You’re familiar with the Liberty Bell, right?
Big bell with a crack in it. On display in Philadelphia. Long associated with the American Revolution, though there’s no evidence it was rung at any significant event. One of those confused quirks of history, like George Washington’s mythic chopping down a cherry tree.
Do you know what’s written on the Liberty Bell? I won’t keep you in suspense: “Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the Land unto all the inhabitants thereof.”
A line from Leviticus 25. A passage that, in some ways, is about farming. Every seventh year is to be a “sabbath” — the land will not be planted, but lie fallow — a smart agricultural practice, essential before advanced fertilizers.
And every seventh sabbath, 7 x 7, the 50th year would be a “jubilee.”
What was a jubilee? Big party? Lots of back-patting? Maybe. The Hebrew word for jubilee, yovel, means ram’s horn, or trumpet, the way news was blasted across the desert. A cue taken in English: jubilee is from the Latin jubilo, or “shout of joy.” That’s where we get “jubilation.”
They weren’t shouting general self-praise, nor self-assigned greatness, but about something real. Something big. The jubilee year was sort of a societal reset, when all debts would be forgiven, slaves freed, seized lands returned. A fresh start for those downtrodden by life. It was about humbling the mighty, not building them up further.
“Do not take advantage of each other,” Leviticus urges.
Not quite, I feel comfortable saying, the spirit we find afoot in the land today, during our American quintuple jubilee, the 250th anniversary of a country, “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” No need to spell it out. Either you understood long ago or you never will.
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