Beginning of the End: Preventing Extremes of Wealth or Poverty

 After “seven times seven years” came the great year of release—the Jubilee. “Then you shall cause the trumpet of the Jubilee to sound ... throughout all your land. And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all its inhabitants ... and each of you shall return to his family.” (Leviticus 25:9, 10).

“On the tenth day of the seventh month; on the Day of Atonement,” the trumpet of Jubilee was sounded, calling all the children of Jacob to welcome the year of release.

As in the sabbatical year, the land was not to be sown or reaped, and all that it produced was to be considered the rightful property of the poor. Hebrew slaves who did not receive their freedom in the sabbatical year were now set free.

But what especially made the year of Jubilee special was the return of all land property to the family of the original owner. No one was allowed to trade his estate, and he was not to sell his land unless poverty forced him to do so. Whenever he or any of his relatives might want to buy it back it, the purchaser must not refuse to sell it. If it was not bought back earlier, it would be returned to its original owner or his heirs in the Year of Jubilee.

The Lord declared to Israel: “The land shall not be sold permanently, for the land is Mine; for you are strangers and sojourners with Me.” (Leviticus 25:23). God was the rightful owner, the original land holder. It was to be impressed on everyone that the poor and unfortunate have as much right to a place in God’s world as the wealthy.

Our merciful Creator made these kinds of provisions to lessen suffering, to bring some ray of hope, to flash some gleam of sunshine into the life of the very poor and distressed.

Great evils result from the continued building up of wealth by one class of people and the poverty of another. The sense of this inequality would bring out strong feelings in the poorer class. There would be a feeling of despair and desperation that would tend to break down society and open the door to crimes of every kind. The regulations that God established were to promote social equality. The sabbatical year and the Jubilee would set right to a great extent the things that had gone wrong in the social and political order of the nation.

These regulations, designed to bless the rich no less than the poor,  would restrain greed and cultivate a noble spirit of kindness. By encouraging kindness between all classes, they would promote stability of government.

We are all woven together in the great web of humanity. Whatever we can do to benefit others will reflect in blessing on ourselves. The law of mutual dependence runs through all classes of society. The poor are not more dependent on the rich than are the rich on the poor. While the one class ask a share in the blessings God has bestowed on their wealthier neighbors, the other need the faithful service, the strength of brain and bone and muscle, that are the resources of the poor.