JUBILEE, YEAR OF. An institution ordained tor the Hebrews in the so-called Code of Holiness (Lev. xxv. 8-55), by which every fiftieth year (i.e. on the completion of seven Sabbatical years) the land that in the interval had passed out of the po—ession of those to whom it originally belonged was restored to them. and all who had been reduced to poverty and obliged to hire them selves out as servants were released from their bondage; there was also a remittance of debts (Josephus, Ant., Ill. xii. 3). The jubilee forms an exalted sabbatical year (q.v.), and the land was to he left completely to itself in the former as in the latter, without sowing or reaping of any kind, or even gathering grapes. The design of this institution was chiefly the restoration of the equilibrium in the families and tribes. It was to prevent the growth of an oligarchy of landowners, and the total impoverishment of same families. It was proclaimed at the end of the harvest time like the sabbatical year, on the tenth day of the seventh month—the Day of Atonement—by the ?lobe( (a kind of horn) ; hence also its name. While the detailed specifica tions are to be found only in one of the codes, there are references to the jubilee year elsewhere (Lev. xxvii. 17-25; Numb. xxxvi. 4; also Jer. xxxiv. 14: Ezek. xlvi. 17) sufficient to indicate that. there existed some institation in early days of which the jubilee is the theoretical elaboration. For an agricultural community it is of impor tance that land should remain in the hands of the tillers, and one can well conceive that even in primitive eommunities some regulations ex isted to bring this about. To this economic pro
vision there was added also the religious con sideration that the land belongs to the deity residing in it. and to whom the fertility is due, and this furnished an additional reason why the land should not be made an object of commercial speculation Still. in the elaborate form mapped out in the Code of Holiness the jubilee was never observed either in the pre-exilic or post-exilic period of Hebrew history. The rabbis them selves admit that the jubilee had not been practiced since the time when the tribes on the .eastern :side of the Jordan were carried away; and this is practically equivalent to saying that it was never held to. It is also significant for the post-exilic period that when the sabbatical year was de facto repealed by Hind's prosbol la legal document entitling the creditor to claim his debt during this period), mention is no longer made of the yobel. It is needless to point out that the system as laid down in Leviticus was only a theoretical development of the underlying principle. If carried out it would mean two years of no sowing. no reaping—since the fiftieth year would be preceded by a year, the forty-ninth, which would be a sabbatical year—and this would imply a third year without a harvest. This consideration is sufficient to show how utter impossible its observance was. Consult the commentaries on Leviticus by Dillmann, Strach, and Baeutsch, and the Hebrew archfeologies of Nowaek and Denzinger.