Leviticus 25:10
Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you. (NIV)
Today’s Reading: Leviticus 25:8-13 and Luke 4:16-21
The Year of Jubilee was to be celebrated by Israel every 50 years. After seven sabbath years – seven times seven years – the next year was to be a special sabbath year. It would begin on the Day of Atonement with the sounding of the trumpet and last until the following Day of Atonement. It was the year of universal redemption.
During the Year of Jubilee, all prisoners and captives were set free, all slaves were released, all debts were forgiven, and all property was returned to its original owners. It was also a year of rest for both the land and the people so no labor would be performed. The Israelites were not to plant any crops so they would eat whatever the land yielded naturally. Think of it as a factory reset that restored everyone and everything back to the way God intended.
There are a lot of symbolic parallels to the Year of Jubilee and the new covenant God made with us through Christ. We are no longer in bondage or slaves to sin having been freed by Christ. Now we can truly enter the rest God provides because we are freed not by our works but by the grace of God. “There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his” (Heb 4:9).
But I wanted to cover the Year of Jubilee because there’s a case to be made that Jesus began his ministry on the Day of Atonement in the year 26 AD which would have been the first day of the Year of Jubilee. There is a lot historical evidence that can be used to place the beginning of Jesus’ ministry in the fall of 26 AD. But the strongest case to be made are the word of Jesus as recorded by Luke. We read this Scripture yesterday as well.
Jesus returned to Nazareth after his 40 days of temptation in the desert and began teaching in the synagogues. On a particular Sabbath day, Jesus stood up and read from Isaiah:
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19).
The Hebrew word used for freedom is dᵉrôr and is also the word liberty in other translations of this passage. The meaning behind dᵉrôr is exactly the Year of Jubilee. Every fifty years God proclaimed liberty to the captives. This whole passage that Jesus reads in Isaiah 61 has the Year of Jubilee written all over it. And as we discussed yesterday, Jesus ended his recitation with “the year of the Lord’s favor” which again points to the Year of Jubilee.
By claiming, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21), Jesus is equating himself with God. If indeed it was a Year of Jubilee, Jesus’ audience would not miss what he was saying. They would know Jesus just claimed to be God and a very different Year of Jubilee was upon them. It’s exactly why they drove him out of town with the intention of throwing him off the cliff.
Christ in the Old Testament 
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