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• “Jubilee” is the name given to a particular year; the name comes from the instrument used to mark its launch, the yobel.
• The yobel, the ram's horn, is used to proclaim the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), a Jewish holiday which occurs every year. Yom Kippur takes on special significance when it marks the beginning of a Jubilee year.
• An early indication of the Jubilee Year in the Bible is found in Leviticus 25: 8-13. God told Moses:
“You shall count off seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that the period of seven weeks of years gives forty-nine years. Then you shall have the trumpet sounded loud; on the tenth day of the seventh month—on the day of atonement—you shall have the trumpet sounded throughout all your land. And you shall hallow the fiftieth year and you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you: you shall return, every one of you, to your property and every one of you to your family. That fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you: you shall not sow, or reap the aftergrowth, or harvest the unpruned vines. For it is a jubilee; it shall be holy to you: you shall eat only what the field itself produces.
In this year of jubilee you shall return, every one of you, to your property.”
The Jubilee Year was intended as a time to re-establish a proper relationship with God, with one another, and with creation.
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