Debt release and liberty

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• The Sabbath Year and the Jubilee →Every seventh year the land rests. Every fiftieth year, the Jubilee, ancestral land returns to its families and liberty is proclaimed. Babylonian kings issued similar debt-release decrees, sometimes; Leviticus builds release into the calendar. Was it ever practiced? And how did it echo in Luke 4 and on the Liberty Bell?
• Redeeming the Poor →When an Israelite falls into poverty, others must help without interest; if he must sell himself, he is treated as a hired worker and goes free at the Jubilee, and a relative may redeem him. The chapter also allows foreign slaves held permanently, a hard contrast that must be faced.
• The Seventh Year: Debt and Freedom →Every seventh year, debts between Israelites are released. Lend to the poor even when the year of release is near. A Hebrew slave goes free in the seventh year with generous gifts, unless he chooses to stay for life. Ancient kings sometimes cancelled debts; Deuteronomy puts release on a fixed calendar.
• Debt, Land and the Governor's Example →A great cry rises from the people and their wives: they have mortgaged fields, vineyards and houses for grain; they have borrowed to pay the king's tax; their sons and daughters are being taken as debt-slaves. Nehemiah, angry, confronts the nobles and officials, calls an assembly, and makes them swear to restore land and the "hundredth." He refuses the governor's food allowance for twelve years and feeds 150 at his table.
• Covenant Commitments and the Temple Economy →Nehemiah the governor, priests, Levites and heads of the people set their seals to a written covenant, and the rest of the people join with an oath. They promise to keep the law: no marriages with the peoples of the land; no buying on the Sabbath; the seventh year left fallow and debts released; a third of a shekel yearly for the temple; wood for the altar by lot; firstfruits, firstborn and tithes brought to the storehouses.
• Eliphaz Invents a Charge Sheet →In his third speech Eliphaz finally names Job's sins: he took pledges from his brothers for nothing and stripped the naked of their clothing, refused water to the weary and bread to the hungry, sent widows away empty and crushed the arms of the fatherless. That is why snares surround him. Eliphaz urges Job to return to the Almighty, lay up gold in the dust, and he will be restored; he will even deliver the guilty by the cleanness of his hands.
• Isaiah 58: The Fast That I Have Chosen →"Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet (shofar)": the people seek God daily and ask, "Wherefore have we fasted, and thou seest not?" God answers: "in the day of your fast ye find pleasure, and exact all your labours" (or "drive all your workers"); you fast for strife and to strike with the fist (58:1–5). "Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free… to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?" Then "shall thy light break forth as the morning"; you will call and God will answer, "Here I am"; you will be "the repairer of the breach" (vv. 6–12). If you call the sabbath "a delight," not doing your own business, you will ride on the heights of the earth (vv. 13–14).
• Isaiah 61: The Spirit of the Lord Is upon Me →"The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn"; to give those who mourn in Zion beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for a faint spirit (61:1–3). They will rebuild ancient ruins; strangers will tend their flocks; "ye shall be named the Priests of the LORD"; instead of shame, a double portion (vv. 4–7). "For I the LORD love judgment, I hate robbery"; an everlasting covenant; their descendants known among the nations (vv. 8–9). "I will greatly rejoice in the LORD… for he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation… as a bridegroom… and as a bride"; as a garden makes seeds spring up, God will make righteousness and praise spring up before all nations (vv. 10–11). In Luke 4:16–21 Jesus reads from this passage in the synagogue at Nazareth and says, "This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears."
• Investigation: Inclusion, Exclusion and the Poor →Isaiah's first chapter tells rulers to "judge the fatherless, plead for the widow" (1:17), and its last chapters open the temple to foreigners and eunuchs (56) and perhaps the priesthood to the nations (66:21). Between them the book condemns those who "grind the faces of the poor" (3:15), defines true fasting as freeing the oppressed and feeding the hungry (58), pictures Zion as a woman humiliated and then married, and promises that the wealth of the nations will flow into Jerusalem. This investigation gathers these texts, sets them in their historical settings, and looks honestly at their ethical difficulties as well as their reach.