaim the Year of Yahweh's Grace
The day of vindication of Our God".
The Greek text (Septuagint) has an additional element, i.e., "recover of sight to the blind", which appears also in the Lukan text (which could mean that the Hebrew text which Christ read was closer to the present Greek text than to the current Hebrew text). The Jubilee Year, or the Year of Release as a symbol of both the primordial life in paradise and the eschatalogical life of the Messianic Kingdom has certain elements which have to do with economic relations, especially, with attitudes to property and work, and also to human relations. Leviticus 25 makes the following affirmations:
1. Land belongs to God and is not to he sold in perpetuity (Lev.25:25).
2. No man can be kept perpetually as a servant, he should go free after some years.
3. There should be periodic intervals at which all commercial relations are annulled, and fully human relations of brotherhood reestablished towards all.
4. Land and houses are on lease to us as human beings, not as property to be reified and accumulated forever.
Can we proclaim today a Jubilee year?
There are two kinds of consciousness being developed today among those who are yearning for a just society. One is that of a society which is structurally just, with enforced by law, implemented by the State. The other, less clearly articulated, is a utopian vision, with very little law and structure and consumption, but with much joy, much spontaneous community, with human relations in love more important than goods and property, with Government and State playing but a minor role, where the people are directly involved in the movement to create a new humanity, where all the burdensome paraphernalia of good government like judiciary, executive, parliament, political parties, bureaucratic administrative machinery, impersonal taxation, heavy government spending, dehumanizing institutions of health, education, welfare and culture, etc., are no longer the most important things to achieve.
It is a terribly impractical vision. But so was the just society we today so confidently strive for. The eschatological vision is utopian, but it is much more human than the rational universe of the planners and developers.
For many of our young people, the dream of a planned and structured just society has already begun to go sour. The concept of the Jubilee Year demands a certain abandon of one's own control and a trust in God's goodness. Otherwise, one could not let the land lie idle, let the slaves go free, and return property to the original user. It demands a simple style of life, and a joyous lack of care and anxiety, to learn to live off uncultivated land.
How ridiculous it sounds to talk about letting land lie idle, when the food crisis clearly shows that not to produce more is to perish! But is it that ridiculous? Are we not clinging little bit too tensely to our tomorrow's bread, and despising the Lord's admonition in the Sermon on the Mount?
For many of us, we have today little faith in our own government's planning and implementation to bring in the just society. The need today is to release a new vision that lies deep in the consciousness of ordinary people-- the vision of a life without greed, not overburdened with property, not so wedded to comfort as to feel threatened at a slight fall in the standard of living.
The Jubilee Year which Christ announced in the Synagogue at Nazareth may have much more in common with such a vision than with the planned and regimented just society of our current dreams. And in a world plagued by consumerism, resource depletion, pollution proliferation, the armament race, and the impending ecological catastrophe, the vision of a Jubilee Year may release new forces in our consciousness which could lead us on a saner path! Only make sure that nobody uses it as a trick to distract from the impelling demand for justice in society. The Jubilee vision must create new dimensions in our perception of a just and more humane society, not be a substitute for it.