Weekly Parashah

Parashah beHar "On Mount"

Torah: Vayikra (Leviticus) 25:1 – 26:2

Haftarah: Yirmiyahu (Jeremiah) 32:6-27
In the evening count Omer 36

Shemittah - The Sabbatical Year; and Yovel - the Jubilee Year

SHEMITTAH, the Sabbatical year, and YOVEL, the Jubilee year, teach that the primary force in the universe is spiritual, not the natural law. Obedience to God’s commandments will result in blessings beyond the natural.

"And Yehovah spoke to Moshe on Mount Sinai, saying, ‘Speak to the people of Israel, and say to them, “When you come into the land which I give you, then shall the land keep a Shabbat for Yehovah. Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard, and gather in its fruit; but in the seventh year shall be a Shabbat of rest for the land, a Shabbat for Yehovah; you shall not sow your field, nor prune your vineyard. That which grows of its own accord of your harvest you shall not reap, nor gather the grapes of your vine; for it is a year of rest to the land (SHEMITTAH).

"And you shall count seven Shabbats of years to you, seven times seven years; and the space of the seven Shabbats of years shall be to you forty and nine years. Then shall you cause the shofar to sound a broken blast [teruah] on the tenth day of the seventh month, in the Day of Atonement shall you sound the shofar throughout all your land. And you shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all the inhabitants of it; it shall be a jubilee to you (YOVEL); and you shall return every man to his possession.

“Therefore, you shall do My statutes, and keep My judgments, and do them; and you shall dwell in the land in safety. And the land shall yield her fruit, and you shall eat your fill, and dwell in it in safety. And if you shall say, ‘What shall we eat the seventh year? behold, we shall not sow, nor gather in our produce;’ Then I will command My blessing upon you in the sixth year, and it shall bring forth fruit for three years. And you shall sow the eighth year, and eat still of old fruit until the ninth year; until its fruits come in you shall eat of the old store... for the land is Mine: for you are strangers and live as sojourners with Me… I am Yehovah your God.”

Leaving the fields untended for a year and still having enough to eat, demonstrates that the true life comes when man stops striving for material gain in favor of dedication to spiritual growth by obeying God’s mitzvot, God's commandments.

They teach that our source of physical sustenance, as well as the spiritual one, is not the world but God. He is the provider of everything we need. It is for our own spiritual growth that He is teaching us to have compassion towards the stranger, the widow and the orphan. But man cannot abstain totally from the world he lives in, that is why Shemittah is only once in seven years, just as is the Shabbat every seventh day. This infuses holiness and purpose into our work-years and our workdays. Just as the days of the week are days of preparation for Shabbat so, too, the six years preceding the Shemittah are lived in anticipation of God's blessing of an abundant crop. The comparison between Shemittah and the Shabbat is that both bear testimony of God’s creation and His blessings upon us, because observing the Shemittah would have brought blessings to Israel just as Shabbat did and still does.

On the Yovel – the Jubilee Year, all property should have been returned to its ancestral heritage. But what is interesting is that God says that all land is His. Therefore, the returning of property, of freeing the bondservants, and of releasing the captives is for the purpose of worshiping and serving God, because we are but strangers and sojourners on this earth. God's people are to be detached from the earthly things resisting the temptations of the cultures surrounding them because their allegiance is with God. God created this material world and He is the provider of everything we need for our sustenance. He can cause an abundant crop to last for three years; if only we would obey His commandments, have faith and believe.

This year of release should have been announced on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, with the blowing of the Shofar with the sound of teruah, the succession of nine tremulous sounds of alarm calling upon man to stand by the banner of God.

Israelis never kept the Yovel, the Jubilee Year, in the physical realm, but when Yeshua came down on earth, the first thing He did at the beginning of His ministry, is to declare the Jubilee Year, the year of release in the spiritual realm, as recorded by the Gospel writer Luke: “And the scroll of Isaiah the prophet was handed to Him. And He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: ‘The spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He anointed Me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim release to captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord...’ Now He began to say to them, ‘Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’” Luke 4:17

Everyone who believes in Him, has been released from the bondage of sin, but for Israel, it remains a future day when the entire Nation, not just individual Jews here and there, will recognize Yeshua as their awaited Moshiah, repent and be forgiven of their sins. The teruah of Rosh haShanah as outlined in Chapter 23 of Leviticus is the yearly calling of Israel to repent and return to God. In its prophetic fulfillment is the day described by the prophet Zechariah: “'In that day... I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced.' And they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him like the bitter weeping over a firstborn.” Zechariah 12:10

But the teruah of Yovel is the fulfillment of the prophecy given further in chapter 13: “In that day a fountain will be opened for the house of David and for the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and for impurity.” Zechariah 13:1

God will announce through the Shofar blasts that Atonement has been made for all Israel and that they have been freed from sin and impurity.

The blessings of the Jubilee Year, the 50th year, after a succession of seven sabbatical years, alludes to the blessings after the counting of the Omer for seven completes Shabbats - forty-nine days - with the giving of the Torah and of the Ruach haKodesh, the Holy Spirit, on the fiftieth day at Shavuot.

By believing in God’s Torah, in His word, through the help of Ruach haKodesh “you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free,” free from the material world but will make you hunger and thirst for the spiritual.

Shabbat Shalom!

Written by Katriel

Published: 18 May 2022