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CHAPTER THREE

Implications of Jubilee

T he speech at Nazareth alone would not be enough to prove that Jesus proclaimed a Jubilee. A more complete reading of the Gospels is needed to validate our thesis. As we have just seen, the Jubilee or sabbatical year prescribed four provisions: letting the land lie fallow, the remittance of debts, the liberation of slaves, and the redistribution of capital. This chapter will explore further references in the Gospels to these four provisions.¹

The Fallow Year

Jesus does not directly mention the provision of letting the land lie fallow. His silence on the subject is not surprising, since this sabbatical prescription was the only one already accepted by the people. It was therefore unnecessary to encourage the Jews to put it into practice. But they surely needed courage to let their land lie fallow every seventh year while counting on God to give them what they needed. In Leviticus 25:20–21 Yahweh foresaw their uneasiness and declared, “You may ask, ‘What will we eat in the seventh year if we do not plant or harvest our crops?’ I will send you such a blessing in the sixth year that the land will yield enough for three years.”

Jesus talked to his disciples in similar terms. His proclamation of the Jubilee may have troubled them because they had abandoned their land and their boats by the lake to follow him. “So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matt. 6:31–33).

Such an exhortation might be misunderstood as encouraging laziness, but in the framework of expecting God’s kingdom (of which the Jubilee was to be a foretaste) it can easily be explained. One can interpret Jesus’ exhortation as follows: “If you work six days (or six years) with all your heart you can count on God to take care of you and your loved ones. Let your land lie fallow without fear. Just as he does for the birds of the sky, who neither sow nor reap nor gather away in barns, God will also provide for your needs. The Gentiles who ignore the Sabbath are no richer than you are.”

Remittance of Debt and Liberation of Slaves

Unlike the preceding regulation, the second and third jubilean provisions are not marginal, but central to Jesus’ teaching, even to his theological vision.

The Lord’s Prayer, which sums up Jesus’ thinking about prayer, contains the following request: “Forgive (or remit) us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.” Several versions translate this passage incorrectly as: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” In reality, the Greek opheilema means a money debt, a sum owed, in the material sense of the word.² Jesus is not vaguely recommending that we forgive those who have created problems for us. No, he is instructing us to forgive sins, which includes completely canceling the debts of those who owe us money, that is, to practice the Jubilee.

The material connotation of the word “debts” in the Lord’s Prayer was so obvious that Jesus thought it fitting to add a commentary to the prayer, to explain that the words concerning the debts also applied to “trespasses” in general: “For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins [the term he uses here is paraptoma, or transgression], your Father will not forgive your sins” (Matt. 6:14–15).

Thus, the Lord’s Prayer is truly jubilean. In this context, Jesus’ listeners understood it to mean: “The time has come for God’s people to cancel all the debts that bind the poor because their debts to God have also been cancelled.” Jesus was setting up a rigorous equation between practicing the Jubilee and the grace of God. Although he was not otherwise a legalist and unhesitatingly forgave even prostitutes and people of ill repute, Jesus was very strict on this one point: only he who grants forgiveness can be forgiven. God’s aphesis toward you is in vain if you do not practice aphesis toward others.³

The parable of the unmerciful servant and the parable of the unjust steward both further clarify Jesus’ thought on this point. The first expresses the strictness of the “equation” of the Lord’s Prayer: no mercy for him who has none (Matt. 18:21–35).

Why has this parable been detached from its sociological background? Why has it been understood as a rather pale portrayal of the forgiveness of sins granted by God to those who forgive their brothers? In fact, its sorry hero was almost certainly a real person, a Galilean peasant whose name was probably known to Jesus’ disciples. He had been a beneficiary of the proclamation of the Jubilee, having been granted forgiveness by God. All his debts had been cancelled, though they were enormous: 10,000 talents (approximately ten million dollars!). This astronomical figure expresses the debtor’s insolvency toward the prince.

We now know how Galilean peasants who had been free proprietors before Jesus’ time had been forced into slavery by their progressive indebtedness. To a large extent, Herod the Great was to blame for this situation. He had overburdened the people with taxes and expropriated the recalcitrant proprietors. To avoid expropriation, a peasant borrowed money from a usurer who usually worked hand in hand with the king’s steward or the tax collector. His pawned property would soon become the usurer’s, and the peasant his sharecropper, or “servant.” But this did not solve the peasant’s problems. His unpaid debts accumulated until they reached horrendous proportions. The creditor sought repayment and ordered that the sharecropper be sold (along with his wife, children, and all he owned) in order to reimburse the debt. This was the situation of the “unforgiving servant.” Jesus described the peasant’s loss of his property and freedom as a direct consequence of his indebtedness.

