The Mystery of the Shemitah (7 page)

Sowing and Reaping in the Modern World

It is striking to note to how many agricultural terms connected with the Shemitah are also linked to the economic and financial realms. Financial investment is called “sowing.” The funding given to launch a financial enterprise is called “seed money.” The starting of a new enterprise is called “planting.” When a financial investment produces returns, those returns are called the “yield.” This yield is part of its coming to “fruition.” One then “reaps
”
the yield.

The connection is just as strong in the ancient Hebrew. In one of the ordinances of the Shemitah it is written:

And if you say, “What shall we eat in the seventh year, since we shall not sow nor gather in our
produce
?”

—L
EVITICUS
25:20,
emphasis added

Behind the English word
produce
is the Hebrew
tebuah
.
Tebuah
can be translated as “fruit” and “produce,” but also as “gain,” “income,” and “revenue.”

Here, as before, we find the connection of the Shemitah to the economic realm. The Shemitah impacts a nation’s material blessings, that which makes up its prosperity, its productivity, and its sustenance. In modern nations that translates to the economic and financial realms. So if the Shemitah was to operate in the modern world, we would expect it to be especially linked to those same realms. And since the nature of the Shemitah is to bring about cessation, this would translate to an economic or financial collapse.

The Shemitah as a Prophetic Sign

But can the manifestation of the Shemitah go even further? Can it extend beyond the economic realm? Can it manifest in other forms of cessation, collapse, or even destruction? The answer is found in the account of 2 Chronicles concerning the calamity that fell upon the land in 586 BC. According to the account, the Babylonian invasion of the land, the burning of Jerusalem, the exile of the people from the land, are all a part of the manifesting of the Shemitah.

This presents a jarring fusion. On one hand is the Shemitah, a religious observance of rest, the Sabbath year. On the other hand is a national cataclysm that sets a city on fire and wipes away an entire kingdom. The one is all about release, the other—a nation taken by force into captivity and exile.

How do these two jarring realities go together? The answer is they don’t go together. They are one and the same. According to the account, that which fell upon the land of Israel in 586 BC was not just connected to the Shemitah—it
was
the Shemitah.

As long as she lay desolate she kept Sabbath . . .

—2 C
HRONICLES
36:21

The destruction was the Shemitah. All the unkept, unobserved, and unfulfilled Shemitahs from Israel’s past were now returning to find their fulfillment. The seventy years of judgment
were
the seventy unkept Shemitahs from Israel’s past. The Shemitah had returned in an altered form. It had transformed. It was now operating through conflict and war, political alliances, the deportation and exile of an entire people, and the countless variables of human actions, reactions, and interactions.

The Shemitah and the Two Empires

The Shemitah lay behind the march of Babylonian armies into the Promised Land, the burning of the Temple, the removal of the people from the land, and their years in exile. It operated on an epic scale, transcending the boundaries of ancient Israel and involving foreign peoples, nations, and empires.

In order for the land to rest and keep its missing Sabbaths, the Jewish people had to be removed from the land. In order for the Jewish people to be removed from the land, the Babylonian Empire had to ascend onto the world stage. In order for the Babylonian Empire to ascend, the Assyrian Empire had to fall.

Once the land kept its Sabbaths, the Babylonian captivity could come to an end. In order for that to happen, another empire had to rise—that of Persia. Thus the Babylonian Empire happens to rise at the time that the seventy years of the Shemitah must commence. Then when the seventy years of Shemitah are complete, it falls. It falls because the empire of Persia rises. Thus the Persian Empire happens to rise at the same time the Shemitahs draw to their end. The mystery of the Shemitah thus becomes global, affecting the course of nations beyond and far removed from Israel and causing the rise and fall of powers, kingdoms, and world empires.

The Shemitah as a Pattern

Does the mystery of the Shemitah always involve judgment? Not necessarily. Nor is it a simplistic equation whereby every manifestation can neatly be attributed to a particular sin. And as we have seen, the same manifestation can mean the fall of one power and the rise of another. The Shemitah forms an underlying pattern and dynamic that, given the right circumstances, will manifest in a specific way. Its manifestations may vary in form but will exhibit consistent characteristics, operate through a consistent dynamic, and produce consistent repercussions.

