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Chapter 4: The Year of Jubilee: Land and Liberty

"And they praised the God of their fathers, because he had given them freedom and liberty." — 1 Esd. 4:62. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty" — 2 Cor. 3:17. "Ye shall … proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof." — Lev. 25:10.
§ 1. The equal division of the land gave to every family in the Commonwealth of Israel direct access to the soil. There was little room for the growth of involuntary poverty in a community whose Law did not permit the divorce of land from labor. "He that tilleth his land shall have plenty of bread," "shall be satisfied with bread."123 It is very significant that while Moses (no doubt "for the hardness of their hearts," Mark 10:5) did permit to the Hebrews a certain form of chattel-slavery — then probably universal among Eastern nations — though hedging it about with unusually stringent limitations,124 yet he prohibited absolutely that more insidious form of slavery, landlordism, which reduces men to subjection by monopolising the natural elements necessary to their existence. "The bread of the needy is their life: he that defraudeth him thereof is a man of blood. He that taketh away his neighbor's living slayeth him; and he that defraudeth the laborer of his hire is a bloodshedder."125	123 Prov. 12:11, 28:19. 124 Note, in addition to what is given below, the effort to protect slaves against injury by their masters (Ex 21:20, 26, 27; cp. Lev. 24:17-22), and the attempts to mitigate the position of the woman slave (Ex. 21:7-11; Deut. 21:10-14). Asylum for escaped slaves (Deut. 23:15, 16). "Servant" in the English versions = "bondman" (R.V. m. Ex. 21:2, etc.), or "slave." "The Deuteronomic law in favor of the fugitive slave is in marked contrast with the severe enactments in the Code of Hammurabi" (S. A. Cook, The Laws of Moses and the Code of Hammurabi, p. 274). 125 Ecclus. 34:21, 22, curiously echoed by Shakespeare (Merch. of Ven., Act IV, Scene I): "You take my life when you do take the means whereby I live.." Cp. Deut. 24:6: "No man shall take the nether or the upper millstone to pledge: for he taketh a man's life to pledge."
§ 2. So far, then, as the first settlers in the land of Canaan were concerned, they all had a fair start. Wage slavery and undeserved poverty were unknown. The legislator was able to contemplate the possibility of an ideal state of society "when there shall be no poor among you; for the Lord shall greatly bless thee in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance to possess it"; but "only if thou carefully hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do all these commandments which I command thee this day."126 So long as the Law was kept, no Hebrew need toil for sweated wages127 for a brother Hebrew. By his own labor, under the Law which secured to him the equal right to the use of the earth, he could produce all that he needed, without being beholden to or controlled by any one else. Under such a Law, the worker's wages consisted of the whole of his product. He was not compelled to share what he produced either with a landlord or with an exploiter of labor. "Whoso keepeth the fig tree shall eat the fruit thereof?"128 "They shall build houses and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them. They shall not build, and another inhabit; they shall not plant, and another eat; for as the days of a tree are the days of My people, and Mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labor in vain, nor bring forth for trouble."129 "The husbandman that laboreth must be the first to partake of the fruits."130 "Who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? . . For it is written in the Law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? Or saith He it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written that he that ploweth the land plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope."131	126 Deut 15:4,5. 127 "The Lord will enter into judgment with the ancients of His people, and the princes thereof: for ye have eaten up the vineyard, the spoil of the poor is in your houses. What mean ye that ye beat My people to pieces, and grind the faces of the poor, saith the Lord of Hosts?" (Isa. 3:14, 15). 128 Prov. 27:18. 129 Isa. 65:21-23; cp. Amos 5:11: "Forasmuch therefore as ye trample upon the poor, and take exactions from him of wheat: ye have built houses of hewn stone, but ye shall not dwell in them; ye have planted pleasant vineyards, but ye shall not drink the wine thereof" [R. V.], and also, in the same sense, Lev. 26:15, 16; Deut. 28:30, 38-41; Mic. 6:10-15; Zeph. 1:13. 130 2 Tim 2:6 [R.V.] 131 1 Cor. 9:7-10; Deut 25:4; 1 Tim 5:18.