But because of the Jubilee, the servant appears before the king, who cancels his debt. This story would be quite encouraging if it stopped there. But it was told at a time when Jesus was facing opposition to the Jubilee from the majority of his fellow Jews, sometimes even from very humble ones. The rest of the story reflects his bitter disappointment in the face of this rejection.

Upon meeting one of his fellow servants, who owed him about twenty-five dollars, the newly freed slave refuses to grant his debtor the same jubilean privilege that set him free. He seizes him by the throat and says, “Pay what you owe.” Denounced by his fellow servants, the unforgiving servant is arrested and taken before the king. The Jubilee is no longer applicable for such an unmerciful and thankless man. He must be sold along with his wife and children to pay for his debts. There is no divine Jubilee for those who refuse to practice it on earth.

The jubilean practice of forgiving debts had one very serious drawback, which is addressed in Deuteronomy 15:7–11. A too frequent occurrence of the remittance of debts tended to freeze credit. As the sabbatical year approached the rich were increasingly hesitant to loan money to the poor for fear of losing their capital. This stinginess paralyzed the economy and hindered their profits. Because of this, some of the most orthodox rabbis, even champions of the restoration of the Mosaic Law such as Hillel and Shammai, hesitated to require a strict application of the Jubilee.

The rabbis, and in particular Hillel, eventually came up with a solution to this problem. The solution was called the prosbul.⁴ Prosbul probably comes from the Greek pros boule (a deed carried out before a law court). According to the Gittin tractate of the Mishnah (iv, 3), Hillel gave the creditor permission to use a court as his attorney in recovering a debt that the sabbatical year had abolished. By means of this subterfuge, loans with interest, which had been abolished by the Mosaic Law (Exod. 22:25) and limited in duration by the provisions of the sabbatical year, once again became possible. The rich, and particularly the Pharisees, whom Jesus accused of “devouring widows’ houses,” used this measure to its fullest.

The Mishnah has preserved a text which refers to the prosbul: “I (so and so) transfer to you (so and so), the judges (in such and such a place), my right to a debt, so that you may recover any amount which (so and so) owes me, at whatever time I will so desire.” The prosbul was then signed by the judges and the witnesses.

Jesus was an avowed adversary of the prosbul. Usually, Jesus is pictured as an opponent of the sabbatical laws. But in this case, the opposite is true. When it was a question of bringing out the humanitarian intentions of the Mosaic Law, Jesus was even more radical than the Pharisees.⁵ If this were not the case, Jesus’ continuous confrontations with the Pharisees would lose all meaning, especially if they merely centered on religious practices. In reality, the conflict went much deeper than that. It revolved around the nature of justice.

“What is goodness?” the Pharisees would ask themselves, and they would answer with a multitude of detailed ordinances in the midst of which they lost the essential truth.

“What is goodness?” Jesus would ask. His answer was to go back to the essential thrust of the Mosaic Law, without detouring through the scribes’ elaborate interpretations. Jesus’ radicalism was exactly the opposite of forgoing the Law. When Jesus retorted that God made the Sabbath for man, he meant: “God set the Jews free by taking them out of Egypt. The sabbatical year, like the Sabbath, must be put into practice. It was made to set people free, not to enslave them.” That is why the prosbul, as well as all other regulations added to the Law to alter its liberating and revolutionary character, provoked Jesus’ indignation.

But the question remains: how can one avoid freezing credit if the lure of profit is taken away? In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus gave his answer. The rich must prove themselves generous by eradicating their desire to be reimbursed, because God will take the matter into his own hands.

And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even “sinners” lend to “sinners,” expecting to be repaid in full. But…lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful…Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. (Luke 6:34–38)

In all this the honesty of the debtor must coincide with the generosity of the lender. The debtor should not hide behind the protection of the sabbatical year in order to escape his own obligation. Again, the Sermon on the Mount contains two striking paragraphs where Jesus points out possible solutions to the problem upon which Hillel and the Pharisees had stumbled.

Hillel would tell the worried creditor: “Take your claims to the court. Your money will be restored to you there.” Jesus tells the careless debtor not to wait for a court summons to repay his debt: “If someone [your creditor] wants to sue you [using the prosbul] and take your tunic⁶ [which he holds as a pledge for the debt you have not repaid], let him have your cloak as well” (Matt. 5:40). Prior to this, Jesus advises, “Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still with him on the way, or he [using the prosbul] may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison. I tell you the truth, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny” (Matt. 5:25). According to the parallel passage in Luke 12:52–59, Jesus asks, “Why don’t you judge for yourselves what is right?” His disciples should avoid court proceedings altogether. Why should they rely on the courts to decide whether or not it is right to pay their debts?⁷

The other parable with a jubilean teaching, the parable of the dishonest steward (Luke 16:1–9), also revolves around the peasants’ status in Jesus’ time. Due to the extortions of King Herod – as well as those of his son and the Roman occupant – most of the older proprietors had lost their independence. Forced to mortgage their property in order to pay their taxes, they had been driven into semi-slavery. The taxes in oil and wheat that they paid to their masters often amounted to half or more of their harvest.

