​From John Dominic Crossan’s “The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately After the Execution of Jesus.”

Note especially the wonderful quotation from Isaiah included.

Or, as Isaiah 5: 8 said, it was intended to defeat “you who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is room for no one but you, and you are left to live alone in the midst of the land!”

First, what was the purpose of the Jubilee Year? And notice, by the way, that it started on the Day of Atonement. Here, at least, the answer is quite clear. From Léon Epsztein: “…in order to restrict the creation of latifundia, [that is,] to prevent the concentration of rural properties”(133). From Norman Habel: “The policy provided a mechanism for deferring in the short term and preventing in the long term land monopolies of latifundialization, the process of land accumulation in the hands of a few landowners to the detriment of peasant farmers”(105). From Jeffrey Fager: “It attempted to restrict the latifundism which was prevalent in the ancient Near East in order to keep the means of production evenly distributed among independent families”(88).

Or, as Isaiah 5: 8 said, it was intended to defeat “you who join house to house, who add field to field, until there is room for no one but you, and you are left to live alone in the midst of the land!”

It wanted to stop the transformation of multiple peasant smallholdings into single large landownerships, to deter the eradication of the family farm and the creation and extension of latifundism or agribusiness. That, of course, put divine tradition on a collision course with rural commercialization.