The Mystery of the Shemitah (6 page)

Lastly, the keeping of the Shemitah was, above all, an act of devotion and worship, to put God above everything else in one’s life. But for all this, a blessing was promised. If Israel would keep the Shemitah, God would keep and bless Israel with all that was needed and beyond.

The Broken Shemitah

On the other hand, to abandon or reject the Shemitah would signify the opposite—the breaking of the covenant and the rejection of God’s sovereignty over the land and lives. It would be as if they said, “The land does not belong to God, but to us. Our blessings, our possessions, everything we have in our lives, comes not from God but from the work of our hands, nor does it belong to God, but to us. We will not sacrifice profit or gain for the sake of pursuing God, nor will we allow anything to halt or interrupt these pursuits. We have no need, no time, and no room for God in our lives or in the life of our nation.”

So the matter of the Shemitah was critical. Upon it rested the nation’s future.

The Shemitah and the Fall of a Nation

Israel’s rejection of the Shemitah set in motion a series of far-reaching consequences and repercussions. If God is not sovereign over the land and its people, then the land and its people become cut off from the Creator. A God-centered worldview is replaced by a man-centered and self-centered worldview. So the people of Israel drove God out of their lives to become their own gods, masters of the land, their world, and their destiny. They could now rewrite the law and redefine what was right and wrong, moral and immoral.

Without God nothing would be holy or, for that matter, unholy. Nothing had any purpose except the purpose they now assigned it. And with no true purpose, they could do whatever they wanted—not only with their land but also with their lives, with each other, and with their children. Thus they lifted up their children as sacrifices on the altars of foreign gods.

It was for this last transgression that the judgment finally fell. It began with the breaking of the Shemitah and ended in the offering of their sons and daughters in the fires of Baal and Molech, the sin that would bring about the nation’s destruction.

The Shemitah’s Judgment

When the judgment fell in 586 BC, the holy city would be left a burning ruin, the holy land a vast desolation, and the people captives in a foreign land. What does this have to do with the Shemitah?

The nation had driven God out of their lives and the Shemitah from their land. Now it would return to them. What they had refused to observe freely would now come upon them by force. It would come back at them not in the form of blessing, but of judgment.

They had driven the Shemitah from the land. Now the Shemitah had returned, and they themselves were driven out. They had removed God from their lives. Now their blessings would likewise be removed from their lives, and their lives from their blessings.

The Shemitah’s Desolations

During the Shemitah there was to be no sowing or reaping of the land. The nation had rejected the ordinance and had worked the land continuously, exploiting it for gain. But when the Shemitah returned to the land in the form of judgment, all sowing and reaping ceased, all tending of vineyards and groves came to an end, and no one worked the land. Through judgment and calamity the ordinance was now fulfilled.

During the Shemitah everyone who owned a vineyard or a grove had to open it up to those in need. Every field had to now be accessible to the poor. The gates of walled and fenced lands were unlocked and left open the entire year. In the destruction of 586 BC the gates were opened by force, walls were broken down, fences were destroyed, vineyards were exposed, groves were left unprotected, and private land became public and accessible to all. In judgment the Shemitah was fulfilled.

On the Shemitah’s last and climactic day all debt was canceled, all credit annulled, and the nation’s financial accounts were transformed in a massive nullification. In 586 BC the nation’s financial accounts were, likewise, transformed in a massive wiping away of the nation’s financial realm. The calamity canceled and wiped out debt and nullified credit by force. As it had always done, the Shemitah had transformed the nation’s financial realm, only now by the force of destruction.

The effect of the Shemitah was to wipe away that which had been built up. In 586 BC the Shemitah wiped away the kingdom itself. That which had been built up, the nation’s palaces and towers, were all wiped away. The kingdom itself had been nullified.

The Severe Sabbath

The Shemitah was the Sabbath of years, the year of rest, of fallow ground, of unkept vineyards, of stillness. In 586 BC and the years that followed, with the people in exile, the land of Israel rested. Its fields lay fallow, its groves unkept, its vineyards untended, its threshing floors silent, its olive trees abandoned, and its vine presses still. What was ordained from Sinai was now fulfilled:

Then the land shall enjoy its sabbaths as long as it lies desolate and you are in your enemies’ land; then the land shall rest and enjoy its sabbaths.

—L
EVITICUS
26:34

There had been a total of seventy Sabbath or Shemitah years that the nation had not observed. So Israel’s judgment would last seventy years.

As long as it lies desolate it shall rest—for the time it did not rest on your Sabbaths when you dwelt in it.

—L
EVITICUS
26:35

So it was the mystery of the Shemitah that held the secret of the timing of the nation’s judgment.

