Posted on 08/25/2003 1:24:15 AM PDT by goldstategop
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08534a.htm
Year of Jubilee (Hebrew)
According to the Pentateuchal legislation contained in Leviticus, a Jubilee year is the year that follows immediately seven successive Sabbatic years (the Sabbatic year being the seventh year of a seven-year cycle). Accordingly, the Jubilee year takes place at the end of seven times seven years, i.e. at the end of every forty-nine years, or the fiftieth. Hence, the institution of the Jubilee-year system is but an extension or the working out of the Sabbatic-year legislation, viz. that as at the end of every six years there succeeds a Sabbatic year, so at the end of each seven Sabbatic years there succeeds a Jubilee year.
....(snip)...
The legislation concerning the year of Jubilee is found in Leviticus, xxv, 8-54, and xxvii, 16-24. It contains three main enactments:
* rest of the soil;
* reversion of landed property to its original owner, who had been driven by poverty to sell it; and
* the freeing or manumission of those Israelites who, through poverty or otherwise, had become the slaves of their brethren.
Now the sabbatical year says
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13289a.htm
Sabbatical Year (Shenath shabbathon, "Year of rest"; Septuagint eniautos anapauseos; Vulgate annus requietionis). The seventh year, devoted to cessation of agriculture, and holding in the period of seven years a place analogous to that of the Sabbath in the week; also called "Year of Remission". Three prescriptions were to be observed during the year (Exodus 23:10-11; Leviticus 25:1-7; Deuteronomy 15:1-11, 31:10-13):
*The land was to lie fallow and all agricultural labor was to be suspended....The prescribed rest was for the land, not for man. Hence work other than agricultural was not forbidden, nor even work in the fields which had no direct connection with raising crops, such as building walls of enclosure, digging wells, etc.
*No crops being reaped during the sabbatical year, the payment of debts would have been a great hardship, if not an impossibility, for many. Hence the creditor was commanded "to withhold his hand" and not to exact a debt from an Israelite, though he might demand it of strangers, who were not bound to abstain from agricultural pursuits (Deuteronomy 15:1-3, Hebrew text). The Talmudists and many after them understand the law to mean the remission of the debt; but modern commentators generally hold that it merely suspended the obligation to pay and deferred the creditor from extracting the debt during the year.
*During the sabbatical year the Law was to be read on the Feast of Tabernacles to all Israel -- men, women, and children -- as well as to the strangers within the gates, that they might know and fear the Lord, and fulfill all the words of the Law (Deuteronomy 31:10-13).
*The law concerning the release of Hebrew slaves in the seventh year (Exodus 21:2 sqq.; Deuteronomy 15:12 sqq.) is wrongly connected by some writers with the sabbatical year. That there was no special connection between the two is sufficiently shown by the requirement of six years of servitude, the beginning of which was not affixed to any particular year, and by the law prescribing the liberation of Hebrew slaves in the year of jubilee, which immediately followed the seventh sabbatical year (Leviticus 25:39 sqq.).
So that must be where I got the seven year cycle from - you served seven years for debts you could not pay, starting from the time of sentencing, not from the beginning of a sabbatical year cycle.
But the point mainly was that there was no prison system - people were either executed or forced into servitude to learn to WORK. Which isn't all that bad.
Saves a lot of cash rather than have people sit and rot in jail.
Preserves a little more of human dignity, IMO.
What's the matter? Prayed to God for something and he didn't come through?
Ain't that the truth!
Slavery isn't condoned by the Bible, it is merely acknowledged. And advocacy is a puny word. Homosexuality was noted to be perverse and a confusion of God's order to things. It is an abomination. But those with no respect for life or God would'nt much understand that.
It's been sold as a 'natural happenstance.' So natural is it that people must convince others to follow the lifestyle - thus the modern problem with kids being preyed upon by Homos. That coupled with the lies that had to be spread while the insidious perversion tried to gain ground and match the numbers lied about.
The term 'out of the closet' is telling. It isn't abuse or chastising that keeps one in the closet, it's shame. Shame is a matter of conscience - that part of a person that is their moral compass. It's also that part of a person that liberals, including gays and lesbians, are conned into suffocating. Once conscience is gone, they become emboldened in their error. But error nonetheless is what they espouse, just as your error in assuption and verbage..
Human conduct has to be judged from a moral standpoint. Absent that, there is no sure rule - none. It boils down to a peeing contest or a blame albert symposium: "Albert got by with it so I should too..." It is why Europe is such a mess. And it's why the liberals are. What's right and wrong to them is determined by the whims of the popular people around them. If they don't like you tomorrow, you're out - whether that means out of favor, ridiculed or stretched at the end of a good piece of hemp rope.
Certain things are a right in this country. You have the right to pursue happiness so long as that doesn't infringe on others or violate the norms that have been put into law. You have the right to be Stupid; but, I have the right not to put up with you. See how that works. You can do whatever you choose so long as you accept the responsibility for it. The problem is that no one wants to accept responsibility for anything they do. So it's mean that the poor serial killer should go to death row. And it's just awful that those poor kids have to suffer in court after killing their parents.. The mindset that irresponsibly comes to these conclusions is lazy and unburdened by good sense or any moral direction. If you want to defend that mindset, have at it. I'll excercise my right to ignore.
BTW, It used to be so obvious in this country that certain things were just morally wrong. Liberals have attacked the moral fabric of this country for decades with the tool of Politically correct greyness. They have confused and obfuscated and been willing dupes to comunism and socialists who willingly use them to undermine this country. I for one have had enough.
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