I.-the Sabbatical Year

Who is there that could continue to doubt the divine origin of the Scriptures, if he read without prejudice and with simplicity of heart, a chapter such as this? Who else than God, the Creator, could speak in such sort, could give to a people similar ordinances? Imagine the most mighty of the kings of the earth, Nebuchadnezzar or Alexander, Caesar Augustus or Charlemagne, prescribing to their subjects that the land should be left fallow every seventh year, that all agricultural toil should be suspended; and yet promising them abundance Would not every one be justified in crying out against the barbarous absurdity of such a law? Would it not be a decree of perpetual famine, and exposing, four times in every human generation, of a whole people to die by famine?
Ah! no: God alone, the Creator of all things, He who opens his hand and satisfies all created things, could say: " Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and gather in the fruit thereof; but in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, a sabbath for the Lord: thou shalt neither sow thy field nor prune thy vineyard. That which groweth of its own accord of thy harvest thou shalt not reap, neither gather the grapes of thy vine undressed: for it is a year of rest unto the land."
In truth, God alone can resolve the doubts, calm the fears, dissipate the anxieties of those who flinch before such an edict, and who say: " What shall we eat the seventh year? Behold, we shall not sow, nor gather in our increase:" God alone could say to them: " Then I will command my blessing upon you in the sixth year, and it shall bring forth fruit for three years. And ye shall sow the eighth year, and eat yet of old fruit until the ninth year."
God alone can prepare a table for his people in the wilderness; He did so during forty years in the, great desert, sending down every morning from heaven the manna for the nourishment of Israel; He did it again in satisfying, twice, in the desert place, thousands: of persons with a few barley loaves and a few small fishes; He will do it, once more again, nourishing, in the wilderness, the woman through twelve hundred and sixty days (Rev. 12:6).
Without a doubt, He ordained and appointed toil to man, as one of the consequences of sin; He said to the man.... "in the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat 'bread." But God who can, when it seems good to him, suspend the laws of nature, can also, when he wills it, suspend a law such as that of which we speak.
Although the wisdom and the goodness of God have united, as to man, the right to eat with toil (2 Thess. 3:10), it is not therefore the less true that it is not the toil of man that secures him his bread. Man might in vain cultivate the earth, sow, plant, water, if the Creator did not send him the rain, the dew, and the fruitful season. If He gave not the increase, all the labor of man would be utterly useless. It is quite as certain, on the other hand, that here also, as in every other respect, God, if He will, can do without the labor of man. He has no need of the co-operation of His creature, in order to nourish it; and this is, I suppose, one of the first lessons which the Lord desired to give to His people when He imposed on them the year of rest for the land.
By this alone, the children of Israel ought to have learned to confide in God, to live in dependance upon Him, to count upon his faithfulness, and to repose for everything upon His promises, on His power, and not upon their own resources. What an admirable sight must this people have presented, if there had been faith enough to obey this law of their God (and often more faith is required for patient expectation of deliverance, without doing anything, than for action). How was their faith rewarded. How blessed was it to see the promise of God made good every sixth year, in such sort that the earth then brought forth for three years: for that sixth year itself, for the seventh, in which there was neither sowing nor harvesting, for the eighth, in which there was no ingathering, but in which preparation was made of sowing, in order to harvest only, however, in the ninth year. How blessed to see a whole nation, having sufficient confidence in its God to leave its soil thus without culture, and yet finding itself abundantly nourished. Oh faith is admirable; blessed is it to see it in action; how it glorifies the Lord!
Canaan was in an especial sense the land of Jehovah, the country which pertained to Immanuel. The Israelites were as His husbandmen. He desired to show them that the right to the land was His, by recalling to them that He alone was its Owner and Lord. "The land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me."