The peasants’ conditions in Israel were aggravated by yet another evil: the owners’ absenteeism. A hierarchy of middlemen (toll-gatherers, publicans, customs officials, stewards, and managers) had the task of collecting debts. They extorted from the sharecropper arbitrary sums of money that exceeded the rent, debts, and taxes they actually owed. The poor were always in the wrong. They could rely on no one because the stewards presented falsified accounts to their masters. With the help of these accounts, they were able to accumulate what Jesus called “unrighteous mammon.” It was by constantly seeking these unjust riches that the stewards lost their genuine riches, namely, the friendship of their fellow citizens.

This parable tells how a landowner discovered the dishonesty of his steward. Not only did the steward plunder the sharecroppers, he also stole from his master to whom he showed falsified records. Once his cheating had been discovered, the steward began to feel the pangs of conscience. He understood that he would never be able to reimburse the entire amount of his swindling. But he decided at least not to require of the sharecroppers exaggerated amounts they had not yet paid. He then erased the amount by which he had unjustly increased their debts. Jesus describes him calling the debtors together and reducing their debts to their correct amount: fifty measures of oil instead of a hundred, eighty measures of wheat instead of a hundred, etc.

Such a decision certainly increased the steward’s insolvency. It forced him into poverty. But by acting as he did, he would acquire genuine riches, that is the thankfulness and friendship of his previous victims. Poor among the poor, man among men, he would be received as a brother in their homes. That, says Jesus, is the nature of God’s kingdom. The point of the parable? Jesus says, “Use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves”(Luke 16:9). That is, put the Jubilee I’m announcing into practice. By liberating others from their debts, you set yourselves free from fetters that bind, which keep you from being ready for the coming of God’s kingdom of justice.

The most remarkable part of the parable is the praise for the steward’s shrewdness that Jesus puts into the mouth of the landowner, who symbolizes God. In the parable of the unforgiving servant, God is the one who takes the initiative. God is the first to cancel our debt, and so he expects us to do the same. In the parable of the dishonest steward, it is man who takes the initiative. He is the first to put the Jubilee into practice by obeying the messianic call and remitting the debts of those who are debtors to God, as well as debtors to himself. Consequently, God praises this man for practicing the redistribution of wealth even before being touched by divine grace. He was able to read the signs of God’s kingdom and understand that the rule of unjust riches is over.

These two parables coincide with and confirm the inferences of the speech at Nazareth, the Lord’s Prayer, and the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus was indeed proclaiming a Jubilee, consistent with Moses’ sabbatical instructions, a Jubilee capable of reversing the social problems of Israel at that time. It would abolish debts and set free the debtors whose insolvency had turned them into slaves. For Jesus, putting such a Jubilee into practice was not optional. “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” was one of the prerequisites of his kingdom. Those who refused to take heed could not enter.

The Redistribution of Capital

The Gospels clearly indicate that Jesus voluntarily accepted poverty in view of the coming kingdom. He also commanded his disciples to practice the redistribution of their capital. During the time of Jesus, land and flocks were the people’s only wealth, or in today’s terminology, “capital.” Yet Jesus taught, “Seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well. Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give to the poor” (Luke 12:31–33). Does this mean that Jesus commanded a blanket redistribution of wealth on the part of all his followers? Or did he mean it to be only a “counsel of perfection” applicable to a select number of saints at certain times?

Traditionally, the church has chosen the second interpretation, the easy one. Only the person with a particular vocation, such as the monk, is called to abandon all his possessions. The ordinary believer can be content to “give alms,” that is, to distribute part of his income to the poor.

Such a position would be quite justifiable had Jesus not been so harsh toward those very people who in his own day were complacently satisfied with their almsgiving – the Pharisees. They gave one tenth of all their income, no mean accomplishment in light of the taxation requirements of the Romans. But Jesus did not believe that this was enough: “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices – mint, dill, and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law – justice, mercy, and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former” (Matt. 23:23). This confirms Jesus’ radicalism; he did not want to abolish the Law, but fulfill it by exercising justice, mercy, and faithfulness.

What did Jesus mean by these three words? Everything points to the fact that he meant the gratuitous act by which his disciples ceased planning for their own futures and gave away even what they needed for themselves. “Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:20).

