Prolegomena to the History of IsraelWellhausen, Julius
Religion
Prolegomena to the History of Israel
Wellhausen, Julius
Bible. Old Testament -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.; Jews -- History -- To 70 A.D.; Judaism -- History -- To 70 A.D.
In the Priestly Code the year of jubilee is further added to
supplement in turn the sabbatical year (Leviticus xxv. 8 seq.).
As the latter is framed to correspond with the seventh day,
so the former corresponds with the fiftieth, i.e., with Pentecost,
as is easily perceived from the parallelism of Leviticus xxv. 8
with Leviticus xxiii. 15. Asthe fiftieth day after the seven
Sabbath days is celebrated as a closing festival of the forty-nine
days' period, so is the fiftieth year after the seven sabbatic years
as rounding off the larger interval; the seven Sabbaths falling on
harvest time, which are usually reckoned specially (Luke vi. 1 ),
have, in the circumstance of their interrupting harvest work, a
particular resemblance to the sabbatic years which interrupt agriculture
altogether. Jubilee is thus an artificial institution superimposed
upon the years of fallow regarded as harvest Sabbaths after the
analogy of Pentecost. Both its functions appear originally to
have belonged also to the Sabbath year and to be deduced from the
two corresponding regulations in Deuteronomy relating to the
seventh year, so that thus Exod xxiii. would be the basis of Leviticus
xxv. 1-7 and Deuteronomy xv. that of xxv. 8 seq. The emancipation
of the Hebrew slave originally had to take place on the seventh
year after the purchase, afterwards (it would seem) on the seventh
vear absolutely; for practical reasons it was transferred from
that to the fiftieth. Analogous also, doubtless, is the growth of
the other element in the jubilee--the return of mortgaged property
to its hereditary owner--out of the remission of debts enjoined in
Deuteronomy xv. for the end of the seventh year; for the two hang
very closely together, as Leviticus xxv. 23 seq. shows.
As for the evidence for these various arrangements, those of the
Book of the Covenant are presupposed alike by Deuteronomy and by
the Priestly Code. It seems to have been due to the prompting of
Deuteronomy that towards the end of the reign of Zedekiah the
emancipation of the Hebrew slaves was seriously gone about; the
expressions in Jeremiah xxxiv. 14 point to Deuteronomy xv. 12,
and not to Exodus xxi. 2. The injunction not having had practical
effect previously, it was in this instance carried through by
all parties at the same date: this was of course inevitable when
it was introduced as an extraordinary innovation; perhaps it is
in connexion with this that a fixed seventh year grew out of a
relative one. The sabbatical year, according to the legislator's
own declaration, was never observed throughout the whole
pre-exilic period; for, according to Leviticus xxvi. 34, 35, the
desolation of the land during the exile is to be a compensation
made for the previously neglected fallow years:
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