'The land shall not be sold for ever: for the land is
Mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with Me.'
--LEV. xxv. 23.
The singular institution of the Jubilee year had more than one purpose.
As a social and economical arrangement it tended to prevent the
extremes of wealth and poverty. Every fiftieth year the land was to
revert to its original owners, the lineal descendants of those who had
'come in with the conqueror,' Joshua. Debts were to be remitted, slaves
emancipated, and so the mountains of wealth and the valleys of poverty
were to be somewhat levelled, and the nation carried back to its
original framework of a simple agricultural community of small owners,
each 'sitting under his own vine and fig-tree' and, like Naboth,
sturdily holding the paternal acres.
As a ceremonial institution it was the completion of the law of the
Sabbath. The seventh day proclaimed the need for weekly rest from
labour, and as was the sabbath in the week, so was the seventh year
among the years--a time of quiet, when the land lay fallow and much of
the ordinary labour was suspended. Nor were these all; when seven weeks
of years had passed, came the great Jubilee year, charged with the same
blessed message of Rest, and doubtless showing dimly to many wearied
and tearful eyes some gleams of a better repose beyond.
Besides these purposes, it was appointed to enforce, and to make the
whole fabric of the national wealth consciously rest upon, this thought
contained in our text. The reason why the land was not to pass out of
the hauls of the representatives of those to whom God had originally
given it, was that He had not really given it to them at all. It was
not theirs to sell--they had only a beneficiary occupation. While they
held it, it was still His, and neither they, nor any one to whom they
might sell the use of it for a time, were anything more than tenants at
will. The land was His, and they were only like a band of wanderers,
squatting for a while by permission of the owner, on his estate. Their
camp-fires were here today, but to-morrow they would be gone. They were
'strangers and sojourners.' That may sound sad, but all the sadness
goes when we read on--'with Me.' They are God's guests, so though they
do not own a foot of soil, they need not fear want.
All this is as true for us. We can have no better New Year's thoughts
than those which were taught by the blast of the silver trumpets that
proclaimed liberty to the slaves, and restored to the landless pauper
his alienated heritage.