Holy Year of Jubilee :: Religion Religious Christian Church Essays

Holy Year of JubileeThe last derivation of the rallying cry jubilee is disputed, scarce it is most probable that the Hebrew word jobel, to which it is traced, meant a rams horn, and that from this instrument, used in extoling the celebration, a received persuasion of rejoicing was derived. Further, passing through the Greek iobelaios, or iobelos, the word became impoverished with the Latin jubilo, which means to shout, and has given us the forms jubilatio and jubilaeum, now choose in most European languages. For the Israelites, the year of Jubilee was in any grapheme preeminently a time of joy, the year of remission or prevalent pardon. Thou shalt sanctify the fiftieth year, we read in Leviticus 2510, and shalt proclaim remission to all the inhabitants of thy land for it is the year of jubilee. Every seventh year, desire every seventh day, was always accounted holy and set aside for rest, but the year which followed seven complete cycles was to be kept as a sabbatical yea r of special solemnity. The Talmudists and others afterwards disputed whether the Jubilee Year was the 49th or the fiftieth year, the difficulty being that in the latter sheath two sabbatical years must have been observed in succession. Further, there are historical data which seem to show that in the age of the Machabees the Jubilee of the fiftieth year could not have been kept, for 164-163 B.C. and 38-37 B.C. were both certainly sabbatical years, which they could not have been if two sabbatical years had been intercalated in the interval. However, the text of Leviticus (258-55) leaves no room for ambiguity that the fiftieth year was intended, and the origin evidently bore a close analogy with the feast of Pentecost, which was the settlement day after seven weeks of harvest. In any case it is certain that the Jubilee period, as it was generally understood and adopted afterwards in the Christian Church, meant fifty and not forty-nine years but at the identical time the number f ifty was not originally arrived at because it delineate half a century, but because it was the number that followed seven cycles of seven. It was, then, part of the polity of the Old Law, whether practically adhered to or not, that each fiftieth year was to be celebrated as a jubilee year, and that at this season every family should recover its absent members, the land return to its former owners, the Hebrew slaves be set free, and debts be remitted.