§ 3. But it is written that "God made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions."132 There was a good deal of human nature about the descendants of the crafty Jacob. They were subject to at least their share of human weaknesses and imperfections, and were, moreover, liable, like other folk, to accident and misfortune. It was necessary that the Law should take this into account, and provide, not only for a fair start in the first instance, but also for a continuance of fair conditions. Each succeeding generation had the same equal right to the use of the earth. So abhorrent to the Mosaic conception of justice was the idea of a landless proletariat, that special provision was made to secure, once in each generation, a restoration of the original right of equal access to the natural opportunities of labor. Hence the institution of the Year of Jubilee.	132 Eccles. 7:29.
In spite of many learned disquisitions and much acute speculation, the derivation of the word "Jubilee" remains among the unsettled questions of Hebrew philology. Happily, the nature and significance of the institution itself is not open to doubt. No two things bearing the same name could well differ more completely than the jubilee of the Hebrew Commonwealth and the Victoria celebrations in connection with which its name was taken in vain. Jubilæus est ad universam civitatem restaurandam.133 It had nothing whatever to do with the reign of a monarch. One of the greatest Hebrew statesmen solemnly warned his nation against the evils of monarchy, and showed them how inevitably great social and political evils — the rise of a privileged class, the growth of a landed aristocracy, the subjection of the common people, the manufacture of flunkeys, the taxation of food, the erection of a standing army134 — would follow upon such an act of treason to the unseen King135 as the establishment of a dynasty.	133 Thus tersely Ewald, De feriarum Hebr. origine ac ratione (1841), p. 25. In his later Altertkiimcr Volkes Israels he has discussed the subject fully. 134 1 Sam. 8:11-18; cp. 13:1, 2; 14:52; I Kings 4:7, 18:5; "the king's mowings" (Amos 7:1); the building of Jehoiakim's palace by forced, unpaid labor (Jer. 22:13-19); Ezek. 46:18; Deut. 17:14-20. 135 1 Sam. 10:19, 12:12,19; Isa, 41:21' Hos. 8:4 and 13:10, 11. There is an early tradition that Gideon, the "Judge" or Deliverer, refused an offer of hereditary kingshlp. Note his reason as given in Judg. 8:23.
§4. In our "Diamond Jubilee" procession, on 22nd June 1897, the visible embodyments of Samuel's forecast were paraded before the eyes of an admiring public; a procession of rent-eaters and tax-eaters, titled and other, along a lane of forty thousand fighting men. The then Prince of Wales fathered a "Jubilee" fund for postponing the public support and control of the public hospitals. His gracious consort started another fund for giving one square meal for once in a while to some of the beggars and outcasts who people the slums. But a real Jubilee on Old Testament lines would, if carried into practice in Bible-reading England, render five-sixths of the hospitals unnecessary136 by remedying the social injustices which breed avoidable sickness and cause premature death; and, by establishing equity as the basis of social relations, would abolish the slums, and impose starvation as a penalty only upon wilful and obstinate idlers.137 To the Hebrews, the Jubilee meant a year's holiday.138 The Victorian equivalent for this was a day's holiday by Royal proclamation — a holiday for which many workmen had to pay by the loss of a day's wages — and even this (so incurably are we given over to the worship of Mammon) was announced, not as a national holiday, or as a religious holy-day, but as a "Bank" holiday. This was entirely worthy of a nation of shopkeepers, who exploited even a revel of "loyalty" in the interests of Diamond Jubilee Syndicates, gathering unearned increment along the line of route at an "expected," but not always realised, "profit" to the shareholders of thousands per cent.	136 St. Paul chides the Corinthian Christians for profaning the Sacrament of Brotherhood; "For this cause," he says, "many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep" (1 Cor. 11:30). 137 Thess. 3:10. 138 i.e., from their usual agricultural work (Lev. 25:11, 12).
In England, with its immense wealth and its chronic poverty, with its Empire upon which the sun never sets and its slums where the sun never rises, there is nothing more greatly to be desired than a real Jubilee. Once in every generation the Hebrew people were called to a National rejoicing: not because the courtiers' prayer, "O King, live for ever" had sounded in royal ears for half a century, but because the reign of social justice was being re-established; because the erstwhile disinherited was once more a free man and a citizen. If the principles of the Hebrew land laws were applied under our constitutional monarchy, we could with the greater heartiness "sing with heart and voice, God save the King," because we should no longer fear that a crowd of hungry men might send back, as a sort of dismal echo, the dreary chorus, "We've got no work to do."
