Year of Jubilee or Jubile

JUBILEE or JUBILE, YEAR OF, in the Bible the name ap plied in the Holiness section of the Priestly Code of the Hexateuch (Lev. xxv.) to the observance of every fiftieth year (determined by the lapse of seven seven-year periods) as a year of perfect rest, when there was to be no sowing, nor even gathering of the natural products of the field and the vine. At the beginning of the jubilee-year the liberation of all Israelitish slaves and the restora tion of ancestral possessions was to be proclaimed. Modern scholars are agreed that the name (Heb. Wel) signifies "ram" or "ram's horn"; "Year of Jubilee" would mean, therefore, the year that is inaugurated by the blowing of the ram's horn (Lev. xxv. 9).

According to Lev. xxv.

8-12 at the completion of seven sab baths of years (i.e., 7X7=49 years) the trumpet of the Jubilee is to be sounded "through the land" on the loth day of the seventh month (Tisri 1o), the great Day of Atonement. The fiftieth year thus announced is to be "hallowed," i.e., liberty is to be proclaimed everywhere to everyone, and the people are to return "every man unto his possession and unto his family." The conditions of the Sabbatical year are repeated as regards the law of real property in relation to the Jubilee (cf. Lev. xxv. 13-34).

The tendency to impose checks upon the alienation of landed property was exceptionally strong in Israel. The fundamental principle is that the land is a sacred possession belonging to Yah weh, and as such it is not to be alienated from Yahweh's people, to whom it was originally assigned. For the law as to property in

slaves, especially as this affected Hebrews who had sold themselves into slavery, see Lev. xxv. 35-55. It should be noted that these enactments are found only in the latest legal code of the Hexa teuch. They can only be understood in the light of the previous enactments regarding the Sabbatical year (cf. Exod. xxi. 2 seq., xxiii. 10 seq.; Deut. xv.).

The Book of the Covenant enjoined that the land should lie fallow and Hebrew slaves be liberated in the seventh year Deu teronomy required also the remission of debts (see Benzinger). It is evident that these enactments proved impracticable (cf. Jer. xxxiv. 8 seq.), and so it became necessary in the later legislation of P., represented in the present form of Lev. xxv., to relegate them to the fiftieth year, the year of Jubilee. This, however, was a purely theoretical development, which never could have been actually carried out. Further, according to Rabbinical tradition the Jubilee years though reckoned were not observed.

The conjecture of Kuenen that originally Lev. xxv. 8

seq. had reference to the seventh year is a highly probable one. This may also be the case with Ezek. xlvi. 16-18 (cf. Jer. xxxiv. 14). A later Rabbinical device for evading the provisions of the law was the prosbul (ascribed to Hillel).

Further enactments regarding the Jubilee are found in Lev.

xxvii. 17-25

and Num. xxxvi. 4. (G. H. B.)