Given the circumstance of a nation or civilization, dedicated from its inception to the will of God but now in departure from that will, in defiance of His ways and at war with His sovereignty, as it was with ancient Israel, the Shemitah will increasingly, more intensely, and more severely manifest in the direction of judgment.

What Would Shemitah Look Like Today?

At the beginning of this chapter I posed a question as to what the mystery of the Shemitah would look like if it was operating in the modern world. To now answer that question, let us assemble the pieces of the puzzle.

The Overall Manifestation

•
  The Shemitah declares God’s sovereignty, dominion, and ownership over all things.

•
  It specifically touches the realm of a nation’s prosperity and sustenance.

•
  It manifests as the Sabbath year and is distinct from the six years preceding it.

•
  It bears witness that all blessings come from God.

•
  It humbles the pride of man.

•
  It lays bare man’s total dependence on God.

•
  It separates wealth and possessions from the owner.

•
  It wipes away that which has built up in the previous years.

•
  It levels imbalance and erases accounts.

•
  It causes cessation, pauses, interruptions, and endings.

•
  It reveals the link between the physical, material realm and the spiritual realm.

•
  It bear witness against materialism.

•
  It calls the nation to turn away from material pursuits and to the spiritual.

•
  It releases entanglements, attachments, and bondages.

•
  It brings about rest—Sabbath.

•
  It calls the nation back to God.

The Economic Manifestation

•
  The Shemitah carries a special connection and bears special consequence on a nation’s economic realm.

•
  Its effect and repercussions extend into the realms of labor, production, employment, revenue, consumption, trade, and finance.

•
  It causes production to cease or severely decrease.

•
  It causes labor to cease or be greatly reduced.

•
  It causes the private realm to increasingly yield to the public realm, and private ownership to be increasingly subject to public necessities.

•
  It causes buying and selling, the transactions of commerce, to be greatly curtailed.

•
  It builds up to its peak day, the Day of Remission, on Elul 29.

•
  It causes a nation’s financial accounts to be transformed, annulled, and wiped clean.

•
  It causes credit to be unpaid and debt released. Credit and debt are wiped away.

•
  It acts as an economic and financial leveler, wiping out that which has been allowed to build up in the preceding years, nullifying imbalance.

•
  It erases accounts and causes release and remission in the economic and financial realms.

The Prophetic Manifestation

The Shemitah is also a prophetic sign of national judgment . . .

•
  To a nation that has rejected the sovereignty of God, a nation that no longer sees itself as “under God.”

•
  To a nation that has driven God out of its culture.

•
  To a nation that has divorced its blessings from the hand of God.

•
  To a nation that pursues increase and prosperity above righteousness and over God.

•
  To a nation that seeks material blessing or pleasure as an end, in and of itself.

•
  To a nation that once knew God but has now largely forgotten Him.

•
  To a nation that once knew the ways of God but now rejects them.

•
  Upon a nation that specifically strikes that nation’s blessings, prosperity, and sustenance.

•
  That bears witness to that nation that all of its blessings come from God, and without Him those blessings cannot remain but will be removed.

•
  That bears witness against that nation’s materialism.

•
  That strikes the nation’s economic realm.

•
  That wipes out the nation’s financial accounts.

•
  That humbles the nation and casts down its objects of pride and glory.

•
  That separates wealth and possessions from that nation.

•
  That causes cessation, pauses, interruptions, and endings.

•
  That releases entanglements, attachments, and bondages among the people of the nation.

•
  That lays bare the nation’s total dependence on God.

•
  That holds the key to the specific timing of national judgment.

•
  That directs the nation away from the worldly and the material.

•
  That calls the nation back to God.

The Global Manifestation

The Shemitah, in its most far-reaching manifestation . . .

•
  Operates on an epic and global scale, transcending national borders and involving every realm of life.

•
  Involves not only the economic and financial realm but also the political realm, the cultural realm, the sociological realm, the military realm, and even the natural realm.

•
  Though directly impacting the financial and economic realms, its outworking can be triggered or accompanied by events of entirely different realms.

•
  Can manifest in the form of a cataclysmic event.