Sabbatical Messianism

In reading Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert’s discussion of the Jubilee year from Leviticus 25, it reminded me of something I discovered while working on my Ph.D. thesis. In studying the concept of “messianism”, I came across the idea of “Sabbatical Messianism” (you probably never heard of this, I hadn’t at the time).

This is the term describes the widespread belief among ancient Jews that the Messiah would come in a sabbatical year. The conviction arose out of Daniel 9:24-27 – Daniel’s interpretation of Jeremiah and the Chronicler. The writer of the book of Daniel uses the sabbatical scheme from the Torah to reinterpret Jeremiah’s prophecy (Jer. 25:11-12) of a return after seventy years (Dan. 9:2; 24-27). Daniel interpreted the 70 years to be 70 sabbatical cycles equal to ten jubilees or 490 years. He believed that the tenth jubilee was about to begin (70 weeks of years) and, thus, the restoration of Israel back in the land as its rightful owners according to the requirements of the sabbatical year. The sabbatical year of jubilee became for later writers of the Hebrew Bible and beyond a paradigm for the YHWH’s handling of Israel’s national sin. The continual hardheartedness and violation of the covenant by both the northern and southern kingdoms led to judgement of YHWH and their respective explosions from the land. This judgement, according to the prophet Jeremiah, would be measured in terms of the Jubilee: indebtedness, slavery and release.

The author(s) of the pseudepigraphon Psalms of Solomon (ca. 30 BCE) held this sabbatical eschatological outlook because they allude to the sabbatical jubilee release of the exiles: ‘sound in Zion the trumpet to summon the saints, proclaim in Jerusalem the voice of him who brings good news, that God has shown mercy to Israel’ (Pss. Sol. 11:1). When Israel had paid her debt the jubilee trumpet would sound and the exiles would return.

The concept of Jubilee was expanded and became linked with the release of Israel from the shadow of the exile.

This concept was widespread in both ancient Judaism and early Christianity. It is likely the framework of Jesus’ sermon in Luke 4. And Paul likely references it in his reference to the “trumpet call of God” at the parousia (1 Thes 4:16).