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"Thou shalt number seven sabbaths of years unto thee, seven
times seven years; and the space of the seven sabbaths of
years shall be unto thee forty and nine years. Then shalt thou
cause the trumpet of the Jubile to sound on the tenth day of
the seventh month, in the day of atonement shall ye make the
trumpet sound throughout all your land. And ye shall hallow
the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the
land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a Jubile
unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession,
and ye shall return every man unto his family."

In this year of Jubilee all land, and village houses, and the houses of
the Levites were to revert to their original owners. These, in other
words, could be leased only, and not bought outright, the price of the
lease depending upon the number of years until the next Jubilee. A
foreigner might not buy a Hebrew outright as a bondslave; he could but
contract with him as a servant hired for a term; this contract might be
abolished by the payment of a sum dependent on the number of years until
the next year of Jubilee, and in any case the Hebrew servant and his
family must go out free at the year of Jubilee. In the last chapter of
the Book of Numbers we get a reference again to the year of Jubilee, and
indirect allusions to it are made by Isaiah, in "the acceptable year of
the Lord" when liberty should be proclaimed, and in "the year of the
redeemed." In his prophecy of the restoration of Israel, Ezekiel
definitely refers to "the year of liberty," when the inheritance that
has been granted to a servant shall return again to the prince.

The interpretation of the sabbatic year and the year of Jubilee has
greatly exercised commentators. At what season did the sabbatic year
begin? was it coterminous with the ecclesiastical year; or did it differ
from it by six months? Was the year of Jubilee held once in every
forty-nine years or once in every fifty? did it begin at the same season
as the sabbatic year? did it interrupt the reckoning of the sabbatic
year, so that a new cycle commenced immediately after the year of
Jubilee; or was the sabbatic year every seventh, irrespective of the
year of Jubilee? did the year of Jubilee always follow immediately on a
sabbatic year, or did this only happen occasionally?

The problem will be much simpler if it is borne in mind that the Law, as
originally pr