If Canaan was the land of God, Israel were the people of God: produce of one and the same stock, of one father, who had been the friend of God, and for whose sake the Hebrews were and still are beloved. The children of Abraham were then, in the purpose of God, a great family, and apart from all others; they had to consider one another, and to act one toward another as brethren. Many of their institutions tended to recall to them this fact, and to clothe them with fraternal affections one toward the other. Such evidently was, if not the essential and primary object, at least, one of the objects proposed by their solemn feasts, as that of the Passover, for instance. Such also was one of the ends of the ordinance of the sabbatical year. Then the land of God, and its produce, belonged equally to all the inhabitants of the country. No one could harvest his field, or gather in his vineyard; but their produce served for nourishment for all;-.to the Israelites, the strangers dwelling with them, to their cattle, and to the animals of the land; all the produce of the sabbath of the land was for immediate consumption. Thus, each seventh year was to be seen realized without difficulty, by a vast people, that which has for so long a while constituted, and which preeminently, in our days, constitutes the subject of the chimerical dreams of so many a poor worldling. Community of goods cannot exist, save in the family of God. In order to it, there needs, as here, that God should enjoin it and manage it; or indeed, as in Acts 4:32-37, that great grace should be upon all those who carry it into practice. Furthermore, it does exist, as a fact (and that in a manner even yet more blessed, inasmuch as it does not exclude the exercise of faith on the part of the poor), with every child of God for whom the heavenly calling of the church is an experimental truth, and the waiting for the Lord Jesus, a subject of daily hope. When we know that we have in heaven better and more abiding possessions, and that, in yet a very little time, He that shall come will have come, we can accept with joy the loss, by violence, of our possessions upon earth, and yet more willingly be ready to communicate of those goods of which we are but stewards.
Lastly, and above all, this appointment connected itself with all the sabbatical ordinances of which it was the filling up. It formed part of the sabbaths, concerning which God said, in the reproaches which he addressed to the children of Israel: Moreover also I gave them my sabbaths, to be a sign between me and them, that they might know that I am the Lord that sanctify them" (Ezek. 20:12). There were indeed several sabbaths. Every seventh day brought with it the rest of the fathers and children, the masters and servants, the strangers and the cattle. From the morrow of the sabbath after the Passover, seven weeks or seven sabbaths were counted, at the end of which was celebrated the feast of weeks or of Pentecost. The seventh month was quite distinctively the month of sabbaths and of feasts. On the first day there was rest and the memorial of blowing of trumpets, which was the feast of trumpets; the tenth day was the great day of atonement, a sabbath peculiarly solemn. On the fifteenth day commenced the feast of Tabernacles, which lasted eight days, the first and eighth of which were days of rest. More than any other did this last feast prefigure the final rest of the people of God. After these sabbaths of days and months, came the sabbath of years, in which God enjoined the rest of the land. This is not the place in which to develop the subject of the sabbath. I confine myself to the remark that it contained the idea, so precious for us also, of the participation of the rest of God. For Israel, it was a sign of the Divine covenant; in truth, it was an earnest of that promise, "My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest." We may remark also, that every time that God communicates any new principle, or any modification of the relationship between Him and His earthly people, the sabbath is introduced.
Let us now see, in the word, what are the details of the appointment of the sabbatical year, called also the year of release. Its first mention occurs in Ex. 23:10,11, where we see, clearly enough, one of the objects we have pointed out-that the poor of the people might eat of it.
In Deut. 15:1-15, the year of release is again spoken of. " And this is the manner of the release: Every creditor that lendeth ought unto his neighbor shall release it; he shall not exact it of his neighbor, or of his brother..... Beware that there be not a thought in thy wicked heart, saying, The seventh year, the year of release is at hand; and thine eye be evil against thy poor brother, and thou givest him naught; and he cry unto the Lord against thee, and it be sin unto thee. Thou shalt surely give him, and thine heart shall not be grieved when thou givest unto him: because that for this thing the Lord thy God shall bless thee in all thy works, and in all that thou puttest thine hand unto."
The sabbatical year brought with it then this additional blessing to the poor of Israel. It was for them, as the clearing off of all their debts, and put an end to all claims, to which any of them could be subject on the part of their brethren.
Next, we have in the same chapter, the liberation of the slaves, which also was one of the benefits of the ordinance of the jubilee. "And if thy brother, an Hebrew man, or an Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and serve thee six years; then in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee." (Compare Ex. 21:2). "And when thou sendest him out free from thee, thou shalt not let him go away empty: thou shalt furnish him liberally out of thy flock, and out of thy floor, and out of thy winepress: of that wherewith the Lord thy God hath blessed thee thou shalt give unto him." The slaves were then sent away free, and with a present.
