II. Laws connected with this Festival.— These embrace the following three main points :
1. Rest for the Soil. — This enactment, which is com- prised in Lev. xxv, 11, 12, enjoins that, as on the Sab- batical year, the land should lie fallow, and that there should be no tillage nor harvest during the jubilee year. The Israelites, however, were permitted to fetch the spontaneous produce of the iield for their immediate
wants (nrxian rx ibsxn tn'::^ p), but not to
lay ijt up in their storehouses.
2. Reversion of landed Property.— This provision is comprised in Lev. xxv, 13-34 ; xxvii, lG-24. The Mo- saic law enacted that the Promised Land should bo di- vided by lot, in equal parts, among the Israelites, and that the plot which should thus come into the posses- sion of each family was to be absolutely inalienable, and forever continue to be the property of the descendants of the original possessor. See Land. When a propri- etor, therefore, being jiressed by jiovcrty, had to dispose of a field, no one could buy it of him for a longer period than up to the time of the next jubilee, when it revert- ed to the original possessor, or to his family. Hence the sale, properly speaking, was not of the land, but of the produce of so many years, and the price was fixed according to the number of years (nXlUn i3'i:) up to the next jubilee, so as to prevent any injustice being done to those who were compelled by circumstances to part temporarily with their land (Lev. xxv, 15, IG). The lessee, however, according to Josephus, in case he had made great outlays on the field just before ho was re- quired by the law of jubilee to return it to its owner, could claim compensation for these {Ant. iii, 12,3). But even before the jubilee year the original proprietor could recover his field, if either his own circumstances im- proved, or if his next of kin (see Gokl) could redeem it for him by paying back according to the same price which regulated the purchase (Lev. xxv, 2G, 27). In the interests of the purchaser, however, the Kabbinical law enacted that this redemption should not take place before he had the benefit of the field for ttco productive years (so the Rabbins understood OXinn "^3^), exclu- sive of a sabbatical year, a year of barrenness, and of the first harvest, if he happened to buy the plot of land . shortly before the seventh month, i. e. with the ripe fruit (Erachin, ix, 1 ; Maimonides, Jobel, xi, 10-13). As poverty is the only reason which the law supposes mightlead one to part with his field, the Rabbins en- acted that it was not allowable for any one to sell his patrimony on speculation (comp. INIaimonides, Jobel, xi, 3). Though nothing is here said about fields which were given aioay by the proprietors, yet there can be no doubt, as jMaimonides says {ibid, xi, 10), that the same law is intended to apply to gifts (comp. Ezek. xlvi, 17), but not to those plots of land which came into a man's possession through marriage with an heiress (Numb. xxxvi, 4-9; compare Mishna, /?«-ac^o^^,viii, 10). Nei- thier did this law apply to a house in a walled city. St'ill, the seller had the jjrivilege of redeeming it at any time within a full year from the day of the sale. After the year it became the absolute property of the pur- chaser (Lev. xxv, 29, 30, Keri). As this law required a more minute definition for practical purposes, the Rab- bins determined that this right of redemption might be exercised from the very first day of the sale to the last day which made up the year. Jlorcover, as the pur- chaser sometimes concealed himself towards the end of the year, in order to prevent the seller from redeeming his house, it was enacted that Avhcn the purchaser could not be found, the original proprietor should hand over the redemption-money to the powers that be, break open the doors, and take possession of the house ; and if the jnirchaser died during the year, the original proprietor could redeem it from the heir (comp. Mishna, Erachin, ix,3,4; Maimoiiides,JoZ/f'^, xii,l-7). Open places, how- ever, which arc not surrounded by walls, belong to land- ed property, and, like the cultivated land on which they stand, are subject to the law of jubilee, and must revert to their original proprietors (Lev. xxv, 31). But, al- though houses in open places are thus treated like fields, yet, according to the Rabbinic definition, the reverse is not to be the case ; i. e. fields or other places not built upon m walled cities are not to be treated as cities, but come under the jubilee law of fields (comp. Erachin, ix, 5). The houses of the Levites, in the forty-eight cities given to them (Numb, xxxv, 1-8), were exempt from this general law of house property. Having the same
JUBILEE
1040
JUBILEE
value to the Levitcs as landed property had to the oth- er tribes, these houses were subject to the jubilee law for fields, and coidd at any time be redeemed (Lev. xxv, 3-2 ; comp. Erachin, ix, 8), so that, even if a Levite re- deemed the house which his brother Levite was obliged to sell through poverty, the general law of house prop- erty is not to obtain, even among the Levites them- selves, but they are obliged to treat each other accord- ing to the law of landed property. Thus, for instance, the house of A, which he, out of poverty, was obliged to sell to tlie non-Levite B, and was redeemed from him by a Levite C, reverts in the jubilee year from C to the original Le^-itical proprietor A. This seems to be the most probable meaning of the enactment contained in Lev. xxv, 33, and it does not necessitate us to insert into the text the negative particle xb before bxj"^, as is done by the Yulgate, Houbigant, Ewald (Alterthiimer, p. 421), Knobel, etc., nor need we, with Rashi, Aben-Ezra, etc., take bs5 in the unnatural sense o{ buijing. The lands in the suburbs of their cities the Le\4tes were not permitted to part with under any condition, and there- fore these did not come under the law of jubilee (ver. 34). Tlie only exception to this general law were the houses and the fields consecrated to the Lord, or to the support of the sanctuary. If these were not redeemed before the ensuing jubilee, instead of reverting to their original proprietors, they at the jubilee became forever the property of the priests (Lev. xxvii, 20, 21). The conditions, however, on which consecrated property could be redeemed were as follows : A house thus de- voted to the Lord was valued by the priest, and the do- nor who wished to redeem it had to pay one fifth in ad- dition to this fixed value (Lev. xxvii, 14, 15). A field was valued according to the number of homers of bar- ley which could be sown thereon, at the rate of fifty sil- ver shekels of the sanctuary for each homer for the whole fifty years, deducting from it a proportionate amount for the lapse of each year (Lev, xxvii, 16-18). According to the Talmud the fiftieth year was not comit- ed. Hence, if any one wished to redeem his field, he had to pay one fifth in addition to the regular rate of a scla (sliekel), and a pundium { = \-Ait\\ seta) per annum for every homer, the surplus pnndium being intended for the forty-ninth year. No one was tlierefore allowed to sanctify his field during the year which immediately preceded the jubilee, for he would then have to pay for the whole forty-nine j-ears, because months could not be deducted from the sanctuarj', and the jubilee year it- self was not counted (JMishna, Erachin, vii, 1). If one sanctified a field wliich he had purchased, i. e. not free- hold property, it reverted to the original proprietor m the year of jubilee (Lev. xxvii, 22-24).