Leviticus 25:11: “A jubilee shall that fiftieth year be unto you: ye shall not sow, neither reap that which groweth of itself in it, nor gather [the grapes] in it of thy vine undressed.”
When I hear the word jubilee my mind automatically goes back to a time when I was about five or six years old and we were visiting some kin folk in Missouri. One day we all packed into our cars and I was told we were going to a Jubilee. I don’t know if it was one church that sponsored it or several churches but we arrive at a picnic ground where there were a lot of people. Today as I look back as best as I can remember I would say over 100 people crowded that picnic ground where there were a number of tables set up filled with pot luck food. I remember it was a happy and joyful time with people laughing and smiling and greeting everyone like old friends. I do recall being told a number of times by white gloved ladies that I was cute. After the meal we all sat down in old wooden folding chairs. There was a platform where there was also a tinny sounding piano. One man walked up and started to sing “Jubilee, Jubilee, happy happy happy Jubilee.” We all joined in singing and this was followed by many other Gospel songs, all happy joyful songs. To this day whenever I see an old wooden folding chair or hear the word Jubilee I am instantly transported to that time many years ago where I felt just absolute joy around people who loved Jesus.
A friend and I took a walk around the old Methodist Camp Ground in Des Plaines, Illinois recently. It is now pretty well run down with most of the old dilapidated frame houses in disrepair and abandoned. We peered into the old tabernacle where my family and I would attend services when I was a child. There was still sawdust on the floor and wooden benches. This was another place I heard the song Jubilee and as I peered into that old tabernacle, now abandoned in ruin, in my mind I saw the crowds of people, clapping their hands and again felt the joy as the sang that song: “Jubilee, Jubilee, happy happy happy Jubilee.” We went into the old hotel which was apparently still in operation. In the meeting room was a piano and I sat down and played a couple old songs just enjoying that old tinny sound that those pianos made when I was a child. I wished I could have played “Jubilee” but I need the music to play something as I can’t play by ear. Yet in my mind’s eye I may have been playing some other Gospel song I knew how to play without music but what my ears heard was “Jubilee.”
I never bothered to study the Hebrew word for Jubilee; I just thought it meant something joyful. So you can imagine my shock when I heard from a former student yesterday who asked me what the word Jubilee meant because he heard somewhere it was a call to battle. I was really taken aback by this, not my precious word Jubilee, a word I always associated with joy and happiness, a word which brings such pleasant memories actually means a call to fight or do battle?
There are a lot of precious memories at stake in this study and I admit to not being a little bit too bias. As many of you know, this is the year of Jubilee on the Jewish calendar. This is the year at the end of seven cycles of Shamata (Sabbatical years). It comes once every fifty years (or 49 the debate rages) known as the Sabbath’s Sabbath. According to Leviticus all debts were cancelled, slaves and prisoners were set free. Jews have not really followed the regulations of the Jubilee year for centuries but many orthodox Jews still recognize it as a festival day.
The word Jubilee in Hebrew is yobal which is simply the word for a trumpet. Some scholars feel it derives from the word yobhel which means ram as the ram’s horn or shofar which was sounded to announce the Jubilee. But that really defines the word shofar and as the Talmud teaches there are no synonyms in the Classical Hebrew there must a difference between yobal and shofar. The Septuagint expresses the word yobal as a trumpet blast of liberty.
The English word Jubilee comes from the Latin word jubilo which means a shout of joy. Now that is the jubilee I know and love. Unfortunately, the Hebrew word yobal has nothing to do with a shout of joy. It simply means a trumpet. In the Canaanite language the word meant a stream or a watercourse, sort of like the rapids. The Akkadian used the word for a violent rain storm. Oh my, that sounds more and more like my student’s understanding of Jubilee as a call to battle. A friend of mine offered that a trumpet blast was usually a call to assemble. Bless her heart; my idea of Jubilee just may be saved yet. For what does a violent rain storm, a running rapid stream of water and a trumpet have in common. In ancient times when a trumpet was sounded crowds would quickly gather or assemble because some important news was to be given. People would push and shove to get as close to the speaker as possible to hear what the news was. It could be joyful and there would be a violent outpouring of joy and rejoicing similar to the old camp meetings or the Jubilee celebration I so fondly remember. It could also be a call to violent out pouring of aggression against a common enemy not unlike my student’s perception as a call to battle.
As far as I am concerned it could be both. The Jubilee year is a Jewish celebration and does not involve us as Gentiles. Yet, maybe we can reflect on this year as a year of Jubilee for us, a time to recapture that joy of fifty years ago with a violent outpouring of praise and worship or a recapturing our the determination of our youth to fight any battle which as the years wore us down we started to become complacent. It doesn’t have to be a fifty year wait but as a Jubilee year is upon us, what a perfect time to recapture the joyful celebration of God that we once knew or to gather together to do spiritual warfare with the determination we once knew.
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