You may have heard the joyful Messianic praise song Awake O Israel, Put Off Your Slumber [1] and wondered what is meant by the term used, “the year of Jubilee.” This is the year that comes after seven sets of Shemitah periods. Scholars are divided as to whether the Jubilee years come every 49 or 50 years. The Essene calendar held to successive Jubilees being 50 years apart. They also had other terms, so that an Onah was 10 jubilees (500 years), two Onahs would make up a millennium (1,000 years), and an Age was classed as 2,000 years.[2]
According to the biblical injunction, during the Jubilee the land in ancient Israel reverted to the original owner. If someone had lost or sold their land, they would have the ownership of their land returned to them.[3] In addition, prisoners, captives and slaves were liberated and debts were forgiven. The land and the people were thus able to rest during the Jubilee year.[4] The Jubilee year started on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, “Then you shall cause the trumpet of the Jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the Day of Atonement you shall make the trumpet to sound throughout all your land.”[5] The rules set out in Leviticus chapter 25 are fascinating. It is a time of restoration, “each of you shall return to his possession, and each of you shall return to his family” (verses 10,13). Like the Shemitah year, there is the prohibition of agricultural activity, “in it you shall neither sow nor reap what grows of its own accord, nor gather the grapes of your untended vine. For it is the Jubilee; it shall be holy to you; you shall eat its produce from the field” (verse 11)...
[1] By Merla Watson, copyright of Catacombs Productions Ltd.
[2] Josh Peck, The Lost Prophecies of Qumran, page 85
[3] Leviticus 25:1-3
[4] What is the Year of Jubilee? gotquestions.org
[5] Leviticus 25:9
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Scripture taken from the New King James Version®.