The Shemitah and World History

The judgment that fell on the land of Israel in 586 BC was a pivotal event in biblical history, Jewish history, and world history. In it the Temple of Jerusalem would be destroyed and the words of the Hebrew prophets fulfilled. In it the Diaspora, the scattering of the Jewish people throughout the world, would begin and the stage set for the formation of what would be known as Judaism and the coming of a Jewish rabbi named Yeshua or Jesus, whose life would irrevocably change the history of the world.

And behind it all was the mystery of the Shemitah. In other words, this obscure, little known, ancient mystery has already affected the entire planet and those who live on it in ways too vast to measure.

But could there be more to it? Could the mystery of the Shemitah still be at work—moving, impacting, and altering the course of world history—even in the modern world, even in our day?

If so, what form would it take on? How would the Shemitah manifest in the modern world? For the answer, another key is needed.

Chapter 6
THIRD KEY: The PROPHETIC MANIFESTATION

What If the Mystery Was Still in Effect?

A
CCORDING TO THE
Book of 2 Chronicles, the mystery of the Shemitah was operating behind one of the most pivotal events in world history, the destruction of the kingdom in 586 BC. But what if the mystery was still in effect? Or what if it was to manifest again in the modern world? What if it was operating right now, still touching, affecting, determining, or altering the course of human history in modern times? What would that look like?

The Shemitah’s Economic Connection

In modern economies a very small percentage of people work the land, gather in harvests, or tend vineyards. So how could the Shemitah break the barrier to operate in the modern world? What happens if we look at the effects and consequences of the Shemitah in purely technical and general terms?

The result is not only relevant but also surprisingly applicable to our day: the effect and repercussions of the Shemitah extend into the nation’s financial realm, economic realm, and the realms of labor, employment, production, consumption, and trade.

Though most modern economies are not centered on agriculture but are industrial or postindustrial, all of these attributes still apply. Thus if the Shemitah was to manifest in modern times, it would affect a nation’s financial realm, its economic realm, and its realms of labor, employment, production, consumption, and trade.

Economic Collapse

Over the course of the Shemitah the nation’s production is severely decreased.
For a modern nation to witness a severe decreasing of its production would point to an economic downturn or recession, an economic collapse, or a depression. During such times demand dries up, corporations downsize, factories cut back on output, and businesses close their doors.

During the Shemitah the nation’s labor is greatly reduced or comes to a cessation.
In the case of a modern nation this would translate to massive unemployment. All of these, again, are characteristics of an economic recession or depression.

During the Shemitah the buying and selling of the land’s produce are restricted and the fruits of labor are abandoned.
Here we have yet another characteristic of economic recessions and collapses. Demand dries up. Consumption plunges. Commerce dwindles. Consumers cut back on their spending. Merchandise sits untouched in stores and warehouses, and international trade suffers massive declines. The fruits and products of the nation’s industry and services are abandoned.

Financial Collapse

On its climactic day, Elul 29, the force of the Shemitah causes credit to be canceled and debt to be wiped away. The nation’s financial accounts are transformed, nullified, and wiped clean.

The description again points us to an economic implosion and, more specifically, to a financial collapse. Such collapses produce corporate failures, bank failures, foreclosures, and bankruptcies. Debt and credit are nullified. And in financial crises involving stock market crashes, financial accounts are transformed, nullified, and wiped clean. Billions of dollars are wiped away in a matter of hours or minutes.

The effects and consequences of the Shemitah consistently point in the direction of a specific event—an economic and financial collapse. This resemblance of the Shemitah to an economic implosion has been noted even by the rabbis.

The Shemitah: Observances and Cataclysms

On one hand, we have the Shemitah as a biblically ordained occurrence, a religious event, a Sabbath rest, and a blessing, carried out through the voluntary observance of God’s people. On the other hand, we have the destruction of a kingdom—an event that comes about through a multitude of causes entirely from having nothing to do with a voluntarily religious observance. How can the two be connected? The Bible itself establishes the connection in Leviticus 26, when it speaks of a military invasion of such magnitude that it reduces entire cities to ruins and the land to a depopulated devastation—and yet it speaks of the land’s desolation as a fulfillment of the Shemitah.

The Shemitah in Modern Translation

So regardless of the means by which it comes, the ultimate result is the same. It is the
effect
of the Shemitah that manifests, whether through the voluntary observance of God’s people or by a calamitous event. The sowers and reapers of ancient Israel were to voluntarily cease from working for the duration of the Shemitah; in the modern world, economic downturns and implosions force people from employment and labor. The means are different—but the end result is the same.

In the ancient Shemitah, the voluntary abandoning of fields and groves meant that the land’s yield and productivity plummeted; in the modern world, the plummeting of production and yield are caused by economic collapses. In the ancient Shemitah, the people were not to buy, sell, or partake in the fruit of the land; in the modern world, economic collapses cause the plunging of consumption and trade. And in the ancient Shemitah, the people were to wipe clean their financial accounts by canceling out debt and credit; in the modern world, financial collapses cause credit to fail, debts to go unpaid, and financial accounts to be wiped out.