Finally we see in Deut. 31:10, etc., an important act which was to be renewed every seventh year. " And Moses commanded them, saying, At the end of every seven years, in the solemnity of the year of release, in the feast of tabernacles, when all Israel is come to appear before the Lord thy God in the place that He shall choose, thou shall read this law before all Israel in His hearing." It was probably in order to conform to this ordinance, that Joshua, Josiah, and Ezra read or caused, to be read, the book of the law to all the people assembled.
Such in brief was the institution of the sabbatical year, to the observance of which, as we have just seen, precious blessings were attached. The people of a stiff-neck did not attach much value, at least not for any length of time, to these blessings. They were not slow to transgress this as well as the other ordinances of their God; they soon despised and profaned the sabbaths of Jehovah, the sabbaths of years as much as those of days, and thus drew upon themselves the judgments of God. There is no question but that the contempt of the sabbath of the seventh year was one of the iniquities of the Jews, which brought upon them the seventy years of captivity in Babylon. It was a fulfillment of this threat of the Lord to His people under the law: " But if ye will not hearken unto me, and will not do all these commandments; and if ye shall despise my statutes... I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a sword after you: and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste. Then shall the land enjoy her sabbaths, as long as it lies desolate, and ye shall be in your enemies' land; even then shall the land rest and enjoy her sabbaths. As long as it lieth desolate it shall rest; because it did not rest in your sabbaths when ye dwelt upon it" (Lev. 26:14,15,33-35). In the second Book of Chronicles we see this threat fulfilled. It is said in chap. 36:20, 21. " And them that had escaped from the sword carried he away to Babylon, where they were servants to him and his sons, until the reign of the kingdom of Persia. To fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths: for as long as she lay desolate she kept sabbath to fulfill threescore and ten years."
See again what God said to the people, by the mouth of Jeremiah (chap. xxxiv. 8-17) concerning the nonobservance of one of the ordinances which, as we have seen, formed part of the sabbatical institution: " Thus saith the Lord, the God of Israel, I made a covenant with your fathers in the day that I brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, saying, At the end of every seven years let ye go every man his brother an Hebrew, which hath been sold unto thee, and when he hath served thee six years, thou shalt let him go free from thee; but your fathers hearkened not unto me neither inclined their ear, and ye were now turned and had done right in my sight, in proclaiming liberty every man to his neighbor.... But ye turned and polluted my name, and caused every man his servant, and every man his handmaid whom he had set at liberty at their pleasure to return, and brought them into sub- jection' to be unto you for servants and for handmaids. Therefore thus saith the Lord; ye have not hearkened unto me, in proclaiming liberty every one to his brother and every man to his neighbor: behold, I proclaim liberty for you, saith the Lord, to the sword, to the pestilence, and to the famine; and I will make you to be removed into all the kingdoms of the earth."
Some outward results were caused by the Babylonish captivity which must not be misconstrued. It inspired the Jews with a horror of strange gods, to whom their fathers had so often sacrificed. This was the drift of what the Lord Jesus said in the parable of the unclean spirit gone out of a man. The man evidently signified " the evil generation" in whose midst Jesus was living. And when the evil spirit returns to the house from whence he went out, he finds it empty and swept out as to the defilements of idolatry (Matt. 12:43-45).
To judge by a fact which the Jewish Historian Josephus relates, it would appear that the Jewish people, at their return from the captivity, had likewise returned to the faithful observance of this ordinance relative to the sabbatic year. The fact is the following:-Alexander the Great, the conqueror having made his entrance into Jerusalem as a friend, asked the High Priest Jaddua (to whom he skewed the greatest respect) what favors the Jews would wish to receive at his hand. Jaddua answered him that they besought him to grant them the liberty of living according to the laws of their fathers, and in the seventh year to exempt them from the tribute which they paid to him in the others. Alexander granted it to him (Flavius Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, lib. 11 chap. 8). And nothing could be more just, for as the Jews did not gather in the harvest that year, it would have been unreasonable to exact from them the ordinary contributions.