Today we begin the portion of Leviticus that describes an event that is to take place every fifty years.
"Count off seven sabbath years---seven times seven years---so that the seven sabbath years amount to a period of forty-nine years. 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." (Leviticus 25:8-9) We studied the sabbath year in yesterday's passage. A sabbath year was to occur every seventh year.
After the sabbath years are counted up to forty-nine, the fiftieth year is a year of jubilee. "Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you; each of you is to return to your family property and to your own clan. The fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you; do not sow and do not reap what grows of itself or harvest the untended vines. For it is a jubilee and it is to be holy for you; eat only what is taken directly from the fields. In this Year of Jubilee everyone is to return to their own property." (Leviticus 25:10-13) \
The Lord gave territories to each tribe in the promised land, with the priestly tribe inhabiting cities and not cultivating farmlands. During a jubilee year, every person was to return to the territory given to his tribe, no matter where he currently dwelt in the promised land or outside of it. According to my background study, all twelve tribes of Israel must be living in Israel in order to meet the regulations for observing the jubilee, which is why it has not been observed in the full and traditional manner since about 150 years prior to the destruction of the first temple, for this is when the ten northern tribes were conquered by Assyria and sent into exile. Only the tribes of Judah and Benjamin were wholly left in the land until they too were conquered, by Babylon, and the first temple destroyed. The jubilee year is still noted and observed in other ways, but it has been several thousand years since every member of all twelve tribes have inhabited the promised land together.
The Israelites could lease out portions of their land to others but in the jubilee year the land would revert back to them. The Lord is about to provide regulations for determining a fair price to charge for the lease. The terms of a lease of land, and the price for the lease, was determined by how many years remained until the jubilee year. In a jubilee year the land reverted back to its original family line. "If you sell land to any of your own people or buy land from them, do not take advantage of each other. You are to buy from your own people on the basis of the number of years since the Jubilee. And they are to sell to you based on the number of years left for harvesting crops. When the years are many, you are to increase the price, and 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 your God." (Leviticus 25:14-17)
When a person leased land from another, he only paid the price it was worth for every harvest year until the next jubilee. This means every sabbath year (every seventh year) is deducted from the total. He will not be charged for the sabbath years because he cannot plant and harvest during those years. If many years remain until the next jubilee, the total amount of the lease will necessarily be larger. If few years remain until the next jubilee, the total lease price will be smaller.
It is a sin to defraud others. It's wrong to defraud those who are not fellow citizens of our nation or community or family line. It's also wrong, and especially shameful, to defraud our own people. If an Israelite defrauded a fellow Israelite it was the same as cheating one of his own family members, for though Israel is made up of twelve tribes, they are one nation and one family.
To think of it in modern terms, it's a shame and a crime if someone unrelated to us cheats us out of money. But it's especially hurtful when the person who cheated us is related to us. Believe me, that is something that happened to my husband and me when we were building our house. A close family member of my husband's fleeced us out of an amount somewhere between $4000 and $5000. I won't go into the details of how he went about it, but believe me, it's far more shocking and hurtful and hard to accept when a relative defrauds you than when a stranger or casual acquaintance does it. The Lord warns the Israelites not to engage in this type of behavior with one another, and He backs up this warning with all the authority of His name by saying, "Fear your God. I am the Lord."
If we maintain a healthy fear (reverence and awe) for the Lord, we'll be far less likely to consider wronging someone. Even if the temptation comes upon us, our respect for the Lord will be stronger than the temptation. A Jew must not defraud a Jew, for they are all of one family. A Christian must not defraud a Christian, for they are all of one family. And, to sum it all up, a human being must not defraud another human being, for we are all of the same species and we all inhabit the same world. God does not look favorably on cheating and stealing. If we defraud our neighbor, our neighbor may not be able to prove it in a court of law and our neighbor may not be able to recover from us what we stole from him. But we'll have to answer to a holy God for our actions, and that's a sobering thought.
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