§ 5. For once in every fifty years139 — which we may take roughly to represent a generation of Hebrew life — the original equal division of the land was restored. Whatever inequalities might have crept in, through the foolishness or improvidence of some, or through the selfishness or injustice of others, were redressed when, in the fiftieth year, "on the tenth day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement," the trumpet of the Jubilee sounded throughout all the land and proclaimed the national festival of Land and Liberty. "And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof; it shall be a jubilee to you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family."140	139 The Book of Jubilees (second century B.C.) makes the Jubilee cycle one of forty-nine years. But according to Jos. (Antiq. iii. 12. 282), and most other authorities, it was the fiftieth year:. Ewald (Antiq., Engl. transl. of 3rd ed., pp. 374, 375) says that it included the last half of the 49th and the first half of the 50th year; and that it "naturally began with the preparatory day of the Autumn festival, after the year's harvest of every kind was complete." 140 Lev. 25:8-10. There is no definite historical record of the actual observance of the Year of jubilee. (But see Jewish Encyclopedia, x. 607, for the tradition of its observance before the captivity.) "On a close inspection nothing is more certain than that the idea of the Jubilee is the last ring of a chain which only attains in it the necessary conclusion, and that the history of the Jubilee, in spite of its at first seemingly strange aspect, was once for centuries a reality in the national life of Israel" (Ewald, Antiq. 378). "It is impossible to think that (as sometimes been supposed) the institution of the Jubillee is a mere paper-law -- a theoretical completion of the system of seven; at least as far as concerns the land (for the periodical redistribution of which there are... analogies in other nations) it must date from ancient times in Israel (Driver, Literature of the O.T., 7th ed. p. 57). Ezekiel (7:12, 13) mentions its non-observance as one of the signs that "the end is come" upon the nation for its abominable misdoings (7:2,3).
It is to be noted that the Hebrew's estate in land is always spoken of as his "possession" or his "inheritance," and never as his "ownership" or "property." Ewald141 seems to have expressed the distinction with exactness: — "The existence of property is assumed by every system of legislation, even the earliest, because such a system can only follow on a long period of social development and exertion. But Jahveism assumes more than this. For, according to it, each of the tribes of Israel is to have its landed possessions, and each individual household in the tribe is to have its definite portion of the land belonging to the tribe, which is for ever to remain the inalienable heritage of this house and form the sure basis of all property."142	141 Antiq. Isr. (Engl. transl. of 3rd. ed.), p. 177. 142 Bishop Westcott has an interesting note (at Heb. 6:12) on the Biblical use of kanpovouia (= inheritance). He says,"The idea of inheritance which [the Gr. words used in the LXX] convey is in some important respects different from that which we associate with the word. . . . The dominant Biblical sense of 'inheritance' is the enjoyment by a rightful title of that which is not the fruit of personal exertion. . there is no necessary thought of succession to one who has passed away" (Bishop Westcott on Hebrews, 2nd edit., pp. 167-169). The words which I have italicised show how aptly the word "inheritance" is used of land as distinguished from the results of labor.
The Hebrew did not own land. It was not "his own" to do as he liked with; "the land shall not be sold out and out;" it was only his to use, subject to the equal rights of every other Hebrew. He only enjoyed an interest in land, and, if he sold anything, he could only sell that interest.143 He could not sell the equal interest of his children or his children's children.144 The land of Canaan was, as it were, held from God on lease, by the families of Israel. At the end of every fifty years, all the leases fell in simultaneously, and God made a fresh grant of the land, for another fifty years, to all the families of His people, in equal shares as at the first. Hence the Hebrew who, voluntarily or through some compulsion, "sold his land," sold, not the ownership of the land, but the "fag-end of the lease" — till the next year of Jubilee.145 When the Jubilee proclamation again sounded from the sacred rams' horns, the land came back to his family, all contracts of sale to the contrary notwithstanding, and his children enjoyed the same advantage of a "fair start" as their father had had before them.	143 It is a maxim of English law that no one can give a better title than he has. Nemo dat quod non habet. See Broom's Legal Maxims, 6th edit., 761. Nemo potest plus juris ad alium transferre quam ipse habet. Coke's Littleton, 309. 144 This natural and inalienable right to the equal use and enjoyment of land is so apparent, that it has been recognised by men wherever force or habit has not blunted first perceptions. To give but one instance: The white settlers of New Zealand found themselves unable to get from the Maoris what the latter considered a complete title to land, because, although a whole tribe might have consented to a sale, they would still claim with every new child born among them an additional payment on the ground that they had parted with only their own rights, and could not sell those of the unborn. The Government was obliged to step in and settle the matter by buying land for a tribal annuity, which every child that born acquires a share (Henry George, Progress and Roverty, Book VII, Chapter 1). 145 This is very clearly illustrated by the fact that a man who "bought" a field from another and "devoted it to the Lord" could only "devote" the value of the usufruct till the next year of Jubilee, when the land itself returned "to him to whom the possession of the land belonged" (Lev. 27:22-24).
