[CS-FSLUG] looking for: info OT Holidays & Year of Jubilee

[Doug Coats]

My understanding is that about how the Sabbath Year and the Year of Jubilee
worked are as follows.

	Sabbath Year
	You were not allowed to plant anything or work the fields.  This was a year
of rest for the people and the fields.  You were allowed to harvest any
crops that grew but these were available to anyone no matter what field they
grew in.  Hebrew "slaves" were set free by their Hebrew "owners."  The
reason for the quotes stems from you were actually renting them more than
buying them.  The price was determined by how many years away the Sabbath
Year was.  You were not allowed to send your "servants" away empty handed
either.  You should bless them for the time that they put in for you.  Their
entire families were freed not just the original servants.  So if someone
married and had children while under your "ownership" the entire family was
set free.  This plays into the cancellation of debts.  Again, debts were
created based on how many years away the Sabbath Year was when they would be
nulled.  No 30 year mortgages in Israel.

	Year of Jubilee
	There is some disagreement on whether this was on the 7th Sabbath Year,
which would make it the 49th year or whether it was on the 50th year so that
there were 2 Sabbath Years in a row.  The rules are the same as above
although if it was the 50th year there should have been no dept or slaves.
Property was returned to the family lines that owned them since the book of
Joshua.  So at most a poor family would only be without means of caring for
themselves for 49 years.  Most likely they could have earned back their
property before this happened since they would not build up long term debt
that could span generations.  Property was assured of never changes hands
out of the family so no one could acquire vast properties and Lord over
them.  If you "sold," more like rented based on the number of years from the
Year of Jubilee, you knew that it would eventually come back to your family
for your children.

That is all from memory but I believe it to be accurate but you have been
warned.

Doug

-----Original Message-----
From: Christiansource-bounces at ofb.biz
[mailto:Christiansource-bounces at ofb.biz]On Behalf Of R. Thompson
Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2004 10:12 PM
To: Josiah Ritchie
Cc: A Christian virtual Free Software and Linux Users Group.
Subject: RE: [CS-FSLUG] looking for: info OT Holidays & Year of Jubilee


Thanks Doug & Josiah,

    You've gotten me off to a good start.  I'm hoping to take a look at
workloads under law vs modern times.  Too often I've heard Christians
vilify OT law without understanding it.  So under law we work six days a
week, but then I roughly figured in the Holidays, and the year of
jubilee, it seemed to me that those under the law should have had more
rest time.  I'm also interested in what the year of Jubilee would have
done for the people.  The year of Jubilee, and laws concerning debt and
property, are of particular interest.  Did life under the law also
provide greater security (property, financial, inheritance, etc.) than
we know today?

      Ron T.

On Wed, 2004-12-15 at 07:28, Josiah Ritchie wrote:
> On Tue, 2004-12-14 at 18:15 -0600, R. Thompson wrote:
> > Hi Doug,
> >
> >   I just got home, and had an opportunity to look at this.  This is very
> > helpful, thank you.  Something I'm not sure about, and that was the
> > length of some of these Holidays, did they cease work for 7 weeks during
> > the feast of weeks for example?
>
> You were supposed to. From what I've been taught they newer managed a
> year of jubilee so the likelyhood that this actually happened seems
> slim.
>
> JSR/
--
Ron G. Thompson, |^|
Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, Canada
www.petomai.org   ron at petomai.org
"Who are these that fly as a cloud, and as doves to their window?" Is
60:8


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