Consider the following incident. One day, as Jesus was comparing the generosity of the rich, who ostensibly put large gifts into the offering box, and that of a poor widow, Jesus exclaimed, “This poor widow has put in more than all the others. All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on” (Luke 21:1–4). In other words, it matters little how much one gives. What matters is what one gives. If it is just a part of your income, it isn’t justice, mercy, and faithfulness.

This is not to say that Jesus prescribed some kind of socialist communism. If he had done so, he would have left with his disciples either monastic rules similar to those of the Essenes, or some constitutional order to be implemented within a collectivist Jewish state. He did neither of these things. Forced collectivism was contrary to the spirit of the Mosaic Law, not to mention Jesus’ gospel of the kingdom.

When Jesus commanded, “Sell your possessions and give to the poor” (a better translation would be, “Sell what you possess and practice kind deeds”), it was neither a counsel of perfection, nor a constitutional law founding a utopian state. It was rather a joyful announcement to be put into practice here and now in A.D. 26 as a “refreshment” foreshadowing the restitution of all things. “Give what is inside,” as in Luke 11:41.

Such a redistribution of capital every forty-nine years, out of faithfulness to God’s justice and in the hope of the kingdom, need not be utopian, nor forced. Many bloody revolutions might have been avoided had the Christian church alone, with all its holdings, practiced the jubilean ideal.⁸

When interpreted in light of the Jubilee, many of Jesus’ other teachings fall easily into place. And none of this takes away the spiritual force of Jesus’ message. For surely when Jesus announced the inauguration of the Jubilee he was also thinking about the salvation of his people. He consistently made a rigorous equation between the Jubilee practiced here on earth and the grace of God. “Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven” (Luke 18:22). “Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted…” (Luke 12:33).⁹

The redistribution of capital as taught in the above verses could be misconstrued to encourage selfish acts with the aim of securing one’s place in heaven. The believer thus rids himself of all his possessions in order to purchase his salvation. In reality, however, compassion for the poor precedes the acquisition of treasure in heaven. What matters primarily to God is the lot of the poor. It is for them that the “rich young ruler” must sell his possessions; doing so is the treasure. To practice compassion is to reestablish the poor in the condition God willed for everyone. God will, one day, entirely reestablish the poor, with or without the help of the rich. “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” If it does not happen in this life, it will be realized in the next, as expressed in Jesus’ parable of Lazarus and the rich man (Luke 16:19–31). In the end, those in a precarious situation are not the poor, but the rich who refuse to put the Jubilee into practice. If they don’t distribute their capital now, it may be too late tomorrow. “Woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort.” A tremendous chasm separates the kingdom of God from the place where the rich like to enjoy themselves in pleasure.

The power of salvation is such that it brings with it acts of liberation. Consider the examples of two people to whom Jesus proposed a jubilean redistribution: Zacchaeus, who accepted, and the rich young ruler, who did not.

The former belonged to the scorned class of publicans and usurers whose activities are described above. Zacchaeus had become rich by lending money at usurious rates to the insolvent poor with one hand so that they could pay the government taxes he collected with the other hand. Before meeting Jesus, Zacchaeus had probably already heard rumors about his proclamation of the Jubilee. All the unjust riches he had acquired troubled Zacchaeus’s conscience. The story tells us that instead of fleeing from the prophet, he climbed a tree to see him. Jesus called Zacchaeus down because he wanted to stay in his house. His sheer presence compelled Zacchaeus to see that his wealth resulted from robbery. Applying to himself the commandment of Exodus 22:1–4,¹⁰ which tells the robber to return four for the one he stole, Zacchaeus cried out, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount” (Luke 19:1–10).

By this action Zacchaeus was joining the great movement of jubilean reform undertaken by Jesus. He was practicing what Jesus preached by abolishing his part in the system of exploitation under which the people of Israel were suffering. And so Jesus exclaimed, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.” One could conclude that those who do not practice the Jubilee are excluding themselves from among the sons of Abraham.

Jesus considered the rich who did not redistribute their capital as lost. When referring to the rich young ruler, Jesus said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!” and the disciples cried out, “Who then can be saved?” Indeed, the rich young ruler had refused to sell his possessions and return them to the poor. He had received the command as the disciples had – to put the Jubilee into practice – but he had not obeyed. Despite Jesus’ sympathy for him, he could not be one of his disciples (Luke 18:18–30).

The contrast between the bitter sorrow of the rich young ruler and the joy of the apostles, who had responded to Jesus’ call by leaving behind all that they had, is indeed striking. It was, in fact, after the rich man’s departure that Peter exclaimed, “We have left all we had to follow you!” Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, no one who has left home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age and, in the age to come, eternal life” (Luke 18:28–30).