The Walking Purchase (aka how indigenous peoples were cheated out of land that became Pennsylvania) and the Third Sabbath – Jubilee, Part 2

Have you heard of the Pennsylvania Walking Purchase?  I have lived in Pennsylvania nearly my entire life, and I took PA History in high school. I do not remember hearing about the Walking Purchase before this week, when a question came to mind, “How was Pennsylvania land obtained by the English?” I searched that question online and something called the Walking Purchase came back in the search results. Walking Purchase?

When I read about the Walking Purchase, I was deeply saddened. It was a devious method that William Penn’s son’s and a PA colonial leader used, after he died, to essentially steal Pennsylvania land from the Delaware Indians. 

If you’re wondering, “Why was he thinking about how PA land got in English hands?” it has everything to do with what we are studying this week. The third sabbath.

In Leviticus chapter 25, verse 8, God teaches his people Israel about keeping the third sabbath:

“Count off seven sabbaths of years—seven times seven years—so that the seven sabbaths of years amount to a period of forty-nine years. Then have the trumpet sounded everywhere on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the Day of Atonement sound the trumpet throughout your land. Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. [That’s the Liberty Bell verse! Remember that from the previous post?] It shall be a jubilee for you; each one of you is to return to his family property and each to his own clan. The fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you; do not sow and do not reap what grows of itself or harvest the untended vines. For it is a jubilee and is to be holy for you; eat only what is taken directly from the fields. In this Year of Jubilee everyone is to return to his own property.”

Let me try to put this passage into context. The Lord instructed Israel to keep three sabbaths. The most common sabbath was the sabbath day, the seventh day of the week.  The second sabbath was the sabbath year every seventh year, which we will study next week.  But then in the passage above we learn about the third sabbath, also called the Year of Jubilee, which was the year after seven sabbath years.  7 rounds of 7 years is 49 years.  That next year, the 50^th year, was the Jubilee year, and it was extra special.  For Jews still to this day, the tenth day of the seventh month is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the most holy day in the Jewish calendar.  The Lord declared that on Yom Kippur of each 50^th year, trumpets were to sound around the land, consecrating that year as the year of jubilee.

When we hear the word jubilee, we think of the idea of being jubilant, having a celebration, a party.  For the Israelites, there is certainly a celebratory element to the Year of Jubilee.  But as you heard in the verses 8 through 13, the Jubilee brings out a very new element of God’s heart for sabbath.  Look again at verse 10, the Liberty Bell verse, “Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you; each of you is to return to your family property and to your own clan.”

Freedom. Liberty. Specifically for slaves, as we will see in a future post this week.  The freedom, the liberty, was also for the land.  Skip ahead to verse 23, where God gives further Jubilee instructions.  I think that you are about to hear is wild.

“The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you reside in my land as foreigners and strangers. Throughout the land that you hold as a possession, you must provide for the redemption of the land. If one of your fellow Israelites becomes poor and sells some of their property, their nearest relative is to come and redeem what they have sold. If, however, there is no one to redeem it for them but later on they prosper and acquire sufficient means to redeem it themselves, they are to determine the value for the years since they sold it and refund the balance to the one to whom they sold it; they can then go back to their own property.”

Can you believe your eyes and ears?  For the ancient Israelites, when you purchased someone else’s ancestral lands, you were never to consider the sale permanent.  It was a temporary purchase.  You always knew that the 50^th year was coming, and during that 50^th year of Jubilee, the ancestral owner would come back and redeem the land.  The Lord says, “you must provide for the redemption of the land.” 

Redeem, redemption.  This is a powerful concept in both the Old and New Covenants.  When it came to the Jubilee Year, it meant that the ancestral family had the opportunity to buy back their land. 

That alone is radical.  In our contemporary mindset, we would say “I bought that property fair and square; you’re crazy if you think I am going to sell it back to you just because 50 years has gone by.  It’s my property now; you sold it, go away.”

In ancient Israel, the Jubilee year directly upends our contemporary viewpoint about ownership.  In ancient Israel, God says, “The land is not yours, it is mine, and you must see yourselves as foreigners and strangers.”  Do you see how radically different that is to our contemporary view of ownership? 

If Jubilee were the guiding principle of our land here in America, every 50 years, the ancestral owners of the land would have a claim to that land.  That means indigenous peoples.  In most cases, the tribal peoples who originally lived here had their land stolen from them by brute force, or by unfair trading or selling, like the Walking Purchase. 

What would God’s heart for jubilee say?  Every 50 years we should give the ancestors of the original owners the opportunity to purchase it.  Especially considering that much of it was either annexed or stolen.

Now notice verse 28.  It gets even more astounding, “But if they do not acquire the means to repay, what was sold will remain in the possession of the buyer until the Year of Jubilee. It will be returned in the Jubilee, and they can then go back to their property.”

It will be returned.  No resale.  Just given back. Give back land?  Doesn’t that seem wrong?

Whether it sounds wrong to you or not, that is God’s heart for jubilee. Perhaps you think God is taking this idea of jubilee too far. We’re about to find out, his Jubilee heart goes even further. How much further? We learn more in the next post.