§ 6. It is plain that, under such a Law, the growth of a wealthy landlord class with large estates on the one hand, and of a landless146 pauper class on the other, were rendered alike impossible. Although there might be, and naturally would be, inequalities arising from varying degrees of industry, there would be no such extremes of poverty and riches as we are familiar with. The two idle classes — the wealthy idlers of the West end and the starving idlers of the East — which disgrace our modern "civilisation," could not coexist with the equality of opportunity secured by the Hebrew Law. The prayer of Agur, the son of Jakeh, perhaps represents the ideal of such a society. "Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me; lest I be full and deny Thee, and say, Who is the Lord? or lest I be poor, and steal, and take the name of my God in vain."147 "The sleep of a laboring man is sweet, whether he eat little or much but the abundance of the rich will not suffer him to sleep. There is a sore evil which I have seen under the sun, namely, riches kept for the owners thereof to their hurt."148 A writer in the Book of Proverbs tells us that "much food is in the tilled land of the poor; but there is that is destroyed by reason of injustice,"149 while Isaiah150 drives the lesson home by his description of the barrenness of the land under monopoly. "There is that withholdeth what is justly due, but it tendeth only to want. ... He that withholdeth corn [and, may we not add, he that withholdeth the land on which alone the corn can be grown], the people shall curse him"151 "As the partridge sitteth on eggs, and hatcheth them not; so he that getteth riches, and not by right, shall leave them in the midst of his days, and at his end shall be a fool."152 For "better is a little with righteousness than great revenues with injustice."153	146 Le but principal de cette institution etait de maintenir autant de possible l'egalite primitive du partage des terres, de reparer les perturbations arrivees dans le courant de quarante-neuf ans, et de prevenir ainsi le complet et durable apprauvissement de certaines familles plus malheureuses que d'autres (Dict. Encycl. de la Theol. Catholique, s.v., Jubile). "With the consistent administration of this 1aw, a class wholly without property would have been impossible in Israel" (Oehler, Theol. of the O.T.,i. 348). Jahn (Biblical Archaeology) well describes the Jubilee as "a regulation which prevented the rich from coming into possession [by "free trade in land"] of large tracts of land, and then leasing them out in small parcels to the poor; a practice which anciently prevailed, and does to this day, in the East." [Heinrich Hein writes: Moses endeavored to bring property into harmony with morality, with the true law of reason, and this he accomplished by the introduction of the Year of Jubilee, in which alienated land that was inherited . . . fell back to the original owner, regardless of the manner in which it had been disposed of. This institution forms the most decided contrast to that "outlawry" with the Romans, where after the lapse of a certain time the actual possessor of a property could not be compelled by the legitimate owner to return the property, if he could not bring evidence to show that he had demanded restitution in due legal form. This last condition left the field open to every possible fraud, especially in a state where despotism and jurisprudence were in bloom, and where the lawful possessor had in his power all the means of intimidation, especially when confronted by the poor man who could not afford the expenses which a contest involved. The Roman was soldier and lawyer at the same time, and he knew how to defend with his glib tongue the property taken from others, often with the sword. --S.]. 147 Provo 30:8, 9. 148 Eccles. 5:12, 13. 149 Prov. 13:23 (R.V. m). 150 Isa. 5:10; see above, Chapter 3 § 2). 151 1 Provo 11:24,26 (R. V.m..) 152 Jer. 17:11. 153 Prov. 16:8 (R.V.); Ps. 27:16.
§ 7. The price paid on such "sales" was naturally based upon the number of years that were to elapse before the next Year of Jubilee: so many years' purchase of the usufruct. And if thou sell ought unto thy neighbor, or buyest ought of thy neighbor's hand, ye shall not oppress [R.V., wrong] one another. According to the number of years after the Jubilee thou shalt buy of thy neighbor, and according unto the number of years of the fruits [R.V., crops] he shall sell unto thee. According to the multitude of years thou shalt increase the price thereof, and according to the fewness of years thou shalt diminish the price of it: for according to the number of the years of the fruits [R.V., for the number of the crops] doth he sell unto thee" (Lev. 25:14-16).
Once more we note the astonishing modernity of the ancient Law. For, if the testimony of Josephus is to be believed, the Hebrew legislation had already drawn a distinction between "land" and "agricultural improvements," and had already recognised the principle of compensation for tenants' improvements. "When the Jubilee is come, which name denotes liberty, he that sold the land, and he that bought it, meet together, and make an estimate, on the one hand, of the fruits gathered, and, on the other hand, of the expenses laid out upon it. If the fruits gathered come to more than the expenses laid out, he that sold it takes the land again; but if the expenses prove more than the fruits, the present possessor receives of the former owner the difference that was wanting, and leaves the land to him; and if the fruits received, and the expenses laid out, prove equal to one another, the present possessor relinquishes it to the former owner."154		154 Jos. Antiq. 3:12/ 283, 284.
That is, if the outgoing tenant has spent more on the land than he has got out of it, he receives compensation for his unexhausted improvements.
§ 8. For there is an essential difference between the "land," which God made, and the "improvements" which the labor of man has made upon the land. "For every house is builded by some man; but He that built all things is God."155 Not only are improvements made by labor; they have to be maintained by labor. "By much slothfulness the building decayeth; and through idleness of the hands the house droppeth through."156 Some elementary appreciation of this economic distinction, not perhaps much more definite than that which has found expression in our own proverb, "God made the country and man made the town," may be traced in the provision of the Law as to the sale of houses. If a man sell a dwelling-house in a walled city, then he may redeem it within a whole year after it is sold; within a full year may he redeem it. And if it be not redeemed within the space of a full year, then the house that is in the walled city shall be established for ever to him that bought it throughout his generations! it shall not go out in the Jubilee. "But the houses of the villages which have no wall about them shall be counted as [R.V., reckoned with] the fields of the country; they may be redeemed, and they shall go out in the Jubilee" (Lev. 25:29-31).		155 Heb. 3:4. 156 Eccle. 10:18.
That is, a house in the town could be sold "out and out," but houses in the open country were treated as a part of the inheritance, and were restored, with it, at the Jubilee.157 "This provision was made to encourage strangers and proselytes to come and settle among them. Though they could not purchase land in Canaan for themselves and their heirs, yet they might purchase houses in walled cities, which would be most convenient for them, who were supposed to live by trade."158		157 For the exceptional treatment of the Levites' houses, and the reason of it, see Chapter 6. Lev. 25:32-34. 158 Bush, quoted in Gray's Biblical Museum (on Lev. 25:29). For the Canaanite traders, see p. 34, n.
§ 9. The Law clearly recognises the fact that slavery, in one form or another, is caused by the denial of equal rights in land. So long as the Hebrew retained his foothold upon the land, he enjoyed freedom and had within his hand the opportunity of winning a comfortable subsistence by honest toil. No landlord could rack-rent him for permission to till the ground, or confiscate the results of his industry by raising the rent on his improvements. Economically and politically, he was a free man.159 But if, in the course of time, he lost to another man his share in the land — through misfortune, or laziness, or vice on his own part; or through the cunning or violence of his fellows — he must either become a tramp, or hire himself for wages to a brother-Israelite. To the man who gained by such a transaction it meant the beginning of monopoly: to the man who lost, and to his family, a descent into social slavery. Wage-slavery is the daughter of landlordism. "And if thy brother that dwelleth by thee be waxen poor,160 and be sold unto thee thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bondservant: but as an hired servant,161 and as a sojourner, he shall be with thee, and shall serve thee unto the year of Jubilee: and then he shall depart from thee, both he and his children with him, and shall return unto his own family, and unto the possession of his fathers shall he return. For they are My servants, which I brought forth out of the land of Egypt: they shall not be sold as bondmen. Thou shalt not rule over him with rigor; but shalt fear thy God" (Lev. 25:39-43).		159 Note, in the story of Joseph, the express recognition of the fact that the people of Egypt, by selling their land to Pharoah during the famine, became Pharaoh's slaves (Gen.47:18-21); and cp. Neh. 5:5. 160 Note the sequence: "If thy brother be waxen poor and hath sold away some of his possession (verse 25). . . and be fallen in decay (35) . . . and be sold" (39). See an instance in 2 Kings 4:1; cp. Matt. 18:25, and Neh. 5:5: A man might also become a bond-slave as a punishment for theft, if unable otherwise to make restitution (Ex. 22:3). Cp. Jos. Antiq., 3.12. 282. 161 i.e., day-laborer. A "hired servant," whether native or foreigner, was not to be oppressed or defrauded (Deut. 24:14; cp. Luke 15:17-19), and his wages were to be paid every evening (Deut. 24:14; Lev. 19:13; Tob. 4:14; Matt. 20:2, 8, 13). The normal day of labor is fixed in the Jewish law at twelve hours, from which two were remitted in the course of the day for meals and the recital of the prescribed prayers -- the Shema and Tefillah -- thus leaving ten hours for work. Workmen could require better conditions, but not a decrease in the number of hours; and a rise in wages could not secure for employers increased time, but a better quality of work. --S.]'
The kidnapping of a brother Hebrew into slavery was punishable by death.162 But the Hebrews were permitted to make slaves of the captives of war, and to buy slaves of "the heathen that are round about you,"163 to treat them as property,164 and to leave them as an inheritance to their children.165		162 Ex. 21:16; Deut. 24:7. Man-stealing is the only form of robbery for which the Law awards the punishment of death. For the stealing of goods or cattle the penalty is restitution, or its equivalent in labor. 163 Lev. 25:44-46; Num. 31:18, 26, 27; Deut. 20:14; I Kings 9:21. 164 "Nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is "thy neighbor's" (Ex. 20:17); cp. 21:21 "for he is his money." 165 The later teaching, fully developed only in the N. T., extended the older Jewish conception of the brotherhood of the children of Abraham so as to include all the children of Adam. ("Christwas not the second Abraham, but the second Adam" -- Rev. Thos. Hancock.) When Malachi (2:10) asked: "Have we not all one Father? hath not one God created us? why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother, by profaning the covenant of our fathers?" he was thinking only of his own nation. But the universal Fatherhood of God, as preached by Jesus Christ, and by St. Paul on Mars' Hill, made slavery logically impossible to Christians. "God that made the world and all things therein . . . hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the face of the earth. .. . .. As certain also of your own poets have said, For we also are His offspring." (Acts 17: 24, 26, 28). In the Jews' morning prayer, the men, in three consecutive benedictions; bless God "Who hath not made me a Gentile . . . a slave . ..a woman" (Taylor, Sayings J.F., p. 15, n.). St. Paul certainly had this prayer in mind when he dictated Gal. 3:28. (The reason why the Jewish ritual contains the passage "not '-.. . a Gentile. . . a slave. ...a woman" is, that these three classes were exempt from certain religious obligations.,..- S.] Jesus ben Sirach exhorts the master, for motives of self-interest, to "entreat" the slave whom he has bought ''as a brother" (Ecclus. 33: 30, 31). St. Paul may have been thinking of this passage when he wrote about the runaway slave Onesimus (Philem. 16)., but the reason he gives is based on higher grounds.
Even foreign settlers among the Hebrews were subject to the law of Jubilee, so far as their Hebrew slaves were concerned. If a rich foreigner bought a Hebrew as his slave, he must treat him as "a yearly hired servant," and must set him free in the Year of Jubilee,166 if he had not, in the meantime, been able to redeem himself, or been redeemed by a kinsman.		166 Lev. 25:47-55
So, once in every generation did the Law "proclaim liberty to the captives" in "the acceptable Year of the Lord."167 Well does one of the prophets call it "the Year of Liberty."168		167 Isa.51:2; Luke 4:18,19. 168 Ezek. 46:17.
The emancipation of the man and the restoration of the land go hand in hand. The same law applies to both: the Jubilee sets them both equally free. Means are provided by which, even before the Jubilee, under favoring conditions, the man may be redeemed from bondage,169 or the land from the hand of the stranger.170		169 Lev. 25:48-52. 170 Lev. 25:25-28.
There are few tracts on the Land Question so thought-provoking as to the first principles of just social relationships as the little leaflet which has floated down to us through the ages, and which we usually refer to as the twenty-fifth chapter of Leviticus. The details of the legislation there recorded have long ceased to have other than an antiquarian interest, but the principles they embody and illustrate are eternal. We have here at once one of the most ancient and one of the most modern treatises on the Land Question; for it is based on the fundamental truth that private property in land is private property in man; that landlordism is slavery; that Land and Liberty are both essential to the well-being of a Nation.

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How do we organize and tax ourselves so as to live in justice, peace with our neighbors, and widely-shared prosperity? The wisdom of the ages for 21st century questions.